Fist of the North Star

Rating:
Summary: Post-apocalyptic gore-fest
Review: "You are already dead" A phrase uttered by the main star Kenshiro, many a time, after performing one of his numerous killing techniques. The dialogue is a little cheesy , the bad-guys cookie-cutter,the animation primitive, but so what? This DVD is chock-full of violence and cool martial arts. Definetely watch this series in order, to understand the back-story and why the hell Ken is tromping around wasting baddies.
You get 7 episodes, very adequate compared to other companies. *cough*Funimation*cough. Audio in English and Japanese, with Subtitles. Let's be honest...you don't want to listen to this in english. The voice acting is really bad (read:Atrocious dialogue), and will make you run home crying. Stick to the Japanese track with subs, and you'll be fine.
Extras are the same old Manga previews from the previous disc,kinda dissapointing. All in all, a great buy...dont miss it!

Rating:
Summary: Post-apocalyptic gore-fest
Review: "You are already dead" A phrase uttered by the main star Kenshiro, many a time, after performing one of his numerous killing techniques. The dialogue is a little cheesy , the bad-guys cookie-cutter,the animation primitive, but so what? This DVD is chock-full of violence and cool martial arts. Definetely watch this series in order, to understand the back-story and why the hell Ken is tromping around wasting baddies.
You get 7 episodes, very adequate compared to other companies. *cough*Funimation*cough. Audio in English and Japanese, with Subtitles. Let's be honest...you don't want to listen to this in english. The voice acting is really bad (read:Atrocious dialogue), and will make you run home crying. Stick to the Japanese track with subs, and you'll be fine.
Extras are the same old Manga previews from the previous disc,kinda dissapointing. All in all, a great buy...dont miss it!

Rating:
Summary: Fists-ful of martial arts action
Review: British Kickboxer Gary Daniels has had a long and fantastic career in direct-to-DVD martial arts movies. He has ocassionally worked with Don "The Dragon" Wilson, and though most of his movie are petty good, they are generally made with budgets and production values that make Don's movies look lik they were made for millions.

Not being familiar with the FIST OF THE NORTH STAR comic books or animated series, I cannot judge this movie based on comic book standards. But I can judge it as both a martial arts fan and Gary Daniels fan, and from that criteria I can say without hyperbole.......
FIST OF THE NORTH STAR IS GARY DANIELS BEST MOVIE EVER!!!!!!

It's got a great story, plenty of martial arts, and an absolutely beautiful leading lady, Isako Washio. I can guarantee you will not find yourself bored during the non-martial arts scenes, since Isako is in most of them.

As for those martial arts combat sequences, well, let me just say that any action hero whose martial arts manuevers include literally blowing up his opponents with a series of speedy punches can make any movie work.

Rating:
Summary: THE BEST FIGHTING ANIME EVER CREATED
Review: don't bother with any of the endless crap animated versions of this story... anytime fist of the north star comes up in conversation or pops into my head, i think of the excellent, flawlessly choreographed, and surprisingly well acted live action version with gary daniels as the dark martial arts hero. the only weakness of this straight to cable film is the slightly fake looking soundstages, but the colors and gothic, post apocalyptic overtones make these easy to overlook. the final sequence, in which daniels plows through a cadre of goons to reach mandylor's villain, is perhaps one of the greatest martial arts sequences ever captured on film, and the final confrontation between the two is theatrical and memorable. great, underrated stuff... a must own dvd for fans of martial arts, science fiction, and action films.

Rating:
Summary: UNTAPPED.....!!!!!
Review: FIST of the NORTH STAR is definitly better in live action. Granted. It's not as intense on somethings as the anime. HOWEVER it gives a different look on the FIST. It really has great fight scenes. Because as a martial artist you can see the techniques of the art compared to the anime movie which just shows a bunch of punches and silly kicking. A MUST SEE!!!!

Rating:
Summary: The End?
Review: Here we go again. Kenshiro continues on his quest to rid the earth of worthless scum and uphold the honor of Hokuto Shinken. Heads explode and fists do indeed fly. Some of these episodes delve into Ken's past (a nice change) and we get introduced to his three adoptive brothers who all veying to be the true successor of their father's martial art "Hokuto Shinken".

As a nice bonus, you get a few extra episodes on this disc (compared to the previous 4). Still, one thing left me scratching my head..this isn't the end,not by a long shot! Yes I did check...Kenshiro still has a few more fights in him, but its up to Manga Ent to acquire the rights and put out the rest (quickly, let's hope).

Back to the DVD..audio and video are satisfactory. Obviously I recommend the Japanese language track with subs (hey, its the way it was meant to be!) Just sit back, relax and watch the Ken dispatch foe after foe with skill and the line "You are already dead". You won't regret it.

