Fist of the North Start Manga in Full Color!

[JoeGKushner]

I've got to admit that I was impressed when I saw this older title in full color. Only problem is that most of the game stores don't have more than an issue or two. I decide to handle the problem by ordering form Amazon.com. Not exactly the easiest thing in the world to do as they don't have the # of the issues, just the name of the book, which is exactly the same for each title! Arg!

Anyway, the book looks fantastic in full color.

Anyone pick up the Fist of the Blue Sky that's also recently come out? I've been skimming it in the book store but haven't decided if I should pick it up. Any opinions?

 

[WizarDru]

I've got to admit that I was impressed when I saw this older title in full color. Only problem is that most of the game stores don't have more than an issue or two. I decide to handle the problem by ordering form Amazon.com. Not exactly the easiest thing in the world to do as they don't have the # of the issues, just the name of the book, which is exactly the same for each title! Arg!

Anyway, the book looks fantastic in full color.

Anyone pick up the Fist of the Blue Sky that's also recently come out? I've been skimming it in the book store but haven't decided if I should pick it up. Any opinions?

Are you referring to the Master Edition versions of Fist of the North Star?

If so, then yes, they are beautiful (and well translated, for a damn change), and I have bad news: volume 6 is the final volume. They won't be making any more, afaiK.

Damn it all.

(slight aside: we were watching episodes of the anime series Gantz a couple of weeks ago, and one of the main characters and his brother actually quote Kenshiro as part of a discussion of bullies and right and wrong. Pretty amusing, really, and a reminder of how influential Hokuto No Ken actually was to manga artists in Japan).

 

[Zappo]

Years ago, I used to play the Fist of the North Star RPG a lot. Pretty good, too. Hm... come to think about it, I'm not sure it existed outside Italy. Anyone else heard of it?

 

[JoeGKushner]

Are you referring to the Master Edition versions of Fist of the North Star?

If so, then yes, they are beautiful (and well translated, for a damn change), and I have bad news: volume 6 is the final volume. They won't be making any more, afaiK.

That's odd. The Master Edition I have is #8 where Ray just got killed and Ken and his oldest brother are getting ready to fight even as the older brother (who wasnt' in the carton movie at all) is moving in on the fight. #9 is supposed to be out soon too.

 

[WizarDru]

raiji

That's odd. The Master Edition I have is #8 where Ray just got killed and Ken and his oldest brother are getting ready to fight even as the older brother (who wasnt' in the carton movie at all) is moving in on the fight. #9 is supposed to be out soon too.

Ahem. That 6 should have been a '9'. Whoops. Raijin Comics has gone on hiatus, which is a shame, as the master series are just beautiful to look at. I mean, just gorgeous color work on the Hokuto no Ken books.

Toki is one of the coolest characters, and he is a major character in the manga and TV series, even though he doesn't make it into the movie (which really streamlined the story to begin with). Rei was one of the coolest characters EVAR, and you see him there, too.

The manga actually has lots more depth than you might first imagine, especially since it isn't bogged down with the TV Series filler episodes, or cut to the bone, story-wise, like the movie is. It's always striked me as strange how the shows that are directly influenced by Fist of the Northstar have succeeded here, when it, like Captain Harlock, just never seems to get a foothold. Beserk!, Gantz, Blame, Trigun, Hellsing and a host of other shows and manga all directly cite it as an influence. Heck, shows like Gantz quote it directly. Go figure.

I really would have liked to have seen the later stories with the Gento Stars, Falco and Rai-oh, Ra-oh's brother....but c'est la vie.

Oh, and Zappo, no one I know has any knowledge of a Fist of the Northstar RPG, so it may very well have been just in Europe. Knowing that manga has had a much bigger penetration in Italy, Spain, France and Germany than the US up until just recently, that doesn't suprise me.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Argh! So #9 is the last in the series? Bogus! I could've swore that there was a #10 listed on Amazon as well. Ah, bogus! It's not available.

Ah well.

How does the Fist of the Blue Sky compare to it overall? Good? Fair? Bland?

