Fist of the North Star/Headscratchers

• How does Raoh's death bring peace? I realize that there's nobody trying to take over the world anymore, but what about all those mooks? The last time they thought he was dead, they were perfectly willing to just run roughshod over Muggles like the gangs had been doing since the beginning. Did all the mooks just die or something?
  • Having read Wikipedia, this original troper found out this gets expanded on in Raoh Gaiden. (He kills the more power-hungry/corrupt ones.) Dammit, All There in the Manual!
• Why would that town have a radiation shelter that can only be closed from the outside? How did they expect it to be opened from the inside if say, someone as strong as Ken wasn't there? I'm guessing the former is they expected someone who was in an anti-radiation safety suit to do that, and the latter is because only said individuals would know when it was safe to come out and it'd be unsafe to just open it ( how did they know it was safe to open?), but still.
  • Are you talking about the one from the Toki backstory? If so, it had powered doors but they malfunctioned.
  • In the anime for no good reason they can only be kept closed from the outside. The manga has no such problem since the malfunction's still there but now there's manual shutters on both sides.
• Why did the series pretend Jagi didn't exist after a while? He's Kenshiro's brother.
  • Likely because he was petty, cowardly, exceedingly weak, and none of the Hokuto brothers really gave a crap about him.
    • He was the one who pushed Shin into doing what he did with Yuria, which started the damn storyline. You could at least give him credit for that.
      • I think it's because after a while, even the bit with Shin was mostly forgotten other than his cameos in "Kenshirou's opponents/companions" montages; barely anything before Souther was acknowledged. Jagi couldn't even get a break on in his own manga! (It ends with his thought process at death being more drawn out than in the anime, followed by Kenshirou and the former leader of his gang being sympathetic towards Jagi's late girlfriend.)
• What makes Mr.Heart so popular? The guy keeps turning up in a lot of the spin-offs that were made in the series, he even got a place in the arcade game as a playable character.
  • He was the first onscreen villain to actually do visible damage to Ken in anon-flashback scene. I guess that counts for something.
  • He's an absolutely giant, lardy Camp Gay fat guy, whose fat can repel nigh on any attack. He embodies virtually everything about Hokuto's hilarious and gimmicky cast of filler villains.
• Okay, at first I thought there were some redeeming moments on Souther. But his entry (especially the Character Sheet) really made me doubt that and makes him look like a non-cowardly Jagi. Was he really like that? What's his leather pants that makes him likable? (That editor also think Yūko Gotō a fucked-up female fan because she happens to like Souther... Wow.)
  • As he's dying, he realizes that he was wrong in the horrible things he did. Kenshiro seems to forgive him, which suggests that he must be worthy of forgiveness to some degree (although it does seem like severe Moral Dissonance. This troper's read that in Japan, a big part in what kind of sentence is given to convicted criminals is whether or not they seem to be sorry for their actions; maybe Souther comes across as more sympathetic to the original Japanese audience.
    • Begging your pardon, but what remorse? Unless Hara is a VERY bad artist (which he isn't), Souther was too busy happily crying that he gets to die next to his father in the last 3 pages of his long and evil life to convey any remorse for all that he's done. Sorry Souther, you won't get to reunite with daddy in Heaven 'cos you'll be dragging pyramid stones alone forever and rotting in Hell, and serves you right too!!
      • The newer anime films sweeten the pill for viewers by having Souther kill himself instead without showing remorse, and that Kenshiro's use of a merciful finishing blow was more of an insult to Souther's merciless way. Well, it was either he becomes a much nicer guy or an even worse scumbag, so...
      • You're all forgetting what makes a person "good" in Fist of the North Star: love and sadness. Every good character has some sort of love and sadness; Ken with Yuria and the state of the world, Rei with Airi/Mamiya and their fate, Raoh with Toki/Yuria and their fate, etc cetera. Souther has his love for his master and sadness over his death. He's a "good" person. ...besides, he's also totally hilariously awesome, so he gets a free pass.
        • Except that Souther specifically stated that the reason he commits his atrocities is because he firmly believes he has no need for love, and deliberately discarded such emotions after the death of his master. The Holy Cross Pyramid was supposed to represent that, as it was there he would bury his love forever.
      • Part of the "shiny" is that he not only didn't go down (originally) like a chump but incapacitated Kenshirou in their first fight, then hurt Kenshirou at least twice more in their second fight. I'd also say that it comes from his reaction to the secret being uncovered: he reveals the existence of Tenshou Juuji Hou, which at least in the anime is RIDICULOUSLY hyped to the point of giving him Magnificent Bastard undertones, and finally when the jig is up he decides to go out fighting:

