Episode 20 is great. If only we could get it out of the gulag. We first bash a really horrible OAV (thanks, Pioneer!) called Hyper Doll. This was probably released really early on DVD and was a hold-over from their VHS releases. While not the straw the broke the camel’s back when Pioneer/Geneon USA started the domino effect of anime licensors we’ve seen over the past 18 months, this shit certainly didn’t help.

Then this man does the biggest rank-pull I’ve ever seen. As far as I’m concerned, he’s only a KGB major. He says Russia calls that ‘Prime Minister’ now.

Being a ranked judoka, though, PM Putin really did love our review of the 1986 film, Fist of the North Star. Hokuto no Ken, as it’s called east of Kamchatka, is the story of Kenshiro and the quest to regain the woman he loves by punching and causing the heads of those punched to explode in crimson showers of medical waste. Also, he has to fight his brother.  HnK was the bane of many a fan’s existence for a good many years because it was shounen and it seemed like nothing more than a good way to see a man’s head bulge and explode. In recent years, thanks to Japan’s Loli Moe Brigades, there’s been a resurgence amongst men in Japan and North America who’ve come to say that there is a time and place for heads to explode. While previously only available through Carl Macek’s dub from Streamline Video, a pleasant late-Christmas surprise let us know that Discotek, who’ve published a few other anime, will be bringing us a DVD release sometime this year!

Maybe we should start a fund to get this episode out to THE PEOPLE and THE MASSES where it properly belongs? I will be accepting rolls of toilet paper and Levi’s Jeans to sell on the black market and have it smuggled out in return.