実写版CITY HUNTERの概要
Konnichiwa! I am your host Mayu for 2AM OTTACK! In this podcast, we talk all about anime, manga,
movies, music, and history through our distinct perspectives as a born-and-raised Japanese
non-otaku, that's me, and an American anime fan. That's me. Welcome! Today, we are going to talk
about live-action CITY HUNTER. It's been released last month on Netflix. Cisco, could you explain
briefly what the movie is about? Sure. So, I never saw the original CITY HUNTER, but the live-action
film is about a guy and his partner who are sort of like freelance detectives, I guess, in Shinjuku,
yeah? And the partner gets killed, so he teams up, I mean, spoiler alert, but it happens right
in the very beginning, so he teams up with the partner's younger sister to investigate a powerful
drug that's making people into sort of monsters. And the main guy is phenomenally strong and also
just really cool, and a very good shot. I hesitate to call him a sniper because I don't use a sniper
rifle very much of the time, but he's very accurate with shooting guns, so in addition to being like
strong and sexy and a huge pervert, he's also very good with a gun, and they solve a mystery
together. It's a little bit of like a buddy cop film, but it's such a
throwback to the 1980s. The story's actually set in the modern day, right? That was one of
the things they did that was interesting with the film. That felt a little bit weird to me,
because the time is set in 2024, I think, but how the characters are dressed or how the main
character behaved was way back, around the time we were born, like 40 years ago.
So I felt a little bit... I couldn't decide which time they were trying to set it, because
they were using smartphones and everything. It was a little bit confusing at the beginning,
but yeah, they brought both time periods, like a combination, to make it work.
Yeah, I mean, it struck me as weirdly similar to Extremely Inappropriate, which is another Netflix...
It's not a Netflix show. It's a Japanese TV show that Netflix acquired about a guy time-traveling
from the 1980s to the 2020s, and this movie had the same kind of feeling, like somehow the plot
and characters had time-traveled, and the setting was in the 2020s, but everyone's behavior and
mannerisms were from the 1980s. And to me, it actually worked. Maybe I'd been primed to
appreciate 1980s culture by having just watched Extremely Inappropriate, but I enjoyed the way
that they sort of shamelessly took these 1980s sensibilities and just plopped them into a modern
setting, and it made me nostalgic for the 1980s as a cultural time. I don't know, I kind of grew up
watching anime from that era, and even in the character design and the sort of city as a main
character, it reminded me of other anime from the 80s that I really liked. So I think those elements
of it really appealed to me. It definitely felt like a movie that was made for people of my
generation who can be nostalgic about the 80s and be like, oh, wasn't that such a great time?
Yeah, it was definitely confusing for me right after watching Extremely Inappropriate,
because it felt like the same setting, same thing. But yeah, I was wondering,
for people who didn't grow up in Japan, how would people feel about main characters' characters?
キャラクターと文化の違い
Yeah, that's a good question. I think, I don't know. I mean, as an American,
there are plenty of sort of perverted chauvinist guys in America too, and it's less socially
acceptable here than it was in Japan in the 80s. But I don't think that type of character is unknown
or not understood. I think the juxtaposition between him being cool and him being a pervert
is more shocking to American viewers, whereas that doesn't seem like a huge contradiction
in the context of 1980s Japan. Those two things being true at the same time isn't
that hard to imagine in the 80s in Japan. But I think an American character would have gone
to greater lengths to embrace one or the other. I don't know. I'm saying that, but I'm not sure
I believe it. I think maybe it would have been natural if it was an American character too. It's
easy to understand that. Interesting. Yeah. Well, the actor who played the main character was
great. The actual actor really wanted to play the role for a long time, and his dream came true. So
he was very ready for his role and all the action and everything. He struck me as a person who
really understood the source material and therefore was able to act it out in a really
good way. Sort of the same vibes as Henry Cavill playing Geralt of Rivia. You could just tell,
oh man, this actor really gets this role and is really leaning hard into what it's supposed to be
about. And yeah, I think he was great. They nailed the casting with him. Yeah, I think it's a great
way to cast those characters because they already loved the material and then they read the old
comic series or did the whole video game. So they have a great sense of what the character is like
when they have to act. Totally. Originally, it became manga first in 1985, and it was released
as anime in 1987. So between then and now, there are a couple of movies and stuff. And we've never,
we had never watched any of those. And this was our first ever City Hunter exposure. And I was
glad that I finally watched it because when I was a kid, there was no way I watched this because of
how the story works. It's too mature. Not in this live action movie, but it seems like a lot of
something about drugs or like a little bit nude in anime and stuff. So there was no way I would
have watched it, but it was fun. It was funny in the movie. What did you think about
the dance he did? Saebaryo did. Oh god, I'm trying to remember. What part of the film did he do the
dance? Well, he was on the stage. It was like just underwear and then like saying,
mokkori. I was like, how is this acceptable for worldwide?
