A politician desperate enough to hire Ryo is already in over his head, because Ryo doesn't just solve problems, he creates better ones. The setup pretends this is a straightforward bodyguard job. It isn't; the real threat is the daughter who doesn't know her father exists, caught between protecting him and the people hunting him. City Hunter takes its one-shot premise seriously enough to let the jokes land harder than the gunfire, turning what could be a forgettable special into something that remembers why these characters matter when they're not busy being ridiculous.

James McGuire hopes to become president of Guinam and free his people from the military rulers who have held power there. His past threatens that ambition. Returning to Japan to see the daughter he left behind 18 years ago, he finds she is facing death threats. Anna now works as a Secret Service agent under an assumed name and is assigned to guard him, but she wants nothing to do with him because she believes he killed her mother. McGuire hires Ryo Saeba, the City Hunter, and his partner Kaori to protect her from men out of his past, and ideally to mend things between father and daughter without costing Anna her job. The result is a one-off special mixing action, comedy and mystery.