Dec 4, 2016
This is my first review on MAL...
In the late 90’s, I was introduced to the world of animes and mangas for the first time. My first favorite anime was from the manga City Hunter by author Tsukasa Hojo. It was adapted by Sunrise Studios in 1987 and has since been one of the top and best-selling series of all time in Shonen Jump. This anime also has a huge fanbase in the west more noticeably in Europe.
The series follows the daily activities of an excellent private detective named Ryo Saeba and
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his associate Kaori. Ryo’s always chasing after beautiful girls and vowed to himself to only accept them as clients. City hunter, displays therefore a lot of funny scenes following the protagonist interactions with girls and Kaori’s never ending jealousy.
Despite all its comedy, City Hunter is one of the most interesting slice of life stories I’ve ever seen. Each episode usually deals with the request of a single beautiful female client, who find herself unable to go to the police for whatever dire situations she got into. Ryo, being a man of experience, talent and feared by the underworld is always coming at their rescue and in style. Sure there is no superpowers, no young stupid teenage protagonist and no high school environment set in this world of City Hunter. This could be the appeal for a well thought out Seinen Manga. But for reason I still don’t understand, City Hunter is categorized as Shounen. But the author went even further against that idea by presenting a lot of themes almost never or rarely seen in other shonen, such as the Yakuzas, Drugs, Prostitution, Human trafficking, Assassinations, etc. All which makes it, a very dark series and definitely not aimed at children… (Even though I was still a teenager when I first watched it…).
Now to the breakdown of the anime Adaptation.
In term of art and animation, I can say the series did an alright job back when it first came out. The character design is mostly realistic apart from the comic relief chibis. The girls are designed very well and made attractive to support the plot as Ryo’s client rule. The main characters all have distinct styles which makes it easy to tell them apart. Animation was about average and acceptable for its time again.
One of the most interesting aspects of the adaption from the manga has to be the soundtrack. This series has an epic soundtrack compared to most anime from the 80’s till now. The mixed of style accompanying each scenes makes it very easy to know the mood and message conveyed.
Finally I would have to recommend this series to anyone who wants to have a good laugh whilst watching an interesting story and sometimes actions packed anime with a little bit of drama.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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