Souther: "I see. Now I've lost my protection and my wings. But... I'm the Saint Emperor, Souther! Emperor of the Six Stars of Nanto! No retreating! No begging! No quitting! The Emperor will never flee!" *vaults off of a step... either punching along the way (anime), or just straight leaping into Hyakuretsuken-Ujoumoushouha (2006 OVA/Hokuto Musou)*

• What bugs me is why almost all of the Nanto Roku-Seiken are playable in most games (Example: Shin, Souther, Rei and Yuda are in the PlayStation 2 game) and yet the Nanto Goshasei (Jyuza, Fudo, Shuren, Rihaku and Hyui) rarely are. I know Jyuza was playable in a SNES game and I could understand if Rihaku isn't playable since he wasn't shown to fight much but Jagi was playable in the PlayStation 2 game and beyond his Hokuto Rakan-Geki move, he hasn't shown much fighting ability in the source material. The Nanto Goshasei need more game time.
  • True, but there wasn't much to work with. Most of them got absolutely butchered after demonstrating one technique, and my favorite of the group who spent the longest fighting, Fudo, spent an episode and a half getting knocked over and getting back up and getting knocked over and getting back up and so on and so forth...and then he keeled over and died, without landing so much as one attack, or even throwing anything more than simply punching and a bearhug. Yeah, that bugs me too.
    • There wasn't much to work with in Heart's case either, but he still made it into the Arc System Works fighting game.
      • It looks like Fudoh and Juza might be playable in Hokuto Musou.
        • Nope, they're "unique" NPCs. Fudou's actually the only of the Five Chariot Stars to appear at all I think.
• I get pissed that the games never include the second saga (the Land Of Ashura). I mean, come on! Ein, Falco, Hyo, Kaioh, I wanna use those guys!
  • Hokuto no Ken 6 for the Super Famicom had Falco, Kuroyasha, and Kaioh.
  • Not to mention Punch Mania 2, which was a Japan-only upgrade to the original Punch Mania/Fighting Mania that had most of the major Hokuto no Ken 2 characters, including the adult Bat.
  • I guess the lack of love for Hokuto no Ken 2 has more to do the fact that the creators Buronson and Tetsuo Hara pretty much wrote that portion of the original manga out of contractual obligations than for creative reasons, since the manga originally intended to end with Ken and Raoh's final battle, and supposedly they don't exactly hold the post-Raoh arcs in high regard. I'm not sure if its true, but it does explain why most of the recent remakes and spinoffs don't even acknowledge the Hokuto no Ken 2 portion of the original manga and anime.
    • I think part of the issue is that the "contractual obligations" reason kinda showed -- for many, all the "soul" of Hokuto no Ken was in the original series, and some of the stuff in the post-Raoh era is just plain convoluted. Fortunately the manga recovered some of the essence at the very end, but most of the stuff before it was just unnecessary.
• Where does Kenshiro gets his replacement shirts (and single shoulder pad) whenever it gets ripped?
  • Maybe there's a Hokuto Shinken skill that allows you to repair your clothes? After 1800 years of ripping off clothes, the masters should have thought of something.
  • He loots the nearest Wal-Mart or shirt store for a new shirt when he is off-screen. That's the only possible explanation I can think of. After all, the show does take place after a nuclear apocalypse.
  • Episode 23 (Rei's debut episode) shows Ken repairing a shoe so my guess is he uses different materials to patch his shirt back together. Except half the time they look like they're outright disintegrating as opposed to just getting ripped off.
  • "That is one damn fine coat you're wearing!".
• Why does nobody see a problem with Rei ripping Mamiya's clothes off and claiming he's going to marry her (creepy enough in its own right, but everybody seems to follow it up with "you remind him of his sister"). WHY DOES NO ONE SEE A PROBLEM WITH THAT.

Shin Hokuto no Ken:

• Kenshiro is shown to fissure rocks by punching them. Earlier in his life, he beat up a goddamn tank. So why is he incapable of taking down a mere steel grid?

• Anyone else perplexed as to why Kaioh decided to become evil in the first place? I mean, it's a pretty lame excuse for becoming evil that your mother makes a Heroic Sacrifice to save somebody. If anything, he should be proud of her sacrifice, and be pushed to do good rather than evil. Instead he is all "My mother that I love willingly sacrificed herself out of love so I'm gonna be evil to avenge her". If I must say, that is really the lamest Freudian Excuse in the entire series. At least Souther had a decent justification for being evil, which Kaioh simply didn't have.
  • He was rebelling to his destiny as a "neglected star". The reaction of the monks to his mother sacrifice was about "no big deal, that's what servants are all about". He did not find so fair that his role and that of his beloved mother was to suffer for the upperclassmen, and if he did not start an evil and demonical cult he would have also been right. Kenshiro gets his point, it could be the reason why he adopts Raoh son after Raoh death .