Gunsmith Cats [Anime]

As anime became more and more popular in the West during the 90s, various companies went to great lengths working on bringing legions of shows to North America. By the end of that decade, those interested in the medium had an impressive selection of shows to choose from on DVD and VHS. Whether it was a full length series or a smaller, lesser known OVA, there was a lot to choose from.

One such example of this was Gunsmith Cats, a three episode OVA based on Kenichi Sonoda’s manga of the same name. The show focused on a pair of women, Rally and May, who ran a gun shop in Chicago while also doing jobs on the side as part-time bounty hunters. It was a straightforward premise but more than adequate as a backdrop for adventure on the mean streets of the Windy City.

In the OVA, Rally and May are trying to stop a gun smuggling syndicate with connections to former Soviet military personnel, and who have ties to ambitious politicians in the upper echelons of government. It’s certainly a very paint-by-numbers story so far as 90s crime dramas go. Thanks to fun characters and plenty of action sequences, the whole thing is an enjoyable ride.

At the center of things are Rally and May. The former is a gun expert with amazing aim and encyclopedic knowledge of firearms. She has a good head on her shoulders and is the more levelheaded of the pair. Meanwhile, there is May who knows a ton about explosive. One would think that with the volatile substances that she uses, May would exercise a liberal amount of caution while on the job. That isn’t the case, though, as she’s all too eager to blow things up, getting the two into trouble from time to time. They’re a quirky pair that keep things more on the lighthearted side, only getting serious when infiltrating a gang hideout or something like that.

The two are joined by a number of supporting characters like their friend Becky, who is also one of their main sources for information, as well as ATF agent Bill Collins who coerces Rally and May to help him with his investigation of the gun smuggling ring. There’s also the show’s main villain, Natasha Radinov.

We don’t spend a huge amount of time with these characters, so there isn’t really an opportunity for them to grow. Becky is just a sidekick who is sort of there helping out from time to time, while Radinov, albeit a badass, comes off as a one dimensional Russian villain. At least Bill does get fleshed out to some degree. He’s a bit of a loose cannon but after seeing how he operates for a while, it becomes obvious that he knows what he’s doing.

The show isn’t non-stop character development, though. Each episode ends with some sort of climactic action sequences, be it a gunfight, car chase, or something of that ilk. I’m particularly fond of the car chase in episode two, personally. There was a lot going on there with Rally chasing after Radinov while the two exchanged gunfire on the highway.  It was quite exciting to watch their cars swerving around as bullets whizzed by. There’s something about the art here as well, that reminded me of Auto Modelista for some reason despite the fact that the game came out a decade after this OVA.

With that, it’s worth noting that the art in Gunsmith Cats is very good. Given that it’s by Kenichi Sonoda, there’s a very distinctive style at play here. He was fairly popular in the 80s and 90s, so one could find his stuff pop up from time to time in anime, another good example being Gall Force in the mid-80s (a series I’m rather tempted to discuss some time in the future). There was a certain round, petite quality to many of his character designs, particularly women. It could get almost cutesy in a way that actually helped elevate comedic scenes. That isn’t to say that he did this across the board. Sonoda was plenty capable of making more traditional-looking characters as well, case in point being Bill Collins.

Given that this is a show based on the works of Sonoda, however, it does mean that there is a fair bit of fan service. Most of it comes from the fact that Rally and May seem to like walking around their house in their underwear, but at least it’s presented in a logical manner and doesn’t feel forced as a mechanism to make up for a dull story. Moreover, it could have been a lot worse, as the manga shows a ton more skin and can get pretty darn explicit at times. (There’s certainly a market for that sort of thing, but it’s not my cup of tea.)

On the whole, the Gunsmith Cats OVA makes for an entertaining little action-y crime story. It gives us a glimpse into Rally and May’s world without being overwhelming. It’s able to tell its tale without feeling rushed, or leaving things out due to time constraints. These days, there are a lot of anime based on manga that run for a single season introducing viewers to its world, but end on a cliffhanger expecting people to just pick up the manga after. It feels incomplete and a little sleazy simply functioning as a tool to sell books in the end. They’d do well to follow Gunsmith Cats example, making a short, contained OVA story. It would still peak a lot of people’s curiosity while at the same time having its story come to a satisfying conclusion.

[Note: I do the Twitter thing, so if for some odd reason you want to read much shorter ramblings of mine, follow me there!]

