City Hunter: Goodbye My Sweetheart

Title:City Hunter: Goodbye My Sweetheart
City Hunter Special
City Hunter: The Motion Picture
Overall:Buy
Keywords: , , , ,
Notables: ASAGAMI Youko
GENDA Tesshou
IKURA Kazue
IWAO Junko
KAMIYA Akira
TANAKA Masaki
YAMADERA Kouichi
A maniacal terrorist known as "The Professor" has come to Tokyo. He has recruited a small band of dangerous criminals and now demands an impossibly large ransom or else he will devastate the city with the bombs his followers have planted. His twisted sense of drama calls for him to stalk and torment his adopted sister, Amy. But his real target isn't Amy--it's the man she has hired in hope of locating her missing brother: Ryo Saeba, the City Hunter!


[edit] The ↗City Hunter Franchise:

Original Story: Parallel universe remake (same characters): Alternate version: Alternate version:
OverallArtAnimationCharacter Design MusicSeries StoryEpisode StoryReviewer
Buy 7 8 10 10 10 Big Fire [series:567#2441]
this is the first city hunter i owned, but it set off a domino effect. This movie centers around the professor and why is he planning to blow up the city. My version is dubbed, but i will just refer to him in japanese form... After actress Amy receives black roses, she needs Ryo to save the day...but alas, Amy dresses like a guy, so he doesn't want to take the case...Kaori, a big fan, has to force Ryo to take the case...How does the professor tie into this? Probably not going to give that away, but it is a nice twist...and once again someone is trying to become top dog by taking down Ryo...my favorite non-saeko moments are in this show...the exchange between Ryo and Kaori about her weight, and the method on which city hunter must determine which wire to cut...Good Bye My sweetheart is a great way to get introduced to city hunter if you don't want to start from the beginning...you get all the characters wrapped into one show, and you get your typical perved Ryo moments plus the climax...Can Ryo save the day?

Last updated Monday, January 07 2008. Created Monday, January 07 2008.
Buy Stretch [series:567#628]
This movie was my introduction to the City Hunter genre in general, which is ironic since this wasn't originally a movie at all, but rather a TV special which aired at the end of the final season of the original series. Fortunately, the various City Hunter movies tend to be more than just unusually long episodes of the series, and even if you've never seen (or heard of) the TV series it's not too difficult to figure out who's who and what's going on. I do recall being a bit astonished at seeing Joe being literally crushed by Kaori's colossal mallet (some sort of Japanese metaphor for the trouble women are liable to cause the men who are near to them). What hooked me was Joe's original personality, him being both "expert detective and shameless ladies' man". As the Professor himself put it, "I didn't know men like him existed... I can't tell if the world's better off or not".

You get to know the Professor a good deal better than the typical City Hunter villain, who comes and goes in the space of thirty minutes. Whether you find him to be cool in an evil way, or preposterous (or both) is up to you. I don't want to give too much away, but I think it's clear that the scriptwriters had seen the movie "Speed". Not that this is some sort of cheap ripoff--indeed, if Joe Saeba was a familiar charachter here in America, this story could easily have been filmed as a respectable live-action movie over here. There are plenty of clever threads in the plot, which neatly come together in the climax amid cars, trains, helicopters, fireball explosions, comedy, and the inevitable faceoff between Joe and the Professor. Joe never loses his ability to transform back and forth between his dramatically serious and his comically perverted personalities, and you'll be surprised which one ultimately saves the day. But you have to see it to believe it.

I actually seldom "buy" brand-new Anime for full price, but that is my recommendation since I bought a used copy of City Hunter: The Motion Picture for $5-10. I've already watched it at least three times, so I think I got my money's worth!

(5/03)

P.S.: I just watched the movie in subtitled form for the first time, and noticed a lot of minor changes to the dialogue (perhaps just to make the lines match the mouth movements). One important difference:

Dub: "YOU are the reason for my visit tonight, Mr. Saeba"
(I was under the impression that the Professor's main objective was to blow up Shinjuku and assasinate Emi, and he had only a casual interest in comparing his skills to Joe/Ryo; that is, he was only devoting "tonight" to that goal. however...)
Sub: "Ryo Saeba, YOU are the reason for my return to Japan"
(I see now that his main target, his very reason for coming to Japan, was Ryo himself, and his terrorist acts were just bait to draw him out)

Another thing I noticed, having watched a good deal of the City Hunter TV series, is that this movie is a good deal more serious and violent--it reminds me of the difference between the Patlabor movies and TV episodes.

(8/04)

Last updated Friday, February 08 2008. Created Saturday, May 10 2003.

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