Yeah, that felt like a really Japanese part. That's something that I don't think if this had
been like an American remake of the movie, they would just cut that scene and be like,
we're not doing it. Or they would have made it more serious and less silly. If they really were
like, oh yeah, he's a Chippendales model, it would have been like a Magic Mike sequence or
something. But I don't think they would have had him with like the props in the same way.
It felt like it didn't fit. I didn't understand why they had that sequence other than it must
have been in the source material. And so they were like, I guess we got to do this guys.
But yeah, that part was weird. I thought the section later where he's got the costume on
歌舞伎町の思い出
at the cosplay event and with the giant horse head, that part to me had a similar sort of feeling
to it, but I think it worked a little bit better. And maybe the whole point of the earlier dance is
to kind of prep you for that scene to be like, oh, he's really used to this. I mean, I don't know.
I really think it must be in one of the comics or one of the shows. And it was just such a
touchstone, they couldn't get rid of it or something. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I think a lot
of stuff happened in Tokyo, Shinjuku, and especially Kabukicho. Kabukicho is in Shinjuku,
which I've been maybe only once or twice in my life, even though I lived in Tokyo.
I didn't go there because this is like a bias for me, but it's like a sketchy place to go.
Like, it's not like a, you know, regular girl go on this, you know, you need something,
wanting something. But it's like, it's the kind of place I would have avoided.
Yeah, I've been to Kabukicho a bunch of times. I remember going there. I remember being there
pretty young, maybe like 18, some time around then. Anyway, I remember walking through Kabukicho
and lots of people, you know, this must've been in the either the late nineties or the early
2000s and lots of people being like, massage, massage, and having to be like, no, no, no,
that's not what I'm here for. And I think at that point, I must not have understood where I was or
like what type of a neighborhood it was. But I definitely remember that sort of first encounter
with Kabukicho. And I went back a couple of years ago after having played one of the Yakuza games.
I've been playing those since, again, maybe like the nineties or the early 2000s. Whenever they
started coming out, I remember playing the first one when it came out in America.
And those games have always made me really like Kabukicho. Like they're, they bring it to life
so wonderfully that going there in real life and being like, oh, look, I'm at like this place in
the game is a lot of fun. Um, but the last time I went back, it had clearly been like very cleaned
up. Um, there's still a lot of, it was, it was a right, right before Tokyo Olympic games. Yeah.
This was maybe 2017, 18, sometime around that. And yeah, so they had, they had clearly like
given it a makeover for the Olympics to try to be like, Japan is not a sketchy country. Please
don't think that. Um, and there were a lot of VR places. There were still a lot of host bars. Like
they, they seem to close a lot of the hostess bars, not all of them, but a lot. And then
there, but all the host clubs were still open. Um, and I guess there's just like less hanky-panky
or chome chome or whatever going on inside the host bars. So those were seen as like acceptable.
Whereas the hostess clubs and the Fuzoku and the other kind of like really shady stuff that,
that seems to have gotten kind of shut down. And what's replaced, it seems to have been like
video games, which, you know, I'm down for, but I didn't go into any of the VR spots, but there
are now like a lot of those, or there were in, there were five years ago, the last time I was
there. Um, so it feels like the neighborhood has, has changed significantly than what it used to be
like. Um, and I don't know, I like having the nostalgia of reliving the old Kabukicho, the
映画と歌舞伎町の描写
bubble era Kabukicho via the Yakuza series of games and also through City Hunter.
Yeah. Um, yeah, you could, you could still see the old time Kabukicho in the film. I feel like.
Yeah. Which was weird because it was set in 2024. And yet
like a lot of these shots seemed like they were from, yeah, 30, at least 30 years ago.
