The first manga I ever bought was the first volume of Fist of the North Star. There were four reasons for this.
1) The pickings at the local comic shop were pretty slim, and it was the only place near my home that sold manga.
2) I wanted to be sure of what I was getting into, and between the cover art and the rear-cover blurb, it was all pretty obvious.
3) It was the thickest manga in the store, and I wanted something that was going to keep me reading for a while.
4) I was totally unfamiliar with Fist of the North Star, with the lone exception of the old NES game, which I had rented once and been only too happy to return.
The manga wasn't bad. I'm not saying it's good, and I'm not saying it doesn't have problems. But it wasn't terrible. The artwork was better than average, well-detailed, and things were more or less well-proportioned. And if there were occasionally characters who stood twelve feet tall, well, hey, it was a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Lots of weird things could happen. Besides, I was at a point in my life where I was prepared to excuse just about anything, providing it looked cool enough.
So, yes, the manga was okay. I didn't know how much of it there was, and so all of my knowledge about Fist of the North Star came from that one volume.
What this means is that, when confronted with the opportunity to buy the anime (the movie, not the TV series released in America by Manga Entertainment), I lacked the crucial knowledge necessary to do what any sane person would do, which is to run screaming in the opposite direction immediately.
So I bought it, misled into the comforting belief that I knew what I was getting into. And then, a few days later, when I knew I had time, I compounded my sin.
I watched it.
At one point during my time in Thailand, my friend Steve and I were discussing anime. He asked me what I thought was the worst anime I'd ever seen, and I didn't hesitate with my reply.
"Fist of the North Star," I said.
"How bad is it?" he asked.
"It's an atrocity against film in general, and against anime in particular," I said. Those weren't my words exactly, but I did say "atrocity."
Some years later, my girlfriend and I were discussing bad anime. She said she hadn't heard of Fist of the North Star.
"Then you don't know what bad anime is," I said, and loaned it to her. She said she'd watch it at some point, but wasn't sure when she'd get around to it.
I knew she had watched it when, coming home from work one morning, I saw that she had left a message on my answering machine. The first words of said message?
"You bastard."
This all took place before we started actually dating. That we started dating despite this incident is a mark either of my sadism, her masochism, or a more general mutual lunacy.
But what makes Fist of the North Star so bad?
The movie, like the manga, is essentially Mad Max with martial arts. Its story follows Kenshiro, master of the martial art known as the Fist of the North Star in the dub and Hokuto Shinken in Japanese. His fighting style concentrates on manipulating 108 pressure points in the human body which cause it to destroy itself from within. To simplify: Kenshiro punches people in the face, and a few seconds later, their heads explode.
He is traveling in search of his girlfriend, Julia (Yuria in the manga) who was stolen from him by Shin some years ago, as depicted in the opening scenes of the movie. Shin was once Kenshiro's closest friend, but his desire for Julia drove him over the edge. So he did the natural thing, of course, thrashing Kenshiro to within an inch of his life and then abandoning him in the desert, where one of Kenshiro's traitorous brothers was then able to finish him off.
It's hard not to admire Shin, really. Oh, sure, he has a girly-man haircut, but anyone who can conquer wide stretches of a post-apocalyptic desert, command legions of oversized goons and inspire terror in minions and foes alike, all while wearing a tight pink jumpsuit... Well, a man like that is really in a league all his own.
But pinning down exactly what makes this movie so terrible is difficult.
For starters, the English dub is pretty awful. Of course, this is one of the old Streamline dubs, so there shouldn't be any surprises there. There's nothing quite so horribly amusing as listening to Kenshiro's normally deep voice rapidly ascend into a series of glass-shattering mock-Bruce Lee screams.
The artwork is a mess. Everything is extremely detailed, but people are so poorly proportioned. Kenshiro's biceps are larger than the average human head, but he looks absolutely sleek compared to some of his opponents.
The plot is pretty generic. As stated above, it follows Kenshiro's efforts to find his girlfriend, and right the wrongs he comes across on the way. The "righting wrongs" bit usually involves making people explode messily.
The music is... not bad, actually. It's all pretty fitting. There's one song, "Heart of Madness" that's actually kind of good, in an '80s butt-rock sort of way.
And the action... Well, it beggars belief. As I mentioned, one of Kenshiro's brothers finishes him off (after Shin beats him to a pulp) by throwing him to the bottom of a deep canyon, and then causing a large chunk of the cliff face to collapse on top of him. Yet somehow, Kenshiro survives. He reappears a few scenes (and presumably a few years) later, when a mute girl's telepathic cry for help wakes him from his slumber inside a statue. The only indication of how much time has gone by is Kenshiro's big, bushy beard. He looks like a mountain man, someone who could pimp-slap grizzly bears without a second thought.
1) The pickings at the local comic shop were pretty slim, and it was the only place near my home that sold manga.
2) I wanted to be sure of what I was getting into, and between the cover art and the rear-cover blurb, it was all pretty obvious.
3) It was the thickest manga in the store, and I wanted something that was going to keep me reading for a while.
4) I was totally unfamiliar with Fist of the North Star, with the lone exception of the old NES game, which I had rented once and been only too happy to return.
