New Fist of the North Star takes place in a Post Apocalyptic war, where a highly advanced civilization managed to destroy most of the planet. The opening theme some is J-rock, and it’s crap. The opening and Ending are sung and written by pop superstar Gackt, and it is fluff. The opening animation is a CGI background with intermittent pictures and animation of the lead character, Kenshiro, and what we eventually learn is his brother.

In less than 10 minutes, New Fist of the North Star employs quite a lot of CGI. CGI can either be used appropriately, or it can be misused, and I think that it is the latter. The more traditional animation is better than average, and the character designs for most of the characters is reminiscent of American Comic book art in the 90s. Any character who is a fighter is big an buff, with an exaggerated set of muscles. Also, no matter how big a guy is, he is surprisingly agile.

Before the main character makes his first entrance, we learn one very important thing: clean water is a rarity, and most of the water has been contaminated. So water is a commodity, and it is so valuable and rare that people willingly become slaves in order to get some. There is a kingdom called “Last Land” where the leader rules because of his supply of water, and people outside of Last Land are Slaughtered for the water they find. One group of diggers is killed when they discover water, and only one of these people is spared. Our hero, Ryu Kenshiro, and at only 10 minutes in, the head explosions begin!

The leader if this murdering gang fights in the name of the God of Last Land, and he claims that he knows the secret fighting art, Hokuto Shinken, or Fist of the North Star. Between Kenshiro and this gang leader, we know that only one is the true master, and the other is going to blow up real nice. The man that Kenshiro saves is named Tobi. Tobi plays sidekick, and he provides the light hearted quips to balance Kenshiro’s tough guy act.

They return to the village of Freedom. A woman named Sara is the village doctor of Freedom and she uses pressure point techniques to cure her patients. Her abilities are so miraculous that Master Sanga wants to use her power to keep the masses in Last Land under his control and servitude. Sanga also has Lord Doha as one of his “goddess.” The young Doha has the ability to create the one thing the people of Last Land most desire, water.
 Kenshiro and Tobi go to the last Land to defeat Master Sanga and free Sara. Sanga’s fighting ability, if real, could prove to be the only thing that could destroy Kenshiro. Altough I would have appreciated if New Fist of the North Star would have updated the look of the characters and gone in a different direction visually, I did enjoy this episode. The CGI in some scenes bothered me, because it does not flow well with the animation, but I am as excited watching this Fist as I was


Special Features

Interviews with cast - ENGLISH voice cast. Not interested, since I preferred the Japanese cast to the Americans. This is a 30 minute feature

There is an interview with a representative from Relson Gracie JiuJitsu, in Austin Texas. While I like martial arts, and I like UFC, this extra has NOTHING to do with the show at all. No one in this volume uses anything resembling ground fighting. I don’t think we’ll ever see any ground fighting in a series like this.

Next is a Japanese press conference with two crew members and Gackt, who not only sung the opening and closing theme, but he also plays the role of Seji in the anime. I do believe the guy’s full of himself, but I’ll let you be the judge. This feature is nice, but not highly interesting.

My favorite extra feature is the character bios, and what makes these character bios special is that they are audio bios, with the American voices of each character used to read the descriptions. It’s a really nice touch, and I hope that other anime take this idea and run with it.

There are ADV Film previews, including Getbackers, Yesterday (a live action movie) Aquarian Age, Neon Genesis Evangelion Platinum, Gravion and Lady Death. Lady Death should be avoided like the plague. Don't even watch the preview. The animation and audio is hideous.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age