History FistOfTheNorthStar / TropesAToH

* DarkerAndEdgier: The newer adaptations are pretty much exclusively action and drama oriented, with the humor of the old cartoon nowhere to be found.

* GentleGiant: Fudoh. [[spoiler: He was once enough to make even a young Raoh tremble in fear. But after encountering a young Yuria, who willing put herself between him and a door where a mother dog was giving birth to puppies and having one of the newborns crawl around on his gigantic hand, he began to change his ways.]] The only thing that could arouse his fighting spirit is his desire to protect the orphaned children in his care.

* GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere: Some of the more bizarre minor villains tend to show up without any foreshadowing. These include a pair of acrobatic thugs wearing claws and bat costumes, a random underling of Jagi who impersonates Hokuto Shinken so poorly, he ended up making ''his own head'' explode, and Xie the giant crab man. The most blatant example is probably the group of monks Kenshiro encounters while racing to intervene in the Fudo/Raoh fight. They seem to be good guys on Kenshiro's side, but fight him anyway BecauseDestinySaysSo.

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: The UsefulNotes/{{NES}} game (actually the second Famicom game) kept in the fairly gory exploding deaths of enemies when they die from being punched. Interestingly, the UsefulNotes/SegaGenesis (which normally had much less heavy-handed censoring than the NES) port of the UsefulNotes/MegaDrive game removed this, substituting the "fly off the screen" death used for kicking.

* TheChosenMany: Nanto Seiken, the rival school of Hokuto Shinken, has OneHundredAndEight branches.

* OneHundredAndEight: The number of branches of Nanto Seiken. The finale of the first anime series was also its [=108th=] episode, since Episode 109 was just a recape meant to set-up ''Hokuto no Ken 2''.

* AlternativeForeignThemeSong: More like [[UpToEleven Alternative Foreign Soundtrack.]] Manga Entertainment's dub of the anime's first 36 episodes not only uses [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmr-Hwf8304 a new intro]], but replaces the original score in favour of techno beats and drum machines. There are even times it lays music over what would be [[LullDestruction scenes of quiet tension in the Japanese track.]]

* FamilyUnfriendlyAesop: Pretty much spelled out in the story of Kenshiro and Shin, the latter of whom wound up teaching Kenshiro his ways of, er, [[YourHeadASplode preaching]]. So, love and kindness win the day in the end...''if'' backed up by constant and brutal violence. Which is not an invalid position to have per se, but a fairly grim one.

* BrokenAesop: Pretty much spelled out in the story of Kenshiro and Shin, the latter of whom wound up teaching Kenshiro his ways of, er, [[YourHeadASplode preaching]]. So, love and kindness win the day in the end...''if'' backed up by constant and brutal violence. Which is not an invalid position to have per se, but a fairly grim one.

* BloodierAndGorier: The 1986 film had high amount of violence than the series itself (which is funny, since the original manga was a bloody and gory mess itself).

* DensierAndWackier: Downplayed with the first AnimatedAdaptation that aired from 1984 to 1988. While it retains the violence and drama of the original manga, it sometimes becomes so over the top that it becomes darkly hilarious, especially during filler episodes or filler parts added to existing scenes. To name a few examples: Kenshiro destroying a tank with his kicks, Jackal becomes a comic relief during a few scenes when Ken chases after him (just watch the scene when Ken throws back at him one of his dynamite sticks), at one point Ken kicks two mooks and sends them flying until they become a TwinkleInTheSky...

* A mook whom Ken fights is based off of the one-shot pilot's WarmUpBoss. The fight between the two is very similar up to how Ken finishes him off the same way

* BattleAura: ''Hokuto Shinken'' allows its practitioner to increase their strength by using an inner energy called "touki", which literally means "battle aura". Taken a step further with the art itself: A character's presence is directly reflected in the size they're drawn. This of course means that the noisy, reckless, and above all else, LOUD henchmen are rarely less than twice as large as any other character, with [[BigBad rare]] [[GentleGiant exceptions]]. As a side effect, characters' actual sizes are impossible to tell without reading some [[WordOfGod supplementary]] [[AllThereInTheManual material]].

-->'''Kenshiro''': Most people only use 30% of their natural strength. That's not much. The secret to Hokuto Shinken is controlling the other 70% as well.

** The opening song. '''YOU wa SHOCK!!!''' This is probably because "you wa shock" sounds a lot like "you are shock". It's [[MemeticMutation become so prevalent]] that many don't even know that the song is actually called "Ai Wo Torimodose".

** A notable subversion: a mook puts his back to the ground, claiming his particular style makes him invincible. Ken agrees, and does the only thing possible: he walks away. The mook, of course, abandons his posture and gets his ass kicked.

