History Manga / FistOfTheBlueSky

* ContrastingSequelMainCharacter: Or prequel, in this case. Kenshiro is a quiet, stoic man who is romantically completely dedicated to his Yuria. Kasumi on the other hand is a bit of a skirt-chaser, prone to trash-talking, cracking jokes and generally much more open to putting his emotions into words.

* ContrastingSequelMainCharacter: Or prequel, in this case. Kenshiro is a quiet, stoic man. Kasumi on the other hand is prone to trash-talking, cracking jokes and generally much more open to putting his emotions into words.

* DragonsUpTheYinYang The Five-toed Imperial Dragon appears in the final battle between Kenshiro and Liu Zong-Wu.
* EasilyForgiven If you thought Kenshiro the 64th successor is bad with this trope, his uncle Yan Wang is arguably worse. For a last minute sob-story of a [[FreudianExcuse traumatic childhood]], Professor Kasumi is willing to embrace drug dealers (Pan Guang-Lin) homicidal sociopaths (Liu Fei-Yan), serial rapists (Zhang Tai-Yan) and '''[[ThoseWackyNazis Nazi Captains]]''' (Liu Zong-Wu) as dear ''Peng-You'' and beloved BloodBrothers.

* BadFuture: [[spoiler: A vision of one is what ultimately led Shuken, founder of Hokuto Shinken, to [[KillThemAll massacre all members of the Seito Gekken]]. Specifically, a vision of [[PsychoForHire Seito Gekken practitioners abusing their skills to become mercenaries and assassins for hire]] and bring about untold suffering. This vision is also what led him to establish Hokuto Shinken's MasterApprenticeChain.]]

** Liu Zong-Wu performs Creator/SteveMcQueenActor's famous motorcycle jump in ''Film/TheGreatEscape'' '''onto''' the fleeing Bence Mercedes of his father's murderer. A nice ironic touch considering that whereas [=McQueen=] was fleeing ''from'' Nazis in his jump, Zong-Wu '''is''' a Nazi.

* DenserAndWackier: Downplayed. It has a lot more adult subjects than the original series, but Kenshiro Kasumi is a whole lot more snarky than Ken in Fist of the North Star, and the antagonists are way more comedic, such as Zhang Lie-Shan, who has a borderline meta-joke about the series tendency to have inexplicably giant thugs by making him a giant of a man sensitive over his huge stature that has a lot of problems with it, such as requiring everything to be custom made so that it's big enough for him to properly use, men with [[NightmareFace horrifying faces]] joking about how Ken looks scary, and there's also the ''Hong Hua Hi'' leaders, who are all a bunch of overly hammy scumbags with many comedic traits.

* DenserAndWackier: Downplayed. It has a lot more adult subjects than the original series, but Kenshiro Katsumi is a whole lot more snarky than Ken in Fist of the North Star, and the antagonists are way more comedic, such as Zhang Lie-Shan, who has a borderline meta-joke about the series tendency to have inexplicably giant thugs by making him a giant of a man sensitive over his huge stature that has a lot of problems with it, such as requiring everything to be custom made so that it's big enough for him to properly use, men with [[NightmareFace horrifying faces]] joking about how Kenshiro Katsumi must be a scary person, and there's also the ''Hong Hua Hi'' leaders and their comedic and hammy personalities.

* EasilyForgiven If you thought Kenshiro the 64th successor is bad with this trope, his uncle Yan Wang is arguably worse. For a [[BelatedBackStory last minute sob-story]] of a [[FreudianExcuse traumatic childhood]], Professor Kasumi is willing to embrace drug dealers (Pan Guang-Lin) homicidal sociopaths (Liu Fei-Yan), serial rapists (Zhang Tai-Yan) and '''[[ThoseWackyNazis Nazi Captains]]''' (Liu Zong-Wu) as dear ''Peng-You'' and beloved BloodBrothers.

*** And Kuomintang, seeing it as a matter of Chinese honor (and prestiege of the National Revolutionary Army in such a time of turmoil [[spoiler:as Kenshiro killed one of their generals- [[AssholeVictim even though every Kuomintang official agrees that the said general had it coming]]]]) and not really an act of war, have refrained from just employing army troops to gun him down and insisted on defeating him fair-and-square with the best Chinese martial artist they can find. Therefore Chiang Kai-Shek and company got their [[http://www.mangareader.net/1057-39954-8/fist-of-the-blue-sky/chapter-105.html Generic Handsomeness treatment]].

Kasumi Kenshiro was a bumbling, bespectacled literature professor in 1935 Japan, playfully joking around with his students in the Towa Women's College at Tokyo... or so he seemed to be. The unusually large yet mild mannered scholar was invited to a restaurant by an aging Chinese gentleman called Li, who served as a poison taster for the Last Emperor of China. Just as the duo started to remininsce on old times spent amongst TheTriadsAndTheTongs, said-Chinese Emperor's Assassins held Kenshiro at gunpoint, "inviting" him to fulfill his "centuries old duty" as the Emperor's bodyguard, only to have their heads painfully and ''literally'' popped open from the inside as he gingerly struck hidden points across their faces with but a single finger.

Back in 1935, Kasumi Kenshiro returns to Shanghai where he tore a bloody swathe across the Chinese Underworld a year ago by the side of his ''Peng-You'' (Friend) Pan Guang-Lin, ''Dai Lo'' (Big Brother) of the ''Ching Bang'' (Turquoise Brotherhood) Triads; to wipe out the ''Hong Hua Hui'' (Red China Organization) Triads for murdering his sworn-brother Guang-Lin.

* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: God LORD Zhang Tai-Yan.

* ForkFencing: Kenshiro ''loves'' to use a variation of this trope wherein cutlery is ''rapidly launched'' like machine gun bullets, after being launched off the table with a hefty slap.

* RazorSharpHand - Liu Fei-Yan's dispatching of some bad guys after Erika and the catalog reveals him to be a Nanto-style badass as he slices them apart.

* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: More cynical compared to its ^redecessor, ''Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar'', despitebeing set in the shiny city of Shanghai. TheHero is helping his best friend - a drug lord, to take over the entire city by eliminating a gang that is even worse than theirs. There are also much fewer villains who receive redemption than in ''Fist of the North Star''.

* BlackAndGrayMorality: Though innocent people don't (usually) die in the crossfires of the Shanghai underworld's civil war, one still has to remember that Kenshiro is helping a ''Drug Lord'' rise to supreme power, beloved ''Peng-You'' or not. See EasilyForgiven for more details.

* BadassBookworm: Kenshiro ''is'' a Literature Professor at a Women's University, after all.

*** And Kuomintang, seeing it as a matter of Chinese honor (and prestiege of the National Revolutionary Army in such a time of turmoil [[spoiler:as Kenshiro killed one of their generals- even though every Kuomintang official agrees that the said general had it coming]]) and not really an act of war, have refrained from just employing army troops to gun him down and insisted on defeating him fair-and-square with the best Chinese martial artist they can find. Therefore Chiang Kai-Shek and company got their [[http://www.mangareader.net/1057-39954-8/fist-of-the-blue-sky/chapter-105.html Generic Handsomeness treatment]].

* OneSteveLimit: Averted. Liu Zong-Wu and Liu Fei-Yan are not related, despite their almost identical surnames (the difference being that they're spelled with different Chinese characters).

** Kenshiro's slapping the last emperor. Complete with the infamous line and a TookALevelInBadass. It isnt the same type as BrightSlapping though, since Kenshiro do it for sake of {{Revenge}}

* ZeerustCanon - The opening of the first chapter has the infant Kenshiro being delivered to Ryuken sometime in the [=1970's=], keeping in line with the [=199X=] setting of ''Fist of the North Star''.

