Hokuto shin ken is an assassination style meant to bring peace. A peaceful Ken in HNK had to learn that the entire world had become a brutal free for all. In this one, a Ken living a peaceful life is asked to stop brutal gangsters that have no honor or humanity, in a fight for the underworld of shanghai.
A good bunch of stories. The main flaw is just that they don't really connect the way saving Yuria and defeating Raoh did with the original. The deaths also aren't hilariously sadistic, instead of playing with the enemy, this Kenshiro just kinda kills them.
The first part deals with a gang war, and helping out these gangsters against more ruthless gangsters. An interesting arc that's similar to the the manga by the second half of the creation team of Hokuto no Ken, it weaves gangsters, honor, and martial arts.
The middle part deals with the coming of war world 2(the chinese and japanese conflict before it) and trying to create a peace zone, and trying to avert the war, which is part of hokuto shinken's mission. this part's also interesting since we get to see Hokuto shinken carry out it's purpose in a historical setting, and it's similar to a real event. It mixes in political factions with martial artist assassins now.
The final arc deals with hokuto shinken's origins, and shares little with the preceding parts, and the history it takes place in. But it does relate to three of the characters previously introduced(including the main character obviously). I'd say it's not quite the smoothest transition but it's not a bad story to tell. The final one is the purest "venerable" martial arts one. The characters have a lot of honor, love and pride, and many tears, are shed in joy, and sympathy. Characters commit suicide or are willing to do so for the sake or empathy of others(and they love very deeply). That's the kind of story it is, and it's interesting for it. There's also some good visuals(the white out fight in particular), though it also introduces a lot of hard to believe myth in the backstory, though not too much(there's a talking wolf in a story told, and 2 out of three people don't believe that part of it).
By the way, the art is fantastic, beautiful, great, lovely ect!.