"Year 199X. The Earth was devastated by a nuclear war."


HOKUTO NO KEN

(Fist of the North Star)



The nuclear war has left the planet devastated. Cities are in ruins, oceans have dried up. However, mankind survives. The people left are in a struggle to survive, the good help each other whilst the bad want nothing more than to plunder. One group of people are in a truck which has got some livestock on it, a very rare thing to see in these times. But they are noticed by a gang of bikers.



Zeed, the leader of this gang, tells everyone to charge and they all attack together. They make the truck crash and all human passengers on it are killed as the start to take anything of value. Things like water are extremely sacred now.



As the gang plunders the truck, Zeed finds a suitcase full of money. But stuff like that is now useless now, and he lets the wind blow is out everywhere. In this time, the world has been plunged into an age of chaos and terror ruled by violence.



Elsewhere, a single man walks across a desert. The heat is terrible and he collapses right next to the skull of a dead animal. He is about to lose consciousness when suddenly, a hand bursts out of the ground next to him!



Another man appears and starts laughing manically, but then the man wakes up. It had just been a dream. He gets up and thinks about a woman, who he can see in the sky. He speaks her name: Yuria.



The man gets back up and starts to continue on his walk again. He soon arrives in the ruins of a city, where some Zeed gang members are also hanging out, but he ignores them and just walks by. They don't take kindly to this, and they start up their car and bikes and give chase. The man doesn't realise that he is been followed until a lasso is used to drag him across the floor!



A little while later, Zeed's gang are having a feast when one of their group comes back to report trouble. Something has happened to their scouts, so Zeed and his men go to check it out. When they find the scouts, they see that they are all dead. But when they check the bodies, it looks like they were blown apart from the inside.



They then find that one of the scouts is still alive. Zeed asks him what happened, but all he says is "Hokuto no ken" and then his head bulges up and explodes! One of the group suggests the use of explosives, but Zeed says weapons like that no longer exist, so that couldn't be it. What is this "Hokuto"?



The next morning, in another town, a young girl is going to collect some water from a well to water the plants that the townsfolk have managed to grow. There is a guard at the well who doesn't want to give the girl, Lin, extra water for her puppy, Pel, but he changes his mind when she kisses him. As Lin watches her pet, she then hears some people shouting and a few feet away are a gang of men threatening to hang a boy because he keeps trying to steal potatoes. The boy, Bat, says that it they hang him he'll come back to haunt them, so they decide on putting him in a cell instead.



Bat tries to lighten the mood by playing on his harmonica but attention soon turns to a water thief: the traveler in blue has arrived in the village. He does not get to drink much as the townsfolk have him put into a cell with Bat, and Lin is told to keep an eye on the pair.



Lin seems to like the traveler and brings him a cup of water. He thanks her for it as she places it in the cell, but Bat sees this as his big chance. He dashes across and rams Lin into the iron bars whilst yelling at his cell mate to grab the keys from her. It looks like the man is going to do that, but he instead grabs Bat's arm.



He does something which causes Bat a lot of pain and makes him let go of Lin whilst he rolls around on the floor in agony. The man asks Lin if she could go and get him another cup of water. As she walks off, Bat is seemingly impressed with his cell mate's power, and requests that they join forces so they can rule this town, as only the ones with power survive. However, he does not receive a reply, which really irritates him.



Lin appears again with a plate of food and another cup of water. The man thanks her for this and then reveals his name: Kenshiro, but she can also call him Ken. He then asks what her name is but Bat tells him that she does not speak any more after she saw her family get killed by barbarians. She was the only survivor and the shock of seeing such an horrific effect has stopped her from talking.



Kenshiro reaches out and tells her not to worry, but to be still. He puts his hands around the back of her head and does something which doesn't seem to do anything and then tells Bat that he has used a magic spell to give her the opportunity to speak, but it is up to her if she does or not. Two men then arrive and tell Kenshiro that the village elder wants to see him.



The elder asks where Ken is going, but he says nowhere in particular. It is discussed if this man could be one of Zeed's men and if he is he will have a "Zeed" tattoo somewhere on his body. Ken's upper clothing is removed but the elder sees something that makes him stand back in shock: the man has scars on his chest in the shape of Hokuto Shichisei (The big dipper). The elder knows that these are the stars of death and he sees this as a bad omen, as where these stars appear, chaos follows. Before the elder can go into any more detail about what has him spooked, an alert goes out: the Zeed gang are on the way!



Kenshiro is put back into his cell whilst all of the townsfolk, even Lin, get ready for battle. However, before she heads out she throws the keys into the cell. Bat can't believe their luck as it gives them the perfect chance to escape whilst everyone else is getting slaughtered, as he tells Kenshiro that Zeed and his men even kill women and children. Lin threw them the keys because she knows she is going out to die.



Bat can't seem to get the cell door open, but Kenshiro has a slightly different approach: he tears apart the bars with his bare hands! He then races outside, despite Bat saying that they shouldn't be messing with the Zeed gang. Ken sees that several villagers have been killed already and that Lin has been taken hostage by Zeed.



Zeed holds Lin above his head and threatens to break her neck if anyone dares to get any closer to him. He wants all of the villager's food brought to him now. Kenshiro starts to walk towards Zeed, but Lin notices and shouts out his name! She tells Ken to stay back. The villagers are shocked and Bat is surprised that Lin spoke...what did Kenshiro do to her?



Kenshiro cracks his knuckles and tells some of Zeed's men to move. They say they are going to kill him and charge. Just as they are about to attack Kenshiro, he does a spin kick...



...and hits all three of them. Ken then leaps up and lands right in front of Zeed. The three guys he just kicked aren't down though, and they turn around and run back towards Ken. But as they do so, each one of their heads suddenly bulge up...



...and explode! Bat wants to know who this guy is but the village elder recognises Kenshiro's fighting style...Hokuto Shinken! Kenshiro tells Zeed to drop the girl as the gang leader realises that Kenshiro was the one who attacked his scouts earlier. Zeed says he'll break Lin's neck to avenge his men, but just as he is about to do this, Kenshiro yells as his shirt rips apart.



He starts to hit Zeed at impossibly fast speeds before he can do anything about it. The hits send him up into the air as he drops Lin, but Kenshiro catches her as Zeed falls to the ground.


HOKUTO HYAKURETSU KEN

(North Star Hundred Crack Fist)



The elder thinks to himself about this Chinese martial art he has heard of which involves hitting key points on the opponent's body, making them explode from the inside. He also knows that the technique was made to kill. Zeed gets back up and is about to kill Kenshiro with an axe. He says his punches were as powerful as bites from a mosquito.


OMAE WA MO SHINDERU

(You are already dead)



And with that multiple parts of Zeed's body start to rupture and his head then explodes. With their leader dead, the surviving Zeed members retreat. Later on, Kenshiro also leaves. Since Bat has nowhere else to go he follows Kenshiro, as he thinks that with a guy like him around he'll never go hungry again. Lin doesn't want Ken to go and asks why they are leaving, and the elder tells her that wherever Kenshiro goes, chaos follows, so he left to keep their village safe -she must understand that. Soon, Kenshiro and Bat are gone.


NEXT EPISODE PREVIEW

Kenshiro and Bat help a villager deliver some seeds, but Spade and his gang want them. Next time on Hokuto no Ken: "The Deadly Fist of Lingering Regret! The Future is Sighted in the Barren Wasteland!!"

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