Yeah. And then like, other than like those scenes, like I noticed about, uh, uh, what do you call
Keiji-ban? Police? No, Keiji-ban is like, there's a board to tell other people the information.
This is the time that there was no cell phone. Right. The message board that's out in the city.
I mean, I don't know what to call it. It's like, it's, it's a chalkboard in the movie, right?
Chalkboard. I think people used to do it in like Tokyo and this stuff, but, and then
that's the one, like one thing, again, like confused me was like, what, who would use this
in 2024? But I think it's iconic thing in the like anime and the manga, and they couldn't get rid of
it. Yeah, it must be. I mean, they tried to make it seem like it had been abandoned or other people
weren't really using it, or it was like something somebody just forgot to take down. Like it looked
like it was really in the, like an out of the way corner of wherever, but yeah, that was a huge
anachronism where it was like, okay, I guess you have to keep this, but I'm sure they struggled
with that choice. And, uh, the ending theme song is the same as animation, which is Get Wild by
TM Network. What did you think about the song? Well, so I had been aware that City Hunter was
an anime from the nineties, or I guess in the nineties, I'd been aware that it existed as an
anime. I'd seen it, you know, in different, I don't know, stores and stuff. Like I knew that
it existed, but the only thing I knew about it was the theme song. And ironically, the version
of Get Wild that I know is one that I found on a best of 1990 something like anime song CD that I
bought, you know, deep in Reseda in the mid nineties. And so I was familiar with the theme
song, but not with the actual show or manga for a long time. And the version I knew was a cover
by a female singer. So when we got to the end of the movie and they started playing the song,
I was like, ugh, why is this version so bad? And you were like, it's the original guy singing it.
And I was like, oh, that's actually, that's cool. But I'm so used to the version that I know from
the like nineties remake that I was like, that one's better. I didn't know about the remake
cover version. I only knew the original version. And then like, it's, you know,
it was three guys member and one of them became a big, big music producer later in his life.
And he made so many hit songs in late nineties to early twenties. Yeah. 20, 20,000. Yeah.
So it was nostalgic a little bit for me, even though I didn't know much about this
anime and the manga, but I already knew the song. I think interestingly, like the very,
very first fight sequence that happens in the building at the start of the movie is like
kind of the best part of the whole film. Um, I mean, the rest of it was still good, but I,
maybe it's because that's where there's the sort of most crossover with like the Yakuza gameplay.
アクションシーンの比較
He's in like a office building, just like beating people up with all of the different
furniture in the office building. And it made me realize watching that scene made me realize I was
like, oh, either this is inspired by the Yakuza series and they're intentionally borrowing things
from that, or the Yakuza series was intentionally borrowing from City Hunter. And so thinking about
the ways in which those two things have probably influenced each other was really interesting.
And I mean, maybe my knowledge of 80s action movies in Japan is just too shallow. And actually
like that was in all of them, but I think that's, that's, that's probably the case. Yeah.
That fight sequence is great at the beginning. It was that part really stood out to me as being
like, especially awesome and fun. It was to me, I don't watch much action movies, but to me,
it was, it reminded of like Jackie Chan kind of actions, like some like impossible,
like move to like, you know, beat enemies and then like funny at the same time. Yeah. I think it had
a lot of sort of Jackie Chan style to it too. I would agree with that. Right. Some comic in it.
不適切な表現の考察
Yeah. Oh yeah. We wanted to do word of the day. What shall we do today?
Oh, I wasn't prepared. You know, I don't think we're going to do an episode about
extremely inappropriate. So I think our word of the day should be futekisetsu.
Oh, okay. I see. I saw you're going to say chome chome.
I don't think they use chome chome at all in this movie.
No, I mean, nobody uses like, yeah, they should have.
I mean, chome chome is a good one too. That's a word I didn't know until we watched futekisetsu
ni wa hodo ga aru, or extremely inappropriate. Like I had never heard that before. So maybe
that's a good one to do also. Yeah, but nobody uses it anymore.
Not a bad reason to do that. It's a pretty dead word.
Yeah. All right. Well, let's start with futekisetsu and we'll add in chome chome as a bonus.