** It should also be noted that most of the villains he forgiven such as Zhang Tai-Yan and Liu Zong Wu are practitioners of Hokuto styles, with several destined to later impact the world and have a facedown with Hokuto Shinken. Some even became their own respective style's successors. So its justified Kasumi forgive them and overlook their terrible crimes because of the destiny and burdens Hokuto Shinken puts on its successor and because the traditions of the Hokuto styles rules that eventually Hokuto Shinken would have to be tested every new generation against the other Hokuto offsprings. In fact Liu Zong Wu is the successor of what late becomes Hokuto Ryūken, the very style Hokuto Shinken was destined to clash with in ''Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar'''s timeline.

* GenericCuteness - Tetsuo Hara here is essentially judging people's appearances by their characters: Kenshiro and his friends, ex-villains who [[TheAtoner renounced their evil ways]], and even [[PunchClockVillain punch clock villains]] with [[FromACertainPointOfView reasonably honorable]] intentions are all portrayed as handsome or beautiful whereas fundamentally-dishonorable personalities are disturbingly intimidating at best and comically ugly at worst; Zhāng Tài-Yán is perhaps the best example. There is no mistaking Zhāng for anyone else at any point of the manga, but he still managed to look significantly different before and after he became Kenshiro's ''Peng-You''.

* Foreshadowing: The invention of the atomic bomb by Erika's father and the flashback to its testing in the anime foreshadows the nuclear war that will one day destroy the world in the time of ''Hokuto no Ken''.

* AmnesiacLover - Pān Yù-Líng. Not only did Máng Kuáng-Yún erase her memory, he put a BoobyTrap in her brain so that Kenshiro cannot directly tell her about their shared past.
* ArrogantKungFuGuy - Kenshiro is very prone to doing everything on his own and belittling his opponents at every turn. Zhang Tai-Yan even notes, that when Kenshiro stands in the pool of his own blood, and his opponent is completely unharmed, he probably should stop acting like he's invincible. Kenshiro's habit of talking down to his opponents might be justified, as a way of provoking them into attacking rashly, but his overconfidence bites him in the ass a couple of times, when he avoids death only through factors beyond his control.

* BadassBookworm - Kenshiro ''is'' a Literature Professor at a Women's University, after all.
* BadassIsraeli - Yasaka. ''Holy crap'', just Yasaka.
* BeenThereShapedHistory - Hokuto Shinken practitioners tend to do it.

* BerserkButton - Crime bosses tend to be ''homicidally'' sensitive about the freakish appearance of the cybernetic replacements to the limbs Kenshiro mutilated off them, or their inborn deformities. In particular, do ''' ''NOT'' ''' remind Zhang Lie-Shan, the ''giant'' boss of the ''Hong Hua Hui'' just how tall he is if you value your skeleton intact. See IAmBigBoned below for more details.
* BlackAndGrayMorality - Though innocent people don't (usually) die in the crossfires of the Shanghai underworld's civil war, one still has to remember that Kenshiro is helping a ''Drug Lord'' rise to supreme power, beloved ''Peng-You'' or not. See EasilyForgiven for more details.

* BloodBrothers - The whole concept of the Peng-You relationship is very much akin to this.
* BloodKnight - Kenshiro in his youth, picking fights with other martial artists for no reason and nearly dying at least twice as a result. He becomes much more level-headed by the time the main story begins.
* BoringInvincibleHero - Kasumi Kenshiro actually is less suspectible to this trope than his nephew, as firearms make {{Mooks}} a more credible threat, and all serious opponents use versions of Hokuto Shinken as well.

* ClockPunk - The technology through which arrogant 1930's crime bosses can be given arms, legs, jaws, spines and ''hair'' blown off by Hokuto Shinken.

* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass - God LORD Zhang Tai-Yan.
* CulturedBadass - Professor Kasumi can speak and read half a dozen languages, play the piano, dance, cook, grade your university thesis AND pop you head open with Hokuto Shinken. [[Franchise/IndianaJones Henry Jones Junior]], eat your heart out.
* CutShort - The manga went down with the sinking ship of ''Comic Bunch''. And although it didn't exactly end on a cliffhanger, it didn't really dovetail nicely into ''Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar'' either; lots of questions were left unanswered. How did Ramon/Ryuken become the [=63rd=] successor? Did Yan Wang die (or become Koryu)? Who was the Old Taoist? How did the Liu family branch of ''Hokuto Sankaken'' ended up splintering into ''Hokuto Ryūken''? Is the ''Kyoku Jūji Seiken'' style related to ''Nanto Seiken''? The subplot involving Jukei, the future ''Hokuto Ryūken'' successor, ended up being abandoned as well.
* DarkerAndEdgier - Since ''Souten no Ken'' was published in a ''Seinen'' (mature readers) anthology, it covers several adult subjects such as drugs, rape, prostitution, and misogynistic disfigurements, stuff that the comparatively campy ''Hokuto no Ken'' either glossed over or would not dare touch with a ten foot pole.
* DragonsUpTheYinYang - The Five-toed Imperial Dragon appears in the final battle between Kenshiro and Liu Zong-Wu.
* EasilyForgiven - If you thought Kenshiro the 64th successor is bad with this trope, his uncle Yan Wang is arguably worse. For a [[BelatedBackStory last minute sob-story]] of a [[FreudianExcuse traumatic childhood]], Professor Kasumi is willing to embrace drug dealers (Pan Guang-Lin) homicidal sociopaths (Liu Fei-Yan), serial rapists (Zhang Tai-Yan) and '''[[ThoseWackyNazis Nazi Captains]]''' (Liu Zong-Wu) as dear ''Peng-You'' and beloved BloodBrothers.

* GunsAkimbo - Ye's primary fighting style.
* HolierThanThou - The corrupt clergyman who takes confessions of criminals BEFORE they commit crimes and forgives them for exorbitant amounts of money so they can go rape, steal, and kill without guilt.
* HollywoodCyborg - The grotesque, rusty and creaky ClockPunk ''Hong Hua Hi'' crime bosses, original disfigurements courtesy of Kenshiro.

* IdentityAmnesia - Pān Yù-Líng believes herself to be a Manchurian nomad named Lǐ Xiù-Bǎo.
* LargeAndInCharge - Zhang Lie-Shang, Boss of the ''Hong Hua Hui'' triads, ''literally'' the size of a building. Don't remind him about it though, [[BerserkButton just don't.]]
* LastOfHisKind - Yasaka. His Yuezhi people were supposed to have died out after being double-crossed by the founding master of Hokuto Shinken in the 2nd century AD.
* ManlyTears - This ''is'' a prequel to ''Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar'' after all.

* MoodWhiplash - The black humor involving the disfigurements of the bosses is quite jarring when placed next to the rather serious Martial-Arts combat and genuinely touching drama.

* NotWorthKilling - Liu Zong-Wu ''could'' have killed UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler (the man for whom he betrayed the Chinese Warrior World to join the Nazis) himself if he wanted to, but spared him instead. Not that he did this out of any decency or compassion mind you; he held the tyrant in such unadulterated ''contempt'' that it would dirty his fists to stain it with his pathetic blood.
* OneSteveLimit - Averted. Liu Zong-Wu and Liu Fei-Yan are not related, despite their almost identical surnames (the difference being that they're spelled with different Chinese characters).

* PaperCutting - Huang Xi-Fei manages to cut Kenshiro's cheek; Ling Wang cuts Kenshiro cheek and Kenshiro cuts Ling Wang's ear; Colonel Guise cuts Ling Wang's forehead with a bullet.
* {{Prequel}} - Set in 1930's Shanghai, around 60 years before the nuclear apocalypse.
* ProtagonistCenteredMorality - Professor Kasumi is presented as a hero through and through in spite of [[EasilyForgiven forgiving and befriending rapists and Nazis,]] not to mention helping to ''protect'' a massive shipment of opium that will poison Manchuria from being contaminated with Black-Death because it is his ''Peng You's'' base of financial power.

