New Fist of The North Star #1: The Cursed City! ADV 55 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles Released: 09/21/2004 Reviewed: 10/18/2005

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List to Dave and Joel (and Evan!) talk about this show! (right click, save as)

If you listen to our delightful little podcast, which in no way I am exhorting you to do, you will hear me say that in five weeks of podcasting we've had as many shows about anime containing strong, tough men and the exploits of such strong, tough men. Joel's quick reply stated that the occurrence was probably not a chance accident. Maybe the idea here is that we watch these things for a reason. I'm willing to go along with it. The whole of anime had basically two styles. Two styles that really could not be more disparate. There's the one where the guy falls in love with fifty girls but is too big of a pansy to act on his emotions, and there's the one where the guy is surrounded by fifty guys and he's the biggest badass on the planet. Such an enormous badass that he has no qualms about reaching out and punching (or kicking) the hell out of those fifty guys without a second thought. I think it should be obvious which of these instances I prefer.

Over the years the genres have become a bit more mutable. Back in the day there was Fist of the Northstar and Urusei Yatsura and the two would never meet. Now you have stuff like Tenjoh Tenge that crosses genres by combining fighting anime and harem anime into one easily digestiblebag of crap. And, of course, there's other little genres spread here and there. Why, nowadays anime has little or nothing to do with girls and guns and giant robots, unless the girls are fourteen and/or sporting DD breasts. There's layers upon layers in our anime onion that all combine to form a delicate whole that we call fandom. And it seems like an anime of the style of Fist of the North Star, with its posturing men and non-consequential female roles, has been dropped to the wayside while everything else blooms into full growth. Without the evolution of anime we'd never have things like the delightful Satoshi Kon's Paranoia Agent or the wonderfully absurd Super Milk-Chan. I would never nip the flower that blooms these in the blood, but this modern world of anime leaves relatively little room for something so mundane and unimaginative as the Fist of the North Star universe.

In case your fandom started with Naruto plushies and Saiyuki fanfiction, there was a time when all you needed to make an anime awesome was have a bunch of big guys battle it out in a poisoned post-apocalyptic earth. And it wasn't lame like you'd imagine a concept like that to be! That time was twenty years ago... but thanks to New Fist of the North Star, that time can also be now. In this universe, which is just about the same as I remember it being, the before mentioned large men battle for supremacy and the control of the world's most heavily contested resource... water. It's a skeleton plot that's pretty laughable, I know, but don't let that get you down! Beneath that lame old chestnut is more than enough beatdown action to satisfy your every want and need. Kenshiro, our main character, has the curious ability to explode the heads of his opponents with the most lackadaisical attacks. And he does this frequently, in spectacular fashion. This should really be the only impetus you need to buy this disc. When I say "heads explode" I mean that forty plus people's heads blown up and each of them loses it in a different manner.

Though this disc contains only one 55 minute episode, it is more delicious than any handpicked random anime could deliver in thrice that length. During this brief time we get to spend with Kenshiro and friends a biker gang is decimated, a man's face melt, false miracles are performed, and then a guy's whole BODY explodes. The men are muscle bound and rarely waste their time with dialogue... much less shirt sleeves! In this short first episode I don't doubt that anything less than a full score of barrel chested men have their upper most extremity exploded. If that doesn't scream "instant classic", then I would submit that there are also breasts to be observed, should that be your thing. Without a doubt Fist of the North Star is what I would refer to as MY 'thing'. It hearkens back to a simpler age of cartoons, when everything didn't have to contain seventeen million billion colors and two furry mascots (per frame). I'm well aware of the fact that such an age never really existed in anime, but I'm willing to wing it if you are. I mean, the show invented a new version of perturbed and off center. Perturbed AND a surgical mask? Sign me up right here! The glory days are back!