Ultraviolent 80s Anime Found A New Audience Through Memes

Fist of the North Star centers on Kenshiro, master of the Hokuto Shinen martial art, which lets him strike vital points on his opponents, who then explode into a shower of blood and viscera. Think of the five-finger death punch from Kill Bill, but make it incredibly elaborate, as if he had shoved a grenade into his foe. Kenshiro wants to be left alone, but he eventually gets dragged into action and starts to wander the wasteland, using his fists to dole out justice.

Part of the appeal of Fist of the North Star is that it’s a simple plot with about a dozen characters to keep track of, which is low for an anime with over 100 episodes, and it all comes to a satisfying conclusion. I found that going back today to watch the series, I was able to appreciate the story, especially Kenshiro, who now I recognize as a post-apocalypse Bruce Lee stand-in, complete to his philosophy on life. That’s compared to when I first came across the series, thanks to the 1991 feature film released in the United States, which I only enjoyed because it was so over-the-top violent.

Instead of the violence, which was the original reason Fist of the North Star found an audience, today, it’s famous for the “Hokuto” meme, with the image of Kenshiro saying, “You’re already dead.” But that’s only the most famous of the memes; remember the Shoop Da Whoop laser meme? That comes from a generic bad guy found in this series.

Have you ever seen anyone leaving a comment on social media that only says “NANI!?” That’s also from Fist of the North Star. Villains shout that whenever they are about to explode, thanks to Kenshiro’s Hokuto technique. It’s impossible to spend a significant amount of time on any social media site and not eventually come across any of these memes, but it’s incredibly easy not to know where they came from in the first place.

Fist of the North Star, the series, took a long time to leave Japan, with most fans only knowing about it thanks to the 1991 film, which mangles the story. It wasn’t until 2011 that the entire series was available on DVD. By the time the complete anime was accessible to fans in the United States, it had already become an underground hit through the memes.

This backward, organic discovery of Fist of the North Star is how most anime fans came across new shows before anime broke through in the last decade. Now that every streaming service, from Netflix to Disney+, has an anime section with a prominent “What’s New” banner, it’s a lot easier to stumble across the hot new thing, like Frieren or Delicious in Dungeon, without having to try and hunt down where a single frame of cool looking animation came from.

REVIEW SCORE

I’ve watched a lot of classic anime, and I’d slot Fist of the North Star towards the top of 80s anime, even if the explosive gore is more humorous than shocking. It’s a better story than Golgo 13; it doesn’t get as overly goofy as City Hunter but lacks the characterization of the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise. Still, it’s a fun time capsule to an era where stumbling across a single VHS anime for rent in the back of the store was like finding the pirate treasure from The Goonies.

Now you don’t have to pop in the tape when your parents aren’t looking, as Fist of the North Star can be streamed on Crunchyroll.