* {{Reincarnation}} -

* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: More cynical compared to the sequel, ''Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar'', in spite of being set in a shiny city of Shanghai. TheHero is helping his best friend - a drug lord, to take over the entire city by eliminating a gang that is even worse than theirs. There are also much fewer villains who receive redemption than in ''Fist of the North Star''.
* SmokingIsCool - And therefore so are all the men of ''Ching Bang'', Kenshiro included.
* TenderTears - Shed even moreso than in ''Hokuto'' by women '''and''' men.
* TheTriadsAndTheTongs - The primary genre of this manga series, ties to ''Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar'' notwithstanding.
* ThoseWackyNazis - If you thought a garden-variety Nazi is nasty enough, meet Liu Zong-Wu, the Nazi ''Hokuto Ryukaken'' Master.
* {{Wuxia}} - Stylistically closer to this genre than its post-apocalyptic predecessor; being set in Classical China in its twilight years helps.

[[quoteright:239:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/souten_8141.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:239:If you got a problem with Hokuto, tell it to me.]]

Kasumi Kenshiro was a bumbling, bespectacled literature professor in 1935 Japan, playfully joking around with his students in the Towa Women's College at Tokyo...

...or so he seemed to be. The unusually large yet mild mannered scholar was invited to a restaurant by an aging Chinese gentleman called Li, who served as a poison taster for the Last Emperor of China. Just as the duo started to remininsce on old times spent amongst TheTriadsAndTheTongs, said-Chinese Emperor's Assassins held Kenshiro at gunpoint, "inviting" him to fulfill his "centuries old duty" as the Emperor's bodyguard...

...only to have their heads painfully and ''literally'' popped open from the inside as he gingerly struck hidden points across their faces with but a single finger.

Since his departure to protect Guang-Lin's little sister from bloody feuds of Hokuto-Shinken's legacy, the corrupt ''Hong Hua Hui'', allied with the French Government, has all but wiped out the ''Ching Bang''. The ''Hong Hua Hui'' leaders have been rendered grotesque ClockPunk cyborgs after being disfigured by Kenshiro yet living to gloat about it.

Kenshiro did warn them to "get out of Shanghai" after literally popping their arms, jaws, spines and legs open. [[TooDumbToLive Crime bosses, however, are just too proud to listen]].

* GratuitousForeignLanguage: As the manga is set in Imperial Japan-occupied Shanghai, Mandarin Chinese is prevalent. Even "You are already dead" is translated from Japanese as "Nǐ yǐ jīng sǐ le" (儞已經死了). [[note]]Due to being set under the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beiyang_government Beiyang government]] post Qing Dynasty, and during the formation period of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_China_(1912–1949) R.O.C.]], the Chinese language hasn’t reformed to their current [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese Modern Standard]] system, hence the old Chinese writing for the word “you” (儞）.[[/note]]

* GratuitousForeignLanguage: As the manga is set in Imperial Japan-occupied Shanghai, Mandarin Chinese is prevalent. Even "You are already dead" is translated from Japanese as "Nǐ yǐ jīng sǐ le" (儞已經死了). [[note]]Due to being set under the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beiyang_government Beiyang government]] post Qing Dynasty, the Chinese language hasn’t reformed to their current [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese Modern Standard]] system, hence the old Chinese writing for the word “you” (儞）.[[/note]]

* GratuitousForeignLanguage: As the manga is set in Imperial Japan-occupied Shanghai, Mandarin Chinese is prevalent. Even "You are already dead" is translated from Japanese as "Nǐ yǐ jīng sǐ le" (儞已經死了).

An anime version premiered on April 10, 2018.

** And much like his descendant, he is fond of telling his enemies that "YouAreAlreadyDead" though as opposed to Ken's Japanese "Omae wa mo shindeiru", he speaks it in the Chinese language: "Nǐ yǐ jīng sǐ le"

An anime version will premiere on April 10, 2018.