Fist of The North Star - Production

Production

Tetsuo Hara has stated that he came up with the idea of Hokuto no Ken from his editor Nobuhiko Horie. According to Hara, Horie suggested to him that he should draw a manga about "a martial artist who destroys his opponents by striking their acupressure points" based on Hara's aspiration to draw a manga about martial arts and his knowledge of pressure points. At the time, Hara was having trouble breaking into the market, as his first series, the Iron Don Quixote, was canceled ten weeks after its debut. A prototype version of Hokuto no Ken was published as a one shot story in the April 1983 issue of Fresh Jump, which was followed by Hokuto no Ken II, a second one-shot published in the June 1983 issue. Both stories are collected in the second tankōbon volume of Tetsu no Don Quixote.

The two one-shots were well received in the reader's surveys of Fresh Jump and Tetsuo Hara was commissioned to turn Hokuto no Ken into a weekly series. Buronson was assigned to work with him as writer for the serialized version. The storyline was revamped, with the 1980s present-day setting in the original version replaced by a Mad Max-inspired post apocalyptic future world, and the protagonist Kenshiro, originally a high school student in Hara's earlier story, became an older and more stoic hero inspired by Bruce Lee. Originally, Tetsuo Hara and Buronson were contracted to do Fist of the North Star for a three-year run, but due to its popularity and the publisher's demand, it was extended to a five-year run.