The live action version. Remember every movie you've ever seen where the lead actor had the same expression through the entire movie, no matter what was happening? Well, they all pale in comparison to Gary Daniels, who commitment to a single expression (blank) is astounding. Not until Devon Aoki arrived on the acting scene would he be challenged. The rest of the movie is dumb and cheap and relatively entertaining in that special way dumb, cheap sci-fi from the 90s often managed to be. Not as gory as the anime thanks to the censors (a Fist of the North Star movie that doesn't show the exploding heads???), though there is still some gore. Fights are plodding most of the time but about as good as anything was before they started importing Chinese people and shaking the camera around a lot.

The supporting cast includes Malcom McDowell as a Japanese guy (he's not even made up to look Japanese; it's just Malcom McDowell), Melvin Van Peebles as a grim guy, Costas Mandylor as the world's most evil Balki lookalike with a Chinese name, Downtown Julie Brown as Downtown Julie Brown but in the post-apocalyptic future, Chris Penn as Chris Penn but with a half-exploded head, that Asian kid from Fakin' Da Funk who plays the same character in every movie regardless of whether it's Fist of the North Star or But I'm a Cheerleader, and pro wrestler Vader.

Best of all is that the gang of mutants are all made up to look mutanty, except for one. For some reason, no one felt like they needed to apply make-up to Clint Howard to turn him into a mutant.

All in all, a pretty terrible movie. I enjoyed it, but not as much as I wanted.