Characters / Fist of the North Star: Main Characters

Fist of the North Star Main Character Index
Main Characters | First Series | Second Series | Spinoff Characters | Fist of the Blue Sky | Lost Paradise

The protagonist Kenshiro, primary allies Bat and Rin, and recurring ally Mamiya from Fist of the North Star. All names are derived from the most recent localization material.

Warning: This series finished serialisation over thirty years ago and is easily accessible in a variety of different media. The entire page contains major, unmarked SPOILERS for the entire series, so beware!

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Kenshiro

Voiced by (Japanese): Akira Kamiya (TV anime and movie), Takehito Koyasu (OVA), Kunihiro Kawamoto (Twin Blue Stars Of Judgment, Legends ReVIVE), Hiroshi Abe (Legends of the True Savior), Hideo Ishikawa (Legends of the Dark King), Katsuyuki Konishi (Ken's Rage, J-Stars Victory Vs., Strawberry Flavor, Jump Force and Fitness Boxing Fist of the North Star), Takaya Kuroda (Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise)

Voiced by (English): Lex Lang (TV anime, as Alexis Lang), William Winckler (TV anime, recut dub), John Vickery (The Movie), Robert Kraft (New Fist of the North Star), Kaiji Tang (Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage), Robbie Daymond (Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise, Legends of the True Savior)

Voiced by (French): Philippe Ogouz (TV anime and movie)

Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Alexander Paez (TV series), Victor Mares Jr. (live-action film)

Stats: Level: AAA, Power: 4, Speed: 5, Skills: 5, Looks: 5, Charisma: 5

"I'll say it again. Hokuto Shinken is invincible!"

"Allow me to show you why Hokuto Shinken is the ultimate martial art in the world!"

The 64th successor of Hokuto Shinken, Kenshiro was adopted by his master Ryuken as the youngest of four sons alongside Raoh, Toki, and Jagi, all of whom vied for succession. After being named as the rightful heir, he wished to settle down with his fiancée Yuria, but his rival Shin abducts her and defeats Kenshiro in combat, engraving the signature seven scars on his chest that form the North Dipper constellation. This sparks Ken's quest to rescue Yuria and eventually become the "Savior of the Century's End" (世紀末救世主; Seikimatsu Kyūseishu).

