Fist of the North Star

FSM Feb 9, 2015

9

A grand father, and one of the most influential battle shounen manga, Hokuto no Ken is a glorious blend of over-the-top action, finest manliness and surprisingly serious and compelling story telling, with one of the most complex shounen villains ever.The art is fantastic and as manga progressed with years, became easily on par with best modern examples.While a must for any retro manga fans, it stands the age of time extremely well and can be recommended for any action and post-apocalypse fans.

apoc9 May 21, 2020

8

This is the fighting shounen series. The story begins in a distant future 199X. Sometime after nuclear war obliterated planet and erased civilization as we know it. The settings are akin to post-apocalyptic series and movies such as Mad Max. Difference between usual shounen series is the fact that most characters including main protagonist are not kids nor teenagers. On the contrary main protagonist is young adult man, who travels land and fights bad guys. He is true hero, because in the end he is not looking for fights for his own sake or ambition, but he just can’t stand by watching as strong pray on weak. Truly manly character – rather stoic, man of few words, but those words deliver as eloquently as his fists – making him the ultimate badass protagonist. He is like John Wick of manga. It has interesting overarching story composed of various encounters building up world, introducing and developing characters. There are more aspects where the series differs from usual shounen tropes. For example, general lack of training arcs. When it comes to difference between the manga and anime adaptation, it’s composition of story, which is different from the anime. Order of events and some settings are different in consequence. The art is splendid especially if you have "the complete edition". It's night and day difference between this and the very dated anime adaptation. It’s also less censored when it comes to entrails gushing out of enemies. I like the design of characters. It leans toward more realistic design over common anime/manga style. Japanese difficulty 5/10 (see my profile for details about various difficulty scores) Generally speaking, the manga does not provide furigana except some “less common” words. I’m using quotes, because it’s debatable how much more complicated those instances are. Overall, it’s not that difficult in my opinion with one exception and that is the mythos and technique terminology. Probably not series for beginners, but very enjoyable for intermediate and advanced in Japanese. Would I recommend the series? Yes, absolutely.