Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes
This tape operates as a fairly comprehensive career retrospective for Akira Hokuto from her debut in mid-1985 to mid-1994. The tape includes comments from Hokuto that appear throughout the tape focusing on her thoughts about different aspects of her career.
The first segment focuses on her childhood and her parents are introduced. The tape then shows footage of her training to become a wrestler in the grueling AJW dojo. For the first two years of her career, she competed under her real name of Hisako Uno. Her early matches were pretty basic, containing no real heat or memorable action. However, beginning in late 1986 her matches began to take a turn twoards greatness. This tape showed that she executed her flip plancha from the middle of the top rope as far back as 1986 when such a move was virtually unheard of from anyone, let alone a female wrestler in her second year as a pro.
Her serious neck injury that kept her out of the ring for most of 1987 is documented, including some of her training for her return. From 1986 to 1988, some of the footage is fun to watch, including a young Bull Nakano before she developed her legendary hairdo and matches against the Crush Gals at the peak of their popularity- the heat in these matches could not possibly be described in writing. Some of her matches with Marine Wolves partner Suzuka Minami are shown, including a WWWA tag team title reign in 1989.
Amazingly, that would be the highest caliber title that Hokuto would actually achieve. Her first WWWA title shot came against Nakano on 1/4/91, and six minutes are shown of that classic match, a longer segment than for any other match. Some of her other matches against Nakano are shown, including a cage match. Around this time, she was the most popular woman in the federation, although Manami Toyota was challenging her popularity by late 1992.
Next, highlights from matches in 1993 against LLPW wrestlers Shinobu Kandori and Rumi Kazama are featured. Only two matches from 1994 are shown, her teaming with Kandori on 3/27 to defeat Nakano and Aja Kong, and her teaming with Kong against Yumiko Hotta and Dynamite Kansai on 8/25/94. Each of these matches have less than two minutes of highlights, although their drama and significance are effectively captured.
Overall, this tape is for the wrestling fan who wants to trace the significant events of Hokuto's first 9 years in wrestling, but not in their entirety. There are no complete matches, although the highlights shown display the legendary work and popularity that Akira Hokuto brought to women's pro wrestling in Japan.
