Fist of the North Star
(1986 movie)
Ah yes, another anime "classic." Well, I can't say this was really to my liking either, at least not in the traditional sense. In pretty much every way, this anime is the stereotype that everyone and his uncle loves to make fun of, and that's pretty much where I derived my enjoyment from.
It has a pretty basic story. A nuclear war has happened, and it pretty much leaves the landscape and people looking like something you'd expect to find in a Mad Max movie. Actually pretty much all the guys look like some variation of Lord Humungus, the only real variations being the outlandish armor and hair style they happen to have, and how big in relation to one another they are. Apparently the nuclear war has caused men to grow into giants even though there's a distinct lack of food and water. Of course they can also glow and pull off impossible fighting moves that can bring down skyscrapers on their own heads that won't even make them flinch. On the other hand, most people seem to be made of pudding, and certain "skilled" warriors can just stab them or cut them to shreds using nothing but their fingers, or better yet, they can use some made-up martial art fighting move to touch all the right pressure points to just make people spontaneously explode. So really the only way to enjoy this movie is just to turn your brain off and accept it as the over-the-top kung-fu action flick that it is. Otherwise you're bound to notice things like how characters who are strong enough to shred all their clothing by just flexing their muscles will suddenly have them back again, and how the bloody mess of the person they just made explode is suddenly not there anymore. I'm actually reminded of Sengoku Basara in just how over-the-top and manly this show is, and it doesn’t even care what you might think about it, dammit.
Where was I? Oh yeah, the story, I kind of got off track there. Like I said, the story is extremely basic. The protagonist, Kenshiro, loses the love of his life (who was actually just betrothed to him by his would-be father-in-law) to his former best friend. Apparently humanity is divided into sects of North and South, and the two sides have slowly been moving toward peaceful coexistence. Ken is from the North, and his old buddy who backstabs him, Shin, is from the South. The chick he was supposed to marry, Yuria, is also from the South. So Shin kicks his ass and takes Yuria for himself. Ken also has a couple of evil brothers who basically want to be the special successor of the martial art style they've all been learning from a master of the art, and one of them set up the whole thing while the other just decided he wanted to take over the heavens, starting with the planet. So that one kills their master while the other dumps the mostly already dead Ken off a cliff so he can take his place as successor to this martial art style. Some time later, Ken appears out of no where to save some innocent kiddies and goes on a roaring rampage of revenge. And that's pretty much all there is to it. And Ken manages to not even really win in the end. He doesn't kill his asshat older brother Raoh, and Yuria just kind of disappears, like she found hammer space or something. Ken just ends up wandering everywhere to try to find her again, but in the end he doesn't. Logic would've suggested she ended up somewhere in the rubble of all those skyscrapers Ken and Raoh knocked over during their fight, but this movie is the opposite of logic. I mean, there’s a flying horse and a ship through a skyscraper. Logic isn’t nearly manly enough for this movie.
Reading about this movie prior to watching it, I actually elected to watch the Japanese version first because of all the flack the English dub was getting. Having seen them both, I can't say I noted a lot of difference there. The English dub changed the story a bit, unless the subtitled version I watched was wrong in its translation, but as far as quality, well, it sounds like a cartoon from the '70s. It isn't the most horrible dub I've heard, but I can sort of see where people were coming from. But honestly the Japanese dub wasn't any better.
As far as suggesting this as something to watch or not, I'd say it's only something to watch just to see and make fun of yourself. There isn't much point to the actual movie itself since nothing of the story-line is really resolved, and there wasn't a whole lot to the story to begin with. I will throw it a bone for the unintentional entertainment value, though.2/10.
ETA: Something to keep in mind here is that it's been like 10 years since I wrote most of these, so while I maintain that this movie is insane, I've actually become somewhat fond of it more lately, as I find it much more entertaining to watch, though in some ways I prefer the series. The movie is better in that it will just straight-up show you the gore, where the series tries to hide it in different ways because it was intended for a younger audience.