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• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Although it is severely understated and no style is named, Kenshiro evidently does know basic Nanto Seiken like Jagi. He performs the hand motion to cut through Amiba's face and, in the anime, cleaves a whole man in half.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: In the manga, after Shin had revealed what happened on Ken's way to Southern Cross, he quickly moves on after burying Shin's body. The anime has every major events taking place before his rematch fight with Shin, and the episode taking place after has him being completely silent after feeling his entire journey was All for Nothing.
• Adaptational Personality Change: In the manga, Ken is very emotive where he'll crack a smile on occasion (whether it's a genuine warm smile or he's messing with Bat), to full-on furious when he saw Shin's Bloody Cross symbol, he crushed the binoculars he was holding, as well as showing genuine happiness to see Yuria alive only to turn into Manly Tears when Shin tells him she forgot about him (though it's revealed to be a doll). The Toei anime made him a stoic no-nonsense badass who smiles in rare occasions and heavy on being a Deadpan Snarker, but still shows anger when sufficently pissed off enough. He retains his tendency to shed tears in special occasions.
• All-Loving Hero: Downplayed. While he is very kind and compassionate and shows even the most heinous villains sympathy because of their Freudian Excuses, he is still capable of feeling hatred, and he is not above brutally killing most of his enemies, especially if they're Beyond Redemption.
• And Knowing Is Half the Battle: During the Animated Adaptation of the Raoh arc, Executive Meddling and Moral Guardians forced Toei Animation to put Kenshiro into contrived situations where he spares the lives of children who are Jumping Off the Slippery Slope, and deliver heavy-handed life lessons ("You may steal to stay alive, but keep doing it and you'll grow to like it, and become real villains"; in other words, "Then I will REALLY kill you") with the subtlety of a brick. Thankfully, this is not done to the detriment of the plot and the story's thematic soul, unlike the post-Land of Shura arc of the manga, left un-animated.
• And the Adventure Continues: Every major part ends with Kenshiro wandering into the wasteland to whatever fate awaits him. With Raoh's defeat, he and Yuria ride off on Koku-Oh to live out the rest of her remaining years with him; post-Land of Shura, he journeys with Ryu to properly teach him the ways and philosophy of Hokuto Shinken; in the grand finale, he continues alone on his mission to protect the innocent wherever he can.
  "I don't need a name on my grave! If I die, it will be on the desert of battle!"
• Armor-Piercing Response: When Fudo asks why Ken hasn't gone to the main capital to see the Nanto General, his reply while removing arrows on his arms, which moves Fudo to tears:
  Ken: The pain of these wounds is nothing. But the pain by your death would last a lifetime.
• Art Evolution:
  • In the manga, Ken retains most of his features from the one-shot story. Later arcs give him a Mad Max-like hairstyle based on Mel Gibson's portrayal. Eventually, he is given a more angular face, a large thick neck, and recognizable iconic hairstyle often adapted in other media such as video games.
  • In the original anime, Ken has a similar hairstyle similar to Bruce Lee, and it carried all until the end with his fight and funeral of Ryuga. The final part of first series gives him a long mullet-like hairstyle, a more narrow eyes, a slightly large neck, and an angular face. The second series gives him more lines on his face, and a Sylvester Stallone-esque features.
• Badass in Distress: Several times after he lost a battle with a major antagonist, he had to be rescued because the physical beating put him into unconsciousness for several days. Tragically, people die as a result during the process including Shu's son.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Making people's heads or bodies go all Body Horror and explode is no good power. Hokuto Shinken is explicitly an assassin's art, and is considered shadowy and sinister. Yet Kenshiro is unambiguously a good guy.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: He can fight well with nunchucks if he has to, but prefers his bare hands during battles.
• Bash Brothers: With Rei. After he and Rei patch things up about Ken not being the one who kidnapped Rei's sister, the two of them make a magnificent team.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: In Ken's Rage 2, when he's about to recover his memory, Kenshiro is forced to fight his inner self who doesn't want to remember the sadness he accumulated for all those years. His inner self has access to every Hokuto Shinken technique, while the current Kenshiro is rendered with Amnesiac Dissonance, and must defeat him in order to regain his memories and defeat Bolge.
• Battle Strip: Kenshiro's shirt and jacket practically explodes and disintegrates off of him if he gets enraged enough. When he gets like this, expect the body count to pile up.
• Berserk Button: He's a stoic, kind-hearted Mellow Fellow who happens to be trained in one of the most brutal and sadistic martial arts in history, and it takes serious provocation to get him to use it on you. Hurting innocents (and especially children) is his usual casus belli, but he has enough professional pride in Hokuto Shinken that insulting its effectiveness is also a good way to get yourself a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Very kind, heroic and totally selfless...unless you're a villain, in which case, you're already dead.
• Big Brother Worship: He has always admired Raoh before his Ambition Is Evil took effect. He even admits this to him in their final bout.
• Big Good: One of the most foremost examples. Any heroic organization in the series eventually has him front and center, inspiring and dishing out the biggest doses of beat-downs.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: It's like two caterpillars crawled onto his face and started munching his hair, and he was too nice to complain about it.
• Black Comedy: Has a strange sense of humour, and some of the deaths he inflicts to his opponents are quite funny. Case in point, this is not a Mook failing in his attack, but Kenshiro's doing. It's also possibly a form of Tranquil Fury, the people he kills are Sadists who torment others in the same way for their own amusement. He's just giving them a taste of their own medicine.
• Boss Subtitles: "The Savior of the Post-Apocalyptic World - Kenshiro"
• Bruce Lee Clone:
  • The Trope Codifier (in anime, anyways), although his fighting style is very different from Lee's. However, his high pitched shrieks are spot on. Those are an invention of the anime, and almost certainly a deliberate invocation of this trope. He also has a lot more "ATATATATATATA!!" moments in the anime than the manga. He also looks a lot more like Lee in the original anime.
  • Skill-wise, Ken has witness several key fights during his journey, and incorporates them in his skillset. This is best shown when he uses Shu's Nanto Hakurou Ken on Thouzer in their second fight. Combining this and Muso Tensei gives him access to their signature styles, and can use them accordingly.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: Yuria doesn't love Kenshiro for his hyper-masculinity, but rather for his gentle, sensitive nature and kind-heartedness.
• Bullying a Dragon: Are bandits and thugs really that dumb to try to taunt and torment this guy? Most mooks are at least a head taller than him and are usually armed. Now, the ones who attack him AFTER seeing their pals explode are either not very smart to begin with or have bosses who will kill them if they run; either way, the poor bastards don't have it easy.
• Bully Hunter: And those he hunts never live to learn from their mistakes, though they usually aren't child bullies either.
• Cain and Abel: The Abel to Jagi's Cain.
• Catch and Return: Kenshiro's Two Finger Air Snatch has him catch arrows and throw them right back at the shooters. Spade gets one in the eye from this.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • "Omae wa mō shindeiru" (お前はもう死んでいる), which is literally translated as "You're already dead" in Japanese. There's also the "Omae wa sude ni shindeiru" variation, which means the same thing, but it's nowhere near as prevalent. However, this catchphrase was only really around during the Southern Cross arc, and disappeared after Shin's death. It does get uttered again on rare occasions, but by then its catchphrase status had practically died out.
  • The english dub of New Fist of the North Star and Lost Paradise also adds a sentence before that: "There's no use fighting now. You're already dead." (the "sude ni" variant) for the former, and "It's too late for you. You're already dead." (the original version) for the latter.
  • "OWATTA" ("Finish!" or "It's finished"), which he adds at the end of his "ATATATATATATATATATATA". It is commonly misheard by people for something completely unintelligle.
• Character Development: While he is consistently portrayed as an heroic protector of the innocent throughout the entire series, he's much more reactionary in early parts of the manga. Destroying Shin's empire was an afterthought next to saving Yuria, he only took on the Golan Army to rescue Lin, and the Jackal and Fang Clan story arcs have the villains attacking a village he just happens to be visiting. Starting with the Jagi arc, he becomes much more proactive in his role as the End of Century Saviour, and starts actively looking for enemies to fight and regimes to topple.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: He had to train his entire life to become what he is. In contrast, Toki may have had more raw talent and was a prodigy, but his illness reduced him too much for him to be successor.
• Clothing Damage: Kenshiro lives in a world where you sometimes must literally give an arm and a leg for basic necessities like food and fresh water, and yet can still afford to shred his expensive jacket every single episode and get a good-as-new replacement the next episode. Episode 23 shows Ken repairing a shoe though, so perhaps Ken uses what limited resources he can find to repair his outfit. Though then again, most of the time they're seen not just ripping but outright disintegrating.
• Cool Horse: Gains Raoh's elephant-sized black stallion Koku-Oh after his death.
• Combat Pragmatist: He has no problems ambushing mooks, throwing objects and attacking somebody while they're talking.
• Crazy-Prepared: He has a move for everything. Attacks with arrows? He has a Catch and Return move. Flying enemy on a horse? He has a flying kick that's more effective on horsemen in air than on horseman on the ground. Mr. Heart, who is so fat to be immune to any attack except Nanto ones? He has a move to push away the fat (this one surprised even Shin, who had known him and his style for years and sent Mr. Heart specifically for him).
• Deadpan Snarker: Kenshiro may be a pretty serious guy, but he does get a few lines in when killing mooks. There's also this exchange with Jackal:
  Kenshiro: Even a rat shows its fangs when it's cornered. Quit running away all the time! Why don't you try fighting?
  Jackal: Damn it! Nanto Bakusatsu Ken!
  Kenshiro: ...you call throwing around dynamite a martial art?
  Jackal: Hey, as long as it works.
• Death Glare: If Ken gives you one of these, prepare to shout "HIDEBU!!!" or something similar at the top of your lungs.
• Desperation Attack: Tenha Kassatsu; according to Kenshiro, this technique rescues the user from the brink of peril.
• Determinator: Ken will not stop until the right thing has been done, preferably with his own fists. Entire armies have learned this the hard way.