Okay. All right. Go ahead. Oh, I'm explaining it. Okay. So futekisetsu
means inappropriate. And I almost feel like that word itself kind of captures
this fascination with 1980s culture that seems to be happening maybe in Japan or maybe in America,
maybe everywhere right now, that in the modern world, like propriety is,
God, I can't even remember saying this, but like our attention to not offending people is so high
that we're pretty careful about what we say and do. And I think there's some desire to like return
to a time when people were not as careful about those things and things that we currently see as
inappropriate, which like were also totally inappropriate in the 80s, but more socially
acceptable were around. So I think that's why I think both the main character in City Hunter and
the guys in Extremely Inappropriate are both futekisetsu at different points. And that being
part of their appeal in the modern day is interesting to me. Why don't you do chome chome
言葉の追加
because obviously I don't really understand it. I didn't quite understand when I was a kid,
but people on TV shows used to say chome chome a lot. And I'm like, I figure like something like
kissing or like being intimate or something, but apparently it means like having sex. But like
Japanese people don't want to say having sex, so they replaced the word with like chome chome
which is like when you say it, you make X letter with your two point fingers. Chome chome. And I
don't know why it's X. Maybe it's from sex. I don't know. I doubt it. I think it's probably
from like batsu, like no good. It's not something. Well, then why do you get excited about it?
I don't know. I mean, to me, the English translation for chome chome is either,
I think in Extremely Inappropriate, they often translate it as either hanky panky or rumpy
pumpy. And I can't even say rumpy pumpy without laughing. That's not, I've never even heard anyone
say that. It's immediately clear what it means, but it's like embarrassingly, I don't know,
out of style to try to talk that way. Like even hanky panky really sounds like, I don't know who
would use that word. Like I was going to say, Oh, it sounds like a thing people would say like a long
time ago. Like in like, but then I couldn't think of a decade, like the fifties, like the twenties.
Like when did people say hanky panky? Like maybe never. Cause it's just so like extremely uncool
that no one ever said it. And then rumpy pumpy is like, if anything, even worse, like, it sounds
like, I don't know, like a grade school or trying to like describe what sex is like, it, it just,
it's like, it's like cringe to even think those words. So in a sense, in a sense, it's perfect.
Well, like, yeah. But if you're saying everyone on TV in Japan in the eighties said chome chome,
like all the time, I don't think I, I, I cannot picture celebrities in America saying the words
hanky panky or rumpy pumpy, like frequently without just getting like canceled for like
serial, like, like just patheticness. I don't know. Hmm. Well, that's a, yeah. I don't know.
You know what, you know, I thought now I came up with a good word of the day.
Okay, great. We'll delete this other part. Yeah, I might. Yeah.
Let's try. Word of the day is could be more quality. Oh, way to make it more awkward.
Yeah, that's a good one. Because like, that's the first line he says in the live action movie.
Right? I think so. Yeah. Something like, oh, he keeps talking about the girl in the sweater. Yeah.
He sings more gory, more gory, more gory, or something like that. Because he's like,
he is supposed to be on watch. But like, he's like, you know, using a spyglass and watching
like girls in like a bikini or something. Yeah. Which is totally unrealistic. They wouldn't be
wearing bikinis if they were really in an onsen. I don't know if I was on someone's
swimming place or something. I don't know. Well, I mean, okay, irrelevant for sure. But yes.
But mockery is not like a outdated word.
True. I don't know how often people use in Japan. And definitely like girls don't use that often
compared to guys, I think. Yeah, I'm not totally sure I know the meaning of mockery.
Mockery means like a part, some part, it doesn't have to be
the private part, but it kind of like...
Bulge?
Like, what do you call?
It definitely means bulge, huh?
Bulge? Okay.
Bulge. B-U-L-G-E. Like...
But unless there's another word for this, I'm pretty sure it means boner.
It doesn't have to be boner. Because like, okay, let's say there's a like a heel.
キャラクターの多面性
Heel. H-I-E-L-L. Heel. And if heel is like really like standing out a little bit,
then you can say mockery still. There was no English translation for that part.
Yeah, I think they didn't even bother. Or they just put it as mockery. M-O-K-K-O-R-I. And they're
like, we're not going to tell you what this means.
Interesting. I mean, like, it would be so hard to translate.
Yeah, it would be really weird if they kept translating as bulge.
Yeah.
Especially because like, that's not... Yeah, it's not like a... It would have made it more confusing.
