To help you maximize your enjoyment, I give you a list of which episodes are good/bad. Which ones I think you must watch, and which ones you can but don't need to, and which ones I think you should not.
[++] Excellent: You should watch these. Satisfaction guaranteed:
Ep 01~14, Ep 32~41
[+] Moderate: You can safely check these out if feeling curious or have enough time. But lower your expectations. They are in no way perfect, so you might feel "meh" or great depending on whether you like soap operas. Expect drawn-out dialogues and occasional cringe:
Ep 15~16, Ep 19~23, Ep 25~28, Ep 42~50
[-] Terrible: I advise that you skip these unless you're really really tolerant and don't mind hurting your own eyes and brain. You have been warned:
Ep 17~18, Ep 24, Ep 29~31
That's the list. If your mind is already set on watching the anime, go do it. It'll be worth your time, I promise, but I hope you keep this list in mind and know to either skip or tolerate bad episodes when they come up, and know that they won't last forever.
Giving an "Overall" score for this anime series is very difficult for me because it is a blend of extremely good episodes and unbelievably terrible ones:
- The female lead, Xiang-Ying, is amazing. She's essentially a female clone of Saeba Ryo in terms of fighting skills but is extremely down-to-earth and believable. I'll choose her over Star Wars Rey any day (I do like Rey though)
- Saeba Ryo is in a mentor role this time, and as I expect, he makes an amazing teacher. Humorous and mentally strong, in equal measure.
- Umibozu's soft side is shown a lot more here than it was in City Hunter. I like it.
- I love Xin-Hong and am a huge fanboy of Saeko. Their arcs resonate a lot with me. I'll let you find out which episodes are those (good news: They're all in the "[++] Excellent" category)
- Kaori's spirit is an overused plot device. Like, I was neutral about her in the beginning, by the end of the series I'm just very very sick and tired of her. This is an anime about living forward, not dwelling backward. Stop reminding us how great you are by telling us how great you are (good-ish news: Most of such over-usages are in the "[-] Terrible" episodes so if you follow my list you won't see too much of them).
I hope this helps and, hope you enjoy the anime. There's only 24 out of 50 episodes to watch if you're trying to maximize your enjoyment.
The music is marvelously done, and surpasses even some of my favorite series like Ghost In The Shell on many occasions. It's also extremely unfortunate because it seems the manga series had continued to run until year 2017, 11 years after the anime was cut short in 2006.
Most great things that the series actually developed down the road in the manga ended up never included in the anime, which was made when the series was too busy finding its own identity to tell the best story it could.
