Yasuyuki Okamura -- SUPER GIRL

Along with the usual anime for this season, the main presentation at my anime buddy's house yesterday was the 2019 anime film version of "City Hunter: Shinjuku Private Eyes". I was surprised to find out that this was actually the first time that the anime got the motion picture treatment after three seasons on the telly back in the late 1980s...even after live-action versions coming out, including the one with Jackie Chan (which I will probably not see).

It was very entertaining with Ryo Saeba（冴羽獠）, Kaori Makimura（槇村香）and the rest teaming up to fight some 21st-century evil seemingly emerging from "Terminator", and that included some special guests in the form of the "Cat's Eye" sisters. Plus, the home front of Shinjuku got that update with the Godzilla in East Shinjuku and the new shopping complex at the south end of JR Shinjuku Station which got built after I'd left Japan permanently almost a decade ago. Of course, those gargantuan hammers also returned to set Ryo straight.

One of the other aspects from the movie was that it being a love letter to "City Hunter" fans, plenty of the themes and insert songs from the original three seasons popped up here and there including the arguably most famous one, the kickass "Get Wild" by TM Network, and my personal favourite, the very first opening theme, "Ai yo Kienai de"（愛よ消えないで）by Kahoru Kohiruimaki（小比類巻かほる）which seems to be as much a welcome to Shinjuku of the 1980s as it is to the world of being a City Hunter.

I think one other song that popped up briefly was "SUPER GIRL" by funky singer-songwriter Yasuyuki Okamura（岡村靖幸）which served as the first ending theme for the second season of "City Hunter". Yes, indeed, about a quarter-century before anime fans got served up with the amazing "Viva Namida"（ビバナミダ）from "Space Dandy", Okamura released "SUPER GIRL" as his 6th single in April 1988. Not quite as epic as "Get Wild" or as personally beloved as "Ai wo Kienai de", the city funk and joy of living in Bubble Era Tokyo is still fun to the ears, and wouldn't it be something for the fans to run all over West Shinjuku while listening to this one?

With Nobuyuki Shimizu（清水信之）handling the good-times-in-Shinjuku arrangement, the lyrics of "SUPER GIRL" read like Ryo's super-charged libido desperately trying to bring in his latest beautiful and endangered client, much to Kaori's anger, jealousy and... hammers of varying weights (usually 100 tonnes). It's just a pity that the song got no higher than No. 92 on Oricon. "SUPER GIRL" was also a track on Okamura's 2nd album "Date" from March 1988, reaching No. 42 on the album charts.

Feel free to witness the buffet of hammers flying here.