Heartwarming / City Hunter

• Ryo was hired by a doctor dying of cancer, who was willing to pay with her life-insurance for him to slay the sadistic boxer who murdered her lover. Upon completing the task, rather than taking her life-insurance and letting her go back to drowning in alcohol, Ryo tears up her life-insurance and asks her to see some doctors to help her get her life back on track.
• The anime-only "Farewell, Hard-Boiled City" two part episode. After Ryo fools around a bit too much for Kaori's tastes, she furiously leaves the agency and disappears. She's later revealed to have been brainwashed into Sarah, a world wide terrorist with multiple indentities (she's a different woman each time). Sarah threatens to blow up Tokyo with a nuke. Ryo goes to the rescue but doesn't try to fight when he recognizes Kaori. The brainwashed Kaori shoots Ryo in the shoulder and begs him to stop coming closer. Ryo shoots and disarms Kaori, who's still brainwashed, and as Ryo tries to figure out how to disarm the bomb, he's unable to move and has only one bullet left. Before trying to cut a wire (even though he has no idea which is the right one), with his last bullet he confesses to Kaori and kisses her.
• Ryo values Kaori not despite her inexperience with guns and the criminal underworld, but because of it. He is her Morality Chain, and on a few occasions he has worked to keep her away from dirtying her hands.
  • It's revealed that he tampered with Kaori's gun so that she'd never have blood on her hands.
  • One time Kaori took to intensive gun practice so that she would acquire the perfume of gunpowder, in order to sooth a gunsmith's baby who cried every time Kaori was near it because it was more used to the smell of guns. Ryo tells her to stop, explaining that the gunsmith intends to lead a normal life for her child, and that Kaori needed to put effort into making the child like her.
• Some story arcs end in heartwarming ways. Here are some examples:
  • Ryo manages to fulfill his task of protecting Yoshimi Iwai by suggesting to the billionaire who initially wanted to give half his fortunes to her through his will, which was why she needed protection in the first place, to change his will and donate his fortunes for a nursing school instead. Yoshimi agrees to the suggestion at once, and the billionaire is on board with the idea^note  (though he insists that Yoshimi herself must retrain herself in nursing in said school after its construction is done, which everyone else tacitly agrees, knowing her track record).
  • The story arc of Kimiko, a seventeen-year-old girl with Unwanted Harem, concludes with some such examples.
    • After the tragic story of the parents of Kimiko is fully revealed, Kimiko's maternal grandfather, who has been hitherto stubborn in his opposition to Kimiko ever meeting her paternal grandmother, eventually relents^note  (the combination of the full details of the story itself and the tearful, remorse way her paternal grandmother recounts it helps) and starts burying the hatchet.
      Kimiko's maternal grandfather: (to Kimiko's paternal grandmother) You're a lot younger than I am, but you look as old as I... maybe even older. These past eighteen years must have been hard for you... maybe I haven't suffered so much because Kimiko was with me.
    • In addition, Kimiko refuses to discuss the issue of inheritance for the time being after meeting her paternal grandmother as the arc nears its end, prioritizing on spending time together to make up for the lost time of the past seventeen years. Her paternal grandmother is deeply moved, especially after Kimiko calls her "grandma" despite only having met each other for the first time since Kimiko's birth.
    • Finally, Kimiko has been given a portrait of her father, bequeathed to her by her paternal grandmother, which she intends to hang on the empty space right next to the portrait of her mother.
• In the final manga arc, Kreutz had kidnapped Kaori, and with his bodyguards being massacred by Ryo and Umibozu decided to hold her hostage and treathen to shoot her if Ryo didn't surrender. Ryo came out, Kreutz mockingly complimented him for his willingness to die for love... And Ryo calls him an idiot because he refuses to let the woman he loves suffer if he can avoid it, finally declares his love for Kaori... And proceeds to curbstomp Kreutz and his last bodyguards, because he wanted to live for Kaori.