Danica Davidson
May 1, 2024 
The live-action City Hunter movie dropped on Netflix on April 25, and the streaming service proudly announced that during the April 22-28 time period, it took first place in Netflix’s list of Global Top 10 non-English films. It was watched about 5.3 million times, and people around the globe spent 9.1 million hours tuning in.
It also reached various numbers in the top 10 for 32 different nations. As for reaching the coveted number one spot, it did that in Guadeloupe, Hong Kong, Martinique, Réunion, Taiwan and (no surprise) Japan.
City Hunter started out as a manga series by Tsukasa Hojo and was published between 1985 and 1991. This is far from the first adaptation of it, and it has inspired both anime and live-action shows and movies. In fact, Hollywood star Jackie Chan was in a live-action adaptation from 1993 that was made in Hong Kong, though it strayed from the original manga quite a bit.
In the Netflix adaptation cast, Ryōhei Suzuki is Ryō Saeba, Misato Morita is Kaori Makimura, Masanobu Ando is Hideyuki Makimura, and Fumino Kimura is Saeko Nogami. It was directed by Yuichi Sato of Kisaragi, and the script was penned by Tatsuhiro Mishima, who worked on the live-action Yu Yu Hakusho. HoriPro, Office Shirous and Netflix all teamed up to produce it.
Discotek Media is releasing the original City Hunter anime, and gave this description for its plot:
Ryo Saeba, the legendary City Hunter, is a first-class sweeper for hire, taking on jobs from protecting beautiful women to taking out bad guys permanently. He can be a private detective or hitman, whatever the case calls for, and it often requires the use of his superhuman marksmanship. But even so, Ryo can’t do it alone. His partner is Kaori Makimura, the younger sister of his murdered best friend. Kaori serves as his assistant, while also protecting their attractive clients from Ryo’s “mokkori” advances with her trusty supply of 100 ton hammers.
Though they always appear to be at each other’s throats, the partners trust each other implicitly when the chips are down, and together they’ve solved various tough cases.
Source: ANN
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Danica Davidson is the author of the bestselling Manga Art for Beginners with artist Melanie Westin, plus its sequel, Manga Art for Everyone, and the first-of-its-kind manga chalk book Chalk Art Manga, both illustrated by professional Japanese mangaka Rena Saiya. Check out her other comics and books at www.danicadavidson.com.
