•
Rating: "Uhhh!!! Here they come again... every time it's the same story... Here they come... Ok, brace yourself. They're three, but this time you can do it, and you know it! Don’t let them know you’re scared, otherwise it’ll be worse. You have no reason to be. You’ll make them run away with their tails between their legs! Do they want your snack cake? You'll sell your skin dearly this time, that's for sure..."
As you can imagine, they took the snack cake, and my skin, the only unwitting item on the market, remained fortunately unsold, albeit with some bruises. After a while, I realized that they didn't care whether I had a Mulino Bianco snack or some crushed snail between moldy bread, but it was nothing compared to what I had lost. What really hurt, even more than the punches, was that Ken had let me down. And in a big way.
My idol had betrayed my trust, and on top of that, he was beating me up badly. I didn’t even have time to wonder why I could never find my opponents' pressure points before I found myself with some bruises and a few milk teeth less. It was then that I began to have a clearer and more realistic understanding of the dynamics of children's groups. Not without a bit of regret, I had to abandon the fruitless techniques of the Hokuto school to associate with some other desperate victims, like me, of the bullying from the stronger ones. Maybe we still got beaten up, but on a personal level, the thrashing would be less mortifying. After all, if the bullies had successfully assimilated mafia-style intimidating procedures, we at least had to wake up from our slumber.
I, first and foremost, had to realize that the comparison with my cartoon hero was decidedly unequal. We were too, too far apart. Ken was like this, all of one piece, few words, and even fewer smiles. The classic type who, if he were a ruthless criminal, wouldn't hesitate to blow your head off with a tap of his foot's pinkie for one look too many at the traffic light. Fortunately, Ken was a good guy and, even better, he didn’t like driving much. He’d get chauffeured around without too much complaint (like the classic "conte r'o cazz", as we'd say in Naples) by a ten-year-old boy capable of driving a jeep, the only four-wheeled vehicle available in the entire post-nuclear war universe. And I could barely ride a bike. The bad guys mostly moved around on motorcycles, and all sported an enviable punk crest. Despite the poverty of that era, Ken Shiro didn’t hesitate to ruin their barber, ruthlessly eliminating all his best clients; yet, wherever he went, he was seen and expected as a sort of new Messiah, who would free the village of the moment from evil oppression.
In fact, leaving aside the approximately 2,500 killings carried out for salvation purposes, the analogies with Jesus are not lacking: Ken healed the sick, gave drink to the thirsty (who knows if among the many there was also the bad guys' barber), and redeemed at the point of death all the worst scoundrels of the series, despite them having done all sorts of mischief to him (Shin, Souther, Raoul, Kaio). I, on the other hand, never managed even once to get an apology from the sneaky ones who stole my snack. To top it off, I never understood how it was possible for Ken, despite losing eight liters of blood after every tough fight, to have the energy to kill an average bad guy with a single finger, who was ten times stronger than Bruce Lee.
At the end of the second series (the last one I watched), like any respectable lone hero, Ken spectacularly snubbed Lynn, the only woman after Julia capable of having feelings for the least friendly man on the planet, and walked away into the horizon singing "Basta 'a salute e 'n par de scarpe nove, pòi girà tutt'er monno". Moral of the story? I haven't grasped it yet. I'm content knowing that Ken has not interrupted his wandering.
So come on, Ken, come into the real world... You have a new enemy on your path!
Loading comments slowly
