The very popular Gun Smith Cats
series has come to DVD, and the package is much better than many of the anime releases
weve seen. Often, anime DVDs tend to be pretty sparse, packing just a couple of
episodes onto a disc with little or no extras beyond the same trailers any otaku has seen
a thousand times. It always struck me as odd, too, that anime DVDs would be like this
after all, anime videos are famous for omake (extra) sections. Either way,
there have been a few great discs released, and Gun Smith Cats: Bulletproof is one
of them.For those new to the series, Gun Smith Cats is a manga by Kenichi
Sonoda, serialized in the Kodanshas manga anthology, Afternoon. It has been
wildly popular in Japan, and the manga is collected into five volumes which have sold over
250 thousand copies each. The story translates well, and since AD Vision (now ADV)
released the first US version of the OVA (Original Video Animation) series in 1995, the
anime along with the manga have become favorites of American otaku. Gun Smith Cats:
Bulletproof collects three episodes of the OVA series. "Neutral Zone,"
"Swing High," and "High Speed Edge" form a 90 minute trilogy that
takes us through one major adventure with the Gun Smith Cats. In addition, ADV has
included a modified version of "Gun Smith Cats Chapter Zero," which was
initially released as an omake on the 1995 videotape. The modified version expands
on the original, and is now imaginatively titled, "The Making of Gun Smith Cats".
This making-of documentary is a riot for all the wrong reasons. Sure, hardcore fans will
dig hearing the details of how the anime was created, and Ill be using some
information from the documentary in this review, but it is campy. And I dont mean
just a little bit funny I mean Plan 9 From Outer Space style campiness all
couched in a strange sense of seriousness.
Gun Smith Cats is all about Rally Vincent, a gun dealer and bounty hunter, and
her barely legal partner "Minnie" May Hopkins. Rally is a sharpshooter and
weapons expert, while May is the bomb and demolitions queen. Add to the mix some wacky bad
guys, wacky good guys, witty dialogue, and a healty dose of panty flashes, mix well, and
youve pretty much got the story sexy gun toting heroines do good and break a
lot of stuff. Thats the episodic story that carries the manga. In the three episodes
on this DVD, the story centers around the Cats being strongarmed into helping an ATF agent
bust a ring of gunrunners and figure out the leak in the bureau.
Thats right they are helping an ATF agent. And while Japan has plenty of
alcohol and tobacco, youll be hard-pressed to find many firearms, which means your
assumptions are correct. Gun Smith Cats takes place in Chicago, Illinois, USA. This
is a definite source of attraction for American audiences. First of all, the creators of Gun
Smith Cats the anime do a very good job representing the city. They made trips to LA
and Chicago and shot reference material to create backgrounds that are recreated in the
animation almost verbatim. Rally drives a Shelby Cobra GT, and at various times there are
sly jokes to remind you they are American, such as when May comments about Japanese
tourists.
Of course, the biggest aspect of Gun Smith Cats that suggests America is the use
of firearms. After watching the making-of documentary, it becomes very apparent that
Kenichi Sonoda is a gun nut. What makes that very interesting is that the Japanese gun nut
and the American gun nut are slightly different. In Japan, guns are a research project
you might buy models, pictures, and posters, but for the most part you spend your
time reading about guns in a book. In America, while many gun fans also read about guns
and love posters and toy guns, the whole point of becoming an enthusiast is to collect
guns. The documentary also underscores something that Ive read over and over in
essays by Japanese who have come to America in a way it is a thrill for Japanese
visitors to America to walk down the street imagining that everyone in the US is armed to
the teeth just under their coats. Every violin case or newspaper-wrapped fish is a
potential weapon. Certainly this works the other way, and Ive heard from Japanese
friends studying in America that their mothers warned them to not look too hard at
strangers on the streets of America. And Ive never actually met anyone who was, at
the moment, afraid or excited by the potential firearms wandering down the streets hidden
from view.
Whats the point of this? Like I said, Sonoda is a gun nut. Each gun in the
episodes is an accurate representation of a real gun, and as one of the two (count
em, TWO) Gun Designers on the staff says in the making-of documentary, Gun Smith
Cats could virtually serve as an encyclopedia of firearms. While Im not really
into guns in real life, I enjoy them in my anime, and the attention to detail extends
beyond the weapons. Vehicles, environments, and characters are all rendered beautifully,
making the animation very engaging. The DVD transfer looks phenomenal, so all the colors
pop out.
The dialogue is the other high point in Gun Smith Cats. It is witty, sharp, and
textured. Characters are drawn quite well, with different motivations and behavior
patterns. Although Gun Smith Cats