Exploding Head
There are a lot of secrets to martial arts. Some people say that if you master your skills enough you can learn to disappear, or even fly. But in the insanely ridiculously awesome Anime called, Fist of the North Star, the hero knows how to use martial arts in order to make his enemies’ heads explode. The level of violence in this Anime is extreme. The hero, Ken, is so powerful that he is able to focus his punches and other attacks with such precision that they cause problems with his enemies’ circulatory systems and then huge pressure buildups occur and their heads explode. Ken fights against punks, mercenaries, huge bosses and even big fat dudes. Let me give you a quick run down of the main story without giving away any spoilers. Ken was trained by his father along with his brothers to be martial artists. He learned how to focus his chi and do powerful attacks. Ken was the youngest of his brothers and he was chosen to be the honored fighter known as the Fist of the North Star. Ken’s brothers were jealous of him and his brother Jagy attacked Ken with a shotgun. Ken fought back and did his pressure point attacks on Jagy and almost made his head explode. Jagy’s only defense was doing a sort of acupressure combo technique on himself that stopped the pressure. Well what happened in a nutshell was that Jagy convinced Ken’s friend Shin that Shin should have Ken’s girlfriend. So Shin fought against Ken and critically hurt Ken. And Ken’s girlfriend left him and went with Shin in order to save Ken’s life. But Ken came back and was stronger than ever.
Fist of the North Star’s action sequences are very unique. In many cases enemies get larger and larger as they become angrier. Other times, when someone is about to explode or die, the color scheme and the video quality changes for dramatic effect. And the whole picture seems to display sometimes extremely vivid and other times washed-out colors.
The best part of the movie is the boss fights. Some of the fights are very quick and others are drawn out battles. No two boss fights are the same. And his enemies use different fighting styles and weapons to keep the fighting interesting. It is very exciting to see how Ken is going to defeat and oftentimes kill his opponents.
There are these two kids in Fist of the North Star that are pretty integral to the story. They really contrast with how powerful the rest of the characters are. There is this little girl that is trying to bring life to the wasteland. This is because in the future there is a big nuclear holocaust that wipes out most life and renders the land unusable for farming and the drinking water is contaminated. It doesn’t make a whole ton of sense how people are able to survive, because there aren’t any farms or food factories in the movie. So you kind of guess that people are basically living off food rations and packaged food that was made before the war. Also you see people drinking water, so either people have gotten used to contaminated water or else there must be small pockets of drinkable water. The story doesn’t really focus on the technicalities of the apocalyptic future and instead they focus on the fighting.
The animation in Fist of the North Star is very smooth and even though it isn’t as visually stunning as movies like Akira, it is able to tell the story and get the violent point across with ease. The opening scenes of the Earth before the nuclear holocaust are breathtaking. And the scenes where people are exploding are very detailed and carefully drawn.
Fist of the North Star will not let you down if you are looking for something to watch on Netflix. I have seen this movie multiple times and it stays fresh. This is a great movie to show your friends, they will probably thank you after the film is over.