City Hunter: Goodbye Sweetheart [aka City Hunter: The Motion Picture] (1996)
City Hunter: Death of the Vicious Criminal Ryo Saeba (1999)
Friend was showing some more City Hunter TV specials, this time the later ones from the 90s (I arrived too late for Secret Service, although I have seen that one before). Perhaps they felt the formula was in need of updating by this point, as both films seem to be aiming for something on a bigger scale than the series, with Goodbye Sweetheart seeing Ryo and Kaori chasing a bomber holding Shinjuku to ransom, while Vicious Criminal pits Ryo against a media tycoon using fake news footage to frame him as a murderer.
Both were a good time though; the production quality is excellent, with some great work on reaction faces and plenty of attention paid to superfluous detail. This is particularly true of Goodbye Sweetheart, which I think is one of the best looking things I’ve seen across the entire franchise, and could easily have been a cinema release instead of a TV special. My only minor complaint is that the iconic city pop / jazz soundtrack has been dropped in favour of slightly non-descript hard rock.
It’s a shame that this was the end of the original run for the City Hunter anime, although it’s nice that they finished on a high.
Fist of the North Star: Raoh Gaiden Junai-hen (2006)
The first of five FotNS films from the 2000s which seem to be generally less-seen, but well regarded by fans, this one is a retelling of Souther's arc from the original series, seeing Kenshiro fighting to take down the self-styled holy emperor who is hell-bent on building a pyramid-like mausoleum using slave labour, while receiving unexpected assistance from adversary Raoh. I actually never made it far enough into the TV anime to see this part, so I can't be entirely sure how faithful it is, but as a self-contained film, I think it works surprisingly well. You couldn't really show it to anyone unfamiliar with the series (you really at least need to know the story up to Raoh's introduction), but you certainly get all the main themes and spectacle one would associate with FotNS, in a narrative that feels complete and not over-stuffed.
This actually made me curious to try the TV series again sometime. I got burnt out on it around episode 40 or so, just due to the repetitive nature of the early episodes, but seeing this made me more curious about 'the good part' which comes later, particularly as Raoh seems to be a more complex character than I was originally giving the series credit for.
I keep meaning to watch Around the World with Willy Fog it looked so fun! 
