Anybody who’s read or seen enough of Hokuto no Ken knows that there is a very specific point where the series jumps the shark: the time skip. It was very clear that the series was supposed to end, but editorial interference meant the series had to chug along even if it stopped making any sense at all. And it’s not like Hokuto no Ken was all that dedicated to establishing its canon in the first place, but it got ridiculous and it was obvious that they were running out of ideas.

Perhaps the best example of this shark-jumping is “Kaioh,” one of the major villains after the time skip who is design-wise quite literally “Raoh with a scar on his face,” only his armor is different. He was even voiced by Raoh’s seiyuu Utsumi Kenji in the anime!

The word bubble on this page with Kaioh actually SAYS “Raoh!”

So I ask, who says that the post time skip stuff can’t be cleaned up? It may be many years after Hokuto no Ken first debuted, but that doesn’t mean we can’t finally try to make something out of that material. Some cool characters appear and it’d be a shame to see them tossed away forever. Why can’t some of that pachinko and slot machine money go into, say, revamping Kaioh’s design and this time making him truly original? If there’s an anime, you could give him a different voice actor, change his facial features, etc. I think there’s much potential there.