The Spring 2026 Anime Preview Guide

Hokuto no Ken -Fist of the North Star-

In a post-apocalyptic world, a man named Kenshiro, a master and successor to a deadly martial art, wanders the nuclear wasteland protecting the weak and innocent from violent thugs. In his travels, he must contend with other master martial artists and figures from his past, including his "brother" Raoh, who has crowned himself the king of the new world.

Hokuto no Ken -Fist of the North Star- is based on the Fist of the North Star manga series by writer Buronson and artist Tetsuo Hara. The anime series is streaming on Amazon Prime on Fridays.

Oh, you men of Fist of the North Star!
How gloriously built you are!
With your necks and your thighs that are both the same size,
and your pecs like two water balloons!
You may not have much to your backsides,
and your crotches are weird-looking, too,
but the glory of your insane musculature
can surely be seen from the moon!

…it's just too bad all of this is rendered in godawful CG. While the original Fist of the North Star manga art may be a bit of an acquired taste these days, this new anime adaptation does it no favors. Personally, my biggest problem is the way Ken and Bat's hair is done – it looks like they've both clamped plastic pinecones to their skulls. Longer hair, like the ubiquitous mohawks on virtually all of the omnipresent thugs, has some movement to it, and straight hair, like Shin's and Rin's, at least looks semi-plausible. But the short hair is nothing short of an abomination, and it kept jarring me out of the actual plot. It's a good thing I'm familiar(ish) with the story, but if I wasn't, it would be a problem.

That said, starting with two episodes was probably the right move here. The start of the story serves to establish Kenshiro and the nuclear post-apocalyptic wasteland he lives in. We need all of those thugs to understand how bad things have gotten and how unusual Ken is – he's a superhero roaming the desert, doing good where he can with his impressive esoteric martial arts. We don't know why he's on this journey, but from the moment he stops Bat from hurting Rin and then politely asks her for another cup of water, we can see that he's very much not like the others. He uses his power for specific cases of good, not for the mere joy of exercising it, and having him help two different people – a young girl and an old man – shows that he's not just out here playing prince. He's genuinely good.

His attacks are gruesome and devastating, though. If you don't like gore, this is not going to be the show for you, because there's blood, brain matter, organs, eyeballs, you name it, with many thanks to Ken's powerful style of fighting that literally makes people explode. Everyone he internally combusts absolutely deserves it, but it's still a lot to take. These grim pops of color are also about all that stands out in the otherwise grey and beige palette of the show, which is a choice I understand but don't quite appreciate.

It's been a long time since I saw the original anime, but honestly, I think you're best off reading the manga for this one. If you do watch it, I preferred the sub, mostly for Shunsuke Takeuchi as Ken; Clayton Alexander just doesn't quite have the same gravitas. Or acting skill. At all. But mostly this just looks kind of bad, so you may as well go experience Tetsuo Hara's beefy art in the original instead.

Well, I can at least begin with this: Fist of the North Star: Hokuto no Ken doesn't look nearly as godawful as that Fist of the Blue Star CGI crapfest from about ten years back. If nothing else, TMS Animation understands how this medium requires strong lighting and texture work to create the kind of grounded and visceral atmosphere that a Fist of the North Star adaptation demands. If it weren't for the hilariously stiff facial animations that make every single character look like they are wooden dummies whenever they try to express emotions or communicate in spoken words, you might even be tempted to call this show's 3D animation…okay, I still don't know if it would be “good,” but I think we could all agree to settle on “pretty alright.”

Alas, a lot of that facial animation is rough enough to actively take us out of the experience, which is a shame. It's 2026, after all, and you think modern anime studios would have learned that choppy lip-flaps and herky-jerky animation done on twos simply doesn't translate as well to three dimensions unless you have a crack team of industry experts on staff who are firing on all cylinders to inject the necessary amount of style. Fist of the North Star: Hokuto no Ken does not seem to have a crack team of industry experts on staff who are firing on all cylinders but bless their hearts, I suppose they're trying. I can give some kudos, I guess, to the fact that the post-apocalyptic wasteland feels appropriately crusty and deadly when you happen to pause on the right screen and squint hard enough to ignore how fake and silly all of the human characters look.

