Hokuto shin ken is an assassination style meant to bring peace. A peaceful Ken in HNK had to learn that the entire world had become a brutal free for all. In this one, a Ken living a peaceful life is asked to stop brutal gangsters that have no honor or humanity, in a fight for the underworld of shanghai.

A good bunch of stories. The main flaw is just that they don't really connect the way saving Yuria and defeating Raoh did with the original. The deaths also aren't hilariously sadistic, instead of playing with the enemy, this Kenshiro just kinda kills them.

The first part deals with a gang war, and helping out these gangsters against more ruthless gangsters. An interesting arc that's similar to the the manga by the second half of the creation team of Hokuto no Ken, it weaves gangsters, honor, and martial arts.

The middle part deals with the coming of war world 2(the chinese and japanese conflict before it) and trying to create a peace zone, and trying to avert the war, which is part of hokuto shinken's mission. this part's also interesting since we get to see Hokuto shinken carry out it's purpose in a historical setting, and it's similar to a real event. It mixes in political factions with martial artist assassins now.

The final arc deals with hokuto shinken's origins, and shares little with the preceding parts, and the history it takes place in. But it does relate to three of the characters previously introduced(including the main character obviously). I'd say it's not quite the smoothest transition but it's not a bad story to tell. The final one is the purest "venerable" martial arts one. The characters have a lot of honor, love and pride, and many tears, are shed in joy, and sympathy. Characters commit suicide or are willing to do so for the sake or empathy of others(and they love very deeply). That's the kind of story it is, and it's interesting for it. There's also some good visuals(the white out fight in particular), though it also introduces a lot of hard to believe myth in the backstory, though not too much(there's a talking wolf in a story told, and 2 out of three people don't believe that part of it).

By the way, the art is fantastic, beautiful, great, lovely ect!.

I started reading this manga today i was bored and wanted a nice martial arts manga, so after i read hokuto no ken i tought i could give this one a chance, well it wasn't a good idea, this prequel doesn't really have anything interesting, it's just simple, the story till vol. 4 is just the same of hokuto but with gangsters i'm gonna drop it at this 4°.

in HnK that ken seems more like a good guy in a bad situation
this ken is a bad person in a bad place and likes it
this ken is for me hard to sympathize with
i just dont like him

but the art is fantastic as allways when it comes HARA Tetsuo
and i like the setting just before ww2 shanghai...and its nice to see the generation that came before
and there is nothing wrong with the story...but i would have liked to see a nicer ken

This manga is a prequel (although it has been made after the orther series ) to "Fist of the north star". When "Fist of the north star" came out it was innovative in a way, but soon started to repeat the same plot device forever: opponent... stronger opponent... ultimately the big fighting God to be defeated. Not much else really. To make it worse, "fist of the blue sky" does not even have anything new, it's like a chewingum that has been chewed for over 20 years. The authors are good at only 2 things: character creation and fighting scenes. If it is what you are looking for then go ahead and try it, especially if you are in the age range 14-18. Otherwise try somethong deeper, like Blade of the immortal or Vagabond, just to stay in the martial arts genre.

I rate it a 5, out of pity for the old story which i loved in my teen years

... Last updated on October 15th, 2009, 2:08pm