A nuclear war has ravaged the Earth. Raoh and Jagi witness Shin defeat Kenshiro. Shin wants Yuria to love him, and he starts torturing Kenshiro, giving his chest seven scars. To spare Kenshiro's life, Yuria screams that she loves Shin. Kenshiro is left for dead in the wasteland, whilst Shin takes Yuria and returns to Southern Cross with his forces. Having seen everything, Raoh gives Jagi the title of the North Star divine fist successor. Jagi takes Kenshiro and throws him off a cliff.

Raoh goes to confront Ryuken, whom he defeats in battle. Wanting to hold heaven itself in his hands, Raoh intends to become the supreme ruler of the new century. Time passes, and the world becomes a chaotic place where the strong prey on the weak. A recovered Kenshiro hears the call of Lin, who has been attacked by some members of the Zeed gang. She and Bat are about to be killed, but Kenshiro arrives in time and kills the gang members. Kenshiro goes to Lin's village, where Bat explains that Lin can't talk after she saw her own parents murdered before her eyes.

The village then comes under attack from the Zeed gang. Lin is taken hostage by Zeed, the gang's leader, but Kenshiro saves her and kills Zeed, blowing his body apart. Kenshiro passes Lin a bag of seeds that used to belong to Yuria, then leaves the village. Elsewhere, Rei, a master of the South Star waterfowl fist style, is searching for the man with seven scars. He enters a village where some of Jagi's men are killing villagers, all whilst proclaiming that Jagi is Kenshiro. Rei quickly slaughters many of the men there.

However Kenshiro then appears and explains to Rei that this fake man with seven scars is actually Jagi. Rei tells Kenshiro about Airi, his sister who was kidnapped by Jagi. At his airport base, Jagi has Airi as one of his slaves. Kenshiro and Rei head to where Jagi is, where they encounter the gigantic Heart. Heart's body allows him to absorb blows made against him without having his pressure points struck, but Kenshiro eventually softens his body up and then strikes a pressure point, killing him.

Jagi reveals he has Airi, and tries to get Rei to kill Kenshiro. Kenshiro stops Rei and asks if Jagi doesn't want to fight him himself. Insulted, Jagi tells his men to kill Rei, whilst he takes Kenshiro up to the top of a tower to fight. The battle begins, but Kenshiro quickly overwhelms Jagi. Jagi sets fire to the roof and reveals that he was the one who convinced Shin to take Yuria. Enraged, Kenshiro smashes the roof, causing Jagi to fall. Jagi smashes a pillar over Kenshiro to no effect, as Kenshiro then strikes pressure points on him. Jagi reveals that Yuria is at Shin's city, Southern Cross. As he starts yelling that he is the North Star divine fist successor, his head explodes, followed by the rest of his body.

Rei kills Jagi's men and saves Airi, but she doesn't seem to know who he is. Kenshiro hits pressure points on her to restore her mind, but she still can't open her eyes. Bat and Lin arrive, and Lin shows everyone that one of the seeds has started to bloom. When Airi touches the flower, she is able to open her eyes once more, and is happy to be alive again now that she's seen the flower. Meanwhile, Shin tries to tell Yuria about how good she has it here, but she isn't interested and says she wants to see the Earth covered in greenery once more.

Having amassed a great army, Raoh expands his territory. He and his forces fight the Fang clan, with Raoh killing their leader. Word reaches Southern Cross that Kenshiro has defeated Jagi. Realizing Kenshiro is still alive, Yuria attempts to flee Southern Cross via using an abandoned subway. However Raoh finds her and takes her prisoner. As his forces approach Southern Cross, Raoh confronts Shin and says he's taken Yuria. He encourages Shin to take his best shot.

Kenshiro sees that Southern Cross is on fire. He enters the city and sees that Shin's forces have been wiped out, and he soon finds Shin. The two start to fight, but Kenshiro only has to hit Shin once to defeat him. However several wounds appear on Shin's chest. Shin says he tried to give Yuria everything, but she always had Kenshiro in her heart. He reveals it was Raoh who did this to him, and he has taken Yuria to Cassandra, the City where Devils Cry. He tells Kenshiro to go there and then dies.

At Cassandra, Bat and Lin watch Raoh and his forces marching through the city. Raoh's horse, the Black King, suddenly stops, as he and Raoh notice Lin. After staring at each other for several seconds, Raoh rides on. Lin then sees Yuria being taken to the prison tower. She and Bat later manage to sneak inside it, where they meet Yuria and present her with the flower. Yuria tells them not to let Kenshiro come here, believing something terrible will happen if he does. Bat and Lin have to leave when they hear Raoh approaching. When Raoh sees the flower, he says things like that have no place in this dark age. He decides to have Yuria executed. Uighur leads the proceedings, wanting to know who it was who gave Yuria the flower.