Now, before I get to my thoughts on the story, I must issue a public service announcement and warn you all to avoid the English dub at all costs. It's not that every single performance is terrible, as some of the side characters sound perfectly mediocre enough to feel right at home in a modern adaptation throwback of a cheesy 80s anime. However, every single line that comes out of the mouth of our main character, Kenshiro, is unconscionably terrible. It is impossible not to laugh in shock when you hear how bad it sounds. The guy sounds like an intern from the bank across the street from the dubbing studio who was dragged into a recording booth and force fed a nearly lethal overdose of Valium before delivering his lines at gunpoint. The credits on Amazon for Transperfect Media claim that a real human man named Clayton Alexander is responsible for this performance, and maybe this really is a case of an actor and/or a director just not being up for the assignment. Until I checked those credits, though, I would have bet money that Amazon was up to their old “A.I. dubbing” bullshit. You can find clips from cheap 90s hentai dubs with more convincing performances. Without hyperbole, I can confidently say that it is one of the worst examples of English voice acting that I have ever heard.

That said, if I'm being perfectly honest, if it weren't for an English dub that genuinely makes you unsure if the entire show is just a stroke-induced hallucination, this adaptation of Fist of the North Star would be completely forgettable. Yeah, I know, we all love “You're already deads” and head explosions and ridiculous biker-gimp chic costumes. I'm just saying that this is not exactly high art that we're dealing with, even in the best of circumstances. Fist of the North Star has always been a silly pulp fantasy about a boring but noble kicker-of-asses who wanders the deserts of a ruined earth and blows up the heads of absurd cartoon bandits and inspires scrappy orphans with his heroics. In 2026, the only reason to make a new version of this tired old story is to accomplish things with the presentation and spectacle that couldn't be done in the previous productions. Really wow us with all of that modern technology and cinematic influence, you know? All that Fist of the North Star: Hokuto no Ken has to offer is crappy CGI that still looks ten years out of date and an English dub that deserves to go down As One of the industries greatest pranks.

Fist of the North Star is an anime powerhouse—a franchise that has truly stood the test of time. It's basically what happens when you take an old school wandering martial artist movie plot and put it in the post-apocalypse of Mad Max. These first two episodes fit that formula perfectly as Kenshiro stumbles first into a town being menaced by bandits and second rescues a man trying to bring rice seeds to his village to provide food for the generations to come.

While the first episode is all action and setting—teaching us how the world works and Kenshiro's place in it. The second episode is about showing us that there is still hope in the atomic wasteland. There are normal people dreaming of a future where fighting and looting isn't necessary—and are working to bring it about. Of course, the big problem is that there are plenty of assholes out in the world—namely those at the top—that are perfectly happy with how the world is now. After all, when might makes right and you live only for the moment, who cares about the future after you are gone?

So on a story level, these two episodes are good—great even. They make it obvious why so many would be drawn in by this story over the decades. But then we get to the animation—and these first two episodes are all over the place animation-wise. The actual fight scenes look really nice—flashy, flowing, and generally like the manga come to life. But then there are the many scenes where people just stand around talking—static images with no movement beyond mouth flaps despite the characters being digital models. This includes scenes where people stand in impossible poses for long stretches of time—it looks odd to say the least.

And then there is the English dub. It's hilariously bad—and not just when it comes to the minor roles. Kenshiro's voice is done by Clayton Alexander, a non-union actor with only one other voice credit to his name (and it shows). I mean, good on him for landing such a major role so early in his career but it is unquestionably beyond his ability. And I don't really even blame him as much as I blame those behind this anime for going with such a low quality option for their dub.

In the end, if you only know about Fist of the North Star from the “you're already dead” meme and want to know more, this is a decent, if uneven, way to experience the story with a new coat of paint. Just stay away from the English dub—unless you're a big fan of “so-bad-it's-good anime dubs.”