Yeah.
I see. And I know this. I learned this when I lived in Vancouver, like a long time ago.
Mockery means necklace in Korean.
Necklace in Korean.
That's extremely unfortunate.
That's what I thought too. Really? I was like, mockery? Yeah. Different meaning, same sound.
Got it. So that's definitely not a loanword then.
One of the words that existed before Japanese people came from Korea.
Yeah. How did it happen? Like, it was supposed to be necklace. And how like,
when the word came into Japan, like, people got it the wrong way.
No, I feel like that's what I'm saying. That's got to be like an Ainu word or something that
they wrote from a different language. Like, that can't have come from the same place.
I don't know. I have no idea. But yeah, I think that's a very... How can I say it?
The word describes haiba pretty well.
Yeah.
Why? What's the pause?
I mean...
Yes, that word describes him pretty well. Boner. That's like the whole movie in one word.
But that's how he is, right? Suga?
I think someone's getting lost in translation here. Like, to me...
He is a pervert. But to be like, that's all there is to his character, really. Just boner.
That's him in a nutshell. It seems like a little bit of an oversimplification.
Okay, I have to say, even though he's a pervert, he shows the other side, a cool side of him.
Right.
In anime, it's very obvious because the voice actor, he's a very famous voice actor,
Kamiya Akira, I think. But when he's a comic and a pervert, he uses a really high tone voice.
But when he's serious, his voice gets really low and it sounds very cool. And the actor in the
show did a great job doing the same thing. Yeah. I mean, I think that's what I was saying
in the beginning, is I don't think very many American shows or just entertainment products
in general have characters who try to hit both of those notes at the same time. You're either just
cool all the time, or you're just a comic relief pervert all the time. But I don't think there are
a lot of cases of people being both at the same time. It's hard to imagine Dick Tracy being a
serious private investigator and then sometimes being just a total weirdo pervert. That wouldn't
work. Or James Bond is a cool secret spy, except for he gets in the bedroom and then he's a teenage
boy. It just wouldn't work. Maybe it's for Japanese women. I don't know. A guy made this
manga, so I'm not sure. But it could be an attractive aspect.
To have two different faces. Oh, I see. Because it's such an omote and ura culture,
the idea of the front and the back is so important. Maybe. Yeah. Usually he's a pervert,
but when it comes to something important, he can do the job. Got it. So the ura is him being cool.
シティーハンターとヤクザゲームの魅力
Yeah. Because you can't tell which side is true himself.
Right. Totally. For me, it was the opposite way around. You look cool on your face,
but you're actually a giant pervert on the inside. Oh, I see.
And I was like, who would find that attractive? But I get where you're coming from. If it's the
other way around, you act silly all the time, but then you actually are cool when it counts.
That makes sense as an attractive quality. Yeah. Someone you can't hate, even though you try.
Because he's too cool? Yeah.
Got it. I should work on that.
Okay. All right. Anything you'd like to add?
Nope. But if you watch City Hunter and you like it, I can't recommend the Yakuza games enough.
Hmm. Or Judgment, the more updated version.
Oh, Judgment. The Kimidoku one.
Yeah, the Kimidoku one. But that one, he kind of doesn't have the silly side. That one's a
little bit more like he's serious all the time. Oh my god, he's too serious.
Yeah, he didn't allow himself to be too funny. Yeah.
Because he's too cool. It's still a good game, but I think the
best one far and away is Yakuza 0, because it's set during the bubble era. And that's like the
most fun time to experience Kabukicho. That's a very weird game.
In a time machine that takes you back to the late 80s.
And in like lots of minigames you have to do. Yes.
Like singing, right? Singing. Yeah. Oh, you know, I mean, we're going on
this topic then. Like, yeah, the music in Yakuza 0, the karaoke that you can sing is amazing and
really fun. And like a car racing, like a toy car racing
minigame. That minigame was also great. That's a thing that doesn't exist in America. So,
I mean, maybe it does, and it's a subculture. I just don't know. But
that is also a great part of that game. Yes. Yeah.
Talk about having like a child's side as your ura.
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So check those games too if you're interested in
Shinjuku or Kabuki culture back in like 80s, 90s. Yeah. Kabukicho culture.
Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode. Don't forget to subscribe and follow
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