City Hunter spawned a media franchise consisting of numerous adaptations and spin-offs from several countries.

It also had a spin-off manga, Angel Heart, which in turn spawned its own anime television series and a live-action Japanese TV drama.

The series follows the exploits of Ryo Saeba, a "sweeper" who is always found chasing beautiful girls and a private detective who works to rid Tokyo of crime, along with his associate or partner, Hideyuki Makimura.

Their "City Hunter" business is an underground jack-of-all-trades operation, contacted by writing the letters "XYZ" on a communal message blackboard [ja] at Shinjuku Station.

[18] Attempts were made to license the series for the American comic market during the 1980s; however, Hojo insisted the manga should be released in the right-to-left format.

[1] In 2022, Coamix's MangaHot service began publishing City Hunter manga in English digitally.

[24] A 32-disc DVD boxset, City Hunter Complete, was published by Aniplex and released in Japan on August 31, 2005.

The set contained all four series, the TV specials and animated movies as well as an art book and figures of Ryo and Kaori.

[29] For the 30th anniversary of the original manga, buyers of all 12 volumes of City Hunter XYZ edition were entitled receive a "motion graphic anime" DVD.

The DVDe adapted a special Angel Heart chapter entitled "Ryo's Proposal" and was voiced by the original City Hunter cast.

[30] The series was licensed by ADV Films for release in North America; they announced their acquisition in May 1998 at Project A-Kon 9.

[38][39] On April 20, 2019, Discotek Media announced that they had licensed the entire City Hunter animated franchise, including the 2019 movie, Shinjuku Private Eyes.

[45] Teruo Satoh and Takahiko Kyōgoku served as episode directors, while Kumiko Takahashi designed the characters and Taku Iwasaki composed the music.

Discotek Media released Death of the Vicious Criminal Ryo Saeba with all films previously licensed by ADV in a Blu-ray collection on January 31, 2023.

Saviour of the Soul (九一神鵰俠侶 Gauyat sandiu haplui) is a live-action Hong Kong film from 1991 that uses the characters from City Hunter but changes the plot.

The film was directed by Wong Jing and starred Jackie Chan as Ryo Saeba, Wang Zuxian as Kaori, and Japanese idol Kumiko Goto.

It was announced that it would be directed by Hong Kong filmmaker Stanley Tong and star Chinese actor Huang Xiaoming as Ryo Saeba.

[62][63] A separate French action comedy film Nicky Larson et le Parfum de Cupidon (lit.

[65][66] In December 2022, Netflix announced a live-action film adaptation in the works with lead actor Ryohei Suzuki as Ryo Saeba and Misato Morita as Kaori Makimura.

[69] Jung Woo-sung, was scheduled to play Ryo alongside Hollywood-based stars, with location filming in Seoul and Tokyo.

[73] In 2015, the spin-off manga Angel Heart received its own live-action Japanese TV drama adaptation.

[81] Patrick King of Animefringe described the series as "not the most intellectually stimulating piece of fiction I've experienced lately" but called it "a blast to read".

[90] The anime series was also popular in France, where it was dubbed as Nicky Larson and 140 episodes aired in the early 1990s.

[93] The cover for the 2015 Chris Brown single "Zero" was allegedly copied from one of Hojo's City Hunter sketches.