Fist of the North Star (1986) - As Rough as Changing Jobs or Women's Wrestling

The end is the beginning is the new teller job and trying to find another night stay to secure my status in the rewards program. I know that does not sound too bad, but my hesitations prior to the commitment will not let me get comfortable.

I immediately knew that things seemed too good when you can respond to management's text about how I could not get tonight off to watch "All Out", despite it being requested a month ago , with "I had just e-mailed you my two-week notice." My discipline is too great to not bring a tablet in to watch it and ignore the Downstate Illini fans hoping to get too drunk to make it back to Springfield or Peoria. The seven deities know I could use a distraction from that and their kids wandering about instead of being parented. Perhaps tomorrow I can leave a "present" on management's desk for blatantly ignoring my request until the last minute so they could do whatever they liked this weekend without any concern for their subordinates' mental health.

Then again, I may see management twice a month at this position. My chances to get friendly so that I am cozy with them were far and few. That will be the extent of my venting. The property is part of major chain, so do not want to screw up the great rapport with a Vegas location I interviewed with. Just stay out of hospitality in Champaign/Urbana is the summation of the last three years of my career.

After that, my first career decided that it needed to get back in my life. It happened over Wizard World weekend. My brief neighbor from 2005 decided that she wants to start a Peorian take on Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. She asked me in a comment about what I thought was needed to get it going, I replied, and the insistence of immediate action during my vacation was requested.

As a result, upon getting home, I ordered another green and black wrestling mask from MaskManiac and another UltraSaber. It is from my personal experience that Sith Lords are hella over. These occurrences should have been my lead when I briefly got to speak to the potential promoter. The lack of matching enthusiasm displayed on my behalf in our brief conversation may be the reason why she has quit corresponding via any media with me and seems less determined when it comes to letting the Facebook world know that she is the next Marc Maron.

I wonder if talking about this with my girlfriend had triggered the mood and her willful lack of awareness of me. She is acting like I am just going to run back to my strip club pass, so why work on making his life comfortable. Her experience may lead her to believe that everyone abandons you in the end, but based on my life, I have tried to show her faith is the greatest act of defiance. It feels like I am getting judged by everyone despite upping my income $5000 and being willing to work seven days a week to do so. Hence, judgement is something that I need to start dishing out.

But since I do not want to upset my girlfriend, denying her a Don Bluth cartoon has prevented me from opening up the Netflix DVD envelope. At least Amazon Prime Video does not allow for fulfillment injuries.

"Fist of the North Star"

Since I started collecting anime in the 1990s, I was up for catching anything released by Streamline Pictures. When Princess Diana died in a car wreck, I was watching the "Akira" dub on VHS. Once the Pioneer DVD of that title came out, I sorta felt cheated with that weak tape. Thus, my willingness to watch anything distributed by them was affected.

But, the title names are still timeless to me and "Fist of the North Star" was one I still wanted to get around to. The "Golgo 13" series from 2008 was so much slicker than the feature film trailers, and despite the lack of amusement, so did "Dirty Pair Flash" when compared to the original. My need to revisit them was not pressing. But "Fist of the North Star" has always looked like "Fist of the North Star" with the exception of Gary Daniels versus Costas Mandylor in 1995 (but I will defend white-washing for a bandaged up Chris Penn).

The video game for the PS4, images of the manga, the TV shows, it felt like this film was going to actually be timeless. And probably not pretentious on top of that with its sub two-hour runtime. Exploding body parts being promised made me think, "I could watch it without the significant other feeling left out," so Amazon Prime Video gave me the chance to see how bad the American live-action version truly was.

It is probably inevitable, nuclear weapons are going to destroy humanity. We keep denying every fictitious prediction, but what are we supposed to do with weapons designed to kill. Not use them? Guns carried by cops are supposed to be a deterrent, but they always seem to go off all the time. Let us just bury the megaton capable in Nevada like we were supposed to 40 years ago. If something bad happens, at least we know we are getting New Vegas.

