Angel Heart

Angel Heart is a Japanese comic book, otherwise known as a manga, that was created by Tsukasa Hojo. Hojo is a well-known mangaka in Japan, creating some of the most well known mangas, such as City Hunter. City Hunter has become his most well-known work, but Angel Heart follows closely in popularity. Angel Heart began in 2001 and is still being released in the magazine Weekly Comic Bunch. A lot of the characters from City Hunter made guest appearances in Angel Heart.

Synopsis

Angel Heart begins with a girl who is known as Glass Heart. Glass Heart is an assassin, who recently killed a man who was sitting on a park bench. She receives a phone call from her boss, telling her what a good job she did. It was her fiftieth kill. Suddenly, she sees a young girl run to the man she just shot, holding an ice cream cone. Glass Heart realizes that she has killed the father of this girl. She can not take the grief and guilt, so she throws herself off of the building and is impaled through the heart on an iron fence right below the building she was standing on.

Kaori Makimura, the well-known wife of City Hunter Ryo Saeba, is on her way to an appointment when she sees a young girl in the middle of the street. A truck is coming right at her. Kaori runs into the street, pushes the young girl out of the way and is hit by the oncoming truck. She winds up brain dead, and her heart is taken out of her body because she had her organ donor card in her purse, which traveled with her to the hospital. Kaori’s heart is stolen by The Organization, who have managed to keep Glass Heart alive, but badly need a new heart for her body.

She is in Taiwan and in a coma for a year. While asleep, she has visions of all the people she has killed. She also has images in her head of Ryo and Kaori. As soon as she wakes up, and is able to move freely again, she heads to Shinjuku to find the City Hunter, Ryo. She explains to Ryo that she has Kaori’s heart. Ryo, who has been grieving during that year, decides to adopt Glass Heart, thinking of her as his and Kaori’s daughter, due to the heart inside her body. He calls her Xiang Yang, and does his best to help the fifteen year old move on from her old ways and into a new life.

Kaori

There was a lot of controversy when Tsukasa Hojo said that Kaori was going to be killed at the beginning of Angel Heart. The City Hunter fans made their displeasure known, and states that Karoi could be kept alive. Losing Kaori, they said, would change the City Hunter dynamic. Hojo heard their please and created an “alternate universe. In this universe, Karoi still lives.

External Links

• Website (Japanese)

Manga created in Japan or by Japanese mangaka.