The manga wasn't bad. I'm not saying it's good, and I'm not saying it doesn't have problems. But it wasn't terrible. The artwork was better than average, well-detailed, and things were more or less well-proportioned. And if there were occasionally characters who stood twelve feet tall, well, hey, it was a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Lots of weird things could happen. Besides, I was at a point in my life where I was prepared to excuse just about anything, providing it looked cool enough.
So, yes, the manga was okay. I didn't know how much of it there was, and so all of my knowledge about Fist of the North Star came from that one volume.
What this means is that, when confronted with the opportunity to buy the anime (the movie, not the TV series released in America by Manga Entertainment), I lacked the crucial knowledge necessary to do what any sane person would do, which is to run screaming in the opposite direction immediately.
So I bought it, misled into the comforting belief that I knew what I was getting into. And then, a few days later, when I knew I had time, I compounded my sin.
I watched it.
At one point during my time in Thailand, my friend Steve and I were discussing anime. He asked me what I thought was the worst anime I'd ever seen, and I didn't hesitate with my reply.
"Fist of the North Star," I said.
"How bad is it?" he asked.
"It's an atrocity against film in general, and against anime in particular," I said. Those weren't my words exactly, but I did say "atrocity."
Some years later, my girlfriend and I were discussing bad anime. She said she hadn't heard of Fist of the North Star.
"Then you don't know what bad anime is," I said, and loaned it to her. She said she'd watch it at some point, but wasn't sure when she'd get around to it.
I knew she had watched it when, coming home from work one morning, I saw that she had left a message on my answering machine. The first words of said message?
"You bastard."
This all took place before we started actually dating. That we started dating despite this incident is a mark either of my sadism, her masochism, or a more general mutual lunacy.
But what makes Fist of the North Star so bad?
The movie, like the manga, is essentially Mad Max with martial arts. Its story follows Kenshiro, master of the martial art known as the Fist of the North Star in the dub and Hokuto Shinken in Japanese. His fighting style concentrates on manipulating 108 pressure points in the human body which cause it to destroy itself from within. To simplify: Kenshiro punches people in the face, and a few seconds later, their heads explode.
He is traveling in search of his girlfriend, Julia (Yuria in the manga) who was stolen from him by Shin some years ago, as depicted in the opening scenes of the movie. Shin was once Kenshiro's closest friend, but his desire for Julia drove him over the edge. So he did the natural thing, of course, thrashing Kenshiro to within an inch of his life and then abandoning him in the desert, where one of Kenshiro's traitorous brothers was then able to finish him off.
It's hard not to admire Shin, really. Oh, sure, he has a girly-man haircut, but anyone who can conquer wide stretches of a post-apocalyptic desert, command legions of oversized goons and inspire terror in minions and foes alike, all while wearing a tight pink jumpsuit... Well, a man like that is really in a league all his own.
But pinning down exactly what makes this movie so terrible is difficult.
For starters, the English dub is pretty awful. Of course, this is one of the old Streamline dubs, so there shouldn't be any surprises there. There's nothing quite so horribly amusing as listening to Kenshiro's normally deep voice rapidly ascend into a series of glass-shattering mock-Bruce Lee screams.
The artwork is a mess. Everything is extremely detailed, but people are so poorly proportioned. Kenshiro's biceps are larger than the average human head, but he looks absolutely sleek compared to some of his opponents.
The plot is pretty generic. As stated above, it follows Kenshiro's efforts to find his girlfriend, and right the wrongs he comes across on the way. The "righting wrongs" bit usually involves making people explode messily.
The music is... not bad, actually. It's all pretty fitting. There's one song, "Heart of Madness" that's actually kind of good, in an '80s butt-rock sort of way.
And the action... Well, it beggars belief. As I mentioned, one of Kenshiro's brothers finishes him off (after Shin beats him to a pulp) by throwing him to the bottom of a deep canyon, and then causing a large chunk of the cliff face to collapse on top of him. Yet somehow, Kenshiro survives. He reappears a few scenes (and presumably a few years) later, when a mute girl's telepathic cry for help wakes him from his slumber inside a statue. The only indication of how much time has gone by is Kenshiro's big, bushy beard. He looks like a mountain man, someone who could pimp-slap grizzly bears without a second thought.
But never mind the beard. How did he get in the statue? Why is he in it?
Apparently it doesn't matter, because it never gets explained.
And on and on it goes. I think what makes it so bad is that so many people, both its creators and its fans, take it so seriously. There is a contingent of people out there who believe this is great stuff, maybe even art.
It's a scary world.
Fist of the North Star is a classic in its way, though. You see parodies of it in all sorts of other shows. Excel Saga, Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi and Great Teacher Onizuka are just some of the series that have referenced it for instant laughs.
And actually, I have to be thankful. Fist of the North Star helped me to define what a bad movie really was.
Apparently it doesn't matter, because it never gets explained.
And on and on it goes. I think what makes it so bad is that so many people, both its creators and its fans, take it so seriously. There is a contingent of people out there who believe this is great stuff, maybe even art.
It's a scary world.
Fist of the North Star is a classic in its way, though. You see parodies of it in all sorts of other shows. Excel Saga, Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi and Great Teacher Onizuka are just some of the series that have referenced it for instant laughs.
And actually, I have to be thankful. Fist of the North Star helped me to define what a bad movie really was.
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