• Deuteragonist: He briefly becomes this during the Last Nanto General arc, which has a greater focus on Raoh.
• Did You Actually Believe...?: If he says that he'll spare a villain who he's hit with a pressure point attack, that villain is dead as soon as he's of no further use to Kenshiro. It serves as a Karmic Death as Kenshiro would call out said villain had pulled this numerous times on defenseless people for their own sick enjoyment, so it's only fair to give them a taste of their own medicine.
  Kenshiro: Did you honestly think I'd let a scumbag like you live?
• Does Not Like Guns: Ken refuses to use a gun, since he would rather throw his punches to make his enemies explode. Part of his disdain towards Jagi is because he would use them, and when he held a child kidnapper dead-to-rights, he points a gun at him, but doesn't pull the trigger and instead throws it into the ground. The kidnapper ends up exploding anyway.
• The Dreaded: A rare benevolent example. He is known to most of his enemies as "the Man with the Seven Scars", and mentioning this nickname is sometimes enough to make the mooks run in terror. To put it into perspective, he is the badass — with combination of Good Is Not Soft, One-Man Army and Hope Bringer rolled into one — who delivers the bloody and cruel death to those who prey on the innocent and women and that fear is very justified. Not only is he frighteningly competent in his skills, but he is also frighteningly determinated to accomplish the goal of protecting the innocent and killing evil-doers who really deserve it. Just watch his actions in the anime episode "I Am Death Itself! I'll Chase You to the Ends of Hell!" for proof.
• Earn Your Happy Ending:
  • In Ken's Rage, Yuria is Spared by the Adaptation, since she never contracted radiation poisoning (in fact, it's not mentioned) and Raoh achieved Musou Tensei for other reasons, thus Kenshiro gets to live Happily Ever After with her. This change is strange since it happens in the primary "Legend Mode", while other characters who get their respective happy endings get pushed into "Dream Mode" territory, which makes Kenshiro's own dream scenario worthless, since he dreams of defeating Raoh and living together with Yuria once again. While the same happens in Legend Mode, in Dream Mode, it's for different circumstances.
  • In Lost Paradise, Yuria goes to cure herself of her illness, but the cost is that after being fully cured, she would inadvertently set off the nuclear missiles once she wakes up. However, Nadai decides to save Ken and Yuria from the nukes by sacrificing himself so they would live. At the end of the game, they both ride into the wasteland with a cargo of apples Ken intends to deliver.
• Easily Forgiven: Has the tendency to be on the forgiving end of this trope, as mocked here. Note, though, that Ken does tend to forgive his enemies only after fatally wounding them first, unlike a lot of other examples of this trope.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Occasionally played around with the likes of Mr. Heart.
• Expy: Aside from being an obvious Bruce Lee Clone, he is directly based on Max Rockatansky, particularly from The Road Warrior. Also directly based on Yusaku Matsuda. After the Raoh arc, he also looks a bit like Sylvester Stallone, with his sunglasses at the start of the Land of Shura arc explicitly recalling Cobra.
• Emotional Bruiser: "And so you see, boys and girls, it IS manly to be sensitive and kind."
• Eyes Never Lie: Kenshiro knows about sadness better than anyone. And if he happens to see a palatable sadness in your eyes while you're trying to engage him in a fight, 9 times out of 10 he'll pull his punches in order to make an effort to understand your plight.
• Family of Choice: The four Hokuto brothers: Raoh, Toki, Jagi, and Ken. Despite them all coming from different pasts and different backgrounds, the narartive makes it clear that each of the four considers the other three to be his brothers. This is even a big part of the final battle between Raoh and Ken; after losing, Raoh says "splendid, little brother".
• Fashionable Asymmetry: His original outfit only has a single shoulder pad on his right side. In the manga he only wears this outfit for the first ten chapters before switching to dual shoulder pads after the Southern Cross arc, whereas in the anime TV series it's his standard outfit until the time skip.
• The Fettered: Kenshiro will never compromise his beliefs or his morals, no matter what he's offered or bribed with. It helps that most of the people offering such things are usually begging for their lives anyway.
• Fingerpoke Of Doom: Not only does he have a literal example, he has variants.
• Flanderization:
  • New Fist of the North Star didn't try to make Kenshiro appear soft and gentle or a genuine protector of the innocent, but rather portrayed him as a cold-blooded assassin. However, while Kenshiro is a lot harsher and colder in the OVA, the characters were also a lot less sympathetic, and anyone he felt actual sympathy for forced him to kill them in one way or another. In fact, none of the villains are sympathetic; furthermore, the smaller cast of characters and the length of the OVA reduced his time spent not killing foes and showing his gentle nature outside of battle didn't help much.
  • With Used to Be a Sweet Kid, Even Evil Has Standards, and Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds going for him AND being overcome by remorse and Driven to Suicide once he remembers what having humanity feels like, main antagonist Seiji is one of the most sympathetic in the entire franchise. His father, not nearly as much, but it's still made clear he genuinely loved his son and did what he did so Seiji would grow strong enough to one day kill him in battle and take the throne.
• Four Is Death: Kenshiro's catchphrase is four words long, and his Meaningful Name includes the character for the number four.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: There are two kinds of villains in Ken's eyes: Those who deserve his sympathy and those who don't. Colonel is such military villain who Ken doesn't give his sympathy to, since despite Colonel's attempts to build an army to prevent the catastrophe of another nuclear war, Ken outright tells him "You have only exchanged one mistake for another" since he and his army has murdered innocents and have left children sorrowful and orphaned.
• Friend to All Children: Any child Kenshiro meets instantly warms up to him, and children are the ones who see Kenshiro at his most gentle and friendly. Hurting a child in front of him is suicide.
• Friend to All Living Things: While they don't always reciprocate, Kenshiro refuses to kill Attack Animals when the villains use them against him, instead rendering them unconscious.
• Genius Bruiser: Aside from martial arts, Kenshiro is also broadly familiar with religion and mythology from around Asia and the world.
• Get Out!: Hokuto Shinken may be a brutal martial art, but Kenshiro does believe in second chances. Provided you haven't been committing an atrocity, he might let you run off with a hopefully not literal wound to lick depending on the mood you put him in.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Red and seriously evil-looking. So they naturally tend to trigger when someone really evil's pissed him off.
• Good Is Not Soft: He may have a heart of gold, but hurt an innocent before his eyes, and he will make you suffer.
• Growing Muscles Sequence: All the time early on: Hokuto Shinken practitioners can use their full strength by activating the Tenryu Kokyu Ho (Art of the Dragon's Breathing) technique, that increases his muscle mass and rips his shirt. In a variation it's implied to be caused by his inexperience, as his older brothers have no need to bulk up to use their full strength and by the Last General of Nanto arc Kenshiro stays in his muscular form the entire time.
• Handicapped Badass: Injuries whether from weapons or martial arts techniques won't slow him down one bit. In fact, Ken even used his injured left arm on Yuda's right-hand man Dagarl to prove a point.
• Healing Hands: Kenshiro is capable of using Hokuto Shinken to heal as well as harm, though this gets much less play than the harming part. And Ken's brother Toki is far better at healing than he is.
• Hero Antagonist: Raoh is the Villain Protagonist of the Last General of Nanto arc, making Kenshiro this by default.
• Hero Protagonist: He is the main protagonist and resolves to protect the innocent from harm and work for the bright future in humanity. He is also the most fearsome warrior and the Hope Bringer to boot.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Jagi actually aims for such an outcome when he goes to a village and make himself look bad so that Ken would gain such a reputation. Ken puts a stop to it by defeating his mooks, and kill him for good.
  • He also catches this in the Boss Fang arc.
• Heroic BSoD: Kenshiro does his best to better the world despite the despair and loneliness he goes through. And trying to inflict this trope on him often only makes him angrier and stronger. However, Last Piece reveals that Yuria's death sent him into a great depression, to the point he feels unworthy of helping Juza's son and wants to be left alone.
• Heroic Build: In a genre where the main character is usually a pint-sized boy, Kenshiro stands out as one of the earliest Shonen heroes who are built like Conan the Barbarian.
• Heroic Neutral: Pre-Character Development, while he'll help people against villainy, every instance is a glorified sidequest in his quest to find Yuria. Later on, however, he becomes more of a proactive savior.
• Hitman with a Heart: While Kenshiro does not accept contracts to kill people, Hokuto Shinken is still an assassination art, but Kenshiro is one of its most kind-hearted practitioners, if utterly merciless toward his enemies.
• Honor Before Reason: He might allow someone to go free if they spare an innocent, even if they were an unrepentant killer before. Of course, most of them just turn back around and try to kill him anyway... at which point all bets are off. Basically, don't make Ken regret showing you mercy, or you'll receive none.
• Hope Bringer: "The Savior of the Century's End"; he EARNED that title. Everywhere he goes, those who would use their strength to dominate and hurt the weak fear him. The innocent and the just fighters of the world, however, love him.
• Hunk: One of the most famous examples in manga.
• I Have Many Names: Feared far and wide as "The Man With Seven Scars" and revered far and wide as "The Savior of the Century's End."
• Ideal Hero: Provides the trope image. A Friend to All Children who will Never Hurt an Innocent, and will never compromise his beliefs in the future of humanity for any reason. There's a good reason he's called the "Savior of Century's End."
  "I refuse to build my own future on the blood and tears of others!"
• Identical Grandson: To his uncle Professor Kenshiro Kasumi, the 62nd Successor of Hokuto Shinken and dean of literature at Tokyo's University for Proper Young Ladies in 1935. The final story arcs of Fist of the Blue Sky leaves the possibility open that Kenshiro is actually a reincarnation of his uncle.
• I Lied: Kenshiro's not above promising to spare a villain or a mook in exchange for information, then killing them when they're of no further use.
• Implacable Man: Don't even bother running. Kenshiro relentlessly, inexorably pursues all forms of evil and oppression, as the Zeed Gang, Fang Clan, Jackal's gang, and many others have found out to their detriment. Even a falling skyscraper is neither excuse nor reason to slow his pursuit of evildoers for an instant.
• Important Haircut: In the animated film, Kenshiro sports a thick Chuck Norris-esque beard for a few scenes before giving himself a clean shave.
• In-Series Nickname: His friends just call him "Ken."