Rating:
Summary: The End?
Review: Here we go again. Kenshiro continues on his quest to rid the earth of worthless scum and uphold the honor of Hokuto Shinken. Heads explode and fists do indeed fly. Some of these episodes delve into Ken's past (a nice change) and we get introduced to his three adoptive brothers who all veying to be the true successor of their father's martial art "Hokuto Shinken".

As a nice bonus, you get a few extra episodes on this disc (compared to the previous 4). Still, one thing left me scratching my head..this isn't the end,not by a long shot! Yes I did check...Kenshiro still has a few more fights in him, but its up to Manga Ent to acquire the rights and put out the rest (quickly, let's hope).

Back to the DVD..audio and video are satisfactory. Obviously I recommend the Japanese language track with subs (hey, its the way it was meant to be!) Just sit back, relax and watch the Ken dispatch foe after foe with skill and the line "You are already dead". You won't regret it.

Rating:
Summary: A terrible rehash of the exellent animie movie!!!
Review: How is this possible, Tony Randall has taken THE coolest anime movie and messed it up. Everything that made the anime such a wicket experience has gone wrong here. Gary Daniels, although he is a very good martial artist, is just no match for the power of the anime version of Kenshiro. All the fight scenes lack the incredible punch that made the anime so great. The storyline has been messed up to, with all the caracters names and identities all wrong. For example let's take Jagi, Kenshiros brother. In the live version he's called Jackal and doesn't play the role he did in the anime movie. Also were is Ken's older brother, Raoh? The look of the movie, setting and acting are amongst the worst I've seen. Overall this is a major letdown, if Tony Randall had any wits whatsoever he would have made the movie with a punch like the movie Blade, with Wesley Snipes. For the real thing, check out the new anime series about The Fist Of The North Star vol 1-12. Piece,

Rating:
Summary: Fails Utterly
Review: I am a huge fan of the Japanese anime "Fist of The North Star" which is of course the story of Kenshiro's quest to save his beloved Yulia from the clutches of his arch-rival Shin. What impresses me the most about this series is not the violence and fighting but the way Ken deals out justice. The way Ken delivers vengeance upon the evil-doers and tries to save as many good people as he can. The dialogue between Ken and Shin and between Shin and Yulia is some of the best I've heard in terms of outrageousness and hubris.
Now we get to the live-action version of this classic...
Great dialogue totally written out. Script seems like something from a bad pulp fiction novel. Flat performance from most although Shin and Bart were passable. No mention whatsoever in the movie of Ken's classic "I struck your hidden power point which controls your arm muscles..you have 3 seconds..." or Shin's "I am not meek...and contrary to what you may have heard, it is the strong who will inherit the earth" or Yulia "all I want...is kindness as vast as the sea, a heart as warm as the sun...like a wind blowing through a meadow" We get none of this great dialogue. Also missing are all of the great villians such as the martial arts killer, a giant of a man with a body like a sumo wrestler who absorbs blows with his body.
This movie takes the name of Fist of The North Star and totally fails to do justice to it. While watching this movie I at first laughed out loud at the bad special effects and poor acting but soon felt disappointment and later anger at this travesty styling itself as my beloved Fist of The North Star. If you are a fan of this series don't bother to view this movie. It should be called "Bloody Cross" or some other nonsense as it doesn't deserve the name Fist of The North Star.

Rating:
Summary: Good stuff yet bad animation
Review: I enjoyed this. It was on one of those starz movie channels and I got to see the first 4 episodes. It is alright. Ken, a.k.a. Kenshiro, is pretty cool. The boy Bart is a little out of place. He just shows up and trusts this strange martial artists who can kill guys with insanely weird moves. The girl also seems out of her element.

The fights are alright, but the juice of the episodes are the kills. Every episode has these weird deaths like "exploding fingers" or "your dead in 7 seconds from my fingers in your neck". Stuff like that happens.

The problem with these episodes is animation. There is only, mabye 2 scenes you can consider fights. Almost every other death is by some weird killing move that lasts a few seconds but requires 2 clips of animation. Then, instead of showing the actual guys fall apart, they make the screen all bright and you see the shadow of the guys go all squishy and fall apart. Not cool.

On top of that. There is so little animation that it is a little infuriating. It almost feels like the creators tried to use one frame at least twice. I remember seeing 6 cars speeding through a city. 2 cars sped across followed by 4 others. The 4 other cars were just clones of the first 2. You could clearly see the exact same people go across the screen 3 times. As I said earlier, the fights all involve one or 2 moves. A frame is one little shot of the characters. I'd say it takes about 5 frames for a character in Dragonball Z to punch someone slowly. There may be 10 different frames tops to one fight in this anime. It is almost pathetic.

Normally I don't have high expectations. I'm satisfied by even the lowest animation if there is a story or something interesting. I remember seeing tons of old animes that had bad animation but still kept my interest. This seriously though has to be some of the worst use of animating I have ever seen. If Ken wasn't so awesomely cool I would of given this DVD 1 star.