Don't Believe the Hype

Admirable film.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Having watched the other movies in this five part story arc, Yuria's disappointed me the most. As someone who only had seen the movie before watching these story arcs, it was actually worth watching to learn more about Yuria and what happened to her as the movie failed to do so.I had a great deal of high hopes for this movie arc as I imagined it would have gone over a lot of what happened in the original motion picture version and it did..just not the way I expected.It managed to gloss over every one of the epic battles that took place. It was like they purposely wanted to crush your dreams of seeing all the great reenactments take place and it hurt knowing that they squandered the opportunity.To add insult to injury they took the time that they could have used for these battles to replay events that should have been viewed if anyone took the time to look at the other story arcs. It was not a very smart film decision in my opinion.Some may say they were taking a higher road as to express a "softer"(:P) side for the heroines story line, I say they were just trying to cut corners in an Arc that should have been littered with memorable fight scenes and its just ashamed they took this route because there may never be another retelling of this the story again.

Anyone who's ever seen Fist of the North Star will tell you that the female characters were pretty much there solely to be rescued or serve as sacrificial lambs, so this made-for-DVD place holder (until the next theatrical feature) beefs up the role of Yuria — rechristened "Julia" in the English version, presumably to distance her name from sounding like a urinary reference — and adds further details to her covert role as the last general of the Southern Cross Fist (if you aren't well-versed in this series, don't ask; it's a long story). However, while admirably fleshing out Yuria's role the writers have rendered much of the mystery and surprise of the tale's events moot by having her serve as a behind the scenes manipulator whose actions create a whole new level of pointless retroactive continuity.This is the first truly "girly" Fist of the North Star story, and as a result much of the insane fighting, violence and showering gore is absent, attempting to make the viewer feel guilty for enjoying the carnage that they wanted to see in the first place, and while not boring this is not what a fan of the series would want. And for those who know this stuff, this DVD recounts hero Kenshiro's origin, bits of the Rei storyline, and sets the stage for the next film, Toki's heartbreaking battle with the ruthless Raoh. Now, that's a film I want to see!