#224: New Fist of the North Star (2003-4)

 

Studio: A.C.G.T

Director: Takashi Watanabe

Screenplay: Hiroshi Toda and Nobuhiko Horie

Based on the serial novel Fist of the North Star: The Cursed City by Buronson and Tetsuo Hara

Voice Cast: Takehito Koyasu as Kenshiro; Akimitsu Takase as Tobi; Gackt as Seiji; Romi Park as Bista (Doha); Unshō Ishizuka as Sanga; Yurika Hino as Sara

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

This was my first Fist of the North Star. This franchise, from the manga by writer Buronson and illustrator Tetsuo Hara, who wrote the source novel which ties this three part anime and their franchise together, had less recognition in the United Kingdom than it did the United States. Manga Entertainment did release a tiny bit of the 1984 television series, but beyond this, especially into the DVD age when I got into anime, all I had to go with was the 1995 live action Fist of the North Star film, which is not a great interpretation of the premise, and this, which we got from ADV Films, tied to the source in that, whilst set after the original story, its creators were directly involved with.

Introducing this franchise to me as an outsider, as the OVA tells it, civilisation was totalled by nuclear war, leaving the survivors to fend for themselves. Those desiring power prey on those wishing just to survive, and as we see early in the set up of the world in the first episode, polluted water which kills you instantly means clear drinkable water is a huge resource, even more so than petrol as, in this version, is never a concern as cars and motorbikes can be used without issue. Kenshiro, our franchise lead, is a wandering martial artist, the sole heir of Hokuto Shinken, an art form which forces only one master to exist, and fights to stop others claiming the art. His talents with this include the ability to touch pressure points that can even cause a man's head to swell up like a balloon and explode. Unlike the 1995 film which briefly touched on this, and censorship for the television anime series, this version has the gore there fully, but also, unlike the live action film where Gary Daniels played a conflicted but one dimensional figure, Kenshiro here is ridiculous as a stoic muscle man but is also one with a moral compass.

The paradox this OVA claims as a virtue, whilst not perfect even in telling it, is that this contrasts its more lurid content with moral dramas. Kenshiro is fully aware his art is a curse, as he must hunt down other practitioners of the art form, and he is heroic too. Though he can violently explode people, his heart is in saving people, protecting them, even for villains to redeem themselves if he has not made them implode already, willing to have let them live if they redeemed themselves as happens in the finale here. The paradox, that this is gory ultra violent macho anime, yet is full of sentimentality and would get away with manly tears and melodrama in its toe, really stood out as its best aspect returning to this anime, effectively a three hour animated film which sets up the virtues of the source to interest me.

Episode one sets up the premise, that a town is attacked by Sanga, the dictator ruling Last Land, a kingdom where he controls clean water supplies and has brought in religious fanaticism, with a boy who can do magician parlor tricks, to keep his subjects under foot. He requires Sara, a female healer from that now destroyed town whose lineage clearly was one of the Hokuto Shinken clans who were beaten, as her skill is in pressure points that can make miraculous and unnatural healing transpire, something Sanga can exploit to pretend she is a goddess. Touches like this is where this as pulp has something more magical to it, such as that this will come to ahead even when Sanga is out of the story, including the downfall of the boy's older brother Tobi, an ally of Kenshiro who will try to weld this religious fanaticism in a Holy War with the newest ruler when power corrupts him. There is nuances, and the story properly begins with the introduction of Seiji, a figure who has acquired the style Kenshiro has but, abandoned by his father as a boy, has turned into a vengeance seeking nihilistic who believes only in power.

Seiji is also voiced by musician Gackt, who provides the opening and ending themes. Clearly this production was as much to sell Gackt as a star too, even in how, unsubtly and heavy handed, this tries its hardest to make a morally evil figure actually a damaged one who finds humanity, the ending credits even looking like a music video when it cuts to Gackt himself in a post-apocalypse costume screaming to the sky. The music is good, so I will not complain, even if I cannot claim to whether his vocal acting is good or not. Trying to make Seiji, a heinous character, into a complex one is among the virtues of New Fist of the North Star but also where this does struggle, try as it does admirably to do, with an almost comedic number of abrupt inclusions, even an aunt never seen before who appears in Episode 3. 

A lot of New Fist of the North Star will put people off. It is violent, where unlike the previous versions as mentioned, you can have intestines and brains here even if this is past the Millennium, meaning we are no longer in the sickening yet lovingly depicted organs of hand drawn OVAs. There is also an implied rape scene, which is attempt at a moral complexity which does fail. It is not too explicit, and not one to damn the production, but alongside that Sara ends up in the skimpiest of costumes, stuck as a caged bird for Seiji, this is where the complexity this story wanted does falter because the storytelling itself slips, trying to deal with this moment that transpires between Sara and Seiji. It is always problematic to have sexual violence, and in this case, the complexity is enough without this - that Sara knows Seiji, because he once saved her from a wolf attack as children, her decision even to ignore a chance to escape clearly a wish to try to save him or try to bring him to reason. It connects with Tobi's own trajectory, infatuated with her, leading him in his downward spiral in trying for a Holy War when he feels she has been seduced by Seiji. Only that there has to be the rape scene, including her own divided reaction to it, causes the problem, entirely because this is not a subject decades on which can easily be broached in narrative story telling well, and with New Fist of the North Star, in its one huge storytelling flaw, not making Seiji's humane side feel less abrupt than it is its one huge flaw, alongside that this one scene, far more tastefully tackled, is still not as carefully dealt with as it could have been.

