Ranked #579

Hokuto no Ken 2

First of all, this is a continuation of Hokuto No Ken with a time gap in between, so you would probably want to look at that before this. But, as this is not a plot-based show, it does make sense without having seen the original.

The first half of the story was actually pretty enjoyable, even if very standard. Heroic Rebels overthrow the Evil Emprire, but it's done well and had some suspenseful moments and likeable characters. Falco is one of the more impressive adversaries for Ken and their final duel was good fun. If the story ended at that point, I would have given the story an 8.

However, after this climactic battle at around episode 10, the plot suddenly totally changes track. There is no sense of continuation at all; the main character literally just goes off to a new island where the author has found thin reasons for Ken to massacre everybody. Hence, my low score for the story.

But, naturally, the most important part is the fighting. Is it any good? Just like the original Hokuto No Ken, there is plenty of footage of Ken making grunts explode (literally), which can get monotonous fairly quickly. However, the named boss enemy fights were usually well animated; Ken vs Han in particular, I thought was the best fight in both series combined-extremely gritty and violent. It was disappointing that in some of the fights, they resorted to a less realistic fighting style with faux force attacks instead of martial arts, which I felt ruined those fight scenes.

As for the sound, most of the tracks are nothing special, but there are a few music moments. "I Kill the Fight" during Ken Vs Han was awesome and contributed to that being one of the most epic fights.

So in conclusion, the story starts off pretty decently and will keep you interested until the first big showdown, although after that you may need a lot of willpower to get through the filler. Most of the fights are nothing special, but, Ken vs Han and a few others will hopefully make you feel that you haven't been wasting your time watching this old series.

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I watched this series directly following the first series (and assuming the reader of this review has watched the first one as well), so this will be a bit of a comparison between the two.

Firstly, I have to say, that this series was a let down when compared with the original. There are a couple major reasons for this, which are as follows:

1: The story. The story this time around was really unattractive for me. It didn't HAVE to be bad, but I really think it was poorly executed. I should say that the earlier half, story-wise, was going in a good direction. Ken reappeared when everyone thought he was a fallen hero, and Lynn and Bart had grown up and attempted to carry on his legacy. If that had been the major plot piece, I would have liked this series a lot better. However, just as soon as a small climax comes, the story swerves off in a different direction... the island of the Shura, where Ken follows Lynn and discovers the roots of his Hokuto Shinken. The problem with this was not inherently what it was -- but how long it lasted. Traditionally in the first series, you could expect a series of mini-plots that are interconnected to Ken's quest. This Shura plot became the major focus of the series, trading out old characters for new and unacquainted ones. Bart was absent for the bulk of the episodes, only focusing on Lynn and Ken. The new characters on the Shura island bore a striking and boring resemblance to the pre-existing characters of Toki and Raoh.. in fact, you could venture to say that the Kaioh story was just a creative retelling of the Raoh story. There's more I could say but quite simply, the story was a letdown, and at the least, this series could have easily been compacted to 26 episodes without losing any significant detail.

2: Originally, the Hokuto No ken series was about martial arts that actually kind of resembled real-world martial arts. Sure, people blowing up with a touch of the finger is hyperbole, but it's not the same thing as people flying and shooting beams from their hands. Sadly, this second series veered from the martial-arts feel and turned into more of a dragonball-z-style fight setting, with weird energy beams and whatnot often being used to fight. The problem of the "power spiral" was also present, where the strength of the characters begins to make no sense and not logically follow itself. A character who fights evenly with Ken in the earlier episodes has difficulties against a weakling on the Shura island. The Shura island itself was originally made out to be a super-dangerous place full of very powerful fighters.. and yet, the typical Shura fighters ended up predictably pathetic and powerless before the main characters.

All in all, this show was really quite bittersweet.. and it certainly didn't live up to the quality of the first one. The art was wonderful as ever, and there was nothing bad about the sound, but the real problem here was the plot and setting. read more