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Not only will Kenshiro never back down from doing the right thing, offering him rewards for doing so is to get on the wrong side of a one-sided ass-beating.
• Invincible Hero: Practically everyone who goes up against Kenshiro ends up turned into Ludicrous Gibs. This is doubly so in the anime, with all the filler episodes where Kenshiro has to deal with Punks Of The Week instead of enemies who have to be able to pretend to stand a chance. In fact, only a total of three characters have the distinction of actually defeating Kenshiro in combat: Shin, a practitioner of Nanto Seiken and Kenshiro's Rival Turned Evil, whose beatdown of Kenshiro triggered the latter's character development into becoming the Invincible Hero he is in the main storyline; Thouzer, a practitioner of Nanto Seiken (the rival style to Hokuto Shinken) who appeared to be completely invulnerable to Hokuto Shinken's pressure point-based attacks (at least until Kenshiro figured out why and exploits it); and Kaioh, Raoh's older brother and practitioner of Hokuto Ryuuken, whose Battle Aura rendered useless even the strongest techniques of Hokuto Shinken. Also, Kenshiro's first fight with Raoh - his older brother who was originally intended to be the successor to Hokuto Shinken - ended in a tie, as the two were evenly matched. Even then, all of them were defeated once Kenshiro eventually gained the means to defeat them.
• It Never Gets Any Easier: Despite the countless corpses in his path, he is careful not to become desensitized to killing, and bears the sadness of battle as a burden.
• Jack of All Stats: In Twin Blue Stars Of Judgment he is neither the fastest in the cast or the strongest physically, mostly serving as the Ryu of the game, and this is considered mid-tier. He's capable of infinites but in a game like that, so is everyone else.
• Kamehame Hadoken:
  • Tenha Kassatsu; in the manga against Baran, a Hokuto Shinken "imitator" who'd been strongly influenced by Raoh, Kenshiro showcases how to perform a proper Hokuto Gosho Ha. He also uses Raoh's Tensho Honretsu against Han in the Land of Shura arc.
  • Hokuto Tenkai Senretsu Sho in Ken's Rage has him blasting tons of fireballs around the place with each hand alternating. The result is quite impressive.
• Keep the Reward: Tends to hand back rewards whenever he can, to Bat's annoyance. However, he never seems to have a problem getting enough to eat, drink, fuel his car and repair his clothes, so it's implied that he does sometimes accept resupply from villages that can afford it.
• Ki Manipulation: Kenshiro can use touki to attack an opponent's pressure points at a distance, yet the only time he's ever done this was using Tenha Kassatsu against Thouzer, Tensho Honretsu against Han and Hokuto Gosho Ha against Baran.
• Kung-Fu Jesus:
  • The prequel film Legend of Kenshiro makes explicit allusions to him being this trope, right down to his resurrection from getting literally crucified by a tyrant, and multiple references to God (Kami-sama) instead of Heaven (Ten).
  • His title is the "Savior of the Century's End" for a reason.
  • At one point, when he rescues a child who's about to fall off a broken highway and gives him a drink of water, then walks off without giving his name, the kid comes to the conclusion that Kenshiro is God Himself.
• Lightning Bruiser: While he may not be the most agile fighter in the show, he's far from slow, and very damned strong to boot. Also applicable to his Ken's Rage incarnation: while Nanto Seiken fighters tend to be faster, Kenshiro's the fastest of the Hokuto brothers and relies on this via dodge/jump cancelling for invincibility frames. This is before mentioning his access to Musou Tensei, which in-game gives him fifteen seconds of Nigh-Invulnerability.
• Loved by All: All across the wasteland, he is widely praised as "the savior of the post-apocalyptic world" without even trying to gain people's respect.
• Manly Man: Not only he is designed to be a big badass all around, he ditches all of the emotional turmoil of some other characters and has only the wish to protect the innocent from evil-doers. There’s also his muscular physique and the way he kills the most vile of villains. Manliness, thy name is Kenshiro!
• Manly Tears: All the time; notable in that at no point does he attempt to hide his tears. Even provides the trope image.
• Made of Iron: This is a guy who took seven stab wounds to the chest and lived to tell about it. Even now, hitting him with things like pipes, baseball bats and even iron crowbars will just annoy him. Hell, Kenshiro even took a huge stone pillar to the head, and he acted like nothing happened.
• Martial Medic: As shown with Rin and Airi, he can use his Hokuto pressure point knowledge to cure certain ailments like muteness and blindness.
• Meaningful Name: In the Fist of the North Star pilot illustrated by Tetsuo Hara before working with Buronson, Kenshiro's name was written in kanji characters that literally meant the "Fourth Son of the Fist"(拳四郎).
• Mid-Season Upgrade:
  • Musou Tensei, which allows him to become intangible and commune with the spirits of his fallen rivals. He gains this ability about halfway through the manga.
  • Acquires a small one when he inherits Ein's weighted gloves after the Celestial Emperor arc, making his punches hit slightly harder.
• The Mourning After: Once he’s reunited with Yuria, they could only live a few peaceful years together because of her radiation poisoning. Yuria’s final words are not only to thank him for giving her a great life, but to move on with Rin. Kenshiro could never fulfill her promise due to the pain and heartbreak over losing his only love, even as Bat and Mamiya try to implore him to move on, but Kenshiro refuses to change his mind. Even when he loses his memories, he rejects Rin and successfully encourages her to go to Bat’s side. Kenshiro looks up to Yuria’s spirit and believes this is the right choice.
• My Kung-Fu Is Stronger Than Yours: "Hokuto Shinken is invincible!" No kidding, since whenever someone dumb enough thinks their own martial arts technique is strong enough to beat him, he backs up this claim by deliberately taking hits from said martial art, and show them why they are wrong.
• Never Hurt an Innocent: It goes against his very being to do this even at his expense. Amiba claims this is his greatest "weakness" and exploits it by using a woman as a Human Shield, daring Kenshiro to attack. He doesn't and Amiba subsequently lands a critical blow.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: Kenshiro has a Hokuto Shinken technique for everything. Everything. This is justified as he learned Hokuto Shinken at a young age, so knowing 710 pressure points and using Hokuto Shinken techniques is a requirement to know what exactly which pressure point to hit and use its effects.
• Nice Guy: He is one of the most benevolent, affable and gentle Hokuto Shinken practitioners in history... but if he catches bandits or other thugs terrorising the innocent, he will brutally kill them.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Failing to put Jagi out of his misery when he had the chance not only ruined his own life, as well as Yuria, Shin, Rei and Airi, but threw away the lives of countless innocents in the process. Thankfully, Ken learned his lesson and did not show Jagi mercy in their second fight.
• No-Sell: Kenshiro often lets enemies take pot-shots at him and for him it's not even worth the energy to bother noticing it, including taking a two-handed smash from a 40' giant inside an abandoned prison or getting pin-cushioned with throwing darts from neo-fascist soldier wannabes.
• One-Man Army: Kenshiro is a hugely powerful fighting force on his own and has easily taken down entire squadrons sent to kill him. Look no further than a good example in this clip.
• Papa Wolf: If you harm children, You Are Already Dead. If you harm children that Ken is especially close to, You Are Already Dead Even Faster.
• The Paralyzer: Although he mostly uses his Hokuto Shinken to make his enemies explode messily when he touches them, he can also use it to create less messy effects, including paralysis and even healing of blindness. Unfortunately for his enemies, 'less messy' is often only temporary - he'll happily use an opponent's paralysis to set up much more painful and destructive pressure point strikes if he's sufficiently annoyed with them (or simply if they were moving too fast for him to get a decent shot in).
• Pay Evil unto Evil: While he himself is the titular 'Savior of the Century's End', he does kill most of his opponents in painful and gory ways, mostly because of Karmic Death, and every Mook seems to be a complete scumbag and incapable of doing right.
• Positive Friend Influence: For Lin and Bat but especially for the latter. If he, Lin and Bat had never met each other and Ken taught him about compassion, Bat would eventually grow up to be an irredeemable asshole whom Kenshiro will not hesitate to kill should they meet just like the others, unlike our adult Bat who's grown into a better and altruistic man post Time Skip.
• Power Copying: The Hokuto Shinken technique Suieishin allows Kenshiro to learn an opponent's techniques just from fighting or observing them. Two notable examples is during Kenshiro's fight with Shew by using Nanto Seiken techniques and when Kenshiro confronts Raoh in his rush to find the Last General of Nanto, where he uses Toki's stance and one of Rei's techniques. Rihaku (and in the anime, Raoh) see the spirits of the fighters that Kenshiro has fought and learned from. More explicitly evoked by a blinded Kenshiro in the anime when several of Raoh's biker troops tried to stop him from reaching the General: the troops deliberately revved their engines in hopes that it would drown out the sound of their attack, thus Kenshiro drew upon his experience with Shew to defeat them.
• Pre Ass Kicking One Liner: He delivers this frequently to Mooks who end up pissing him off. Probably the biggest goes to Thouzer after he has Shew killed:
  Ken: THOUZER! When I am done with you, there won't be anything left of you in this world!
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: His signature "You are already dead", which may or may not double as a Bond One-Liner, since he says it after "killing" his opponent, but before they actually die...
• Prone to Tears: He is an emotional guy, and so he will shed tears for others. However, he sheds these tears for the sufferings of his opponents who lost their way or lost someone they loved that turned them to villainy. It's actually how he's able to attain Muso Tensei.
• Protectorate:
  • Never abuse a child in front of Kenshiro or let him find out you killed them. Just don't; Zeed, Spade, Diamond, the Golan Organization, Jackal, the Fang Clan, Jagi, Amiiba, Thouzer, etc. all learned this the hard and painful way.
  • It's also a VERY bad idea to abuse women in front of Kenshiro. He'll make you fully regret your actions just before he kills you.
• Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: Hokuto Hyakuretsu Ken, delivered with his trademark "ATATATATATATATATATATATATATA!"
• Red Baron: He's referred to in-universe as "The Man With Seven Scars" due to the distinct scars on his chest. He's also called "The Savior of Century's End", though much less frequently.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: His eyes occasionally glow red when his rage peaks. This only serves to show one of the most dangerous men on the face of the planet is about to become even more dangerous. One prominent example is when he's about to make the self-professed "Genius", Amiba, walk himself off a building to his death. The first instance of this is witnessing Shin kill Yuria in front of him (which turned out to be a doll) and he makes sure to make Shin suffer the consequences.
