If ever there was a series that truly defined over the top action in anime and manga, it was Fist of the North Star. Known as Hokuto No Ken in Japan, the series is one of the bestselling manga franchises in history, having sold more than 100 million copies.

Fist of the North Star takes place in a future where worldwide nuclear war wiped out most living creatures on Earth, leaving survivors to fight over what little food and water supplies remain. Kenshiro is a master of the “Hokuto Shinken” assassination art, and must fight his former brother-in-training, Raoh. Raoh has become a warlord known as “Ken-oh,” meaning “fist king.” Meanwhile, Kenshiro’s fiancée, Yuria, is missing.

The thing most remembered from Fist of the North Star is the “Hokuto Shinken” style itself. It allows Kenshiro to kill his enemies from within, using the human body’s secret vital points. Kenshiro’s enemies would often explode from within their bodies as if a bomb had gone off, leading to exceptionally gory deaths.

The manga started serialization in Weekly Shonen Jump in 1983, and an anime adaptation soon followed, debuting on October 4, 1984. The version of the story that most English-speaking viewers might remember, though, is the 1995 American-made live action adaptation. This straight to video film was loosely based on the first story arc of the manga and starred kickboxing champion Gary Daniels as Kenshiro. The English live-action movie was considered almost “too tame” in comparison to its Japanese animated counterpart.

Fist of the North Star ended up having more than a half-dozen spinoffs and continues to see success now, more than three decades after it launched.