Hokuto no Ken vol. 2; image from pirates
Is Fist of the North Star my favorite comic? No. Is it the one I think gets the worst rap? Definitely.
I coined the term "fist opera" for it, years ago. Emotions are big in that series, and expressed through hugely violent kickpunching. Sometimes crying. Mostly kickpunching. The plots are not intricate; mysterious identities and "you're alive!?" are the biggest twists.
And yet...there's more to it than just that.
An example:
Kenshiro is our hero. The last practitioner of a deadly martial art, he and his fiancé (Yuria) and his best friend (Shin, a martial artist of a different stripe; pointillism to Kenshiro's expressionism, haha) survived the kind of nuclear war the 80s warned us about.
This friend, Shin, had a thing for Yuria. In the pre-apocalyptic martial artist scene, she was the It Girl, so that's understandable. But Ken's hard to dislike too; he's a Nice Guy, despite his martial art being an assassin's art.
He tells himself she'll be happy with him. Like you do.
But then the world blows up, and between the world now being a blasted, Darwinist plain and a little bit of poison in his ear from Ken's shitheel brother...Shin snaps. Cuts Ken's tendons on all four limbs, then has goons prop our lad up so that Shin can stab his finger up to the third knuckle into Ken's torso. Seven times for the seven stars of the big dipper. Pointillism.
And he takes Yuria. Because if Ken can't stop his crazy best friend from doing so, who can he stop?
She can learn to be happy about it. Shin lives in hope.
Ken also lives, which was not part of the plan. His mind is for revenge. Ken was schooled, quite literally; having your friend exsanguinate you a bit and steal the last good thing in the world teaches you important lessons about what trust and hardness mean in the new world.
Fast forward a bit. Ken meets some kids, and we see that Ken has stopped being a Nice Guy and started being a Good Man. Fools get their heads kicked off. Walks are walked. And Ken gets his revenge.
He almost falters when he sees Yuria on Shin's throne. And he snaps when Shin puts a hand through her chest. But that's a Real Doll. Yuria leapt off a balcony rather than have Shin bloodily carve out any more world for her.
They both failed her.
So, when Ken punches Shin's torso to mush, I suspect Shin feels he has it coming.
That's not what he says, of course. He dresses it up in bluster..."I won't die by your hand!" he says, already dead, knowing it, blood and whatever else is in him dribbling out of his sneering smile.
And then Shin takes a staggering swan dive off the balcony. He's dead after he hits the ground. Not a second before.
Because here's the thing: if teaching Ken that being a cruel man to protect what matters turned out to be an erroneous lesson, then Shin can't let Ken kill him. Pride and craziness won't let him concede the issue out loud, of course, and justice demands Ken gets to take his shot. But Shin needs a way to say "I was wrong, and it cost us the best girl in the world and it made you kill me."
He puts his blood on the cobblestones instead of his best friend's hands.
Ken buries him. Someone asks why.
"Because we loved the same woman."
Because this never should've been this way.
0 comments:
Post a Comment