Are there any good web sites that help define the characters for us poor English readers?

How are the DVD's? I see that there are some new ones coming out soon that are supposed to take place after the first series I guess.

 

[Scorch]

Argh! So #9 is the last in the series? Bogus! I could've swore that there was a #10 listed on Amazon as well. Ah, bogus! It's not available.

Ah well.

How does the Fist of the Blue Sky compare to it overall? Good? Fair? Bland?

Are there any good web sites that help define the characters for us poor English readers?

How are the DVD's? I see that there are some new ones coming out soon that are supposed to take place after the first series I guess.

Ah, Fist of the Blue Sky. A prequel of sorts to Fist of the North Star. Where North Star takes place in a post-apocalyptic world resembling "Mad Max", Blue Sky takes place in a world more resembling a John Woo/Chow Yun Fat Hong Kong gangster flick. By taking the martial art, Hokuto Shinken, and placing in a 1930's Singapore setting, the story focuses more on the assasination and infiltration techniques of this deadly style.

The story tells of Kasumi Kenshiro, a distant relative of the Kenshiro we know from the original series. After a mispent youth where he hung with gangsters in Singapore he has settled in as a teacher at a girl's prep school in pre-WW2 Japan. He is trying out a new profession that is different from the discipline of his Hokuto art's training and the wild "devil may care" lifestyle of the Chinese mafia.

His past catches up when he receives news from his old friends in Singapore that their gangs have been crushed and his former "brothers" are being hunted down like dogs. He returns to Singapore and finds his one best friend missing in action and the other horribly crippled by burn scars. Kasumi dives right into the Singapore underworld to find out what happened and to right some wrongs.

If you like old style Hong Kong gangster flicks like "A Better Tomorrow" or "The Killer" then you will dig this story. Once again they play fast and loose with the Hokuto mythos much like the original series did near the end (other secret Hokuto styles? Sure! Long lost brothers? OK!).

There are a lot of nice little touches such as Kasumi not acting like the invulnerable force of nature that Kenshiro did in the original series. One reason for this: GUNS! There are a lot of them. Modern day mechanisation makes Hokuto Shinken more of a style that favors attacks from the shadows rather than up front fisticuffs. When Kasumi is confronted by a french regiment of soldiers he quite wisely sneaks around and avoids them.

One of my favorite characters is a French Jew who happens to be a high ranking officer of the French police in Singapore. Oh, have I mentioned he also managed to sneak into one of the secret Hokuto temples and actually have a master teach him? Wild stuff. One great fight is where he confronts another Hokuto practitioner and says something along the lines of: "Hokuto Shinken is the deadliest style of unarmed combat and I have been taught in it. Think of what I could do if I used it with a gun" and then promptly pulls out a pistol. The other Hokuto practitioner wisely turns tail and runs for it.

I should note that the heroes in this world work in a very morally ambiguous setting. By that I mean that the resource they are fighting over in Singapore is opium distribution. It is a little disconcerting that the guys you are cheering for are drug dealers fighting other drug dealers.

A fun read. I hope someone else picks up the story now that Raijin has gone bust.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Sounds like it's a pretty good series. I know that when I've seen them, they've been in digest sized books that run something like $9.95 per book. I'll have to take a closer look at 'em now.

 

[mmadsen]

The manga actually has lots more depth than you might first imagine, especially since it isn't bogged down with the TV Series filler episodes, or cut to the bone, story-wise, like the movie is.

Amongst my geekier friends, proclaiming "Now I will turn myself to steel!" is akin to saying "And now for something completely different...." That Fist of the Northstar movie was so disjoint...

(By the way, how is it that no one has worked "You are already dead!" into the conversation yet?)

 

[JoeGKushner]

Some of those lines are indeed classic. That whole turning the body to steel has been one of them in the past. In games, we've got that whole, "You're already dead" thing down to a science. I guess when talking about a thread of FotNS, there is no need to say it as it's so common.

Any good web sites for fans of the series?