Kaori Aoyama is a 40 years old office lady working in Shinjuku, Japan. Her life isn't really what she expected and she doesn't really like her job either. But most of all she has never had anyone who loves her, a man who protects her, cuddle her ... Her ideal man would be her hero Ryo Saeba, the protagonist of City Hunter. One day, she goes to work but falls in front of the train and lose consciousness.
She wakes up in high school clothes, visibly younger. After some thinking, she first thinks of a Mental Time Travel. So she sets to phone her home, but her number, address, and family don't seem to exist. Puzzled and scared, she finds the police, but they can't find trace of her identity, family or anything. She doesn't exist, plain and simple. Desperate, scared and alone, she ends up at the Shinjuku Station where, at the time, the message board of the Shinjuku Station was. There, out of desperation, she writes XYZ, the code to which City Hunter answers, and the miracle happens... Ryo Saeba shows up.
Now under the fake name of Saionji Saori, Kaori (Who will be called Saori on the page, since there's already a Kaori in City Hunter) sets to stays with the City Hunter duo (Ryo Saeba and Kaori Makimura) to find out what happened to her, how she can return home ... and not meddle with history as she already knows everything that happens in the City Hunter universe. Task that won't be easy due to her nearly fanatic love of City Hunter.
City Hunter Rebirth (今日からシティハンター) is a shonen manga drawn Nishiki Sokura with Tsukasa Hojo himself writing the story. It is prepublished in Comic Zenon and published by Tokuma Shoten.
City Hunter Rebirth include examples of:
- Adaptational Badass: Kreutz. In the original manga he was just a general in a Banana Republic who tried a coup late in the manga, failed due Ryo being hired to protect the president while he was in Japan, and then tried to take revenge on Ryo and Umibozu only to have his bodyguards mauled, and was only notable for being the final villain in the series. Here his influence is felt much earlier, with him being involved in international drug trafficking and possibly with Union Teope and his underlings posing an actual threat to Ryo and Umibozu.
- Alternate Universe: As far as Saori is concerned, the City Hunter universe is not her world. It looks a lot like it, though.
- Audience Surrogate: Saori, definitely. She reads the manga, loves Ryo and fan-girl at all the known character.
- Ascended Fanboy: Saori is one. She was a fan-girl about Ryo at home and then things happened and she's now part of the manga story. She has no idea what happened though.
- The Brute: Python, the guy gives Umibozu a run for his money and overpowers Ryo with alarming ease.
- Fish out of Water: Saori is out of her world and time period. But she is clearly not lost as she lived in the 1980s and knows EVERYTHING about the City Hunter manga and knows who is who and what happens.
- Evil Counterpart: J.J. is one to Ryo, the are very similar in their past, but J.J. has nobody in his life to prevent him from being a Death Seeker.
- Heel–Face Turn: After being defeated by Ryo, J.J. finds people who cares about him. He stops being a Death Seeker after that and becomes a strong ally.
- It Began with a Twist of Fate: The story-line began, chronologically speaking, with Kaori Aoyama accidentally coming across City Hunter books when going through her brother's manga collection back when she was in high school. The rest, including her start in her Next Life as a Fictional Character as Saori, was history.
- Lampshade Hanging: Every time something stupid or dramatic happens, Saori often remembers the reason that should be revealed later in universe.
- Legally Dead: After breaking down when Ryo tries to make her talk about who she really is, she reveals that she has no family, no papers, no name here. She doesn't exist. Ryo can't help but to feel sympathy since he is also legally dead.
- Next Life as a Fictional Character: This series is about a 40-year-old woman reincarnating as a teenage character in the original City Hunter universe, ending up joining Ryo and Kaori in their adventures.
- One-Steve Limit: Invoked. Kaori Aoyama goes by Saori Saionji — her Pen Name when she tried to make it as a manga artist before the start of the story-line — in order to avoid causing confusion due to sharing the same name as Kaori Makimura, Ryo's partner.
- Squee: Saori openly fangirls HARD during dramatic moments, which puzzles some characters. In the Miki Arc from City Hunter (Chapter 139 of the original manga), she fangirls when Ryo & Umibozu are going to fight to the death. (In the manga, Ryo swapped both their bullets with Paint Bullets beforehand, which Kaori/Saori knows.) Her lack of reaction alarms Umibozu who discovers the Pain Bullets.
- There Is Another: After a couple of cases took right from City Hunter, Saori meets a girl of her age ... Who ends up being someone like her. Someone who was reincarnated in the City Hunter universe.
- Wake-Up Call Boss: Goda-sensei. While he's barely a threat, and only because Ryo and Umibozu couldn't conceive a grade school teacher who steals his students' underwear as anything more than a nuisance until he procured a gun and some grenades, he's still a danger that wasn't in the manga and thus Saori and Maki couldn't see him coming.
