Angel Heart

Title:Angel Heart
エンジェル・ハート (Japanese)
Overall:Rent
Keywords: , , , , , ,
Notables: ASAGAMI Youko
Animation - SUNRISE
GENDA Tesshou
IKURA Kazue
KAMIYA Akira
KAWASAKI Mao
"Glass Heart" is a female member of the dreaded "Suzaku Unit", an elite corps of Taiwanese assassins who have been raised since childhood to be heartless killing machines. At age 14 she is congratulated for her fiftieth successful hit, but she has become painfully disillusioned with her line of work and leaps from the roof of a building. But the Suzaku Unit isn't ready to let such a valuable member go so easily, and are willing to take extraordinary measures to save her, including the theft of a transplant-compatible girl’s heart from the streets of Japan. Glass Heart finds herself somehow in contact with the spirit of her heart's previous owner, and cannot resist the urge to search for this woman's lover...

50 TV Episodes.
Animation by TMS Entertainment.
Aired on TV - Oct '05 through Sept '06.

(A sequel to the series City Hunter)

1:29min Series Opening- YouTube Video

[edit] The ↗City Hunter Franchise:

Original Story: Parallel universe remake (same characters): Alternate version: Alternate version:
Episode Details 
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 99, 1893
OverallArtAnimationCharacter Design MusicSeries StoryEpisode StoryReviewer
Rent 9 9 10 9 9 10 Big Fire [series:1221#2441]
Ok, this series isn't finished, and to be honest I am like on episode 6...But I gotta say I am hooked...A City Hunter sequal with a more serious tilt to it...I LOVE IT!!! I dropped the art scores cuz I am still miffed that saeko just doesn't look that good in this series, but no complaints everywhere else...

(11 episodes finished)
I gotta tell you, i didn't think i would like a romance type more serious sequal to city hunter...but I am digging the show...Even Saeko is sort of growing on me...The action is quite good to, the story line is working for me...Nothing but positives still...

(24 episodes finished)
Watching this series, and hearing Xiang Ying continually call Ryo 'papa' is getting to me...am I that old? I still love this series, but i am downgrading it to a RENT if you are not familiar with City Hunter, and a BUY for those who are...I just think it is very dramatic, and I am just not into romance anime...BUT for some reason, I am still watching...maybe because it is the City Hunter sequal that I keep at it...Don't get me wrong, these are very good stories, and it is good to have the whole gang in there but i am sure if this wasn't a sequal, I would have fell off the wagon around episode 15...

Last updated Monday, April 02 2007. Created Wednesday, February 21 2007.
Buy Jan-Chan [series:1221#967]
I just have to chime-in on this series! Episode 18 is available as a fansub (all praise the Anime-Kraze fansub team) and episode 41 was recently aired on Japanese TV .. so this might just turn out to be yet another of those never-ending City Hunter sequels .....

I have not yet seen City Hunter, so I really can not compare - but I have to admit that I am really enjoying both the plot and characters in this series.

While it really might be a bit premature, pls allow me jump the gun and flag this series with a fun-n-favorable <BUY> rating ..... I am just enjoying Angel Heart too much to continue to allow it be tagged as an <unevaluated> anime series.

More later!

Last updated Thursday, July 27 2006. Created Thursday, July 27 2006.
Unevaluated Forbin [series:1221#1573]
1 Episode Watched.
Of course I had to watch this. It's City Hunter! Ryo is back, and just as perverted as ever and it appears that Kaori is missing since he gets with a few girls. But that Mokkoriness is just a sham and he's really hurting inside.

If my memory serves me right Ryo is voiced by the same guy 20 years later! Damn he must be about 40 now so he's finally caught up to the real age of Ryo!

More after I see more. A bit ecchi especially considering Glass Heart is only 15. I wonder how he's going to deal with that. His #2 rule is 'the girl has to be 18.' and of course his #1 rule is 'NO MEN!'

Last updated Tuesday, November 08 2005. Created Tuesday, November 08 2005.
Rent Stretch [series:1221#628]
I was both eager and uneasy about seeing the first episode of this sequel, since I'm an enthusiastic fan of the original series but have always strongly preferred the comic element over the action, and had heard that Angel Heart would be a "darker" sort of show--would that mean the comedy had been deleted altogether? No, although it plays a smaller part, it's still present and what there is is genuinely funny. It was good to see that Ryo hasn't completely lost his usual randiness, though that, too, has been toned down. Action is clearly being taken more seriously in this show, which is encouraging considering how unrealistic it often was during City Hunter. For example, when a serious battle broke out I was expecting the usual City Hunter-style shootout in which Ryou takes down numerous opponents with one bullet each, but instead was treated to an intriguing plot twist. The "slack" which is created by less comedy and action is taken up with some serious character development. Someone who had never seen the original series probably wouldn't have much trouble figuring out what's going on here (though some familiarity would certainly help). Getting used to the subtly altered character designs took me some time. Ryo seems to have gotten younger whereas Glass Heart looks more like 25 than her supposed age of 16. I notice from the credits that all of the usual VAs are back for this sequel, plus Kawasaki Mao as Glass Heart. Altogether, pretty neat! An intriguing introduction to this odd character, a bad girl who will presumably go straight from now on. Glass Heart is turning out to be a neat series, being alternately exciting, funny, and touching, and not nearly as "dark" as I'd originally feared.

This is another fansubbed series which employs the option of downloading a seperate file of cultural references and translator's notes (and lists the manga chapters which correspond to each episode). The fansub is extremely sharp, with professional quality lettering that made me wonder if the people behind it might do this sort of thing for a living. The credits are especially good, with every name translated and so tastefully positioned that I wondered if they might have actually been part of the original Japanese run of the series. The fansub unit, "Lost in Translation" is quite modest, only mentioning their own name once at the very end of the ED sequence (and not at all on the accompanying notes).

Based on my experiences watching City Hunter, when I started watching Angel Heart I was asking myself, would Glass Heart team up with Ryou Saeba to break up the Suzaku Unit? Not exactly; they team up to put "City Hunter" back in business. Would they fall in love? No, she will have a different, but still very close relationship with him--and she will, in all likelihood, have a boyfriend. This series in general seems a good deal more clever than the old City Hunter series. The word "touching" seldom applied to those episodes, which tended to be a mix of bawdy humor and villain-of-the-week shootouts, and were very episodic. Here we get a well thought-out long term plotline.

Ah, I'm glad that around episode 32 or so poor Xin Hong finally gets to play a major part in a mini-arc (four episodes at least). He's probably my favorite character. I got a little bored by the previous episodes which focused on learning more about Kaori and her past, but this looks cool.

All things considered, Angel Heart seems to have gotten a good deal less exciting after after everyone gets used to Xiang Ling and she settles into her new career as a City Hunter. It's still a fun show, with multiple episode arcs instead of stories that would have been over in one or two episodes in the old days. There are significantly more plausible story lines, though I'm not sure that works to the show's advantage. But I can no longer see buying Angel Heart, especially as long as it is.

P.S: I read on another website that the series will extend to no less than 52 episodes--hurray!

P.P.S: Catch Xiang Ying's montage at the Cute Girls with Guns page!

Last updated Saturday, November 20 2010. Created Sunday, October 30 2005.

Other Sites
NameURL
Official Japanese TV Series Web Site http://www.ytv.co.jp/angelheart/
Japanese DVD & Product web site http://www.angelheart-dvd.com/

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