• Right Makes Might: This might as well be tattooed on Kenshiro's knuckles so it's the last thing a mook sees before his fist goes right through his face. Kenshiro's fighting prowess comes from Hokuto Shinken. Kenshiro's STRENGTH comes from the righteousness of his cause and his unwillingness to ever give up. Whle he doesn't muscle through his enemies like tissue paper like Raoh does or the Social Darwinist mindset of other villains, he has time and again demonstrates his might by showcasing his feats of strength such as stopping tractors with his bare hands, splitting large pillars in half, and even filler, stopping a tank in its tracks, and he is very humble. Toki tells him he can't defeat Raoh as they both use the same style, and that his defensive style can effectively defeat his hard fist style.
• Sadist: He may be a noble protector of the innocent, but the ways he kills the people he chooses to kill are so often unnecessarily creative, gruesome, and darkly comic that it's hard to describe him as anything other than this. Even the ones he spares often end up with Cruel Mercy.
• Shipper on Deck: Believes Rin should love Bat, not him, and he gets them together at the end of the manga.
• Showy Invincible Hero: Aside from a few Out Of Character Moments, Ken is typically portrayed as utterly invincible. What makes him interesting, typically, isn't if he can defeat a particular character, but how he's going to do it, and how cool/gruesome it's going to be.
• Single-Target Sexuality: The very final moments of the Manga is spent on love relationships, in this case trying to tie them, since Bat tries to have an amnesiac Kenshiro and Rin together. It doesn’t work because Kenshiro has Bat accept his feelings and make Rin happy himself. It gets to the point where Ken has a flashback of Yuria herself telling him to move on and find another love (Rin she specified), the manga shows Mamiya is still readily available even, but Ken refuses. He has steeled his heart to the point where he will never love another woman, Yuria was the only woman in Ken’s life and then reasoning that he should die alone in the desert, fighting for someone in need.
• Sleeves Are for Wimps: Kenshiro's wardrobe consists almost entirely of sleeveless vests and and undershirts. In fact, the first time we see Kenshiro wearing a jacket with sleeves was in the flashback when he suffered his first major defeat at the hands of Shin, playing this trope literally straight. And while Ken does occasionally wear jacket with sleeves at later story arcs in the manga (most notably when he sails to Shura), he mostly sticks to a standardized design in the anime adaptations.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: He suffers this trope badly with his fiancée Yuria, since this whole nuclear apocalypse doomed their romance from the get-go. Yuria is kidnapped twice by other men deadlock on winning her love, the first was Kenshiro’s Evil Former Friend Shin and Yuria’s last suitor, Raoh, was willing to kill her if faced with rejection. Kenshiro goes through hell and high water searching for her, but once they’re finally reunited, Yuria turns out to terminally ill from radiation poisoning. They could only enjoy a few years together until Yuria’s eventual passing, and Kenshiro could never find it in himself to move on with another woman.
• Stock Shōnen Hero: Downplayed, especially since he predates many of the more well-known examples of this trope (including Son Goku, the Trope Codifier). While Kenshiro is a determined All-Loving Hero, he's also older, quieter, more brutal, and more intelligent than most other protagonists of shonen series, although he does give a good Bruce Lee impersonation that's loud and shouty whenever he uses his signature Hokuto Hyakuretsu Ken. He's also quite strong from the beginning and doesn't need to go through any more training to improve himself, unlike most modern examples of the trope.
• Strong and Skilled: He's a highly athletic mountain of muscle who has mastered the finer techniques of Hokuto Shinken for killing and healing. He's tough enough to kick an axe on a chain back at his opponent without any problems then he taps someone on the side of his head to kill him.
• Smug Super: Downplayed very much. Kenshiro never gloats about how powerful he is. But he does often brag about the 2000 years long tradition of Hokuto Shin Ken, and he only ever does so while he's already winning.
• The Stoic: Some of the time. Other times he is either a raging avenger... or a bit of a snarker as Jackal can attest to.
• Super-Strength: Some of his feats include bending open prison bars, wielding a steel I-beam like a broomstick, stopping the charge of a 500 kg man with six fingers, and plugging a burst dam by carrying a huge chunk of a mountain to it. "100% of the body's potential" indeed.
• Taking the Bullet: Ken would normally deflect an arrow aimed at his face towards a mook or someone dumb enough to try kill him, but he's taken shots by arrows in order to save someone's life or to make a point. In the 1986 movie, he takes an arrow shot by a mook, but doesn't flinch.
• Tender Tears: Being a merciless death machine on two legs notwithstanding, Kenshiro is still one of the most sensitive and kind-hearted men in 1980s manga. He may actually cry these more than Manly Tears, if you can believe it.
• Think Nothing of It: Helping innocent people to him is not a duty, but the right thing for a man to do. To that end, he'll often refuse food, water, or any other sort of reward for his good deeds (unless he absolutely needs it).
• Took a Level in Badass: Practically what the first story arc in the franchise was about. He lost to Shin within seconds and spends a year constantly battling and improving skills for a rematch. Especially true for the anime who devotes an entire season of filler showing him battling a variety of different superhuman opponents and martial artists and portraying his progress in improvements before he finally confronts Shin.
• Touch of Death: In increasingly elaborate forms. Most of them make Your Head Asplode, but he's been known to use pressure points to make people do all sorts of things, including walking backwards against their will off of a cliff. However, Ken reserves those only for people who he thinks really deserve a Cruel and Unusual Death.
• Tragic Keepsake: After Ein's death, he permanently wears his gloves, which has the added benefit of making Kenshiro's punches slightly stronger.
• Tragic Hero: Anyone tied to him via the bonds of family and friendship are doomed to a violent, tragic death, hence his refusal to ever settle down after Yuria's death. When he left Rin's town in the first chapter of the manga, the village elder explained to Rin that this trope was the reason: where the successor of Hokuto Shinken treads, death follows.
• Trash Talk: Probably should have its own page. One gem:
  Ken: (To Shin) "I didn't think you'd get into the pig breeding business."
  Mr. Heart: "Ho-ho. You dare call me a pig??"
  Ken: "That's right. Pigs belong in the slaughter house."
• Trauma Conga Line: His girlfriend gets kidnapped, he gets scarred by his rival Shin, and is left wandering a post-apocalyptic wasteland till he can defeat all the other practitioners of his deadly martial art. Lesser men would have been completely broken by the things Kenshiro goes through. Sometimes, his emotions do get the better of him, but that just means he'll rip the villains a new one more fiercely.
• Troll: A heroic version. He likes to mess with people (especially mooks and small-time Arc Villains) and in the manga, the bartender to safeguard Toyo's children by telling him he'll die in a month, and he was only kidding.
• Unexpected Successor: Kenshiro upset the odds when he became the 64th successor, since Toki was in the running lead, until his deteriorating health forced Ryuken to reconsider.
• Unlimited Wardrobe: No matter how many times it explodes when he gets enraged, Ken will always have an exact replica of his shirt and jacket by the next episode. One episode shows him repairing a shirt so it's likely he receives supplies from grateful villagers for this purpose.
• Unstoppable Rage:
  • Not that Ken isn't already one of the best warriors on the planet, but making him mad is a good way to get him to show how strong he really is.
  • When Shin made Ken think Yuria was dead, Ken ignored the pain of Shin stabbing through Ken's hand to deliver a fatal blow.
  • When Jagi revealed that he was the one who persuaded Shin to go after Yuria in the first place, Ken split the entire roof of a skyscraper with one hit.
• Villain Killer: This guy is anime's reigning champion of bad-guy slaughtering.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Once he rips his shirt off with his Battle Aura, that is. Which is admittedly quite often.
• When He Smiles: Kenshiro unsurprisingly doesn't smile much, but whenever he does, it's the warmest, most loving sight imaginable. Children are the most common reason he'll crack a smile (indeed, the first smile he gives in the series is to Rin).
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: He is noble, compassionate and kind-hearted to the core in a Crapsack World where only the only law is the survival of the fittest. When they met and Bat saw that he would not lift one finger to break out of the jail, deliberately staying to protect a little girl, Bat wondered how he had survived so long. Shortly afterwards Bat learned exactly why Ken can afford to be nice.
• Wife-Basher Basher: You think Ken's usual techniques are cruel? You haven't see what he does to those who dare to hit women... ooh, boy...
• World's Best Warrior: Goes hand-in-hand with being The Ace. The only people to have decisively beaten him were Shin, Thouzer and Kaioh, and lightning did not strike twice for them.
• Would Hurt a Child: Albeit far less brutally than he would hit an enemy, Kenshiro has beaten Bat at least once (Episode 2). And not just a Dope Slap at that. To be fair, this was shortly after the two had met, where Bat was still a bratty little punk and hadn't started to mature.
• Would Hit a Girl: Zigzagged Trope. In one hand, a villainess actually trying to kill him with murderous intent became an exception. Bella was an exception despite trying to challenge him because her mother was taken prisoner, and he knows exactly why she's after him, but doesn't press the fight further because she admits defeat.
• Wouldn't Hit a Girl: He refuses to make any moves against Bella when they fight, to the point that she concedes defeat after he shields a girl from a rose intended for him.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Uses one against Mad Sarge in the anime. He allowed himself to get knocked out by Sarge's wrecking ball in the hope that he would be taken straight to the headquarters of God's Army without getting himself killed. Kenshiro merely gets strung up like a punching bag for the recruits, but he easily escapes and then kills Sarge, Buckham (an anime-exclusive character) and then the Colonel.
• You Are Already Dead: The Trope Namer, and his catchphrase; "Omae wa mou shinderu", translated to "You're already dead". Hokuto Shinken techniques have this general effect. The phrase is delivered just before the gruesome results.
• You Fight Like a Cow: His frequent insults revolve around getting under a villain's skin when they often boasts how strong they are, their former (often illegal) profession, and how many people they killed. And he's not even impressed one bit.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: A heroic version. If Ken feels a mook or a mob boss outlived their usefulness, he makes absolutely sure their death is karmic. He is even prepared to kill a mook when they try to attack while his back is turned.
• Your Head A-Splode: One of the more common occurrences when Kenshiro uses a Hokuto Shinken technique, although he gets far more creative later on than simply internally, exploding heads.

