Shinjuku
could be considered the Times Square of Tokyo. It is now a clean, neon-lit
commercial mega-district, but it was once seedier and more dangerous. Ryo Saeba
used to work cases as a “street-sweeping” private investigator for hire in old
school Shinjuku, but he can still get into plenty of trouble in the fancy, high-rent
neighborhood of today. The old manga and anime franchise that inspired Jackie
Chan’s City Hunter returns with a new, sort of updated anime feature
film, Kenji Kodama’s City Hunter: Shinjuku Privates Eyes, which releases
today on BluRay.
Even
though the world has changed, Saeba is the same Saeba. That means his impatient
partner Kaori Makimura must continue to bonk him on the noggin with her comically
large hammer whenever his outrageous horniness gets the better of him. That
will definitely be an issue during this case, since they have been hired by
fashion model Ai Shindou to protect her from the villains who killed her
estranged father, a scientist conducting cutting-edge brain research.
Currently,
Shindou is working on a shoot for one of the companies owned by industrialist
Shinji Mikuni. As fate would have it, he is an old childhood friend of
Makimura, who used to protect him from bullies. Sadly, he learned the wrong
lesson from those experiences, because he is also obviously the criminal
mastermind pulling the strings behind the scenes. It turns out his real
business is arms dealing and the new weapons system Shindou’s father
reluctantly developed for him is quite a doozy. To take him down, Saeba might need
some help from cross-over characters from the Cat’s Eye franchise, set
it the same universe.
City
Hunter is
such an established institution, it is easy to see why the studio would look to
reboot it. The franchise even spawned a recent French live-action film, Nicky
Larson and Cupid’s Perfume (as the dubbed character is known in France),
with apparently little hand-wringing over the “white-washed” casting. However,
for those unfamiliar with the characters, Saeba’s shticky horn-dog behavior
clashes with the slick Miami Vice-inspired vibe and amped-up chases and
shoot-outs.
Still,
when Saeba and Umibouzu (a fellow sweeper, who also manages the Cat’s Eye
coffee shop) get down to the business of fighting war-drones and battle-bots,
it is definitely entertaining, in a meathead kind of way. This is exactly the sort of run-and-gun action
we watch series anime for in the first place. However, Saeba’s juvenile humor will
even have twelve-year-old otakus rolling their eyes.
Shinjuku
Private Eyes stands
pretty well on its own for series newcomers, at least until the big Cat’s
Eye crossover event late in the third act. It good to see the venerable
series showing signs of life, but it might be time for Kodama and creator
Tsukasa Hojo to figure out a way to mature Saeba a little, without alienating
their bread-and-butter fans. Recommended for the anime action rather than the naughty
slapstick comedy, City Hunter: Shinjuku Private Eyes releases today (5/26)
on BluRay.