But that this gory production is trying at complexity, Seiji a nihilistic sadist who yet is psychologically scared by the idea of people having the concept of love, even to die for, is admirable even if it faltered. That this comes off at times schmaltzy is actually a virtue in this production's favour. This is not Violence Jack, Go Nagai's original 1973-4 manga written long before Fist of the North Star, but the notorious 1986-1990 anime OVA clearly coasting from its success. Even the sexual violence here is not a cheap shock tactic, just not told well, whilst much of this story as a simple action tale has moments where it gets morality over better than other anime trying to be complex. The destruction of a town, including the horror that a disabled girl has been killed among the civilians, is actually not cheap and means a lot, as it is shown enough without being shocking, and with emphasis that this Kenshiro, not a brainless thug, is a heroic figure who, whilst a stoic muscle man, takes the deaths of innocents with anger and remorse in his own way. His decision to try to save the boy from tetanus infection, driving through the mountains to where mysterious mountain men kill everyone who tries to pass, leads to the best moment, where I see the virtues of Fist of the North Star as a legacy franchise fully, that it comes apparent these men, a martial arts temple, only do this because their mountain has a huge silo of nuclear and biological weapons from the old civilization they do not want back in the world. In a moment like this, you see this as a macho melodrama written and crafted by creators where it is about morality as much as the animators even make gags about goons in danger of their heads imploding.

In mind that this is not perfect, that some of it has aged, and some of it will come off as ridiculous, I am glad to return to New Fist of the North Star now able to appreciate it. Its only technical flaw, not storytelling, is that made into the early 2000s, you see the early use of computer animation for vehicles, which became more common and looks obvious here. What it has in comparison though is that this became a gateway for me to want to see Fist of the North Star, the original source work, which is a huge virtue for this to have even if it was not seen as a key piece of the franchise.

#223: Pale Cocoon (2006)

 

Studio: Studio Rikka

Director: Yasuhiro Yoshiura

Screenplay: Yasuhiro Yoshiura

Voice Cast: Minako Kawashima as Riko; Nakao Michiosu as Ura; Yuka Koyama as Yoko Yamaguchi

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

In the far future, in this OVA short, a man named Riko is in an archive, chronicling a world that ceases to exist. Usually visual records, he finds among the archival debris one that has sound, becoming an obsession for him as he tries to figure out who the figure within it, a woman, is and what she is saying. It is effectively a short designed for me, as a former media archiver even in a volunteer position who once had to clear old celluloid film, the kind designed for recording holidays on cameras or for 16mm versions of the Disney short The Skeleton Dance (1929) to be sold on, or go through videotapes from attics and storage rooms, trying to sieve any possible historical worth to them and sending others without back to their owners, back to likely decimation or a bin. It was, even in this tiny role, a poignant one to consider what we record and can see from the past, as well as the issue that, unlike here with the digital preservation, we are still less likely now as Pale Cocoon has passed as an older anime to have dealt with preserving digital material properly. Here too in Pale Cocoon, in a time of huge environmental catastrophe, few are interested in the past barring Riko. There are few individuals working in the archive in this world, and the one he can interact with, a young woman Ura, eventually tells him she is quitting, not wanting to record and preserve the knowledge human beings destroyed themselves, forcing them down under the Earth to where archives like this are, or travel into colonies.

The animated equivalent to a short story, a character piece, there is not a lot further to say about Pale Cocoon in terms of plot, barring that, as he explores this video, Riko will finding himself exploring physical space into an environment beyond his comprehension, of the world before and abstract in itself. It also leads to the abrupt, but tonally appropriate, shift into becoming an animated music video, with a song, Aoi Tamago by Little Moa, which becomes the centre piece of the entire short. Its director/screenwriter Yasuhiro Yoshiura made his first steps in the directorial chair here with Pale Cocoon, a small but growing career with directorial work in the likes of Time of Eve (2008–2009, 2010) to Patema Inverted (2013), someone who is growing as a creator and notably one who is his own voice, as most of his directorial work is also crediting him as their creator. He is someone clearly with an interest in exploring science fiction in a heady way even with Sing a Bit of Harmony (2021), a theatrical film about a female AI in a body being tested in a high school in the future, even if that story among its plot details includes her habit of abrupt singing.

Pale Cocoon's themes are pretty up-front, of environmental disaster which is more pertinent, alongside the point of preserving history, both the importance of archiving but also its existential issues, whether such knowledge will benefit one, the notion of whether we learn from the mistakes of the past, or whether in a time when it is apparently too late, the past is merely the chains of our current imprisonment. The film, clearly using computer animation and melding it to the 2D characters, is showing the time when it was made, but that in itself is contrasted by how distinct Yasuhiro Yoshiura's short still looks, a bleak futuristic narrative matched by the tone of the story itself which is moody in the little time this has. As his beginning in directing, this does entice with the fact that, starting his career, Yasuhiro Yoshiura showed an interesting mind which I would like now to explore with the career he is building currently.