City Hunter: Bay City Wars

Title:City Hunter: Bay City Wars
Overall:Watch
Keywords: , , ,
Notables: HOJO Tsukasa
KAMIYA Akira
KODAMA Kanetsugu
R1 License - ADV (Renamed)
After the U.S. military ousts a sadistic Central-American tyrant, a spirit of merciless vengeance is born. And when the Bay City Hotel unveils its new supercomputer, the deposed ruler and his loyal daughter devise a plan. With the daughter's hacking skills, the very same computer that helps room service deliver breakfast can now deliver a nuclear payload right to Washington's front door. But their nuclear vengeance has one unforseen problem--City Hunter. And now, the only question remaining is whose finger is faster: the girl on the button or the man on the trigger?


[edit] The ↗City Hunter Franchise:

Original Story: Parallel universe remake (same characters): Alternate version: Alternate version:
OverallArtAnimationCharacter Design MusicSeries StoryEpisode StoryReviewer
Watch Stretch [series:613#628]
If I'm not mistaken, this was originally a Japanese TV movie which has been dubbed and re-released as an OVA. Therefore, perhaps it is appropriate that my overall impression is that Bay City Wars contains about the same quantity and quality of entertainment as a typical episode of the original TV series. The problem is that with a length of 50 minutes, that amount of entertainment had to be spread over twice as much time. Some of the action scenes were amusing due to their sheer absurdity, just like they were supposed to be, but at other times I found them to be just plain annoying. This was because the plot of this movie repeatedly stepped across the limits of what I was prepared to believe might really happen. When the heroes repeatedly pull off seemingly impossible escapes from hopeless situations (without any better explanation than "good luck"), when they start ignoring hails of bullets, when Joe allows himself to be captured just so that he can show that he can throw a punch faster than his guards (more than one) can squeeze their triggers, well, the effect is no longer "Hey, these guys are cool", rather it becomes "this is bull----!" When the good guys become incapable of getting hurt, all tension and excitement goes out the window. This, I felt, was the principal flaw of this movie. The only other problem which gave this one a run for it's money was purely technical--somehow the music on my copy had been recorded at an infinitely higher volume than the voices (if only I had laid my hands on the subtitled version!). There were some humorous scenes which exploited Joe's priceless Jekyll & Hyde-ish personality, but the film relied too heavily on action, and really dropped the ball there. I would recommend this one only to those who have already seen the "good" City Hunter movies (City Hunter: The Motion Picture, and .357 Magnum), and feel they must have more. In it's defence, as I rewatched it to refresh my memory for this review, it came across as better than I remembered from the first time. Maybe a grade of, say, C- would be appropriate.

My favorite line:
Joe: "What do you think you're doing?! You're completely trashing my car!"
Falcon: "Ha! Your car's trash anyway."

7/03

Last updated Friday, February 08 2008. Created Thursday, July 10 2003.

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