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Gunsmith Cats: Anime for Americans

One of the biggest problems we as otaku face, besides the fact that are oafishly proud of using a Japanese insult as a badge of honor, is accessibility. When people (that’s “normal” people, whatever those are) think of anime, they tend to think of Pokemon, Sailor Moon, and other “kid stuff.” Big eyes and speed lines. As a great deal of anime, on the surface, is completely incomphrensible to Americans in general, it’s hard to get non-otaku interested in such things. Don’t believe me? Try explaining Neon Genesis Evangelion in a paragraph or less. Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Enter Gunsmith Cats, the best of both worlds. It’s anime, with all the big eyes and speed lines one can shake pocky at, yet it’s also firmly in the vein of Magnum PI, NYPD Blue, and countless other cop shows. Nor does it take place in some faraway land like Japan or Lodoss, but right here in the good ol’ USA, namely Chicago, Illinois. It has guns, babes, car chases, explosions-hell, it’s anime as if Francis Ford Coppola or Jerry Bruckheimer got hold of it, what amounts to Bullitt made in Japan. Not surprisingly, GSC is the product of Kenichi Sonoda, confirmed otaku, gun nut, and one of the men responsible for Bubblegum Crisis and the creator of Riding Bean.

The Premise

GSC’s main characters are Rally Vincent and Minnie-May Hopkins, the co-owners of the show’s namesake, the Gunsmith Cats gun shop. Rally happens to be the hottest, in both looks and skill, bounty hunter in Chicago: she’s a crack shot with any kind of gun, an expert driver that would put Jeff Gordon to shame, and knows her weapons so well she can tell if a gun’s loaded just by handling it. Though it’s addressed more in the manga, Rally is more in love with her guns than she is with any man, being single at the ripe old age of…well, it’s never a good idea to ask a woman her age. Suffice to say that Rally is a successful young businesswoman and a lethally effective bounty hunter. Nor is she an amoral Boba Fett: Rally has a conscience, and prefers to wound rather than kill.

Her partner is Minnie-May Hopkins, barely out of her teens, yet one of the best explosives experts in the Midwest. Minnie’s stock-in-trade is grenades, which she enjoys painting like Easter eggs; if Rally is a bit insane, Minnie is certifiable. So overenthusiastic is Minnie that she tends to end up blowing up whole buildings, cars, her own house, etc.

The supporting cast of the anime is fairly small, but rich: Bill Collins, a smartass ATF agent who likes Rally a great deal (she hates him); Becky, Chicago’s greatest information broker; and Roy Coleman, Rally’s buddy on the Chicago police force. The villain of the piece is Natasha Radinov, a former KGB assassin who has never missed a target. Radinov is something of the anti-Rally, nearly as good with her weapons and cars as Rally is.

The basic plot of the series goes something like this. Rally finds herself in dutch with the ATF, namely Collins, who has found out that Rally stocks automatic weapons in her basement and Minnie keeps C4 in the fridge-both felonies. He’ll waive the charges if the two women help him break a local gunrunning ring. Collins, who veers between expert investigator and idiot, manages to get captured by the gunrunners, so it’s up to Rally, with assistance from Minnie, to get him out. This leads to, of course, a big shootout in a warehouse. Because Rally has damaged the gunrunners, the ringleader contracts Radinov to kill Rally and Minnie. Collins, for his part, has learned that the ring reaches deep into local and national politics. The rest of the series is a race between Rally and Co. trying to solve the case and Radinov (with her patrons) trying to kill them. Sorry, I’m not giving away more than that.

The Good GSC is probably the only series that every otaku should buy dubbed, just because all the characters are Americans, and it sounds funny to hear conversational Japanese being spoken on the streets of Chicago. A short series (only three episodes in length), GSC is easily understandable, with a straightforward plot, likeable characters, and plenty of action. The car chase scene in Episode 2 is well worth the price of the whole series: Rally’s Shelby GT 500 Cobra versus Radinov’s turbo BMW, on the expressways of Chicago. (Think about that next time at Anime Central.) Moreover, since it doesn’t have the complicated plot of Evangelion, the weirdness of Sailor Moon, or the length of Robotech, it’s much easier on the first-timer. Plus all Americans can relate to cute, heavily-armed women.

Having said that, GSC is far from simple-minded entertainment, and unlike Lara Croft, Rally and Minnie don’t get by on their looks and bust size, but on skill. The plot is so believable that it could have been pulled off CNN. There’s just enough humor to make the series funny without being stupid, and a bit of fanservice for the guys (not to worry, ladies, it’s more Faye Valentine than Miko Mido). Finally, you can knock out the series in a single night and still leave room for an episode of Bebop or two.

The Bad The animation style is a bit on the cartoony side, and GSC would have been even better than it is had it been given the Patlabor style of animation. It would have also been more expensive, but there you are. Probably to preserve accessibility to the series, a lot, read damn near all, of the backstory provided in the manga is left out of the anime. Roy Coleman, the most likeable anime cop since the Tank Police, gets a walk-on, and viewers might wonder why he is so friendly to Rally, who has just caused several pileups in pursuit of Radinov. In another scene, Minnie moans in her sleep to Ken, but nowhere is it explained that Ken Taki is Minnie’s longtime beau. It is not mentioned that Minnie was a child prostitute, and Rally’s rogues’ gallery of villains from the manga-Bonnie and Clyde and the unspeakably evil Goldie-are not mentioned at all. Some of the action is a bit over the top, but no worse than your average Schwarznegger flick. Back when Schwarznegger made kill-em-all Reagan-era movies, anyway. Surprisingly, Sonoda makes no references to his earlier Riding Bean in the anime, though Bean Bandit is a recurring character in the GSC manga. (This may be a good thing; Riding Bean is not all that great.) Finally, the music makes an attempt at a jazzy theme, but is nowhere near on par with the J-pop sound of BGC or jazz of Cowboy Bebop.

The Verdict With only a few minor problems, Gunsmith Cats is one of the finest bang-for-your-buck anime series out there. The whole thing can be had for a measly $20. Best of all, this is probably the only anime that one can sit down the family-assuming your family is typically American and likes to see gunfire and explosions-and watch without questions like “What the hell is going on?” Hey, I got a fanatic Republican and confirmed gun nut to watch Gunsmith Cats, and now it’s his favorite series. GSC is a good springboard to get non-otaku into our twisted little world; I give it nine pocky sticks.

Just don’t show them Perfect Blue right afterwards.