Bounty Hunter: The Hard

Have you ever heard or read about this anime? No? Well, me neither until I randomly found it in the recommended videos section on YouTube. It's a very obscure OVA from 1996 based on a possibly even more obscure manga by the same author of the more known Riki-Oh. Oddly enough, I found it dubbed and the dubbing was good quality with well known and top notch voice actors.

It's made by the famous J.C. Staff, a very renowned animation studio with plenty of resources, so the art and animation (which are in full 1990s style) are good. Character design is cool and the sketches ... of New York City, where the story is set, are realistic and detailed.

The plot is quite simple but it works just fine for a 45 minutes OVA: it's a crime story. The main character, Kenji Hado, is a Japanese bounty hunter living in NYC who struggles every day to earn some money and get by. One day he steps into an apparently easy case that will lead him into serious trubles.

There isn't much character development but you can't expect it anyway from a short anime. By the way "not much" is still better than nothing.

Bounty Hunter: The Hard is an enjoyable, easy to watch anime which can still entertain you even if you don't have great expectations, and this made me think it deserved a solid 7 out of 10 overall.

Simply put, Bounty Hunter is an OVA heavily inspired by classic American action. Cobra (1986) is probably the closest work to it and in terms of other animated works, Kenichi Sonoda's Riding Bean and Gunsmith Cats are good matches. It is very much a product of its time and does contain some dialogue/depictions that would not fly today but it adds to the gritty atmosphere of the main location featured, that is, New York City's South Bronx.

Considering how short the film is, I don't really want to dive too deeply into it, however, what I do want to say is if you miss the ... days gone by of good ol' fashioned action and all its over-the-top chase scenes, firefights, and questionable continuity, then you have come to the right place! Bounty Hunter does little to stand out but it is quite solid in terms of animation, character designs, background art, music, action, and it tells a decent story. The film, however, nails what it's trying to go for in terms of atmosphere and it's not afraid to point directly at the anguish plaguing the urban settings Hard (the film's bounty hunter and main character) finds himself scrounging for details in. South Bronx feels like a character in and of itself, making the film a somewhat immersive experience especially if you've ever had the pleasure of walking through NYC, having to tip-toe around broken glass and getting a whiff of the city's "unique odors". It's all here and hopefully this overview inspires you to give it a shot.