City Hunter follows a pervy private eye named Ryo Saeba, as he’s joined by the sister of his partner who’s killed by a shady organization pushing a new potent drug in Shinjuku. The film is now streaming on Netflix.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Plot summary
Private Eye Ryo Saeba and his partner Hideyuki Makimura, work alongside to rescue a girl named Kurumi. Ryo, also feared as the City Hunter in the criminal underworld, beats up the men, but Kurumi escapes.
She drops vials of a drug that Makimura picks up. He goes to the dinner he had promised his sister Kaori for her birthday.
There, he’s rammed by a truck, and the driver, under the influence of the same power-enhancing drug that Kurumi was under, kills Makimura.
The former police officer asks his friend City Hunter to look after his sister. Kaori swears revenge on those responsible for her brother’s death and she asks Ryo for help.
He refuses to help her and repeatedly asks her to go home, but she is really persistent. He eventually lets her join in his investigation and they soon find Kurumi.
They give her refuge in his house and later accompany her as bodyguards at a cosplay event. She is taken by the Union, a shady organization behind the peddling of the drug and the murder of Makimura.
Ryo and Kaori work together to get to the bottom of it all and track down Kurumi’s location, before fighting hordes of armed Union guys and rescuing Kurumi.
Ending explained:
Kaori’s revenge
Kaori’s biological father was in the Union, and when he had her, he wanted out. He shared this with Kunio Konno, who ratted him out.
Consequently, he was made a test subject and injected with the drug. In a violent outburst, he attacked Inspector Nobuyuki Makimura, who had to kill him.
Failing to find where the drug came from, Nobuyuki took in the man’s daughter, i.e., Kaori, and raised her as his own.
His son, died after he got his hands on the drugs as part of his investigation. He was killed at the orders of Konno too, who now leads the Union’s branch in Japan.
Kaori swears revenge on those who deprived her of her brother. In City Hunter‘s climax, Konno further breaks her by revealing he led to her biological father’s death as well.
She gets the chance to shoot Konno down, but she can’t go through with it. Her brother’s killer does end up dead though. After the ordeal, she moves into Ryo Saeba’s house as his new partner.
The Union & the drug
The Union is a Central American organization which uses Shinjuku as an advertisement space for a new drug that can change the game.
The drug is called Angel Dust, used in warfare before it was banned because it was so inhumane. It makes people violent with a sudden surge in their power and athletic abilities.
However, subjects die as soon as their violent outburst is over. Only one subject manages to survive it and use the abilities it offers without any of the side effects. She is Kurumi, a cosplayer who goes by the name “Milk.”
She is kidnapped as incorporating her DNA into the drug will eliminate the side effects and then the drug can be sold worldwide for warfare.
Konno takes the research data and kills the CEO and scientists of Lore, the subsidiary of Seta Pharmaceuticals which also serves as the Union’s front for activities in Japan.
He grabs Kurumi and plans on boarding a helicopter out of Shinjuku, but Ryo Saeba shoots down all his armed guards and a juiced-up henchman called Brown Bear.
He and Kaori confront Konno at the terrace and as he goes to kill them, Konno dies himself, as the bomb in his neck is activated by the Union members in the helicopter.