Animisery – A Blog About Living Miserably with Anime (Among Other Things)

you are already swole

I like Fist of the North Star! I can’t finish the anime because it’s so long and cheesy with multiple additions to the narrative that just feel tacked on to sell kids on it but I like Fist of the North Star! Post apocalyptic world with deadly martial arts fights feels like something that is so inherently wrong in concept like pouring orange juice in your cereal but then it’s surprisingly not the worst thing in the world! Seriously though, if you pick the right cereal then OJ in your bowl is kind of solid.

Fist of the North Star Fitness Boxing went on sale yesterday for a massive discount of 4.99 on the Nintendo Switch eshop (down from like 50 dollars which is PRETTY expensive for what it is in all honesty) and I immediately bought it up. I wasn’t even aware that there was a Fist Fitness Boxing game but Japan took a peak into the eyes of a dream and made it reality, huh? It’s perfect for me. I’ve been wanting to lose more weight for myself and needed some fun exercise to supplement my caloric restrictions so here we are! I need all things in my life gamified because I am a horrible man child who won’t do anything unless I can equate it to video game success otherwise the dopamine just won’t flow and friends it rarely flows to begin with anyways.

The game opens up with manga panels in mock reference to the start of the Fist of the North Star manga which is the preferred Fist consumption style here in this household so that was a huge boon. You get an instructor in the form of Kenshiro who will guide you through timed workouts where you swing your fists in time to music. It’s pretty much like the other Fitness Boxing which I had a demo to dabble in except your instructor is the pinnacle of muscular strength and also sounds REALLY bored. Fist of the North Star, to my knowledge anyways, never had a solid and definitive dub cast for their characters so I’m pretty sure they just cast whoever wanted to stay later in the office that week for the characters because everyone sounds so flat and uninterested in their work barring a select few.

The movements are pretty rudimentary for the exercise but if you actually follow the instructions involved with playing the game then you’re honestly doing kind of a lot for what it asks. The game requests that you constantly bob in time to the rhythm of the music (which they even include a foot step indicator to tell you bounce timing) and mixing that in with even the simple jabs and straights puts a lot on a slightly overweight and out of shape anime fan like myself. It’s not strenuous but it also got my cardio going which I desperately need because, even when I frequented the gym, I don’t give cardio the time of day for anything.

The game has a variety of modes including a pseudo campaign where you fight Kenshiro’s biggest villains like Raoh and Shin in time with boxing and you even have a daily exercise mode where you can put little stamps on a book! This game, however, is Fist of the North Star so we don’t just place a pretty stamp on a page! We use Hakuto Shinken to stab our fingers into a goon’s head and his sweat explosion from his head definitely not exploding marks our page! It’s wild and bombastic and fits perfectly with the style of the franchise of the game.

Yeah, the very bloody and viscerally comedic fighting manga Fist of the North Star just has white liquid shoot out of your opponents when you out exercise your enemies. I’m just going to boldly declare it’s sweat and not a result of some mismanaged censorship that actually makes thing a little worse.

All in all, I’m having fun at about two hours in and two days of play. I’m getting a nice sweat in and some exercise is better than no exercise since my diet can only carry me so far. I’m not a personal trainer or anything but I’d recommend it if you’re just not getting any physical activity in and have man child brain where you can only be happy if you’re having fun. If you’re a Fist of the North Star fan though? You should just get it already. It’s layered with references to the franchise and features some fun outfits for your trainer of choice like the Ken ones shown above. The sale ends on February 24th so I’d hop on it before then because there’s no way this game is worth anything above 20 dollars. That’s just my humble opinion anyways.

Now if only Hatsune Miku Fitness Boxing would go down in price…

Hey all! I just wanted to share the fun of this game and want to get back on with regular blogging so here we are. I do think the game is a solid value for the 4.99 price tag and have been enjoying my sweat so a blog post was made.

If you enjoy this blog and want to hear the dulcet tones of my voice then hop on over to your podcast platform of choice and check out the Anime Brothers Podcast which I co-host with my good friend! Thank you for reading this blog! I hope to read or hear from you soon!