Fist of the North Star, the series, took a long time to leave Japan, with most fans only knowing about it thanks to the 1991 film, which mangles the story. It wasn’t until 2011 that the entire series was available on DVD. By the time the complete anime was accessible to fans in the United States, it had already become an underground hit through the memes.

This backward, organic discovery of Fist of the North Star is how most anime fans came across new shows before anime broke through in the last decade. Now that every streaming service, from Netflix to Disney+, has an anime section with a prominent “What’s New” banner, it’s a lot easier to stumble across the hot new thing, like Frieren or Delicious in Dungeon, without having to try and hunt down where a single frame of cool looking animation came from.