Rei heads out and says the flower sprouted thanks to the love in Kenshiro, Yuria and Lin's hearts. Raoh says this dark era has no need for love, and tells Uighur to deal with Rei. Uighur tries using his whips against Rei, but fails to hit him and gets sliced apart. Rei then confronts Raoh, but gets repelled by Raoh's powerful battle aura. Rei then uses his ultimate technique, but Raoh throws his cape over him and then strikes a pressure point on his body, fatally wounding him. Lin screams out, telling Kenshiro to come quickly. Kenshiro arrives, but is too late to save Rei. Raoh throws Rei towards Kenshiro.

Before he dies, Rei tells Kenshiro not to fight Raoh now, as the two will both die, and this era needs Kenshiro to live. Kenshiro confronts Raoh, as Raoh reveals that he was the one who killed their master, Ryuken. The two unleash their battle auras, causing mass damage to the city. Yuria, Bat and Lin get blown away by the discharged energy, whilst several of Raoh's troops are killed. Kenshiro and Raoh's battle then begins, with the two evenly matched. They fight until they both collapse, both badly injuring each other.

Raoh eventually gets back up and is about to kill Kenshiro, but Lin appears and asks him to stop. Raoh says he knew it was her. Lin asks him to please stop all the killing. Raoh asks her if she is standing against the Fist King, but tells her not to fear, as Kenshiro will not die. He tells her that he will also live on, then expresses his surprise at Lin being the one. He asks her to grow up quickly and then leaves the city on the Black King. Later on, Lin and Bat are happy to see some flowers starting to grow in the soil, meaning the dead Earth is coming back to life. Elsewhere, Kenshiro resumes searching for Yuria.

Box office performance and reception

The movie had a reported budget of around 700 million yen. It made around 1.8 billion yen at the Japanese box office, which I imagine meant it was a success... especially when compared to some of the movies released much later. I can't find any reviews from Japanese film critics. When the movie was released in America some critics did review it though.


"Fist of the North Star is a gut-punching ecological fable (a stretch, but it's there), but watching it you'll feel as comfortable as a hemophiliac in a razor blade factory."
-Richard Harrington, Washington Post review


"What the film, which opens today at the Cinema Village Third Avenue, lacks in coherent storytelling, it partly makes up for in visual flash."
-Stephen Holden, New York Times review


Reviewers weren't too keen on the violence, it seemed. Some also got confused by the story, which certainly wasn't helped by Streamline's poor translation (see below). As for my own thoughts? If anyone was to ask me where to start if they were trying to get into HnK, I would tell them to go and watch this movie (preferably the Japanese version). If they liked it, then I would recommend they go and see the anime series afterwards. As far as I'm concerned, the series has yet to look any better than this either, thanks to the bigger animation budget and the fact that I just don't like the look modern anime has, which the Legends of the True Savior feature. Most fans look on it favorably and for many fans outside Japan, it was the first time they go to experience Fist of the North Star and anime itself in general.

Early trailers

Further reading: Hokuto no Ken (Movie) early trailers

When the movie was first announced in Japan, a strange trailer soon aired on TV which stated that the movie was coming, but the animation it featured mostly wasn't in the finished film at all. Instead, the preview trailer features lower quality animation (on par with an average episode from chapter 2 of the anime series) than the high quality animation the film features and shows oddities such as Rei about to fight King Fang (which doesn't happen in the movie), Shin about to fight Raoh by charging straight at him, Raoh in manga accurate colors and more. The highlight of the first trailer is a purple alien like creature. A second early preview trailer was later released which again had several odd images, such as Bat and Lin encountering Uighur.

Alternate ending

Further reading: Hokuto no Ken (Movie) alternate ending

Originally, the movie ended with Raoh beating Kenshiro. However when the movie was released on video in Japan, the ending was changed, featuring new animation. The new ending has Kenshiro and Raoh's battle ending in a draw. The new animation shows Ken and Raoh about to hit each other one last time, but Lin then appears. The revised ending was produced since the film's director, Toyoo Ashida, felt that the theatrical ending was unnatural due to the way Raoh abruptly decides to spare Kenshiro's life. The original ending, however, is the one featured on most DVD releases of the movie, with the alternate ending either being available as a bonus feature or not being included at all.

Censorship

As this was a movie, it wasn't held back by the restrictions that the TV series had regarding the violence. This meant that things could be a lot more violent, including much more detailed and gruesome deaths. Sometimes, some gang members are colored completely gray before they die, which was a common occurrence in the TV series too. But a lot of other shots show normally-colored punks getting blown apart. It's believed that the movie was originally released in Japanese theaters with no censorship, but this would change later (see below).

