City Hunter - episodes 8 to 26

One, two, mokkori. One, two, mokkori ...

City Hunter somewhere down the track seems to have lost a lot of its serious treatment. The blame can rest almost squarely on Kaori’s 10, 100 and 1000 ton hammers. With a woman beating Ryo up at every move he makes, the poor City Hunter’s chances for mokkori with any of the beautiful women in his clientele drastically fall.
The series also takes more turns into the surreal with a psychic gambler, a shrine maiden, a transvestite gangland boss and far, far too many instances of Ryo shooting right into the barrels of his opponent’s guns … from a block away ... than is strictly believable.
The most gritty realism comes from ... well, there is no gritty realism any more. While Ryo may be a good guy beneath all the lechery, he's not given much of a chance to show his caring side. He meets a kid from a war torn land and is charged with corrupting him, but the kid is really just a pervert at heart anyway. Of course, he's not entirely without his sensitive side; the movie episode and the romance course episode showcased some of his more tactful ways of dealing with women. It can only be hoped that the fact neither episode contains any real danger is simple coincidence.
There are instances when the episodes don’t make much sense: episodes where the bad guys were actually good, despite having earlier piloted an attack helicopter and made Ryo’s car explode.

The episodes offer some pretty good situations among the bizarre, such as the tried and true "Police and stalker pop idol" routine. This is mainly handled with the seriousness that it deserves, but also with the intensely odd notion of confusing a gift of brass knuckles with an engagement ring. There's not really that much more that can be said.

There’s a disappointing dearth of Umibozu scenes – so few as to the point of none - but there’s another recurring character who has been introduced. Nogami Saeko is a police officer and, to Ryo, is poison. No other woman knows how to manipulate Ryo in such a fashion as she. Saeko’s chief tactic is to offer sweet mokkori compensation for whatever task she wants the City Hunter to do. She’s just smart enough, however, to never give him anything. The cases that Saeko takes on are among the more interesting, particularly as she’s the dame for these episodes and no new character with some sort of hidden beauty has to be introduced.
Between Saeko and Kaori, however, it’s unclear if Ryo will ever get any mokkori ever again. Ryo’s failure to be totally emasculated by this pair probably says something about his strength of character. He’ll go on chasing the mokkori no matter how many hammers are thrown his way (and Kaori’s a pretty good shot). Also of note are the "Kaori is a man" jokes, which are becoming increasingly elaborate, hilarious and ludicrous. She was thrown out of a change room as a peeping tom!

Kamiya Akira has, in the time between seriousness, become a master of the pratfall. The sounds that he makes when he gets thrown out of windows or what have you are priceless and not so much accurate as appropriate.

City Hunter is very much a "just one more" series. It's easy to consume it in vast quantities because it calls to you. Each episode is surprisingly different, despite the constancy of Ryo's mokkori hunts and Kaori's hammerings. There's not a heck of a lot of growth, though, and so comedy continues to be the hardest genre to write for.