Hokuto no Ken Episode 11
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Villains!! Listen to the Blues of Hell!!
-From Rage Quitter 87's Fist of the North Star site


For a detailed overview of this episode, click here.

Kenshiro helps a boy called Taki get water for his village, but a gang led by Jackal finds out about it.
Original broadcast date: December 20th 1984

Contents
1) Synopsis
2) In the manga...
3) Errors





Synopsis

Ken, Bat and Lin are in a town and are resting in a bar. A kid called Taki walks in and Bat recognises him -he lives in the village he used to stay at. Taki tells the others that at his village, the adults have all left but Auntie, who Bat refers to as "an old hag" is still there looking after children and trying to create a water supply for the village so more people come back. Ken decides to help him, but Taki's problem has been overheard by a gang leader called Jackal. He and his gang follow Kenshiro from a distance.

Ken meets Toyo and sees that she looks after children who's parents have either died or abandoned their kids. He finds the place where water could be and punches the ground, creating a new well. However, Ken thinks that it is dangerous for himself to stay at this village, as he knows Shin has many people going after him. He leaves, but Bat and Lin follow him. Jackal sees that Kenshiro has gone and invades the village with his gang. Toyo nearly blows his head off with a rifle, but he survives and reveals that his body is packed full of dynamite, so she should stop shooting. Afraid to take the risk of hitting the explosives, Toyo hesitates and Jackal takes her weapon before beating her with it.

Having heard the gunshot, Ken returns to the village and stops Jackal from killing the kids. Knowing when to run, Jackal gets his second in command, Fox, to plant some dynamite on two of the kids and they run off in separate directions. As Jackal and his gang leaves, Ken saves one kid whilst Toyo saves the other, but when she throws the dynamite away, it explodes close to her and she dies from her injuries. As Bat cries over her death, Ken swears revenge.



In the manga...

-The bar Ken is at is the one owned by Johnny in the manga. When Ken walks in, Johnny is amazed that Ken has returned as he never thought he would survive going up against God's Army. For the anime, the bar is just some other bar in another town.

-In the manga, two guys who are already in the bar overhear about Ken destroying God's Army and ask him to join their gang. In the anime, they walk into the bar and want to kill Kenshiro, as there is a reward for doing so.

-In the manga, Bat tells the two guys of Jackal's gang that they need to speak to him first as he is Ken's manager, but one of them punches him across the bar and into a table. This isn't in the anime.

-When Taki walks into the bar, Bat doesn't recognise him at first in the manga, whilst he does in the anime.



-Toyo never shot at Ken in the manga. She just throws some stones at Bat when she first sees him.

-Taki goes to the other village to get water by himself, for the anime, they had Bat go with him.

-Taki dies in the manga. The first punk who sees him (who is on a bike) shoots him with an arrow. Kenshiro arrives and kills the punk with the Ganzan Ryouzan Ha technique, but he is too late to save Taki, who dies in his arms.

-Those three guys of Jackal's gang who go into the village never tell Jackal they were going to do so in the manga, whilst they do in the anime. Also, in the manga, they go there to get water, whilst in the anime, they go there to kill Kenshiro so they can claim the reward on him. There are also only two guys in the manga.

-Ken instructs Bat to take the guys he was memory wiped out to the desert in the manga, whilst he does it himself in the anime.

-The scene where Ken sees Shin and Yuria was something added for the anime. In the manga, Ken spends another night in the village but sneaks out to leave. Bat and Lin are aware though and say that they are going with him, too.

-The manga has Toyo try and shoot Jackal whilst he is still on his bike -her shot grazes his head and he crashes, but survives. In the anime, Jackal is off his bike and at the well before she takes a shot at him.

-When Jackal confronts Toyo, he stabs her with a blade he has concealed in his arm in the manga, whilst the anime toned it down by having him just beat her with her rifle instead.

-It isn't made very clear how the gang intends to kill the kids in the anime -Taki gets dangled upside down, but then Ken arrives. In the manga though, one of the kids is hung, but Ken thankfully arrives just in time to save him. Ken also kills one guy by hanging him in the manga, whilst he uses a Hokuto Shinken move to kill him in the anime.

-The manga has an additional short fight scene where a guy claiming to be a former big league boxer takes on Kenshiro. Ken destroys the muscles in one of his arms and then causes his face to explode. This never made it into the anime.

-The kid Toyo saves is a boy in the manga and a girl in the anime.

-The distance of the explosion is much closer to Toyo in the manga, and is much more believable that the blast could have hurt her, unlike the anime.



Errors

-One of the shots in the bar has Kenshiro with blue arms.

-The second guy Ken fights in the scene where Taki gets water goes from having a blue jacket, then a yellow one, then a blue one again.

-When Jackal reveals the dynamite strapped to his body, there is also some on his legs. This vanishes after a few shots.

-The stick of dynamite Kenshiro throws away is never heard exploding.







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