SOUTEN NO KEN (FIST OF THE BLUE SKY)

Fist of the Blue Sky (蒼天の拳, Souten no Ken) is a manga and later anime series by Tetsuo Hara with plot supervision by Buronson. It is a prequel to the popular 1980s series Fist of the North Star (????, Hokuto no Ken), which Hara originally co-wrote with Buronson. Set primarily in Shanghai during the 1930s, the series centers around the 62nd successor of the Hokuto Shinken style, Kenshiro Kasumi, the namesake and predecessor of Fist of the North Star’s own Kenshiro.

The main protagonist of this story is Kasumi Kenshiro, better known as “Yan Wang” or “The King of Hell” (derived from the myth Yan Luo Wang). Kasumi is a laid back and chain-smoking Tokyo professor who is the successor of a deadly Chinese martial art of assassination known as Hokuto Shinken. He later travels to Shanghai after hearing that his Triad friend Pan Guang-Lin and his sister Yu-Ling (his love interest) are in trouble. In Shanghai, Kasumi goes on to help the “Qing Bang” Triad gang against the immoral “Hong-Hua” Triads whilst taking on the three legendary branches of Hokuto martial arts known as the Hokuto Sankaken (styles based on the royal families of Romance of the Three Kingdoms).