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Fist of the North Star Stage Play About Random Thugs Adds Additional Cast

The official Twitter account for the upcoming stage play based on Buronson and Tetsuo Hara's Fist of the North Star (Hokuto no Ken) manga announced additional cast for the play on Monday. Nobuaki Kakuda (first image below), Keiichi Yamamoto (second image below), and Kōzō Takeda (third image below) are triple cast as Jagi, and will appear at different performances.

Other additional cast members, all playing random thugs, include comedians Fall Kachi Aoyama, Captain★Zako, Shimazō Z, and Pink Machiura, as well as Kazuya Ōiwa, Yūsuke Fukushima, and Teppei Yoshino.

The play will also star Ryūko Isogai, Ryūnosuke Kawai, Juri, Takeshi Hayashino, and Naomichi Hanazono. AŌP idol group member Aoi Mizuki is also part of the cast. Shigeru Chiba, the voice of Joker, Jakō, the narrator, and numerous other characters in the anime adaptations, will also have a voice role in the stage play.

The play, titled Hokuto no Ken - Seikimatsu Zako Densetsu (Fist of the North Star - End of the Century Legend of a Random Thug) will run for five days at Tokyo's Theater G-Rosso from September 6 to 10. Rather than focus on the main characters from the original work, the play will focus on the "zako" or random thugs that normally die in the manga. The stage play celebrates the manga's 35th anniversary.

The play is holding a Twitter campaign asking fans to submit dying sounds the random thugs will make in the play. The staff are also asking fans to submit their own written "random thug episodes," and seven winners will be chosen from the applicants to receive a "Random Thug Membership Card."

Yū Murai is directing the play, and Keita Kawajiri is penning the script. The band Crystal King will return to perform the franchise's iconic theme song "Ai o Torimodose!" with AŌP singing the theme song.

Buronson and Hara's original manga's story is set in a post-apocalyptic world. The story centers on a man named Kenshiro, a master and successor to a deadly martial art, as he wanders the nuclear wasteland protecting the weak and innocent from violent thugs. In his travels, he must contend with other master martial artists and figures from his past, including his "brother" Raoh, who has crowned himself the king of the new world.

The manga ran in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine from 1983 to 1988. The latest incarnation of the manga – the DD Fist of the North Star II and Fist of the North Star: Strawberry Flavor comedy anime spinoffs – aired alongside each other in 2015. Crunchyroll streamed both anime as they aired in Japan.

Source: Comic Natalie