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Why Hokuto no Ken 2 Sucks
12 years ago
So yeah, a couple of times in the last week I started watching Hokuto no Ken aka Fist of the North Star and streaming it for buddies to join in and watch. Well it come up in the stream today so I thought I'd expound on it quickly. There are going to be spoilers obviously. There's a universal fact about this series.
Hokuto no Ken 2 sucks balls.
Now it's not all bad. There were in fact three good things about HnK2. Their names were Ein, Falco and Han. They were original characters with interesting motives and fighting styles. The Tentei arc itself wasn't bad either. Beyond that though, it sucked. Biggest reason being the series creators didn't want to even make the damn thing. They had a plot leading up to the final confrontation between Ken and Raoh and didn't plan further than that but the powers that be wanted more money and had them continue. They gave no fucks it seemed so the writing was pretty lazy. But let's get into specifics shall we? Here are my personal reasons for thinking HnK2 sucks.
-The new OP song "Tough Boy" is pretty damn atrocious. I know "You Wa Shock" is peerless but goddamn.
-Most new characters are bland if not uninspired expies of better characters in the first part.
-The few interesting new characters die far, far too soon after their introduction and often for dumb reasons. I know meeting Ken at all is like signing a death warrant but even so some of these guys could have lasted a while or gone out with style. Nope!
-Kaioh was an especially terrible villain. His motives were lame and he was so over the top evil it was actually comical most of the time. It's hard to take a guy seriously when he looks like he's on fire and doesn't even realize it.
-Hokuto Ryuken in general was a dumb style after the Han fight when the introduced the demon aura concept. How the hell does a martial art itself make a person evil?
-The Shura arc drags for too long and is very boring because the character conflict lacks personal history and emotional weight many earlier arcs had. These characters have virtually never met before the arc actually began.
-The retcons. This is the big one because they were horrible. Mostly in reference to the Hokuto lineage bullshit. They added this whole True Hokuto Bloodline thing and made a lot of the major players relatives in order to give the Ryuken branch an artificially deeper reason to oppose Ken and add phony gravitas to the fights. This made the the history of Hokuto Shinken overly convoluted and in another way cheapened the story and characters that came before. Being the sole successor to Hokuto Shinken became less about earning it and more about being a child of destiny. It's basically the same as what George Lucas did when he decided The Force comes from Midi-chlorians.
-The Raoh worship. Raoh was the main villain of HnK1. The villain. Sure he was pretty cool and on some level you might sympathize with him but ultimately he was a ruthless tyrant who put his ambition over all for almost the entire time he was around. Then HnK2 keeps trying to paint him as this tragic anti-hero. Maybe even the guy who really should have been the Hokuto successor which is bogus because it reduces the importance of Ken, the damn protagonist of the entire series. It gets even worse when Ryu enters the mix.
-The series ended on a low note no matter which media you choose. The anime ends with an unimpressive fight against Kaioh, a comically poor villain, and the manga ends with the already silly Kenshiro/Bat/Lin love triangle concluding by Ken curb stomping a robo-mook after Bat shows he's a total jobber even as an adult.
-Oh yeah, there's a Ken/Bat/Lin love triangle. Why does this even exist? I wouldn't doubt it if ken were almost twice as old as Lin even after she grows up.
Hokuto no Ken 2 sucks balls.
Now it's not all bad. There were in fact three good things about HnK2. Their names were Ein, Falco and Han. They were original characters with interesting motives and fighting styles. The Tentei arc itself wasn't bad either. Beyond that though, it sucked. Biggest reason being the series creators didn't want to even make the damn thing. They had a plot leading up to the final confrontation between Ken and Raoh and didn't plan further than that but the powers that be wanted more money and had them continue. They gave no fucks it seemed so the writing was pretty lazy. But let's get into specifics shall we? Here are my personal reasons for thinking HnK2 sucks.
-The new OP song "Tough Boy" is pretty damn atrocious. I know "You Wa Shock" is peerless but goddamn.
-Most new characters are bland if not uninspired expies of better characters in the first part.
-The few interesting new characters die far, far too soon after their introduction and often for dumb reasons. I know meeting Ken at all is like signing a death warrant but even so some of these guys could have lasted a while or gone out with style. Nope!
-Kaioh was an especially terrible villain. His motives were lame and he was so over the top evil it was actually comical most of the time. It's hard to take a guy seriously when he looks like he's on fire and doesn't even realize it.
-Hokuto Ryuken in general was a dumb style after the Han fight when the introduced the demon aura concept. How the hell does a martial art itself make a person evil?
-The Shura arc drags for too long and is very boring because the character conflict lacks personal history and emotional weight many earlier arcs had. These characters have virtually never met before the arc actually began.
-The retcons. This is the big one because they were horrible. Mostly in reference to the Hokuto lineage bullshit. They added this whole True Hokuto Bloodline thing and made a lot of the major players relatives in order to give the Ryuken branch an artificially deeper reason to oppose Ken and add phony gravitas to the fights. This made the the history of Hokuto Shinken overly convoluted and in another way cheapened the story and characters that came before. Being the sole successor to Hokuto Shinken became less about earning it and more about being a child of destiny. It's basically the same as what George Lucas did when he decided The Force comes from Midi-chlorians.
-The Raoh worship. Raoh was the main villain of HnK1. The villain. Sure he was pretty cool and on some level you might sympathize with him but ultimately he was a ruthless tyrant who put his ambition over all for almost the entire time he was around. Then HnK2 keeps trying to paint him as this tragic anti-hero. Maybe even the guy who really should have been the Hokuto successor which is bogus because it reduces the importance of Ken, the damn protagonist of the entire series. It gets even worse when Ryu enters the mix.
-The series ended on a low note no matter which media you choose. The anime ends with an unimpressive fight against Kaioh, a comically poor villain, and the manga ends with the already silly Kenshiro/Bat/Lin love triangle concluding by Ken curb stomping a robo-mook after Bat shows he's a total jobber even as an adult.
-Oh yeah, there's a Ken/Bat/Lin love triangle. Why does this even exist? I wouldn't doubt it if ken were almost twice as old as Lin even after she grows up.
But alas, this is just me and my mind - it has it's entertaiment values to me without me having to think too deeply about what is going on, why things are going on and everything else nowdays that needs to be acknowledges eitherway as either some sort of extreme symbolism from the beginning (be it the historical ones or the creator of the series inner symbolism that we'd need to acknowledge) or making it so complex it would suddenly suffer from The Chris Carter Effect just to make more drama (because dramatism is always turning me off).
Though I have to agree with Ein being in it since his death was at leas adequately executed. Falco's was just so rushed. It was horrible because I didn't really feel as much for him since his character was only fleshed out a few episodes before. Han was cool. Too bad he was killed so fast before we got to know him lol.
Anyways, I do agree that it was enjoyable but it wasn't nearly as good as the first. I kind of hate the fact that they tried to end Kaioh with a Raoh-esque I realized my faults and it was an honor to fight you thing when the character was painted totally evil up until that point. Though, I did like it the first time. It was something I never seen before since I expected Raoh to go down like any other bad guy. "CURSE YOU SPIDERMAN! FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE!!!" lol.