City Hunter

Right. So, I figured it's time I earn my upkeep by doing a review of an anime over here. And guess what I choose? A classic that I grew up with (Amber says: "That explains A LOT..."), and which I consider one of the world's three greatest animes, EVER. It's a true classic, an 80's anime of the perfect genre crossbreeding: Action, romance, ecchi (that's pervertedness for y'all non-otakus out there), and more ecchi. In other words, I give you all, the one, the only, the legendary, City Hunter. (That's Shitihanta for all you Japanese people out there.)

The main character is Ryo Saeba, a "sweeper" (private detective/mercenary/hitman/assassin/vigilante) in the Tokyo underworld. Ryo have four major crosses to bear; 1, he loves women. 2, he loves women's underwear. 3, he loves to peep at women when they take a bath, and usually, he tries to do more than just peep on them, which leads us to number 4, he also loves a little something that he calls "mokkori". To keep this clean, I won't say what it is (though I will say, a simple search on Wikipedia can inform you of it), but I'm certain you can guess already. "Mokkori" happens to be Ryo's battle cry whenever he attempts to pick up a beautiful woman, or steal her underwear. ("Waow, mokkori brassiere!").

But!
That's where his partner, the female tomboy Kaori Makimura, comes into the picture. Whenever Ryo tries to woo one of their clients (and being that Ryo only accepts contracts from beautiful women, that happens every time), vóila, she's there with a 100 ton hammer, smashing his head in with tremendous force and fury. She's really a scary woman, considering she's the only one who ever get the drop on the legendary City Hunter.

So, anyways, what you have is action, romance, heartwarming stories in every episode, and all of it in a typical 80's package accompanied by an incredible soundtrack. It stands to reason that this series is really one of the best that has ever been made. Quite obviously. And if you decide to read the manga, be prepared to realize that the series, which is quite perverted in its own right, pales in comparison to the manga, drawn by the genius mangaka Tsukasa Hojo.

Unfortunately, though, the manga is a rarity these days. Even on the net where piracy seems to be able to get you everything, it fails here. You can only, via fan-translations, get your hands on the mangas up to chapter 32. This is, as opposed to volume 32, which always confused me, but are two different things. You may think that you can still buy the manga, even if you have to buy it legally from Ebay, or somesuch. But the sad truth of the matter is, the manga has never been translated to English past chapter 32. And I dare say if you really want to read the manga you would have to speak and read fluent Japanese, and also live in Japan, to be able to track it down.

The series, however, is more than capable of standing on its own as one of the greatest animes of all times. So, with that in mind, get your butt out there, find it, and ACQUIRE IT, by any means necessary! Until the day you have seen the City Hunter anime, I daresay your life is 69 percent un-lived.