Love Conquers All
Good evening. I am Kenshiro, ass-kicking practitioner extraordinaire. Having fought countless villains throughout my travels, I’ve learned that nobody is truly evil, for we all have love in our hearts.
Shin
So he kidnapped my girlfriend. That can only tell me one thing: he has great taste in women. Nobody who loves Yuria could possibly be evil.
Souther
Enslaving thousands of children to build a pyramid isn’t the worst thing in the world. It’s not like he enslaved everyone. And he only did it out of love for his master. I could only dream of having a heart so big.
Yuda
Yuda may be a serial rapist,1 but it’s not like I’ve never raped anyone…
Kaioh
We can’t blame Kaioh for being the personification of evil. Sure, his reign of terror devastated an entire continent. But that was his fate! It’s not like he wanted to drown his puppy. He couldn’t help it!
Random Henchman
This jerk had it coming. Attack me, will you? He’s clearly incapable of love.
- It’s unclear whether Yuda actually raped the women he abducted. He was ambiguously gay; maybe he just got them to do his makeup. [↩]
Tags: hokuto
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Holy shit, a comment RSS feed!baka-raptor@baka-raptor.com
February 14th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
You forgot about Krauser and how full of love he is. That guy is too nice, wanting to share his love with women, towers, air and trombones.
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February 14th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Srsly. Krauser-tan is teh shiznit. Raping tambourines = love.
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February 14th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Bad graphics is bad. Seems to me this Yuda isn’t ambiguously gay but is just gay.
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February 15th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
No-one’s saying that the evil have no love in their hearts. They’re just douche-bags. Serious douche-bags.
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February 15th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
It really pains me to see the essential struggles which define Hokuto no Ken lost on you Baka Raptor. Are you so used to watching shows where everyone lives happily ever after, that the implications of DEATH, mean nothing to you? Yes, ken sympathized with all of the major villains of the show, but he also killed them. Each and every one of them, with the exception of Yuda, who was murdered by Rei in a duel for revenge, was killed by Kenshiro. In the case of Souther, Ken was quite enthusiastic about killing him, and it was only afterward that sympathy kicked in.
In the Hokuto no Ken universe, strength is a measure of spiritual power, meaning that the villans who are the most powerful have to be of a noble disposition. It is their fallen nature however that weakens their strength enough that they become a threat, and that allows Kenshiro to kill them. Arguably, the henchmen are more evil, because they are fickle bandits who are willing to serve someone whose ambition is destroying lives. There is no innocence because they ain’t the mastermind, none of them are noble retainers or anything of the sort, these guys are wolves who think they can survive by following the alpha male.
Most of all however, the henchmen die too quick to fill in a backstory, and if they didn’t they wouldn’t exist because they would be charcters not henchmen.
But back to the morality piece. Kenshiro kills people whose ambition and way of life conflict with his own, and he is successful because his way of life is the most pure of any of the main characters. His sympathy is for a noble and powerful spirit who has gone the path of evil, but he does NOT beleive that love conquers all. He believes that a fist guided by love conquers all, and that is why your list of characters is actually more of a quarry of characters.
The true message is far more complex than you have pigeon holed it. Taking into account existential conflict as a stage, Kenshiro shows us clearly that there is no room to justify anything nihilistically or with any consideration other than the interpretation of the world which resides in your own heart. We have a qualified absolute truth, whereby kenshiro is the eternal hero, only because his selfless life is the strongest framework possible among all the moral systems which have been shown to us through the various intelligent and noble villans. As far as ken is concerned, nobody can help their fate, and you can’t blame someone for how they have chosen to live their life, it just means that you have to sometimes kill them.
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February 15th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Aizen: Watch your mouth, kid. This stuff is yo’ history.
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February 15th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
Of course you can’t blame Kaioh, just like you can’t blame Oedipus for sleeping with his mum or Ravana for kidnapping Sita – it was all their fate to do so, they couldn’t change that!
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February 16th, 2009 at 3:38 am
Love is nice, but it is the actions that are borne out of love that make a difference. Love never kicked anyone’s ass, or powered a beam weapon. The martial arts may be approached with love, and so is the crafting of weapons. But the actions that does the conquering are distinct from love. How do you identify the love in pulling the trigger? Manly/girly speeches?
Did Reinhard von Lohengramm “seize space” (and galactic history) by the power of love? Did love for the Kaiser put the mettle in the likes of Muller and put fire in the likes of Bittenfeld? Sure there’s got to be some love there. After all we can’t say even Reuental didn’t love his Kaiser.
Hate can do those just as fine. Better yet, ambition, greed, and a hyperbolic sense of importance matched with talent and resources.
