Hokuto no Ken episode 8
Strike the Hidden Power Point!
No Requiem for the Wicked
-From RQ87's Fist of the North Star site
Hokuto no Ken episode 8 |
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For a detailed overview of this episode, click here.
Ken heads into the tower of the leader of God's Army, Colonel.
Original broadcast date: 29th November, 1984
Contents
1) Synopsis
2) Manga differences
3) Errors
Synopsis
Kenshiro enters the tower of the Colonel, who is the leader of God's Army. As he works his way up the tower, he encounters some traps and soldiers, which he either evades or kills. Eventually he comes face to face with Colonel, and finds out that his God is actually his sworn nemesis, Shin.
Worried about what may have happened to Kenshiro, Lin takes Bat's car and heads towards the base of God's Army. Bat and Johnny follow her in a truck. Meanwhile, the fight between Ken and Colonel has begun, and Colonel is Kenshiro's greatest challenge yet. His telepathic ability lets him read the mind of his opponent, and read what they are going to do before they do it. Kenshiro manages to destroy the Colonel's boomerang weapons with a technique called ky kyoku ryuubu (ultimate energy flow dance), but the Colonel has another plan. He is a master of Nanto muon ken (South Star silent fist) and puts claws onto his hands. He can still read Kenshiro's moves, and swipes at him.
Kenshiro eventually turns the tables by suppressing all of his body's aura, meaning that his opponent will not be able to predict where he is going to attack next. Colonel attacks anyway but all of his swipes are avoided by Kenshiro, who does this with his eyes closed. Ken hits him with the Hokuto hyakuretsu ken (North Star hundred crack fist) technique, just as Lin enters saying she wants to help Ken. This lets the Colonel almost kill Lin, but Ken stops this from happening and hits another pressure point on the Colonel, which completely destroys him.
-Quite a bit of the stuff that happens in this episode did not happen in the manga -in particular, the manga has the part with the statues, but after Kenshiro defeats the guy hiding in one, he meets the Colonel. In the anime, he still has several floors to go through before he reaches the Colonel.
-In the manga, the God Colonel and his soldiers follow IS God, whilst it was changed to Shin for the anime.
-Kenshiro is shirtless when he fights Colonel in the manga, whilst he still has his red shirt and blue jacket on in the anime.
-The part of the episode where needles are launched into Kenshiro was actually in the manga, but it was used in the fight between Kenshiro and Mad -the latter used them during the battle.
-The manga also explains the Colonel's history before the war -he and his Red Berets were well trained, but one night he returned to a General's mansion to find his superiors drunk at a party. As girls poured wine over his head, a General told him that he and his troops were nothing compared to
the "finger on the button" -the button which could launch nuclear missiles. Colonel saw that other people in the mansion were high ranking government officials and the presidents of large corporations, and realized that they were the ones really controlling him and his Red Berets.
He hated them from that point, and was appalled when they turned to nuclear war to solve their problems. Whilst they all died, he and his men survived thanks to their training. He believes that God had chosen them. He also tells Kenshiro to understand the reason he created God's Army was to prevent the same mistake from ever happening again, and for there to be one race united by the same beliefs. Kenshiro tells him he has already made a mistake, and the fight then begins. None of this conversation is present in the anime.
-Isn't it amazing how the grenades Johnny and Bat threw only killed the God's Army soldiers and not Lin, who was right next to them?
-During this shot, you can see that Kenshiro has the scratch marks on his face -but the Colonel hasn't actually attacked him with his claws yet.
-As Bat and Johnny run into the Colonel's room, the black band on Ken's right arm isn't there.