Bat

Voiced by (Japanese): Teiyu Ichiryusai (Child)/Keiichi Nanba (Adult) (TV anime, JP), Ayumi Tsunematsu (Twin Blue Stars of Judgment), Daisuke Namikawa (Legends of the True Savior and Legends ReVIVE), Umeka Shōji (Child)/Daisuke Kishio (Adult) (Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage), Shunzo Miyasaka (Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise), Jun'ya Enoki (Fitness Boxing Fist of the North Star)

Voiced by (English): Gary Dubin (TV anime), Caleb Pearson (TV anime, recut dub), Tony Oliver (The Movie), Debi Derryberry (Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage), Bryan Beacock (Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise), Mike Haimoto (Legend of the True Savior)

Voiced by (Latin American Spanish): Orlando Arenas (TV series)

Stats: Level: D, Power: 2, Speed: 3, Skills: 2, Looks: 4, Charisma: 4

Click ^here to see him post-timeskip

A young boy who decides to leave his home village to fend for himself, Bat was imprisoned in Rin's village for attempting to steal food. While locked in the same cell, he comes across the 64th successor of Hokuto Shinken Kenshiro, who breaks out to fight Zeed. After witnessing his skills, Bat follows Kenshiro as his self-appointed sidekick, hoping to use Kenshiro as a tool for his own self-benefit, but after the death of his adoptive mother Toyo back in his village, Bat slowly matures, upon witnessing the hardships of Kenshiro and his new friends and rivals. Following the Time Skip, Bat has grown Older and Wiser and is co-leader of the new "Hokuto Army" with Rin, a resistance group aimed at bringing down the tyrannical reign of the Celestial Emperor. Although Bat is not a true martial artist, he has rudimentary skills, alongside a limited knowledge of Hokuto Shinken from his travels with Kenshiro.

In the final arc of the series, Bat forgoes his love for Rin so she can be with Kenshiro. To that end, he presses Rin's pressure points to induce Identity Amnesia, including reuniting her with a similarly amnesiac Kenshiro. Fate would force him to pose as the Hokuto Shinken successor in order to fight Bolge, a blind thug with a dangerous vendetta for Kenshiro. Unfortunately, Bat is captured, tortured and multilated by Bolge, doing his best to leave an impersonation of Kenshiro, hoping that if he dies, Bolge will stay away from his friend for good. However, the amnesiac Kenshiro arrives to save him, until Bat's screams trigger the martial artist's memories, who is so moved by his sacrifice for him that Kenshiro defeats Bolge easily. Unfortunately, Bat is mortally wounded, yet urges Rin, who too has regained her memories from Bat's heroics, to stay with Kenshiro. Rin decides to stay behind and guard Bat's tomb, only to discover that Kenshiro managed to save Bat's life by manipulating his pressure points. The story of Fist of the North Star ends with Rin tearfully embracing a rejuvenated, yet still unconscious Bat.