"Fist of the North Star" takes place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland after a nuclear catastrophe. Ken, THE Fist of the North Star, and his lover Julia are wandering what remains of Earth to find a place where life can start again. This noble mission does not mean a damn to Ken's fellow martial arts students. With everything destroyed, one must possess whatever they can before it dies like everything else inspiring Shin, The Fist of the South Star, to beat Ken nearly to death, only stopping when Julia surrenders her devotion to him.

Jaggi and Raoh see to throwing the defeated fighter off a cliff to use his title for their gain. Failing to realize that this is a Japanese Intellectual Property, Ken is destined to return. The ambitions of his three spiritual brothers leaving the world even worse off has inspired the peaceful Ken to be more liberal with his heroics. He is going to set the world right with no regard to how many heads will have to explode from his strikes. We can only hope that the young survivors determined to see Julia and his mission come to fruition may keep him on his selfless path.

I found "Fist of the North Star" to be 80's beautiful. It is better looking that any toy-related motion picture in terms of production and the art is as great as its reputation promised. The action is a little too over-the-top for me and it feels like an excuse to avoid showing any detailed strike, but the over compensation in terms of gore evens it all out.

This dub's story seems as coherent, if not more coherent, the live-action version. More importantly, it concisely executes the classic hero's journey premise. I am far too familiar with manga adaptations and swords and sandals features that feel the length of the features is irrelevant as long as you get every detail (Takashi Miike's "Blade of the Immortal" is a prime example.). It may just be the lack of actual combat that allows for this one to clock in under two hours. The ending ends up being anti-climatic, but we would be tuning out if it ran any longer.

Let us remember that "Fist of the North Star" is a gem of the cocaine decade. I say this because some of the visual effects seemed rush. It seems that they did many of the explosions on video, and the edits are far from seamless. The time of the release also means you are not going to get much for quotable dialogue or humor, so it is either an accurate comic book script or lazily written. For an adult audience, you got to try amusing adults. If a child can follow it, many adults will expose them until one explosion too many.

The "Fist of the North Star" motion picture is not art, but it is entertaining and there is nothing wrong with that. In the time of Americans only being exposed to films by Studio Ghibli for the most part, I think the audience forgets that anime can just give you a good action flick. If you can appreciate the ridiculousness of violence, you can appreciate that genre, so anyone should appreciate the adventures of Ken.

The Neon Genesis of Anime - Akira

I will be up front and tell that this is at least the greatest anime movie ever made. "Akira" is definitely the first anime that made it seem like this genre could create a major studio, four star, blockbuster film.

"Ghost in the Shell" is good, but feels more like an art film.

Synopsis:

In August of 1988, World War III begins when a nuclear explosion occurs in Tokyo. By 2019, Neo-Tokyo is built, but unfortunately there are anti-government protest, terrorists, and an ongoing motorcycle wars. Tetsuo, a teenage biker, is involved in an accident with a strange-looking child who the army (and domestic terrorists) seem to have a classified interest in. When his friends come to the rescue, army helicopters come and take away the boy and Tetsuo. Worried about his best friend, Kaneda needs to find out what's going on. He also needs to impress a young female terrorist, Kei, so he joins her terrorist group that is out to stop a project called Akira from occurring or possibly reoccurring.

Whatever Akira is, the army seems to want to use Tetsuo to be the body to contain it. Let's just say the power to disintegrate people is a power that is to be quickly abused.

Critique:

Until Miyazaki's "Spirited Away" was released 15 years later, Akira was be deemed the best anime movie ever made. A long with being a great anime, it is marvelous science fiction, and deserves to be shown in the main stream cinemas. Its characters are excellently written, especially Kaneda, and all the sci-fi elements are used well. The music is excellent except when Tetsuo just starts to open up a can of whoop a**(dumb, dumb, dumb dumb is more like it), and the voice actors in the Streamlined Studios' dubbed version are good except for patient 25's, the fat one, but this dub can make it look like a "Godzilla" movie at some points.

