Trivia / Fist of the North Star

• Acting for Two: The late Kenji Utsumi voiced both Raoh and Kaioh in the original anime run. Takaya Hashi voiced both Toki and Amiba.
• Actor Allusion:
  • Jakoh's voice actor in the anime is provided by Shigeru Chiba, who in addition to being the show's narrator, also voiced the Filler Villain Joker. Given who he was modeled after, the casting of Chiba as Jakoh was obviously deliberate.
    • Although additionally, Jakoh shares a slightly similar resemblance to Kefka from Final Fantasy, who also just so happens to be voiced by Chiba.
  • Kenshiro himself is voiced by Akira Kamiya, who previously worked on essentially the Super Robot version of Fist of the North Star, ''Daimos. It also involves him using martial arts to save a beloved, but this time it involves winged angelic aliens and a Motion-Capture Mecha.
• Cash-Cow Franchise: Thirty years after the first chapter was published, Hokuto no Ken is STILL churning out new (spin-off) manga, merchandise and video games by the year....
• Completely Different Title: Hokuto no Ken is officially translated as Fist of the North Star in English when it really should be "Fist of the Big Dipper". This is an artifact from when Viz translated the manga in 1989. Instead of explaining what the names Hokuto and Nanto meant (the Northern and Southern Dippers, two Chinese constellations roughly corresponding with the Great Bear and Saggitarius), they changed the names of the two main martial art schools to North Star and Southern Cross respectively. The North Star is still somewhat related to the Great Bear, as the Big Dipper is used to locate it, but Southern Cross barely has anything to with Nanto other than the fact that it happens to be the name of Shin's city. Later translations stick to the styles' original names, but the English title remains Fist of the North Star for recognition. Toei originally proposed the name Ken the Great Bear Fist and almost used that title for the NES game until they went with Viz's chosen title.
  • Fist of the North Star can be considered more of a localization than a direct translation of the Japanese title. The North Star and Southern Cross have historically been used as navigation aids. Considering that one of the themes of the story is who will lead the ruined Earth, it is fitting that the martial art schools of the main warriors would be named after beacons of guidance.
  • In Italy and France, the title was localized as Ken il guerriero (Ken the Warrior) and Ken le survivant (Ken the Survivor) respectively.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: In the TV series, Bat was voiced by a female voice actress, until he became an adult and was replaced by a male actor. Averted in the English dubs for the movie and TV series.
• Disowned Adaptation: According to the Ore-tachi no sukina Hokuto no Ken anime guide, original writer Buronson and editor Nobuhiko Horie were angered over some of the insane filler content that Toei's writers were coming up with during the show's early run that clashed with the serious tone they were trying to set up with the manga. The Nanto Human Cannonball technique in particular near the end of the Southern Cross arc was what triggered their outrage. As a result, they became more creatively involved with the anime to prevent it from becoming an Audience-Coloring Adaptation.
• Fountain of Expies:
  • Shin is the basis for a lot of Long-Haired Pretty Boy rivals, including Dio Brando, Ken, and Liquid Snake.
  • His henchman, Heart, is also the basis for tons of Stout Strength mooks in fighting manga and video games, such as Niu-bao, Wadatsumi, and Queen.
  • The Golan Army's Colonel. Heidern and Rolento took notes from him.
• Gag Dub: The French dub of the Anime is particularly notorious for its attempts to completely ignore the plot of the series in favour of one just made up on the spot. Reportedly, the voice actors hired for the dub didn't like the series (or anime in general, for that matter) and would only do it on the condition that they be given full control over the script. The result is truly something to behold and genuinely amusing, loaded up with culinary puns of all kinds, plenty of large hams and overacting so extreme it goes well beyond the threshold of Narm territory.
• No Export for You:
  • For many years the original manga has never been published fully in English. Viz Media brought the series to the U.S. briefly in 1989 and again in the late '90s as a monthly floppy with mirrored art, and later on, in the early 2000s Coamix's U.S. subsidiary themselves would try to bring it over as a series of colorized graphic novels, but both attempts ended unfinished. Viz Media has once again picked up the license and intend on translating the latest Ultimate Edition starting in 2021 with the same hardcover treatment they gave Jojonium, so hopefully they can finish it this time.
  • The first Fighting Mania: Fist of the North Star game was released worldwide, but the second game, Punch Mania: Hokuto no Ken 2, wasn't.
• The Other Darrin: Even before future installments began to change the cast around, the original anime and movie would fall victim to this. Before his proper debut, Raoh would be voiced by Norio Wakamoto in a flashback of Jagi's during episode 32 before Kenji Utsumi took over and made the role his own. Wakamoto would return later as the voice of Shuren who, ironically, faces Raoh in battle. Oddly, when the same flashback appeared late in episode 98, Wakamoto's performance was kept instead of having Utsumi redubbing over it.
  • Speaking of Jagi, he was voiced by Kōji Totani in the series but by Chikao Ohtsuka in the movie. Many characters in fact, aside from the principal cast, were replaced with different actors in the film:
    • Narrator: Shigeru Chiba —> Taro Ishida^note This recast is bizarre as Chiba still appeared in the movie as Kubaru, though he was replacing his original actor from the series too.