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• Adaptation Dye-Job: A strange case. His hair is light brown or auburn, but was depicted as white in the full color Master Release edition of the manga.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: In the manga, he was a street punk who got caught trying to steal and would rather save his own skin before meeting Ken, and going with him develops his character. In the first Toei movie, he's making runs with Rin and has been protecting her up until meeting Ken.
• The Alleged Car: Owned a buggy that broke down constantly prior to the time skip until it was torched in a very petty moment of Disproportionate Retribution by Morgan and his goons.
• Badass Normal: He's got no martial arts training at all, but is able to lead the Hokuto Army to numerous victories after the time skip.
• Bring My Brown Pants: In the manga's first chapter, the demonstration of Hokuto Shinken on the Zeed gang terrifies Bat into wetting himself. Good thing no one saw.
• Bodyguard Crush: During Kenshiro's absence, he vows to protect Rin for him, only to end up developing feelings for her.
• Bratty Half-Pint: Pre-Time Skip.
• Character Development: Bat is first shown in a jail cell with Kenshiro speaking rather fondly of the Might Makes Right rules of engagement of the Century's End. He casually tries to strike a Social Darwinist partnership with Ken, which naturally gets him a cold shoulder from Ken. Tagging along, Ken's actions, from his bully hunting interventions to his turning down tribute and compensation, from his cold blooded beat downs, to the utter respect he shows his fallen foes perplex Bat, but soon get him shouting "Hokuto Shinken is Invincible!" the more he and Rin travel with Ken. Once the Time Skip comes around, he's leading an army of guerrillas, sporting scars from the multitude of times he saved Rin's life. Even Kenshiro remarks on his maturation.
• Did Not Get the Girl: Subverted. He attempted to get Kenshiro and Rin (both being amnesiacs at that time) together, disregarding his feelings for the latter, but it fails when their memories are revived and Rin decides to stay with him instead of Kenshiro.
• Disney Death: Bat was put through utter hell by Bolge and despite being the one to finally finish him, he seems to have died from his injuries. Kenshiro had somehow pressed his pressure points to regenerate from those wounds.
• The Driver: Served this role Pre-Time Skip for most of his appearance due to being the only one of the trio with a (barely) working vehicle and any amount of driving ability.
• Emotional Bruiser: Post-Time Skip.
• Everyone Can See It: More specifically in Ken's Rage 2. Most people, including Mamiya, Toyo, Juza, Rihaku, Jask, and even Kenshiro, seem to notice or point out his feelings towards Rin.
• Fire-Forged Friends: With Ein in the Celestial Emperor arc. They even have a Back-to-Back Badasses moment together when the two of them attack Lord Beron's fortress to take his area. It was due to Bat's influence that the strong bounty hunter became a valuable ally of the Hokuto Army during the arc.
• Future Badass: Goes from being a Tag Along Kid with Rin to a leader of the Hokuto Army, who's very handy with a crossbow and actually knows a few Hokuto Shinken techniques.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Bat refuses to marry Rin, who falls in love with the first person she sees, as a result of Kaioh triggering one of the pressure points before his duel with Kenshiro. He wipes her memory and attempts to pair her off with Kenshiro, since Bat is aware she's been nursing a crush on him for years.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: As a kid, whenever he isn't being a cocky little brat he does show his soft side more than once. As an adult, the "jerk" part mostly goes away.
• Joke Character: Hilariously done when going up against one of Amiba's Mooks in the anime. He punches a soldier squaring in the face, tricking the goon into thinking he has fallen victim to a Hokuto Shinken technique. Bat deliberately invokes Kenshiro's catchphrase and mannerisms. It worked: the frightened soldier froze in fear, leaving Bat to run off and leave the humiliated man be.
• Kid Sidekick: To Kenshiro, prior to the time skip.
• Large Ham: Is a bit of a showoff at times.
• Last-Minute Hookup: Implied with Rin since Kenshiro prevents him from dying permanently, though it wasn't shown when he finally woke up.
• Meaningful Name: Named after the flying rodent of the same name, according to an interview with Buronson on the Japanese Legend of Raoh DVD.
• Mr. Exposition: In early arcs, he serves to fill in Kenshiro (and therefore the reader) on the finer points of the post-apocalyptic society.
• Nice Guy: While he first started out as a selfish cocky jerk, spending time with Ken and Rin as his close friends helps him realize that he can do better in being empathetic, senstive, and selfless for weak and even bad people with tragic backstories like Souther and Raoh during the apocalypse and post Time Skip, as an adult, he matures into a kind, courageous and selfless man who makes Ken very proud of him.
• Rebel Leader: He and Rin co-lead the Hokuto Army against the corrupt Tentei forces during the Celestial Emperor arc. Though Rin is more of a companion-sibling figure to Bat since she has no fighting skills of her own, while Bat is a capable combatant and as such takes active participation in raids and guerrilla assaults against said Tentei forces.
• Satisfied Street Rat: Though he goes straight LONG before he grew up, he still shows some shades of this from time to time.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: In the Southern Cross arc, he is terrified of being hunted down by KING's men because of his power and influence. Ken thinks the opposite.
• Senseless Sacrifice: Bat believes Kenshiro arriving to help him when Bolge is torturing him is this. Even when hit with amnesia, Kenshiro isn't going to allow that to happen.
• Ship Tease: With Rin. While it might be debatable in the first series, it's definitely romantic in the latter part of the manga.
• Spell My Name With An S: In the Manga Entertainment dub, his name was changed from "Bat" to "Bart", likely a reference to another kid trickster.
• Tender Tears: An adoptive big brother like Ken tends to even make the snarkiest Jerkass kid grow up to be just as sensitive and kind-hearted as a man. Exemplified in the Celestial Emperor arc, when he cries for Ein's Heroic Sacrifice.
• Took a Level in Badass: Took one post-Time Skip, having grown up and become the leader of the Hokuto Army. Lampshaded by Kenshiro, which moves Bat into complete tears.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Not only he becomes a charismatic and competent leader of the Hokuto Army with years of martial arts experience as an adult, he also came a long way from being a selfish punk in his childhood into an altruistic and selfless man thanks to Kenshiro.
  "Bat, you've become a man!"
• The Watson: He fulfills this role alongside Mr. Exposition. He's there to tell Kenshiro about the setting, and to be told about Kenshiro's backstory.

Rin

Voiced by (Japanese): Tomiko Suzuki (Child)/Mina Tominaga (Adult) (TV anime), Miwa Kouzuki (Twin Blue Stars of Judgment), Maaya Sakamoto (Legend of the True Savior, Legends ReVIVE), Kanae Itō (Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage), Rie Kugimiya (Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise), Maekawa Ryoko (Fitness Boxing Fist of the North Star)

Voiced by (English): Sandy Fox (TV anime), Marieve Herrington (TV anime, recut dub), Holly Sidell (The Movie), Stephanie Sheh (Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage), Xanthe Huynh (Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise), Bryn Apprill (Legend of the True Savior)

Click ^here to see her post-timeskip.

A young mute girl who was traumatized after witnessing the death of her family at the hands of bandits, Rin befriends Kenshiro when he wanders into her village and captured for being suspicious. Offering him water, he helps restore her voice by using one of her pressure points. Upon being rescued from Zeed, Rin begins to follow him through the wasteland and becomes one of his loyal traveling companions. Years after Raoh's defeat, she forms and co-leads the Hokuto Army with Bat as they fight off the corrupt army of the Celestial Emperor.

Rin is actually the younger twin sister of Lui, the Celestial Empress. After they were born, Falco, sucessor of Gento Kōken was ordered by Viceroy Jakoh to get rid of one of the twins, as two successors to the throne was unallowed due to a prophecy that foretold the kingdom would fall into ruin with two heirs. However, Falco could not bring himself to kill a baby, thus left her in secret care by his aunt and uncle. After Lui was rescued by Kenshiro and his companions from Jakoh, his son Jask (changed to Taiga in the anime) kidnaps Rin and takes her to the Land of Shura to exact revenge, only for Rin to be tossed around by Shachi to goad Kenshiro into fighting Kaioh and his Hokuto Ryūken brothers. Before the final battle between Kaioh and Kenshiro, Kaioh presses Rin's pressure point that knocks her unconscious and erases her memories: the moment she opens her eyes, she will fall in love with the first person she sees. Bat, who has arrived in the Land of Shura to help, insists that Rin be the one to see Kenshiro, but the successor of Hokuto Shinken believes Rin is destined to be with Bat. However, Bat would force Rin back into amnesia so she can reunite with Kenshiro. The final arc in the series is resolved when Rin regains her memories and chooses to be with Bat of her own free will.

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• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: She is very prone to worrying about Ken and his allies in the anime. In the manga, she doesn't angst too much, and when situation calls for it, she'll defend her friends if she has to without fear of dying.
• Adaptational Angst Downgrade: Various media after the original anime and manga ended has her to be more cheerful despite living in a post-apocalyptic hell. This is prominent in video games where she is far more cheerful and happier than in the 1984 anime.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: From black to red in the anime, then pink in the movie. The Ken's Rage 2 game has her hair as brown as a child and red as an adult.
• Adaptational Badass: In Ken's Rage 2, like Mamiya before her, she can use a crossbow. She can also pick up a makeshift mallet, something Mamiya cannot do in the first game.
• Adaptational Name Change: From Rin to Lin in a lot of animated material such as the English dubs of the movie and Lost Paradise.
• Adaptational Personality Change: She's more prone to worrying about Ken and her friends, and it takes someone, like Ken, to talk her down and tell her that it's a personal conflict between Ken and Rei and whoever they need to face. In the original manga, she gets the message, and knows it's something Ken has no control over.
• All-Loving Hero: In the movie, she makes a tear-filled passionate plea to Raoh to stop the fighting and let Kenshiro be with Yuria. It works.
• Belated Love Epiphany: Subverted. After Bat dies, Rin realizes her feelings towards him and goes to his side to stay and cry beside his body... Only to find out that he's alive due to Kenshiro manipulating his pressure points.
• Combat Stilettos: Post-Time Skip, when leading the Hokuto Army alongside Bat.
• Contemplate Our Navels: Occasionally makes some poetic observations about the destruction and atrocity the party bears witness to. Bat gets a little creeped out by it.
• Break the Cutie: Pretty much her witnessing her family die in a nutshell.
• Cross-Dressing Voice: Shouta Aoi voices her in Ichigo Aji.
• Cute Mute: Until Kenshiro restores her voice.
• Dumb Struck: As a result of seeing her family murdered right in front of her.
• Faux Action Girl: As an adult; Ken's Rage 2 averts this, having her become as armed as Mamiya.
• Kawaiiko: Pre-Time Skip.
• Kid Sidekick
• Last-Minute Hookup: With Bat at the end of the manga and Ken's Rage 2.
• The Load: She doesn't quite get that Kenshiro's a fighter and that she simply isn't. Accordingly, her attempts to join him in peril force him to rescue her and cause more problems than they solve.
• Male Gaze: Ken's Rage 2 has the camera in her battle introductory cutscene doing close-ups of her right thigh and her chest for brief seconds.
• Nice Girl: In contrast to Bat being the Bratty Half-Pint.
• Pink Means Feminine: Nearly all of her animated appearances have her wear pink in some form and she's a kind, caring pacifist.
• Plucky Girl: Was at one point defiantly prepared to endure elaborate torture by Ken-Oh's army once they had invaded Mamiya's oasis.
• Precocious Crush: One-sided, as Ken only sees her as a surrogate younger sister, and devotes himself to Yuria. Bat, on the other hand, doesn't believe it's this trope and the final arc of the series is dedicated to resolving this issue. She eventually gets over him though.
• Rescue Romance: She fell for Kenshiro the first time he saved her from Zeed's gang. The last chapter of the manga strongly implied that this was how she fell for Bat.
• Silk Hiding Steel: Even if she's capture-prone and not much of a fighter, Rin does showcase the kind of resolve and fearlessness both Yuria and Mamiya are known for during the Land of Shura arc. It likely stems from her unwavering faith in Kenshiro.
• Tender Tears: One of the franchise's biggest sources of them
• Token Mini-Moe: During Pre-Time Skip.

