James Bond meets Lupin the Third! A stylish cocktail of hard-boiled action and raunchy comedy, manga classic CITY HUNTER follows exceptional marksman and compassionate sleazeball Ryo Saeba as he sweeps corruption from the lavish 80's Tokyo nightlife, one evil at a time.

Readers follow the City Hunter as he takes on underground odd jobs, ranging from serving as the bodyguard of a captivating madame to executing a vengeful assassination of a corrupt politician, navigating through quick-witted thrills and intense dramas.

The City Hunter Ryo Saeba does the dirty work of cleaning up Tokyo's nightlife with his heart of gold worn on his sleeve.

City Hunter has art and story by Tsukasa Hōjō. English translation is done by David Evelyn and lettering by Kai Kyou. Published by Kana (September 23, 2025). Rated OT.

Erica Friedman
Rating:

The 1980s. A time when real (idealized, fictitious) men were able to shoot through their own hands to nail a bad guy in the eye, men who wore tight jeans, drove sports cars around major cities and, in manga at least, had naked women literally thrown at them. Real men made goofy sound effects when they sweatflopped, or tripped backwards as they tried to look cool and failed. Real men took out sleazeball criminals, with ultra cool poisoned rings.

This is the world of City Hunter.

There is something nostalgic about all of this in a Mad Magazine hyper-real kind of way – it is “real” life for some value of the world “real,” but not any life that anyone reading this book might ever live any more than Miami Vice represented real cops.

The cover copy reads “CITY HUNTER features a gritty and charismatic, if sleazy, main character who can't help but do the right thing the wrong way. A stylish cocktail of hard-boiled action and raunchy comedy.” I'm going to give some props to Kana for a very decent synopsis, that captures both the general feel of the story and the tone in which it was written for, obviously, an adult male audience. What's a few boner jokes and a little light sexual harassment among friends? Don't worry…it's comedy!

Bad guys here are the kind of excessive badness that one thinks of when one says “comic books.” This is an underworld populated by a random serial killer, a human trafficking ring run out of a clothing store, drug overlords, the kind of psychopaths and criminals that feel good to see shot, so when Ryo shoots them…that's fine. His cool tomboyish partner Kaori allows women to feel part of the fun, as well. She can use that big ole' .44 magnum (of course it is) just as well as Ryo.

This omnibus from Kana, the Abrams Arts manga imprint looks good —pages feel substantial, and this volume included notes, commentary and an interview with the mangaka.

City Hunter serves up a meaty (pun intended) meal of idealized men will be men and sexualized women will be women, and the bad guys get what they deserve.

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

This is the third time I've read the opening volumes of City Hunter. First, I read them in French. Then I read them when the late, lamented Raijin magazine was around. And now I'm reading them again in Kana's lovely omnibus edition, which, like their Cat's Eye book, has a dust jacket, crease-resistant, flexible spine, and doesn't show fingerprints. It's hard to argue with that, even for thirty bucks! (Which, at current physical book prices, is still ten dollars a volume, making it cheaper than pretty much anyone else.) It should also tell you something about how good this series is that I'm willing to keep rereading it; honestly, the only reason I've read this one more time than Cat's Eye is because this is Cat's Eye's first English release.

In no small part, that's because City Hunter is top-notch mid-80s cheese. It's an action flick on paper, filled with ridiculously flashy stunts, sexy ladies, and a hero who can't keep it in his pants…or at least can't keep his pants from tenting; Ryo Saeba's not quite as successful with the ladies as he'd like to think he is, and the only woman he successfully pulls in is a high school third year. But that's also part of the appeal here; the disconnect between Ryo's prowess as a “sweeper,” someone who cleans up the cases the cops can't or won't, and his personality makes the story more human. At one point he says that he only takes cases that touch his heart, and he amply proves that as the book goes on.

That also allows Hojo to cover some serious territory. While there is a lot of casual sexism played for laughs due to the time this series was originally created, it's still clear that Hojo understands that it's a problem. In one striking case, he helps the older sister of a murder victim who is sick and tired of everyone blaming her dead sister for her own death. Because she was out at night and dressed like a normal teenage girl, people are quick to say that she must have been “asking for it.” Ryo's the only person who understands that no one asks to be murdered for the crime of being female out after dark, and that the only person to blame is the murderer himself. When he takes on his late partner's younger sister as his new partner, he doesn't denigrate her just because she's a woman, although plenty of other side characters do. Ryo may have a very skeezy side, but he's not a bad person.

In the included interview at the back of the book, Hojo mentions that he based Ryo on a character from Cat's Eye, the mysterious thief Rat. That's a good argument for reading both series, but rest assured that City Hunter stands on its own two feet and that it only gets better as it goes on.