But hate doesn’t have as good a publicist as love, so love gets the privileged treatment as far as values are concerned: in media, in fiction, you name it. So for Kaioh, Yuda and the rest – don’t make your historians spin love into your yarns. With indifference being the only opposite and ignorance its only weapon, stay hateful and keep conquering until someone more badass rips you apart. That’s the only way.
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February 16th, 2009 at 9:16 am
FIRST PICTURE MADE ME HORNY
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February 16th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Baka-Raptor, have you seen Gungrave?
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February 16th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
@mike hunt: I can’t stick Krauser in every post. Hell, even ShizNat doesn’t always make it in.
@Eroshiyda: See above
@Aizen: Anyone can appreciate good graphics. However, only a few can appreciate the pleasure that manliness can give you.
@Omi-syth: That is an excellent-point, Omi-syth.
@Randolf: “Are you so used to watching shows where everyone lives happily ever after, that the implications of DEATH, mean nothing to you?” Maybe, but that’s another story. I can buy the differences-in-values argument to some extent. Yes, the purest intentions can lead to the worst atrocities. But you need to draw the line somewhere. For example, after defeating Souther, Kenshiro said Souther “had more love than anyone.” Ummm…what about Shuu, the blind guy who 20 minutes earlier carried a capstone up the pyramid with wounded legs to save a few kids? I can’t buy that Souther “had more love than anyone” and his love just happened to be twisted. It’s easier to just call the dude evil.
@LJ: I didn’t buy that Hokuto was the predecessor to the modern shonen anime until I saw Hokuto no Ken 2. It was less a-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta and more powerups, energy blasts, gravity-defying rocks, and gross inconsistencies in plot and power levels.
@Day: You can’t blame me for cutting class to take a nap–it was fate!
@ghostlightning: I publicize hate all the time. And yes, I’m a terrible publicist.
@lelangir: You wa geyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
@korosora: Hell yeah, it’s one of several excellent shows I completely forget to talk about. The only reference to it on this site is back in post #1, which I didn’t even write.
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February 17th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
HnK2 is alot like Dune’s “sequals”. The true fans will vehemently deny its canonocity, but the public doesn’t especially care. But hey. Pirates.
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February 17th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Thing is, Souther was willing to kill all the kids, and make them work, and kill shuu and ken, and whoever else he needed to just for an abstract concept, if that isn’t love than I don’t know what is.
Besides, since when does evil even exist in hokutoland? Ken only does two things to his enemies, he belittles them, or he respects them. He never judges their “evil”. Why should this be any different.
Also I notice that you only mentioned one example in your amazing rebuttal.
I think you are trying to find inconsistencies where you should just be questioning whether or not you agree with the obvious message of the show.
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February 17th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Indeed baka-raptor, i trully beleive that love and hate are so much related not to say that they’re opposite parts of the same sentiment.
Hate produces long lasting relationships, because hate doesn’t support the ideia of seeing anyone flying around free…
Hate makes others not happy and it sticks more than love, because love let you be free.
So if you love something, hate it !
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February 18th, 2009 at 12:55 am
In my book, nobody’s evil. Still raep = love, pedobearing and extrasexual relationships don’t apply.
Hate eventually evolves into love. Well, you can’t possibly hate someone all your life now, can yah? If you hate somebody, raep the hell out of him! More love!
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February 22nd, 2009 at 1:11 am
@LJ: At least it gave us Ken with goggles to the tune of “Kill the Fight” (song begins at approximately 1:10)
@Randolf: Thank you for admitting my rebuttal was amazing. Behold as I continue to amaze. Kenshiro killed many of these henchman without even looking at them. Could he really tell that they’re evil? If he could instantaneously tell who’s evil and who isn’t, he wouldn’t have had an extended battle with the fake Toki. Some of the henchmen showed signs of being reasonable human beings. For example, Guy-who-likes-baths had a few henchmen who expressed concern for the villagers who weren’t getting enough water. Yes, many of these henchmen were common thugs with no heart. Yes, many, if not all of, the major enemies were led astray by love or ideology. But this show takes it to the excess. That’s what I’m satirizing: not the message of the show but the extent to which it’s carried.
@Laguna & @Rakuen: That comment should appear in a Hallmark card.
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February 22nd, 2009 at 11:24 pm
It truly is a touching story on the power of love.
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February 23rd, 2009 at 7:40 pm
He killed them without looking at them, because he happened to be in a fight with them. Ken kills practically everyone that he fights, and only gets to know the more powerful badguys because of their great survivability.
Killing =/= unsympathetic, as I said before. If you’ve killed as many men as ken, you would probably ignore most of them too.
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