The premise for the City Hunter show is to show a detective, Joe Saeba, who is the best at what he does. He's also a skirtchasing boy at heart which often gets him into trouble and limits his employment opportunities. The show was a long running television series in Japan with a number of TV movies such as the ones in this dvd package. Joe is assisted by his secretary who somehow is able to summon a large mallet out of thin air to smash him with when he starts acting like a teenage boy in heat. This also keeps the show from taking itself too seriously and adds comic relief.

In City Hunter 4: Bay City Wars & Million Dollar Conspiracy, detective Joe Saeba, has his hands full once again. In Bay City Wars, Joe and company must stop a madman with access to nuclear weapons from blowing up Washington DC. In Million Dollar Conspiracy, Joe takes a bodyguard case where he'll get a million dollars, as well as some fun time with a hot blonde, if he can keep her alive as a crazy tries to kill her. In both shows, nothing is so clear-cut as it first seems and Joe's first rate abilities, not to mention his lecherous ways, are put to the test.

The show is a light hearted look at a struggling, but talented, private detective in Japan. I thought the voice acting, in both languages, was good and the story enjoyable. No, it wasn't the best anime style used in current practices but even for it's age, it had a lot to offer. You can't say that for every anime dvd release from shows going back about 15 years. As such, I think this one rates a Recommended status.

Picture: The picture is presented in full frame 1.33:1 ratio. The movie was made in 1988 and shows some of it's age but looks pretty good nonetheless. The dvd transfer was solid with few compression artifacts.

Sound: You get the choice of listening to the stereo track in either English, English with song subtitles, or Japanese with English subtitles. To be fair, the English dub was slightly better here in my opinion and my usual bias is towards the original language. The subtitles were not simply dubtitles either with subtle differences between them and the dub track.

Extras: The main extra was an episode of the original television series "Lady Vanish: Boutique of the Shadows" which was, I believe, the second episode of the entire series. Pretty cool extra. The other extras were some trailers to other ADV releases

Final Thoughts: The show was fun to watch and the series continues to grow on me. I think it's fun as a sly look at spy movies as much as television detective shows and releasing it in full season boxed sets would be a great idea. Sure, the anime style was limited and it didn't have any real extras (aside from the 1 episode of the show) but I liked this one and noticed new jokes each time I watched it.