Gunbuster / Top wo Nerae! [Anime]

Gainax has certainly made a name for itself over the years. For a lot of Westerners, their first exposure to the studio’s work was probably Neon Genesis Evangelion. Bring up 90s anime, and the show is bound to make its way into the conversation at some point. That being said, looking back at their earlier works they have a lot of interesting stuff that they’ve put out. Today, we’ll be looking at Gunbuster, an early OVA by the studio.

It takes place in the near future, when humans have developed the means to travel great distances through space. Unfortunately, this has caught the attention of large bio creatures from a distant world, which humans refer to as Uchuu Kaijuu (Space Monster). These creatures view humanity as a threat and have dedicated themselves to wiping out the species, getting ever closer to the Earth.

In order to fight back, humans have created a fleet of spacefaring battleships and giant combat robots, with their ace in the hole being Gunbuster, an absolute titan of robot that is piloted by two people.

This is where the show’s main character, Noriko Takaya, comes in. She’s a high school student training to fight in the war against the Space Monsters. Noriko’s father was an admiral in the first fleet to lock horns with the creatures, dying in the battle as he helped one of his subordinates escape their crippled battleship. With a family lineage like that, one would expect Noriko to have a knack for battle herself. That just isn’t the case, though.

Noriko has the nickname of “The Daughter of Defeat” among her classmates, as se has been doing a terrible job in her training up to this point. Watching her practice, she struggles to keep her mech upright, never mind actually doing more involved movements. Nevertheless, Noriko’s coach doesn’t give up on her, believing that she has the ability to become one of the best mech pilots ever if she sticks with it.

And this is what about half of the series focuses on: Noriko’s struggle to become a competent pilot not only in they eyes of her colleagues, but to herself as well. She slowly gets there, but every time she makes it a little further, she seems to be hit with another crisis. Ultimately, though, the show focuses on Noriko’s growth as she becomes a better pilot, toughens up mentally, and eventually becomes one of Gunbuster’s pilots.

Given that the series is an OVA, most of it focuses on Noriko’s growth without spending much time looking at the other characters. It’s unfortunate but understandable given the time constraints that come with making an OVA. It would have been nice to learn more about Jung, Kazumi, and Coach, but there just wasn’t any time for that. As such, they do come across as a little bit one-dimensional.

I would have especially liked to have seen more time spent with Kazumi, who Noriko refers to as One-sama, since she is like a mentor to Noriko. She’s a highly skilled, mentally disciplined pilot, the complete opposite of Noriko. Kazumi is basically who Noriko dreams of becoming, but we hardly see anything besides her very professional side for most of the show. In later side we see hints of her softer side, and there are those times where she’s caught talking to Coach, questioning why she has to be partnered with Noriko, but given the time constraints of the show, it just wasn’t possible to explore these in greater detail.

Nonetheless, what was there while watching Noriko grow until she’s a decent pilot at the end of the series is interesting to watch, especially when comparing it against later Gainax series that followed similar plot devices, as it gives an idea of how the studio’s storytelling has evolved over the years.

It can’t be emphasized enough how Gunbuster feels like an early prototype for later works by the studio. Coming back to it years later, it’s obvious that Noriko is like an early version of Shinji from Evangelion and one could just as well draw comparisons between Jung and Asuka or Coach and Gendo if they wanted to. The foundations for what would be used and expanded upon in future works are right there.

Moving beyond story, this series also looks and sounds amazing. There is a ton of detail in the characters, environments, robots, and the like. A lot is going on in many of the scenes as well, especially in later episodes when large scale space battles erupt. Of course, one thing people who have seen the show will bring up is the bounciness of all the girls’ breasts. It sounds like a silly thing to bring up, given the sheer amount of fan service that permeates anime today, but this was something that people just didn’t see in the late 80s. Sure, there was raunchiness and naughty jokes back then, just look at series like Dr. Slump or Urasei Yatsura, but here was this obsession with making that particular part of the female anatomy move around with a striking level of realism.

Also worth noting is the artistic choice to make most of the last episode without color. It takes a little bit of getting used to, but after that it’s a really interesting choice. On a very basic, superficial level, one can see a lot more detail in all of the scenes since everything has been reduced to black, white, and shades of grey. However, it also adds to the mood, given that we’re heading into the climatic final battle in that episode.

Before closing off, it’s worth noting one other element that is used in Gunbuster, that being time dilation. The show recognized the laws of relativity and how it impacts the characters. There’s a lot of space travel going on and as a result, those that are cruising the stars are aging at a totally different rate than those on Earth. As such, we see this isolation grow as Noriko spends more time in space, and those she knew back in high school becoming older and older while she’s away, turning into very different people when she visits them later on.