    • Zeed: Eiji Kanie —> Hidekatsu Shibata
    • Mr. Heart: Shōzō Iizuka —> Junpei Takiguchi
    • Jackal: Masayuki Kato —> Hiroshi Ohtake
    • Fox: Koji Totani —> Takeshi Aono
    • Kubaru: Masashi Hirose —> Shigeru Chiba
    • Jujiken Nunchaku User: Koji Totani (again) —> Yusaku Yara
  • Ryūken was voiced by Junji Chiba in early flashbacks and the movie but for his appearance in episode 102, his voice was supplied by Ryuji Saikachi.
  • Yumiko Shibata replaced Kazumi Amemiya as Saki, Yuria's handmaiden in the anime when she cameoed at the start of the Ryuga arc after being absent since the Southern Cross storyline.
  • The elder of Mamiya's village was originally voiced by Kinpei Azusa from episodes 23 to 30 and changed to Kōhei Miyauchi for episodes 45 to 57. Another uncredited actor voiced him in the Celestial Emperor arc for his sole appearance before his death at the hands of Falco.
  • The 2005 video game Twin Blue Stars of Judgment reunited a good chunk of the original cast from the series, but the main cast was all replaced except for Mamiya. Kunihiro Kawamoto replaced Akira Kamiya as Ken himself due to Kamiya's semi-retirement and Ayumi Tsunematsu voices Bat instead of Mie Suzuki likely due to the latter's age catching up with her. Both Rin and Rei's actors, Tomiko Suzuki and Kaneto Shiozawa had died in the passing years so they were recast with Miwa Kozuki and Isshin Chiba respectively. The KING lieutenants, Mr. Heart aside, were all recast too with Naotsugu Yoneda as Diamond instead of Daisuke Gōri and Riichi Nishimoto as Club instead of Koji Totani. Totani, in addition to his bigger role of Jagi, instead got to voice Spade in place of his own original actor, Tesshō Genda.
  • In the short-lived English dub of the series, the narrator was voiced by Jonathan David Cook for the first 27 episodes they dubbed while Tom Wyner would take over for the remainder of the dub (Wyner had previously voiced minor parts like Jackal). Airi's voice also changed in her final dubbed appearance from Kim Mai Guest to Christina Carlisi in episode 33. On a minor note, the character of the week Johnny was voiced by David Ellenstein at the start of the God's Army arc while Jeff Nimoy replaced him for the other two episodes he appeared in. Aruna of Jina Village was initially voiced by Kevin Brief in episode 18 before Joe Romersa took over for episodes 19 and 20. There's also the elder of Mamiya's village, who was voiced by Paul Carr in episode 23 and by William H. Bassett in his other dubbed appearances. In addition, Mamiya's ill-fated brother Kō went from Bob Buchholz to Kirk Baily across his only three episodes plus Fang Clan member Kemada went from Christopher Lee Michael to Ty Webb in those same three installments.
  • Both the movie and the early TV series episodes were dubbed with an L.A. talent pool and shared a good number of actors between them. However, none of the movie cast reprised their roles when the series was dubbed due to the change in companies. The film was dubbed by Streamline Pictures whereas the series was dubbed by Manga Entertainment. A notable example is Michael Forest who voiced Zeed in the movie's dub but he was moved to playing Elder Ukoku in the TV series dub, with Zeed's new actor being Joe Romersa, who was the series' ADR director. Of interesting note, the late Wally Burr^note Under the pseudonym Burt Walters, who voiced none other than Raoh in the movie's dub, made a couple of voice cameos in the TV series as Mahari, a filler villain during the Southern Cross arc, and one of the nameless KING commanders shown during Balcom's rebellion.
• Post-Script Season: The series was intended to end with the death of Raoh, Kenshiro's ultimate nemesis, and the greatest warlord of the post-apocalyptic era. It was renewed after the end of its run, leading to the following arcs requiring a fair amount of rectal requisition to fit into the existing canon (particularly pulling out new Hokuto heirs and another Big Brother for Kenshiro).
• Recast as a Regular: Kaneto Shiozawa voiced a side character of the week named Sam several episodes before the debut of his iconic role as Rei.
• Role Reprise: After voicing Kenshiro in Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise, Robbie Daymond returned to the role for the English dub of the OVAs.
• Star-Making Role: This pretty much became one for Shigeru Chiba, thanks to his iconically hammy narration.
• Wag the Director: Buronson and Tetsuo Hara became far more closely involved with the production of the anime adaptation from the second season onward as a result of their distaste for the large quantity and increasingly off-the-rails nature of the filler in season one. Fans generally agree that them stepping in was for the better, as it led the show to pace itself much better and avoid suffering the same pitfalls that would plague many of Toei's other adaptations.
• What Could Have Been: The Dream Mode of Ken's Rage is this in a nutshell.
  • Mr. Heart was originally going to be renamed "Elephant" in the movie to go along with the animal Theme Naming of Jackal and Fox (Jagi's two underlings in the movie).
  • Toei planned to introduce the anime series to the west sooner, with a test dub of the series under the title of Ken the Great Bear Fist produced and screened for promotional purposes, but the plans fell through. The NES game that was released in the west was originally going to be named after this test dub before going with the finalized Fist of the North Star name (which was derived from a mistranslation of the Japanese title coined by the C/FO anime fansubbing group) that Viz also went with for the manga.
• You Sound Familiar
  • Lex Lang voiced Kenshiro in the English dub of the original TV series, while in the dubs of the OVA series, he voices Kenshiro's master Ryuken.
  • Kaiji Tang voiced Kenshiro in the video game Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage, while in the OVA series, he voices Kenshiro's wicked brother Jagi.
  • Paul St. Peter voiced Uighur in Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise, while in the OVA series, he voices Shisuka.

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