As truly awesome as Fist of the North Star may be though, it’s sheer awesomeness is not the point of these two posts. There is an interesting addition to the Hokuto no Ken family, something else that a Japanese friend mentioned to me, and then was later confirmed by a search on YouTube. Hokuto no Ken is a manga and anime that pretty much every Japanese knows and has seen at least a bit of, it being pretty much the most popular show on TV in Japan through a large chuck of the 80’s. Anyone that knows even a little bit about anime will have at least heard of it, if not seen it. So everything in the last post has been pretty redundant. (although translating that song was pretty fun…) What a lot of people don’t know though, is that Hokuto no Ken was imported into Korea, where it became a live-action drama. A really bad live-action drama. So now I give you the wonders and horrors of: Fist of the North Korean Star! (Actually it was made in South Korea, but blending Korea into Fist of the North Star was just irresistable.)
Intro Episode
The first link is the opening to the TV show, and the second is about 4 minutes from what appears to be the first (and hopefully only) episode. Also please note the character of Shin, Kenshiro’s arch-rival, doing his kung-fu with a bad blond wig and a pot-belly during the intro. Truly amazing.
My search also turned up this, which is equally hilarious, but not quite so easy to quantify. The explanation says it is the opening for the Taiwanese movie Fist of the North Star, but that doesn’t explain the Korean script here:
I can’t read Hangul, but it seems to me the third character is different from the Korean version of the show:
My guess is that since the chinese characters read 北斗新拳, that the Hangul reads the same. As for the genuinely Korean one, I’m guessing the third character is smaller because it’s the equivalent of ã® (of) in 北斗ã®æ‹³. If anyone that can read Korean ever reads this blog (I guess that’s you Mitch, since this blog has a readership of about 3 people…), then please clear this up for me by leaving a comment. My only guess is that it could genuinely be a Taiwanese movie based on Hokuto no Ken, but that this recording I found was taken from a Korean dub or sub.
Unfortunately imdb is no help either, only listing the Japanese show and movie, and what the heck! There is an American version of this! It stars Gary Daniels, a regular in many low-budget martial arts flicks, including Knights, a true classic, an epic tale about a woman killing cyborg vampires in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. (Really!) It seems that this version of Fist of the North Star is readily available on DVD or VHS, but I couldn’t find any clips of it anywhere. Oh well. Maybe I’ll catch it on AMC, SpikeTV, or Turner Classic Movies? one of these days.
Not sure how to interpret the Taiwan/Korea thing – but even the Korean clips seemed to be dubbed. Maybe originally Hong Kong or Taiwan production for all of it? I just don’t know.
The hangul in the “new” one is ë¶ë‘ì‹ ê¶Œ is as you guessed, the same, 北斗新拳 (pukdu singwŏn) or in Chinese bÄ›idÇ’u xÄ«nquán.
Hey is 北斗 northern star (literally) or The Big Dipper constellation, which I think it is in Chinese, at least.
The small ì˜ is, as you guessed, just like the Japanese ã® or the Chinese çš„.
As far as I know, 北斗 is the Big Dipper constellation, but that sounds really lame in English, so they used Fist of the North Star in the translation, even though North Star is actually 北極星 (or 天å¸æ˜Ÿ or 北辰, according to Jim Breen’s JDIC). Similarly å—æ–—, which is a dipper-like formation of six of the stars in Sagittarius, also figures prominently in the manga, and is translated as Southern Cross (which is actually appropriately å—åå—星 in Japanese).
Hi, anybody knows where to find those 2 movies on their original video tapes????