Gunbuster is one of those shows that I do like to revisit from time to time. First, it’s an early work from Gainax, which makes it interesting simply as a way of seeing how the studio has evolved over the years. Second, it’s just a very good a anime. The story is interesting, the image quality is amazing, and some of those songs will get stuck in your head for a very long time. It would have been nice if it was a full-blown series in order to flesh out some of the characters and moments in the series, but on the whole it’s easy to let this shortcoming slide. If you haven’t seen Gunbuster, I definitely recommend checking it out.

[Note: I do the Twitter thing, so if for some odd reason you want to read much shorter ramblings of mine, follow me there!]

Dr. Slump [Anime]

Like a lot of people who grew up in North America, one of the first anime series that I was ever exposed to was Dragon Ball. I’d had a taste prior with Star Blazers and Robotech, but Dragon Ball was what cemented my interest in anime. The design of the characters and worlds were so unique and watching the epic battles unfold was captivating in my youth.

It wouldn’t be until years later when the internet became a thing that I would have the opportunity to learn more about the series. I could finally find out all that I wanted to know about the show and its creator, Akira Toriyama, and it was at this time that I caught wind of one of his very first manga, Dr. Slump.

I often enjoy looking up well-known manga artists’ early work so I can see how they’ve grown over the years, and the case was no different. I wound up watching the anime, and what I discovered was an amazingly surreal world laced with liberal amounts of potty humor, and I loved every minute of it.

The world and characters of Dragon Ball were quite surreal as well, but the show let viewers know that magic and space travel abounded from the get go. As such, it was easy for one to explain away unusual people, places, or events as falling into one of those two camps.

This just isn’t the case in Dr. Slump. The surrealism is there as viewers are plunged into a world inhabited not only by humans but animals walking around like humans, people that look like Frankenstein and Dracula, a mechanical pig that announces when a new day has begun, an anthropomorphic sun that spends a lot of time brushing its teeth, and so forth. That’s a lot to take in and there isn’t an explanation as to why this is. It’s just the world that the show takes place in. After a few episodes, one finds themselves not questioning it anymore, simply embracing the madness instead. This is just the way things are in Penguin Village.

The contrast between the unusual mix of characters and the town in which they live is something that I’ve always liked as well. There’s probably not much to it, but I always liked the juxtaposition of the unusual characters and wacky adventures set against a sleepy, rural village.

Humour in the show is the true litmus test as to whether someone will like Dr. Slump, as it can get pretty darn filthy. A lot of it is pure raunch, with a side order of poop jokes. It’s not exactly highly sophisticated stuff that will be gracing the pages of The New Yorker any time soon. I actually found myself laughing at the gags far more than I thought I would. Potty humour can be tough to pull off, as it often comes off as trying too hard to go for shock value, but that just isn’t the case here. The jokes are lovingly handcrafted and work so well. Senbei in particular always gets a chuckle out of me whether he’s figuring out what to do about Arale, obsessing over Yamabuki-sensei, or just getting himself into yet another predicament. Even something simple like the crow that flies around saying, “Aho! Aho!” all the time is good for a laugh.

Then there’s the whole cast of characters. Toriyama certainly likes to make large rosters when it comes to this sort of thing, and Dr. Slump is no different. For being such a small place, Penguin Village certainly has a lot of people living there. Granted a lot of the show focuses on Arale-chan and her various adventures, but there’s still a lot of other people we get to meet. Whether they’re her school friends, Senbei (who does get quite a bit of screen time himself), Gatchan, or a slew of others, there are plenty of people to keep track of. That being said, it isn’t overwhelming. It’s just a matter of tuning in to a new episode and thinking to one’s self, “Oh, I guess Arale is hanging out with these people today.”

There’s much more of an adventure of the week thing going on in the show too. This is something that doesn’t always work with me, but here the overall silliness of the show is enough to keep me interested. So, even if things aren’t serialized, I still find myself enjoying the episodes for what they are. Bare in mind that there is still continuity, though, so past events are remembered and impact things that happen later on.

Artwork itself is very similar to what we would see a few years later in Dragon Ball and is what we’ve come to expect from Akira Toriyama over the years. On the whole, it feels like he had the most freedom to make the world he wanted here with all of the unusual characters, events, and locales that the show visits. His other creations go to some out-there places too, but they were somewhat more constrained within a logical framework. In Dr. Slump there’s more “anything goes” feel to it.

There have been a ton of other projects that Toriyama has been involved with, but Dr. Slump stands the test of time. It may be over 30 years old now, but its jokes still elicit chuckles and its world is a wonder to look at, making it a classic well worth investigating.

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