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![]() This page is already dead, just like the reader of this page, although the opposite may be closer to the truth. The year, 199Xnote , The earth was engulfed in nuclear flames. The oceans have dried and the earth had split. It seemed as though all forms of life were annihilated. However, only humanity struggled to survive. The people waited for a savior who could bring light back to the desolate century's end. Fist of the North Star (Hokuto no Ken, literally the "Fist of the Big Dipper") is the quintessential "guy who looks and sounds like Bruce Lee, wandering the post-apocalyptic wasteland, making people explode with his fists and crying lots of Manly Tears" manga. Essentially Mad Max meets a Bruce Lee film, North Star became a classic of 80s shonen manga, and subject to many parodies, seen in sources such as Seto no Hanayome, Excel Saga, and School Rumble (but none so much so as Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo). The manga lasted nearly six years in Weekly Shonen Jump with 27 collected volumes.The story is set in a post-apocalyptic future after a nuclear war sometime during the 1990s (in 2010 in the manga) levelled civilization. The world is now covered with bands of mohawked ruffians who prey on the weak. Enter our muscular hero Kenshiro, who wanders from town to town searching for his kidnapped girlfriend Yuria, vowing revenge on his rival Shin (her kidnapper), and helping those who cannot help themselves. Fortunately for Kenshiro, he is the rightful successor to the Hokuto Shinken school of martial arts (the "Big Dipper Divine Fist"), a legendary assassination art which utilizes the keiraku hiko pressure points of the human body to literally make enemies explode.After the conclusion of the Shin arc, the story gradually shifts its main focus to Kenshiro's battle against Raoh, the eldest of his adoptive brothers, a would-be world conqueror who was also trained in the ways of Hokuto Shinken by their mutual master. Since the law of Hokuto Shinken only allows the style to be passed on from one master to a single pupil, it becomes Kenshiro's duty to stop his brother Raoh from using the style to fulfill his own ambitions.The latter half of the manga, set several years after Raoh's defeat, has Kenshiro rejoining his former sidekicks Bat and Lin, now grown up and leader of the Hokuto Army, as they fight off the now corrupt Tentei's army led by the corrupt Viceroy Jakoh. While Ken and his friends are successful in defeating Jakoh and his forces, not long afterward Lin is kidnapped and taken to the Kingdom of Shura, catapulting Ken into a war with the three warlords of Shura, who are all masters of Hokuto Ryuken (the "Big Dipper Gemstone Fist"), a martial art which branched off from the same clan that developed Hokuto Shinken.While the anime series ends with Kenshiro's final fight against Kaioh, the manga continues with a few additional story arcs involving Kenshiro's adventures into new frontiers with a young boy named Ryu (Raoh's orphaned son from an unknown woman), as well as a true resolution to the love triangle between Ken, Lin, and Bat.Body counts are often in the dozens per chapter and any major fight is usually followed immediately by Kenshiro shedding Manly Tears for the fallen, having discovered that his opponent was noble all along, but just misguided. Even if he had been, for example, kidnapping children and laboring them to death in order to build himself a giant pyramid.Despite the manga's popularity in Japan, the manga was only partially translated in English twice before both attempts were canceled (first by Viz Media during the 80s and 90s in a series of monthly comics, and later by Coamix's short-lived American subsidiary of Gutsoon Entertainment in the early 2000s as a series of colorized graphic novels).In addition to the original manga, there have also been various anime adaptations and spin-offs.— Opening Narration
Fist of the North Star subpages:ATATATATATATATATATATA!"You Are Already Dead."*HIDEBU!! *SPLAT*
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