Review of City Hunter

City Hunter is considered a classic from the 80's but in my opinion is too overrated. I'll justify my opinion on this review. Visuals: 1) classic visual style for the 80's; this is a great thing 2) there are several animation mistakes that are capable of breaking immersion 3) most male characters are copy paste, design-wise Sound: 1) every single seiyuu is a legend in the japanese voice acting industry. The big majority of them had already worked together in many other titles like Lupin III, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Urusei Yatsura, Ranma 1/2, ... The chemistry between the seiyuus is very noticeable and theirperformances are incredibly solid. Despite this, Ryo is still an insuferable character. I'll explain why later.
2) The soundtrack is also very 80's and again this is a good thing, in my opinion. However, the 2nd OP is way worse than the 1st OP

Story and characters:
1) I really enjoyed the 1st episode. City Hunter made one heck of an impression on me. However, I did not enjoy any other episode afterwards. 1 enjoyable episode out of 51... yikes.
2) One of the big reasons why this was a chore to watch, has to do with the repetitiveness, predictability and pretty much copy and paste of previous episodes. Ryo goes mokkori (which is the sound effect for a boner, btw) mode for a woman that needs his help, Ryo sexually harasses and assaults the woman, stuff happens and Ryo finishes the job, woman falls in love with Ryo. This is City Hunter in a nutshell. Each episode is the materialization of a dumbass male fantasy where the more of a douchebag you are, the more girls you'll get.
3) sexual harassment was not, is not and will never be funny
4) Ryo is the main character and he is impossible to tolerate. He's a clear failed attempt at creating another lecherous, cool but kind hearted man like Lupin III. Lupin III has charisma, goes through character development and has charisma. Ryo from the 1st episode is the same exact annoying waste of space from episode 51. The only good thing about him is his voice actor.
5) Whenver the anime tries to be all serious and dramatic, it fails so hard at it. Everything gets rushed, not enough "content" to be emotional over, no sense of danger, ... terrible, awful writting. As an example and without spoiling things, I'll mention episode 5. There's a character that we would consider important that will leave the story. We're meant to feel shock and sadness. Instead, we feel confusion because they way it's handled feels like nothing more than a poor excuse to replace that character with another because Ryo needs a bigger female presence in his life. Unfortunately episode 5 isn't the only case of rubbish writting in City Hunter.
6) There's plenty of references throughout the episodes about other animes (Urusei Yatsura, Lupin III, etc), hollywood (Jaws, Arnold Schwarzenegger), literature (Jekyll and Hyde), etc.

Unfortunately for me, City Hunter was horrible to watch. Too repetitive, an annoying main character, uninteresting plot, ... as good as the old school visuals and soundtrack are and the phenomenal job that the seiyuus did, I didn't enjoy this at all.

It gets a 3/10 from me.