Maybe the most bothersome thing about the film is the length. There are several spots where the film can end, but it chooses to go on and on like Peter Jackson's "Return of the King". To top it all off, it feels the conclusion has to be trippy like Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Also, like Kubrick, there was a degree of controversy to the film. In 1988, cartoons could not be this violent. Too quote a Warner Bros. exec, "You couldn't sell happy meals with this film," but a cool set of McFarlane toys did come from this. Now I don't feel the violence is as graphic as they say, not to say that it isn't graphic, it happens so quick it will not disgust too many people. Like Bart and Lisa Simpson said, "It's just pretend violence which is actually good for children."

Akira's a must own for all anime fans, and there is now a great special edition DVD of it. The dub is far more accurate, and the viewer will appreciate it even more. Sadly, the voice of Kaneda is no longer that of Leonardo of the original TMNT animated series. He's now played by the second black Power Ranger instead.

shop.punkgenerator.com

Anime - Battle Arena Toshinden - Not Quite SFII: The Animated Movie

I forgot that I did episode by episode reviews at The Bus's Transit of Anime Reality. I doubt the true otakus need me to do an in depth critique of this Fighter to Anime, but it's my blog, so first and for most this should be for me. The past couple of weeks, I've kept it free of overly depressing 2009 Russ Stevens related bullshit, so at the very least you can give me this. 

Volume 1 Volume 2

This video game to anime adaptation is every bad thing I associate with U.S. Manga Corps (opinion has changed): bad colors, mediocre music and sound, and far from top quality animation. Still if your a fan of video game fighters, you'll enjoy this anime.

"Battle Arena Toshinden" is good enough to pull the fights together, and all the fights are important unlike the "Street Fighter 2: the Animated Movie". It does a good job at only concentrating on the story's main character, but unfortunately it does give us bits with the mediocre characters (only as characters not as video game fighters), Mondo, Duke, Fo, and perhaps Rongo, but at least they still are relevant to the plot. Also the video does does give us the authentic feel of a button smasher, unfortunately it is done only through special moves. Then again, some people may say that is the only way to fight in the video game. The animation still has a unique style and there is some great artwork available. Again you have to be a fan or looking for a cheap anime to enjoy this, so it is definitely not for everyone.

Volume 1

Eiji Shinjo, a finalist in the last Toshin Tounament, long lost brother, Sho, has just defeated two of the past Toshin champions using their own moves, and a fellow fighter, Rongo, was defeated by a mysterious opponent using the same strategy. Eiji joins forces with his friend Kayan to try and find out what is happening. As a precaution, they to go to warn their friends Sophia and Ellis. When Eiji meets up with Sophia (oh what a dumb teenager I was, spoilers), Sho comes to defeat his younger brother, but is it really Sho that Eiji is facing? If not who is behind this?

The story is not too original, and maybe even tacky since we are seeing one man create so much destruction. Even if he is an cyborg he is still a human (strength, weakeness wise), so making the Man Machine Project sounds pretty stupid. Still their are bits where the viewer can really get into the action, and the fight scenes are done very well. In other words, we don't have to care about the plot. The quality of the animation is low, but there are always scenes that are masterfully drawn, and I can see why they can sell the cells. Damn the need for motion.

Volume 2

After defeating Sho's clone, Eiji goes to meet up with Kayan and Ellis to tell them what he now knows about the The Organization's Man Machine Project. The two leave by telling Ellis to watch her back, and their premonition comes true when a Man Machine of a fighter killed by Ellis's father, Gaia, comes to capture her. Her two friends try to rescue her, but this Man Machine is far greater and knows everything thing about the two's fighting styles. Soon Gaia comes to the rescue, but Ellis tries to save her father from some poisoned throwing blades. Blades whose antidote is known only by The Organization. Now Gaia has to exchange himself for the antidote, and try to defeat the stronger Man Machine.

Definitely the worst episode on the tape because the characters who return stink. The voice actress of Sophia changes her image to a cold character, and why the hell would the Duke (not featured in the prior volume) have a grudge with The Organization. The fights are still well done, but we don't get any artistic treats in this episode like in the first volume. Also the horrible sound effects and music are even more noticeable. By no means was this a good way to end any series.

wikipedia.org