Animation Block: Fist of the North Star 2

Like I said earlier, if Toei had stopped with the first five stories, I would have been fine with Fist of the North Star but they didn't.

Part 2 opens up some time later. Ken became savior of the century's end, reunited with Yuria and defeated Raoh. So, everything's going to work out, right?



Yeah, no. Yuria died not long after the fight and Ken did jack and all thus paving the way for the Celestial Emperor to take over and be even worse than Raoh.

There's only two story arcs with this time out. The first deals with Ken getting back into the swing of things and punching people apart. Lin gets more backstory, although she acts more like a proper than a character.

The last story arc focuses on Ken's backstory. Lin gets kidnapped and taken to the Land of Shura, birthplace of the Hokuto fighting art. Ken rushes to find her and finds his past.

Not really sure the point of most of the story. Ken gets two more silver haired sidekicks who die tragically. The Land of Shura seems to be populated with either kill crazy martial artists or frightened villagers. Which begs the question of how does anything get done there?

We learn more backstory of Ken, but did we really need to? We find Ken's actual brother Hyoh who might be the dumbest character in the series. They keep making a deal about how Ken can't fight his brother...after he killed two of the three men he called brother. Plus Hyoh keeps believing that Kaioh is good and honorable. Kaioh is the previously unmentioned brother of Raoh and is so evil red clouds pour off of him. He also tried to kill Hyoh all the time when they were kids and as adults, yet the lunkhead can't seem to accept that.

Plus the people of Shura seem convinced that Raoh is coming to save them from the crazy marital artists who use them as practice dummies. When Ken informs them that he killed the brutal dictator who slaughtered people across the land, they all whine how he killed their hope. Plus Raoh clearly never got within a hundred miles of the island, so I don't think he was all that serious about returning.

Lin is passed around like a prop. Seriously, you could swap her out for a pair of boots and it wouldn't change the plot.

In short, animation is nice but unless you're a completist I'd say skip it.