New adaptation of Fist of the North Star said to be unnecessary

Recently, a writer for Tokyo Weekender said the new adaptation of Fist of the North Star, rendered very heavily in CGI, was uncalled for:

CGI in anime is not inherently a problem. The sequel to the Trigun reboot, Stargaze (2026), was 3DCG, which, yes, did make the characters look a bit like puppeteered action figures when they were standing around and talking. But when the action hit, it was a thing of beauty. The camera danced around while keeping the proportions of the characters intact (something occasionally lost with 2D animation), allowing for a whole new world of high-octane anime action. This approach would have been welcomed with open arms by long-time fans of FOTNS and newcomers to the series. Characters looking like they are wearing plastic hair molds on their heads is a small price to pay for transcendental action.

But the fight scenes simply aren’t anything to write home about. The camera work is static, there are no heart-pumping long-take shots where the CGI could really shine, and the whole thing rarely goes beyond Kenshiro delivering a kick or a punch with a bit more fluidity than in the ‘80s anime. But not by much. And, honestly, if we’re comparing the two shows, then the original Fist of the North Star, with its limited animation from well over 40 years ago, does hold up much better than everything that we’ve seen from TMS so far.

Not Taking Full Advantage of the Visual Medium That Is Anime

In the interest of fairness, it’s worth mentioning that the computer-animated Fist of the North Star does follow the manga much more closely than previous anime. So close that some shots from the new show are straight-up computer copies of the manga panels. Here’s the thing about that, though. What works in manga doesn’t always translate well to an animated medium. It’s fine to tweak and add things to adaptations that would have broken the flow of a comic as long as it utilizes the visual medium of animation.

The ‘80s anime understood that assignment well by throwing in occasional flashbacks to some characters’ past, which are only talked about in the manga and the 2026 series. Another way that the old Fist of the North Star improved the story was by bringing in the occasional comic relief a little bit sooner, like with the orphan thief Bat. Eventually, the creators of the manga figured out that a story that’s all darkness, all sadness and all violence all the time would ultimately start to feel repetitive, so they started using the odd gag or absurd situations to offset this. But those weren’t there in the very beginning.

The CGI FOTNS had the benefit of decades of hindsight to consider fixing this but they didn’t, deciding instead to stick religiously to the manga, and the anime suffers for it. It’s an animated series that’s paced like a comic book, and the two do not work well together. Never in a tale of a lone martial arts genius fighting post-apocalyptic murderers — who make Lord Humungus from Mad Max 2 look tiny — should a viewer ever feel, well, bored. And yet here we are.

I've thought for a while that there's way too much use of special effects in live action science-fantasy movies, but this sure gives it a whole new meaning. And then, let's consider the violence is much more graphic here than in the original mid-80s adaptation:

2026’s Fist of the North Star does not have those kinds of constraints. It will show you the inside of a bad guy’s brain within the first few minutes of Episode 1. When the CGI villains explode from within, you get to see in full detail how their heads just open up and spill on the ground. For veteran fans of gory action, the new anime delivers the goods… But, again, it’s nothing that we haven’t seen before. The 2003 – 2004 original video animation (OVA) New Fist of the North Star was partially made to give fans all the gore they’ve been missing all these years. In most places, it’s much more violent than the new anime.

Seriously, while they may make a proper distinction between good and evil, do we really need this kind of vehicle? Hardly. If there's no comic relief here and it perpetuates the modern playbook eschewing brightness for all darkness, that's another huge letdown, and suggests they're pandering more to people who can't appreciate the light. And that's decidedly why it's best to refrain from this new take on Buronson's combination of Bruce Lee with Mad Max.