A young girl stands on top of a building in Shinjuku as she receives a call from her handler. The handler congratulates the girl, known as "Glass Heart" with a job well done regarding her latest kill, which her handler refers to as her 50th. Glass Heart recounts the day’s events. She had just killed a man sitting on a park bench with a silenced gun. As she was leaving the park, a small girl runs in with some ice cream and Glass Heart realizes that she has just killed the father of a young girl. With that she jumps off the building, impaling her chest on the iron spiked fence below.
At the same time, Kaori Makimura is running late for an appointment to take wedding photos with her husband, the City Hunter Ryo Saeba . When she sees a girl about to be run over by a truck, she jumps and pushes the girl out of the way before the truck hits her. A short while later, she is declared brain dead and her heart is harvested for organ donation, as she had a donor card on her when she died. However, the Organization, needing a heart for their assassin, stealing Kaori’s heart while it is in transit and implants it into Glass Heart’s Body.
Glass Heart is transported to Taiwan, where she remains in a coma for a year. During that time, she is haunted by the images of the people she has killed, along with the images of the donor Kaori as well as Ryo Saeba of whom she does not know. She wakes up after one year to find out who these people are. She travels back to Shinjuku, and after several close events, manages to track down the City Hunter . He has since retired from his role since his wife’s death. Upon finding that Glass Heart is the recipient of Kaori’s heart, Ryo decides to adopt her as his daughter, and is also given a name provided by her real father: Xiang Ying . The former mercenary now tries to help the former assassin move on with a normal life in the outside world.
The "Kaori Controversy"
When Tsukasa Hojo announced "Angel Heart" as his new project and the fact that Kaori would be killed, there was a considerable backlash from traditional City Hunter fans who wanted Kaori to be kept alive to maintain the City Hunter dynamic, and that the stories involved would not have the same calibre of City Hunter without Kaori. Because of this, Hojo stated in the first volume of Angel Heart that the events in Angel Heart take place in an "alternative universe". This "Alternate Universe" has certain "changes" from the original "City Hunter" universe and that in the original City Hunter Universe, Kaori is still very much alive.
These "Alternate Universe" changes include the following:
- Kasumi Asoh does not appear in Angel Heart.
- Although there is a character named Miki who appears later in this series, she is not the same Miki who was Umibozu’s partner in City Hunter. Like the original Miki, the Angel Heart version is also an orphan who is later taken in by Umibozu. As well, in Angel Heart, it has been stated that Umibozu has been owner of the Cat’s Eye cafe for several years before the series began.
- Reika Nogami also does not appear in "Angel Heart" although it has been suggested that she was assassinated by Glass Heart prior to the anime. This puts a personal touch to Saeko’s quest to have Xiang Ying live a normal life.
- The apartment that Ryo lives in is not the same as the red brick apartment in City Hunter.
- The circumstances of Ryo’s first encounter with Kaori is not the same as in City Hunter.
- The circumstances of how Ryo started becoming the City Hunter are different compared to the original anime.
- The circumstances of the death of Hideyuki Makimura (Kaori’s brother) is different than the original anime or manga (both the City Hunter anime and manga had Hideyuki killed by unrelated groups).
- Umibozu is not as awkward with appearances and will even engage in firefights wearing an apron instead of military fatigues. His attitude towards Ryo is less hostile than it was in City Hunter, and he is a bit more emotional, to the point of crying in several episodes. His fear of cats is also not evident in this anime.
- Sayuri Tachiki, Kaori’s biological sister is physically different than in City Hunter and made to resemble Kaori. As well, in this anime, Sayuri has never been able to see her younger sister and instead meets up with Ryo after Kaori’s death. This is in contrast to City Hunter in which Sayuri meets Kaori in person. In City Hunter, Sayuri leaves Japan for a news editor’s job in New York City. In Angel Heart, she comes from New York City where she is a news editor.
- The manga makes mention of the an event that took place 22 years earlier, specifically 1979. It also mentions the Sino-Vietnamese War and the Cambodian Civil War (which ended in 1975). This would mean that the manga and anime is meant to take place in 2001, so it is quite unusual to see a third-generation iMac in Kaori’s room in the anime (this most likely means that the anime is supposed to take place in the present day). Also, Kaori’s listed age at death is at 28, so if she died in 2000 in reference to the manga, then her supposed birthdate is 1972. This conflicts with the birthdate as mentioned in the City Hunter anime: March 31, 1967 (1965 in the manga). Also, Ryo mentions his age as ten years older than Kaori. By Angel Heart Canon, this would mean that his birthdate is 1962. But in a City Hunter episode, Ryo is given a birthdate of March 26, 1959 by Kaori, her decree that Ryo is 30 years old at that time (the episode was aired in 1989), which means that Ryo is obviously not 10 years older in that series.
Even so, many fans of Angel Heart feel that this is a true sequel to City Hunter despite the differences. Some feel that this anime has a more "human" feel than the original and that the stories in Angel Heart involve themes such as emotional healing, maturity, and dealing with the loss of loved ones.
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