(1986 movie)
Ah yes, another anime "classic." Well, I can't say this was really to my liking either, at least not in the traditional sense. In pretty much every way, this anime is the stereotype that everyone and his uncle loves to make fun of, and that's pretty much where I derived my enjoyment from.
It has a pretty basic story. A nuclear war has happened, and it pretty much leaves the landscape and people looking like something you'd expect to find in a Mad Max movie. Actually pretty much all the guys look like some variation of Lord Humungus, the only real variations being the outlandish armor and hair style they happen to have, and how big in relation to one another they are. Apparently the nuclear war has caused men to grow into giants even though there's a distinct lack of food and water. Of course they can also glow and pull off impossible fighting moves that can bring down skyscrapers on their own heads that won't even make them flinch. On the other hand, most people seem to be made of pudding, and certain "skilled" warriors can just stab them or cut them to shreds using nothing but their fingers, or better yet, they can use some made-up martial art fighting move to touch all the right pressure points to just make people spontaneously explode. So really the only way to enjoy this movie is just to turn your brain off and accept it as the over-the-top kung-fu action flick that it is. Otherwise you're bound to notice things like how characters who are strong enough to shred all their clothing by just flexing their muscles will suddenly have them back again, and how the bloody mess of the person they just made explode is suddenly not there anymore. I'm actually reminded of Sengoku Basara in just how over-the-top and manly this show is, and it doesn’t even care what you might think about it, dammit.
Where was I? Oh yeah, the story, I kind of got off track there. Like I said, the story is extremely basic. The protagonist, Kenshiro, loses the love of his life (who was actually just betrothed to him by his would-be father-in-law) to his former best friend. Apparently humanity is divided into sects of North and South, and the two sides have slowly been moving toward peaceful coexistence. Ken is from the North, and his old buddy who backstabs him, Shin, is from the South. The chick he was supposed to marry, Yuria, is also from the South. So Shin kicks his ass and takes Yuria for himself. Ken also has a couple of evil brothers who basically want to be the special successor of the martial art style they've all been learning from a master of the art, and one of them set up the whole thing while the other just decided he wanted to take over the heavens, starting with the planet. So that one kills their master while the other dumps the mostly already dead Ken off a cliff so he can take his place as successor to this martial art style. Some time later, Ken appears out of no where to save some innocent kiddies and goes on a roaring rampage of revenge. And that's pretty much all there is to it. And Ken manages to not even really win in the end. He doesn't kill his asshat older brother Raoh, and Yuria just kind of disappears, like she found hammer space or something. Ken just ends up wandering everywhere to try to find her again, but in the end he doesn't. Logic would've suggested she ended up somewhere in the rubble of all those skyscrapers Ken and Raoh knocked over during their fight, but this movie is the opposite of logic. I mean, there’s a flying horse and a ship through a skyscraper. Logic isn’t nearly manly enough for this movie.
Reading about this movie prior to watching it, I actually elected to watch the Japanese version first because of all the flack the English dub was getting. Having seen them both, I can't say I noted a lot of difference there. The English dub changed the story a bit, unless the subtitled version I watched was wrong in its translation, but as far as quality, well, it sounds like a cartoon from the '70s. It isn't the most horrible dub I've heard, but I can sort of see where people were coming from. But honestly the Japanese dub wasn't any better.
As far as suggesting this as something to watch or not, I'd say it's only something to watch just to see and make fun of yourself. There isn't much point to the actual movie itself since nothing of the story-line is really resolved, and there wasn't a whole lot to the story to begin with. I will throw it a bone for the unintentional entertainment value, though.
ETA: Something to keep in mind here is that it's been like 10 years since I wrote most of these, so while I maintain that this movie is insane, I've actually become somewhat fond of it more lately, as I find it much more entertaining to watch, though in some ways I prefer the series. The movie is better in that it will just straight-up show you the gore, where the series tries to hide it in different ways because it was intended for a younger audience.