City Hunter: Million Dollar Conspiracy

Ryo Saeba is a fixer in Tokyo who takes any job: protection, surveillance, rescue. His partner Kaori Makimura is the only person who can keep him in check. One day an American woman called Emily O'Hara turns up and offers a million dollars: she wants protection from a man called Douglas. The pair take the job. But the story she has told is not true, and it turns out the real target is Ryo. The source is Tsukasa Hojo's City Hunter manga; it was a big hit in Japan in the eighties and became a long anime series. This forty-eight minute piece is a television special, not a feature. Kenji Kodama directed. Akira Kamiya, who voices Ryo, had carried the character from the start of the series. The mould is action comedy and the tone follows: gunfire and jokes stand in the same scene, and Ryo's behaviour towards women is hard going seen from today.