** Jackal is a ruthless leader who lives by the rule "If you want to survive in this world, don't pick a fight with someone stronger than you". Overhearing about the rich water supply from a child from a village, who asks Kenshiro for help in digging it up, Jackal sets on his path to take away this water from the village, but not before killing his two henchmen for picking a fight with Kenshiro and disobeying his rule about not picking a fight with someone stronger than you. After Kenshiro left the village, which consisted of an old woman and a group of children. After Kenshiro left the village, Jackal attacked the village with his gang and upon taking over tries to force an old woman to watch as he prepares to hang all the children of the village. When Kenshiro started hunting him down for his crimes, Jackal has no problems sacrificing his own gang to ensure his own survival.
** Jagi is a Third of Hokuto Brothers and the only evil one among them. After being humiliated by Kenshiro and left crippled for trying to force Kenshiro into abandoning his position of the successor of Hokuto Shinken, Jagi swears to make Kenshiro suffer. Vowing revenge, Jagi manipulated Shin into kidnapping Kenshiro's fiancee, Yuria, from him and later Jagi becomes the leader of a gang of slavers, who at one point occupied a village and started bullying, torturing and killing several men, women, and children for no reason.
** Amiba is an arrogant martial arts scientist who claims that he could easily master any martial art style in record time. Coming to a Village of Miracles several years ago, Amiba decided to master the art of Hokuto Shinken and when he tried to cure an old man's broken leg, he hurt him instead, then Toki rushed to help this old man, accidentally slapping Amiba's face, angry Amiba tries to attack Toki, but Toki easily stopes him and put fear in him in front of everybody. Humiliated Amiba vowed revenge on Toki. When Toki was captured by Raoh, Amiba took the appearance of Toki, came to his village and started to experiment on men, women, and children by pressing their various pressure points and seeing what will happen, resulted in many agonizing deaths.
** Jakoh is the chancellor of the Celestial Empire who ruled the empire through the young Celestial Emperor Rui and manipulating Falco, his adoptive brother, into doing his dirty work by using her as a hostage, keeping her in such unpleasant conditions that she eventually went blind. The Celestial Empire was exceptionally repressive, rewarding the wealthy and brutalizing the poor whilst punishing dissent with death. Eventually, Jakoh's paranoia led him to order Falco to obliterate the nations formed under the Hokuto Shinken and Nanto Seiken martial art schools. After an encountering with Raoh, Jakoh was left with an intense fear of the dark and thus he worked thousands of slaves to death in keeping the capital of the Celestial Empire under constant light.

* GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere: Some of the more bizarre minor villains tend to show up without any foreshadowing. These include a pair of acrobatic thugs wearing claws and bat costumes, a random underling of Jagi who impersonates Hokuto Shinken so poorly, he ended up making ''his own head'' explode, and a giant crab man. The most blatant example is probably the group of monks Kenshiro encounters while racing to intervene in the Fudo/Raoh fight. They seem to be good guys on Kenshiro's side, but fight him anyway BecauseDestinySaysSo.

* AfraidOfBlood: Mr. Heart goes batshit, when he sees his own blood, attacking everyone in sight, friend or foe. Joker triggered this intentionally, so he'd have an edge against Ken. Shin in the manga not only to kill Ken, but also rub in his face that Hokuto Shinken isn't unbeatable.

** Amiba is an arrogant martial arts scientist who claims that he could easily master any martial art style in record time. Coming to a Village of Miracles several years ago, Amiba decided to master the art of Hokuto No Ken and when he tried to cure an old man's broken leg, he hurt him instead, then Toki rushed to help this old man, accidentally slapping Amiba's face, angry Amiba tries to attack Toki, but Toki easily stopes him and put fear in him in front of everybody. Humiliated Amiba vowed revenge on Toki. When Toki was captured by Raoh, Amiba took the appearance of Toki, came to his village and started to experiment on men, women, and children by pressing their various pressure points and seeing what will happen, resulted in many agonizing deaths.

* OneHundredAndEight: The number of branches of Nanto Seiken. It is also the final true episode of the first anime series, as Episode #109 was a recap episode meant to set up ''Hokuto no Ken 2''.

* OneHundredAndEight: The number of branches of Nanto Seiken.

* {{Bookends}}: The final story arc takes place in the same village Chapter 238 (the third chapter in the final volume) ends just like how the very first chapter began with [[spoiler:Ken staggering through the desert, begging for water -- but this time, with Bat and Lin right there]].

* HereWeGoAgain: The manga ending. As the "credits" is shown, Kenshiro is again wandering the wasteland and making the world a better place, one exploding head at a time.

** Shin's minion Garekki, the leader of the Golden Wolf Army, takes his meal times *dead* seriously; if you try to argue the point with him, he'll promptly slice you in half with his sword.