What is Angel Heart?

Angel Heart is the story City Hunter’s world tells when one fact changes. In 2001, Tsukasa Hojo launched it in the very first issue of a new magazine, Weekly Comic Bunch, founded around the Coamix circle of his old Jump editor Nobuhiko Horie. It grew out of an earlier Hojo short story, “The Eyes of the Assassin”.

In this version of Shinjuku, Kaori Makimura is dead, killed in an accident, and her heart has been transplanted into Xiang-Ying, a young assassin raised by a criminal syndicate and codenamed Glass Heart. Drawn to the city by the heartbeat she carries, Xiang-Ying is taken in by Ryo, who becomes her father in everything but blood.

Hojo said it himself, in the first collected volume: Angel Heart shares City Hunter’s characters but is not its continuation. It is a parallel universe. That single decision is the whole series: every face familiar, one fact changed, and sixteen years of manga exploring what that change costs.