But when it was eventually released on video, it was censored. A blurring effect was added to several shots, to make things less graphic. The censorship is wildly inconsistent, with the scene where Kenshiro fights Zeed's gang being the best example. As seen above, you have a guy turning gray before he dies, you have the blurring effect used on another guy, and then you have no censorship whatsoever on the guy who explodes on Zeed's chest. I don't know why certain shots had the blurring effect added, but others didn't -Jagi's death, which features a close-up shot of his head exploding, wasn't censored at all.

Some Japanese viewers claim that the film was censored in this way during the film's original theatrical run, but it has come to light that the film was initially released uncensored in cinemas, then censored later.

The film's final Japanese trailer features Rei fighting Fox's gang, but this shot doesn't feature the blurring effect:

Trailer	Film

Further confusion arose when it was discovered that the Italian video release of the movie featured less censorship than the other versions. The scenes where Shin tortures Kenshiro, Kenshiro saves Bat and Lin and Galf killing a villager by crushing his head were not censored in the Italian video version. Why this particular version didn't have the censorship for these scenes is unknown.

In July 2025, Kineko Video released several uncensored clips, these clips are in vastly highly quality than what was seen in the Italian video release. The belief is that after the backlash to the violence, Toei created censored versions of certain shots, which were then sent back out to cinemas. Again, as mentioned earlier, they didn't censor everything, with the obvious standout being Jagi's death.

Notes

-This movie takes place in a separate continuity to the TV series. It's a retelling of the story that goes from the start up to Kenshiro's first battle with Raoh. In order to cram everything into the runtime, much of the manga's story had to be altered or excised.

-When Kenshiro is first seen, he is wearing his blue outfit from the anime series. But when he saves Bat and Lin the outfit he has on is much closer to the one he has in the manga. This outfit proved to be popular with fans and Kenshiro wears it in Fist of the North Star 2.

-It is mentioned on this film that Yuria is of the South Star bloodline. Nothing had been mentioned about this in other media, but it seems to be a hint to the Last South Star General arc.

-It's not clear what the deal is with Lin in this movie. She seems to have some kind of spiritual connection to Kenshiro, Raoh and even the Black King -the horse takes note of her before Raoh does! Lin also has some kind of super strength, seen when she stops one of Zeed's men from crushing her under his boot. Early on in the film, the spirits from the dead rise up into the sky, then the next thing shown is Lin walking towards the camera, surrounded by an aura of some kind. What this is exactly meant to mean is left to the viewer's discretion.

-The main character from Vampire Hunter D (who is called D) has a cameo in this movie -he's in one of the crowd shots when Uighur shows everyone the flower. Kenshiro made a cameo appearance in the 1985 Vampire Hunter D movie. Both films were directed by Toyoo Ashida.

-Also, in another crowd shot Arion from the Arion manga series can be seen. The Arion movie happened to also be released in March 1986.

-A popular belief, especially with those who saw the English dub of the movie, was that there was a sequel to it. But no sequel was ever made, and at the very end of the Japanese version there is a message stating "the end" rather than "to be continued".

Errors

-During Jagi's first lines, part of his jacket keeps flashing from gray to red.
-Part of Yuria's hair goes skin colored for a few frames during this shot.
-During this shot of Shin laughing, part of his belt flashes from blue to brown.
-When Jagi asks Raoh what they do now, part of his jacket flashes again.
-When Kenshiro gets up from the table, the pillow under his head is seen falling off. On the next shot, the pillow has disappeared.
-Initially, none of the three Zeed members who approach Kenshiro have pink hair. One of them suddenly does a few seconds later.
-The last Zeed gang member who tries to attack Kenshiro has pink hair during this shot, but then he has blue hair one shot later.
-When this same guy gets sent flying into Zeed, he hits his crotch during this shot, but has magically moved upwards during the next shot.
-The broken helicopter on the helipad changes places between shots.
-When the Fang King tells Raoh it won't work, watch the bottom left corner. Part of his jacket keeps flashing from brown to gray.
-When Yuria is in the subway, there is a random, seemingly out of place shot of Raoh that appears for a second or so.
-When Kenshiro says it was vengeance that caused him to change, the buttons and part of his shoulder pad keep changing colors.
-This guard isn't wearing gloves during this shot, but then suddenly has them on during the next shot.
-Rei's eyebrows are colored yellow instead of white during this shot.
-Part of Yuria's head keeps changing from skin colored to hair colored during this shot.
-During the final battle, there seems to be an editing mistake with this shot -it's shown before Lin actually arrives where Kenshiro and Raoh are. Lin is then seen walking towards Raoh with a yellow aura around her, then this shot is shown.