City Hunter: Have Manga and Movies Found Some Middle Ground?

Written by: Mohnish Rajakumaran

Ryohei Suzuki as Ryo Saeba in City Hunter (2024).

The new City Hunter adaptation on Netflix is a refreshing look at the possibilities for a manga or anime to find a home in the world of film. I have to say I did have an overall positive take on this new version of Ryo Saeba's adventures as the City Hunter. Here are a few reasons why I think City Hunter could be the first step in bridging the worlds of animation and manga with that of cinema.

Genre

Understanding the genre of a story is crucial when telling a story and even more so when adapting one. Knowing the tropes and conventions and being able to blend them without making them feel stale or derivative can be an impossible task. As the ill-fated spells of many anime-to-live-action adaptations slowly fade from memory, City Hunter shows its understanding of the Buddy Cop genre.

Films like Bad Boys, 21 Jump Street, Hot Fuzz and of course the legendary Rush Hour are just a few of the great examples City Hunter harkens back to. While it doesn't make full use of the Buddy Cop trope and morphs into this revenge/comedy story that feels more common in anime than it is in live-action, not to mention all those Mokkori scenes, is a by-product of crossing the dos and donts in making a live-action with those of making an anime or a manga.

Editing And Tone

How this film is cut together brings into a much larger-than-life perspective that sometimes feels cartoonish. Perhaps it's the middle ground that director, Yuichi Sato arrived at to best bring this adaptation to life. I personally have an appreciation for the cartoonish but up to a certain extent. I enjoyed the way this approach complimented the action in this film which made the fight scenes seem less serious without taking away their brutality for the most part.

The use of minimal cinematography when convey the most serious points of this film was done so meticulously so as to not bring down the tone of the film to an overly serious one. Where this approach suffers is in the drama of it all. Ryohei Suzuki's portrayal of our protagonist Ryo Saeba is a prime example. While in the source material, his character does switch effortlessly between serious and fun, in a live-action that seems like a very odd thing to do. It removed me from feeling certain aspects of the drama like depth and the emotional connections that weren't the most positive. The moments in which it does work are when conveying positive emotions and bringing a lighter tone to the film.

City Hunter is far from a perfect film and it may not be the gold standard to which we hold live-action adaptations to, but there's something to be said for its earnest and fun approach to bridging the gap between Manga and Movies.