This is both a show that started in 1991 and also one that that started in 1987. Which goes some way to explaining why it’s a lot better than most of the TV anime from 1991.
The first City Hunter anime aired 1987-1988, two years after the launch of the manga. It was followed, pretty much immediately by City Hunter 2. When that ended in 1989, there was a break of 3 months before City Hunter 3 aired. There was over a year between that show ending at this one beginning. However, if you needed a City Hunter fix there was a couple of OAVs in between.
All of these were directed by Kenji Kodama (Detective Conan) and produced by Sunrise, so there’s an argument that you can look at them as a holdover from Eighties anime trends rather than fitting into what was new in 1991. But there’s only so many spikey haired Toriyama clones one can watch in a row so consider this me treating myself.
In their fifth year of adapting Tsukasa Hojo’s manga, this is a very slickly made TV anime. There’s plenty of limited animation short cuts, but its strengths overpower any budgetary restrictions.
It’s biggest strength? Akira Kamiya. He is/was THE BEST, and he was perfect for the role of Hojo’s hero, the lecherous gunman Ryo Saeba. It’s hard to imagine anyone else being able to switch between stone cold killer, dapper playboy & goofball idiot and make you believe it’s all the same guy.
Another strength is in how it uses its soundtrack. It’s not afraid to let the soundtrack do the heavy lifting on a scene if needs be. I believe it’s just Tatsumi Yano on the music here. There are entirely still establishing shots in this episode that are boosted immeasurably by the soundtrack cueing you into the following scene.
When Tiger & Bunny prompted my look at the buddy TV show, I didn’t look ahead to the 80s and where the buddy show went then. One place it went was female/male buddy show with “unresolved sexual tension”. From US TV you had Remington Steele, Scarecrow & Mrs King and Moonlighting. From the UK you had Demspey and Makepeace. And City Hunter firmly fits into that trend with the relationship between Ryo Saeba and Kaori Makimura. It almost seems like the makers of Tiger & Bunny had set things up to do a version of that in the future with Barnaby and Kotetsu, but I wonder if the popularity will make them stick with the NC1978 era heroes for now.
Next, the final 1991 anime I will look at and another show from City Hunter ’91‘s Kenji Kodama…
I've written about this show before, but really, it was in a time before LJ tags and I'm fairly busy, so no link to it today.
Cat's Eye is another massivly popular 1980s series by Tsukasa Hojo (City Hunter). So naturally, you can only watch it fansubbed in English. Because it's gloriously mainstream and 80s, and the current market seemingly only supports the obscure and modern, unless you have a TV broadcast.
It's the story of three sisters (Hitomi, Rui & Ai) and the double lives they lead as the gang of thieves known as the “Cat's Eye” gang and the owners of a cafe. Also known as “Cat's Eye”.
Despite never having seen an episode City Hunter actually plays an important part of my introduction to anime fandom.
It's 1990, and welcome to the world of grey imports and unintelligible Japanese videogames. Now I never had a PC Engine myself. It tended to be the spoilt rich kids who imported consoles. However, I did have a number of spoilt rich kids as friends, so I was familiar with the machine and it's games. And amongst the games folks imported for it was a Platformer RPG called City Hunter.
Yes, people did used to import Japanese text heavy games with no understanding of the language. They tended to rely on the fanzine “PC Engine Fanatics” for plot and gameplay information. I remember playing a Gameboy Lupin III game thinking it was the third game in a series of games called “Lupin”.
Bizarrely the City Hunter game did get an English translation for the ill-fated US launch of the PC Engine as Turbografx. Echoes of the Golgo 13 NES game US release. I remember it getting reviewed in Dragon Magazine by Sandy Petersen (the Call of Cthulhu RPG creator who'd go onto work on Doom and Quake). I also remember Dragon Magazine printing a letter about anime where a reader listed loads of shows that I wouldn't see for another 4 or 5 years.
But I digress. The point I'm making here is one I've made before, my anime fandom is born somewhat out of that early nineties import scene, and without it, I'd doubt I'd be doing this longwinded blogging challenge I've set myself.
So what about City Hunter itself. Created by Tsukasa Hojo, it's the story of Ryo Saeba, a “sweeper” (bodyguard/P.I.) and his business partner, Kaori Makimura. Hojo also created the series “Cat's Eye” and an “alternate universe” sequel to City Hunter, “Angel Heart”. It's arguable that it is only an alternate universe due to adverse fan reaction to the main change in the series from City Hunter. However further changes have also been made to clarify it's alternativeness.
Ryo Saeba, I should point out, is voiced by voice legend Akira Kamiya (Mouri in Detective Conan, Kenshiro in FotNS, Mendou in Urusei Yatsura, to name but three).
Famously there is a live action version of City Hunter starring Jackie Chan. Indeed this is the form most familiar to the UK, and noted for a Streetfighter II parody sequence that has little to do with it's material of origin.
The City Hunter manga managed to get 5 volumes released in english before the collapse of Rajin Comics. The anime has been released by ADV.
Here's the second opening of City Hunter:
Bonus – Jackie Chan City Hunter Street Fighter Parody:
