It's hard to find a more testosterone-laden, purely man-tastic series than Hokuto no Ken, best known in the West as Fist of the North Star. (Well, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure comes pretty close, but the thing about Jojo is that it's so amazingly manly, it completely loops around itself and becomes the gayest thing ever. Not that there's anything wrong with that.) And there's no better time to be a disciple of Kenshiro than the present, it seems. Not content with merely hosting a real-life funeral for series villain Raoh last year, various media partners have announced a flurry of Hokuto no Ken related projects to be released this year - all in time for the series' 25th anniversary. Among the offerings:

• A new TV series based on the recent Raoh Gaiden manga by Youkou Osada
• A series of comedy featurettes called DD Hokuto no Ken with super-deformed characters
• And perhaps, most weirdly, a Hokuto no Ken-themed stage show put on by the Muscle Musical group. Muscle Musical is a Japanese performance arts group with more emphasis on "muscle" (i.e. action and athletics) and much, much less on "musical." They've recently performed in Las Vegas to many positive reviews.

All of these sound cool, but I must admit to being disappointed when I found out Muscle Musical did not do actual musicals. Admit it, every single one of you reading this would kill to see a Hokuto no Ken musical. They'd kick the everloving crap out of those Tenimyu pansies, that's for sure.