Fist of the North Star

With more viscera per minute than a John Woo film and enough exploding craniums to render David Cronenberg a lightweight, this new example of over-the-top Japanimation should keep the dear departed Walt Disney spinning in his gravesite for quite a while. Based on the best-selling Japanese graphic novel, Fist is set in a post-apocalyptic world populated with oversized martial arts warriors, bright-eyed kids, and cycle-crazed rejects from The Road Warrior. Writer Buronson keeps the story fairly easy to follow (unlike last year's Akira), but it's still little more than a Saturday morning cartoon on speed. Ken, the so-called Fist of the North Star, is chosen to bring harmony to his blighted world by uniting the opposing factions of the North and South Stars. Having seen his rightful power usurped by Jagi and Raoh, two competitors for his position, he must use his fighting skills and magical powers to “build a better tomorrow.” If this sounds strangely familiar, it should -- it seems to be the standard plot line for most Japanimation coming out these days. There is a girl to rescue, as well, and small children to protect, naturally, but Fist of the North Star goes the old formula one further by liberally adding heaping doses of thoroughly numbing gore to the mix. Characters die left and right in the most repulsive ways imaginable: heads implode/explode while brains drip, torsos are cleaved in two with entrails spilling out onto the radioactive ground, limbs are hurled into the air, blood jetting… It would be hideous if it weren't so hilarious. Ultimately, though, it's all just too much. Without an original story to prop it all up, Fist of the North Star soon becomes as tedious and numbing as one of those massive forensic manuals, where gore gives way to more gore and everything quickly begins to look the same. There are, after all, only so many interesting ways to kill a character, and in the end, it's just plain boring.