You guys mentioned it a couple of times because of the anniversary and it got me thinking its time I finally watch it.

I have a weird relationship with Fist of the North Star in that the only thing of the source material I was exposed to was seeing the anime movie as a kid in the early 90s, the live action movie I never even knew existed til the early 00s. Despite never reading or watching the show I owned multiple games based on it for various reasons.

I had the nes game because I only had a nes as a kid til the late 90s. I imported one of the ps1 games because it looked amazing visually, it had a megaman legends style to it and they nailed it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9HnA0J-8Ns

Then the ps2 fighting game because it was played in my local fighting game scene because of how absurd it is. I got kens rage 2 just to try it out as a wii u game and a mussou, and finally lost paradise because it was basically a yakuza game. Never did I purchase any of these BECAUSE it was a Fist of the North Star game, so its not like I was a huge fan of the series.

Fast forward to more recent years and I knew of the live action movie for a while but I have only ever seen it mentioned in a very negative light. I honestly was kinda expecting a Dragonball Evolution tier movie. I think because I dont really have that much of an attachment to the series and only know some basic stuff about the story I was able to actually enjoy the movie.

It kinda falls in a weird spot between its nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be, but at the same time so bad its good. I can honestly say if I saw this as a kid I would have loved it, similar to the live action Guyver movies. The first time Ken did the "you are already dead" it was kinda amazing just seeing the actor flail at the air and the thugs actor kinda laughing as if he just couldnt keep a straight face seeing that. The special effects for the gore were pretty good I thought and Jagi being renamed to Jakal with basically some leather straps on his head was funny in a dumb way. Appearance wise I thought they did a fairly good job with Shin and his scenes with Ken for the time period. Its very much of its time and I actually kinda marked out when the kid who played Rufio from Hook showed up.

So yeah, I actually had fun with the movie and would gladly watch it again after some time passes. I cant say if its because I had extremely low expectations for the movie, I'm not a huge fan of Fist of the North Star, or I genuinely just enjoyed it as schlock. Its tone is strange where I cant really tell if its trying to play it straight or go off the rails with it, I was getting big Riki-oh vibes from it but I dont think they intended that.