Mamiya

Voiced by (Japanese): Toshiko Fujita (TV anime, Twin Blue Stars Of Judgment), Naomi Shindo (Ken's Rage), Hitomi Natabame (Legends ReVIVE), Karin Nanami (Fitness Boxing Fist of the North Star)

Voiced by (English): Mary Elizabeth McGlynn (TV anime), Chase Masterson (TV anime, recut dub), Laura Bailey (Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage)

"I gave up being a woman! What you see before you is not a woman, but merely Mamiya, the warrior who must defend her village!"

A female resistance leader whose village is being assaulted by the Fang Clan, Mamiya has limited skills in martial arts, and makes use of weapons like a pair of bladed yo-yos, combat needles, and a crossbow. She bears a passing resemblance to Kenshiro's fiancée, Yuria. After her younger brother Kou is murdered by the savages, she recruits Kenshiro and the vagabond Rei to guard the village, but they instead wipe out the Fang Clan, after Rei discovers they are holding his younger sister Airi hostage. She accompanies Kenshiro and Rei for several arcs of the story.

Like Yuria, Mamiya gains a growing concern for the brooding Kenshiro, though he waves off attempts of affection from her; instead, Rei slowly develops feelings for her. Unfortunately, because of her past shame, she cannot express her love to him in return, thus Rei uses his final days of life to challenge and defeat his old rival Juda, the one who gave Mamiya her psychological scars. Moved by his sacrifice on her behalf, Mamiya re-embraces womanhood, renouncing her life as a warrior.

She later reappears in the Celestial Emperor and Bolge arcs, making her the only one of Kenshiro's allies other than Bat and Rin to appear in all three major parts of the manga.

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• Adaptational Badass:
  • Exaggerated example. While she was definitely the postergirl for Badass Normal in the original series, Twin Blue Stars of Judgement and Ken's Rage boosted her fighting far beyond most of the mutated martial artists. In the former, she is comparable to the Nanto Rokusei Ken and even the Hokuto Shinken martial artists in overall ability (even being fastest character in the game's roster along with Souther). The Ken's Rage games, she starts off much weaker but even without any upgrades, she already starts off as a one-man army capable of massacring hundreds of mooks onscreen. Given the right upgrades, she can eventually be on the same league as the other featured martial artists and is even considered to be the better matchup against specific characters than the Nanto and Hokuto fighters. One point as an example, she is considered the Raoh's WORST MATCH UP of all things!
  • She also busted a lot more heads during fight scene padding, of which the anime contained a lot.
• Adaptational Wimp: Though her manga counterpart was always a second-stringer to the kung-fu supermen, anime!Mamiya got captured a lot, particularly in filler.
• Action Girl: Though prone to getting captured, especially in the anime adaptation, Mamiya is still one of the more heroic, competent women in 1980s Shōnen.
• Badass Normal: Even if she wasn't trained in a martial art like Ken or Rei, she's still very capable of taking on the countless bandits wandering the post-apocalyptic wastelands.
• Boss Subtitles: "Ascetic Woman Warrior - Mamiya"
• Bound and Gagged: She's captured and tied up pretty frequently, and gets gagged by the Fang clan.
• The Bus Came Back: Mamiya reappears sporadically in post-Raoh arcs with Airi and in the final arc of the series, she encounters Kenshiro again to pay respects to Yuria, but also to inform him of Bat's actions regarding Rin.
• Combat Pragmatist: Despite not knowing martial arts, Mamiya gets by via picking her ground, feminine wiles, and the ancient Chinese art of bringing grenades to a fist-fight.
• Combat Stilettos: Wandering the rocky wastelands and scaling cliffs in six-inch high heels, and occasionally stabbing people with them too.
• Commuting on a Bus: She disappears from the series after Kenshiro leaves her village, but she makes return appearances in the Celestial Emperor and Bolge arcs.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Juda kidnapped her during her birthday celebration, intending to make her his concubine, but not before killing her parents to break the village's leadership. As such, Mamiya has abandoned her femininity.
• Defeat by Modesty: Rei, whose feelings for her were budding, symbolically defeats her by using his Nanto Seiken techniques to tear off her clothes to expose her body and prove that, no matter how much she denies it, she is still a woman, who (in his eyes) has no business on the battlefield.
• Dogged Nice Girl:
  • Quickly becomes enamored with Kenshiro, however when she hears about Yuria and Ken’s devotion, Mamiya shuts her feelings to herself and doesn’t pursue it further; after the many moments' Rei tried to keep Mamiya safe and warn her off the battlefield it seemed she would open her heart to him, then he dies.
  • After hearing Toki describe Yuria further, she's rather upset at the idea of even trying to compete with her for Kenshiro's affection.
• Faux Action Girl: Despite having a few decent fight scenes against some mooks, she gets captured and has to be rescued in almost every story arc she appears in in the first series.
• Fiery Redhead: Has bright red hair, and the feisty personality to match.
• Fragile Speedster: In Twin Blue Stars Of Judgment, she's one of the fastest characters in the game, but has low health.
• Her Heart Will Go On: After Rei's death.
• Hotter and Sexier: In the Ken's Rage games, cutscenes and promotional materials garnered a lot of Fanservice shots of her. Her attire includes a thong and transparent skirt, with cleavage about twice as big as other named female characters. And that's before factoring in Clothing Damage.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Unfortunately for her, she's a Badass Normal in a world where even some mooks are impervious to normal weapons, meaning that she's only able to defeat the nameless cannon fodder.
• Plucky Girl: Neither inexperience in martial arts nor the tragedy that comes with being a village militia leader can stop her when she has a goal in mind.
• Rape as Drama: It's strongly implied that this is what caused her to become so cold-hearted after escaping from Juda's harem. Because of this, she chose to fight rather than be helpless again.
• Shoot the Hostage: If she's the subject of a Hostage Situation and knows she's being used as a bargaining chip, Mamiya would rather diffuse the situation by trying to get herself killed. One such mook witholding information about the Cassandra Prison quickly loses his cool once Mamiya dares him to slit her throat before Ken and Rei.
• Stripperiffic: Downplayed. Mamiya dresses in mostly realistic combat clothes, with only her slit sleeves and high heels being impractically sexy. Rei lampshades the trope before he gives her a Stay in the Kitchen speech.
• Team Mom: If Ken and Rei are the fists of the team, she is easily the heart.
• Tsundere: One of the earliest prototypes in Shōnen - She's more "tsun" around Rei, while more "dere" towards Ken.
• Will Not Be a Victim: Decided to cast away her femininity and take up arms as the head of her village.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Once pretends to be injured, only to spring up behind a guy and stab him with metal spikes. This was turned into her first Legendary Technique in Ken's Rage.