Hokuto no Ken episode 27
Only Villains Can Smile!
How I Hate This Age!!
-From RQ87's Fist of the North Star site
Hokuto no Ken episode 27 |
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For a detailed overview of this episode, click here.
Rei is reunited with Airi, but she is at the mercy of the Fang clan.
Original broadcast date: April 25th, 1985
Contents
1) Synopsis
2) Manga differences
3) Notes
4) Errors
Synopsis
The Fang clan attack a village, but then return back to where the Fang King is. They have spotted Kenshiro, Rei and Mamiya, and the entire clan goes out to meet them. The Fang King has Madara, the most beastly member of the clan, sent out to attack. Kenshiro steps forward to fight him.
Madara tries to rip Kenshiro apart, but Kenshiro sees through his rapid movements and destroys him with the North Star face breaking fist technique. However, the Fang King then reveals that he has Rei's sister, Airi. Airi does not recognize her brother's voice at first, and believes he's going to be her new master. Rei throws her wedding veil over her, and after she feels it, she realizes her brother is here. She explains that she has been owned by several different "masters" who have had their way with her. Because of all the horrors she saw, she poured poison into her eyes.
Rei tries to save Airi, but the Fang clan ties her up and hoists her back up to where the Fang King is. The Fang King starts to torture Airi, and tells Rei that he will now experience true sadness.
-Quite a bit of this episode is filler. The village attack scene was never in the manga, and Madara is not introduced until the Fang King first meets Kenshiro and the others.
-The scene where the Fang King talks to some prisoners and then has them killed happened earlier in the manga. The violence for this is worse in the manga -the Fang King slices a man in half right in front of his wife and son. For the anime, he crushes a guy, and there are no children present in the group of prisoners.
-The manga has a scene where Kenshiro, Rei and Mamiya are having a break, but a clan member fires an arrow at Mamiya.
Kenshiro stops it at the last second. This isn't in the anime.
-The guy who bursts out of the ground suffers a much more violent death in the manga -Rei slices him up into several chunks.
-Right after the above mentioned arrow scene, the manga has the lights come on and Airi is revealed. The Fangs then hoist her up and reveal themselves. Then Madara starts to go berserk, so the Fang King sends him out to fight Kenshiro. In the anime, the order of this was changed so the Fangs reveal themselves, then Madara is sent down, then they reveal they have Airi.
-In the manga, when the Fang King crushes one of Madara's teeth, he says that he cannot believe Kenshiro is trying to provoke him. This line got cut from the anime, he just grunts instead.
-Madara's death is much more violent in the manga, as his body gets torn apart. In the anime, his head just explodes.
-Some of the clips used in the recap have some differences to what they looked like in the previous episode, click here for details.
-Usually, the title card has a black background. But in this episode, it features an image of Madara.
-Madara was voiced by Eiji Kanie, who previously did the voices for Zeed and Devil Rebirth. Madara would be his final voice role in the series, as he would die from a subarachnoid hemorrhage on October 13th, 1985.
-This episode has an extremely rare case of a child dying on-screen. In the manga, a few kids are seen getting killed, but usually in the anime they end up surviving. Perhaps that because the kid in this episode isn't seen being attacked, and dies from injuries he got off-screen, it was OK to show?
-When Bat is seen playing his harmonica, you can see that it's engraved with the letters I, K, N and M. Does this have any significance to anything?
-When Airi explains to Rei about what happened to her, some of the flashback footage from this episode is re-used. However, one particular shot has been edited slightly, and been made brighter. The shot of the masked man who captured Airi is no longer covered in thick shadows, for some reason.
-During this shot, part of Gojiba's pants are skin colored, instead of red.
-When Kenshiro and Rei kill the two Fangs who stayed at the plundered village, Ken's red shirt is missing.
-During this shot, you can see that Gojiba is stood next to the Fang King. But one shot later, Gojiba is suddenly gone, and Madara is in his place.
-Kenshiro's shoulder pad reappears a couple of times after Madara destroys it.
-During this shot, the light effects seem to be slightly misaligned with the actual lights.
-Speaking of the lights, where are the Fang clan getting the electricity to power these things?!
