Gunsmith Cats/Riding Bean: The Fast and the Flirtatious

I get memos on occasion.

In this instance, I got the memo that the adult, gritty manga story that I'd been hooked on was going to be put into anime form and my face lit up like a thousand suns.

In the end, that's not quite what happened as anime was certainly made, but nothing like anyone reading the comic would have expected.

Let's draw a bead on the anime mishap that makes me sad on the inside AND the outside, Gunsmith Cats.






(A couple of GSC trailers meant to make the show look AWESOME and it's hard to argue against their effectiveness.)

Kenichi Sonoda is slightly different than other Japanese nerds. He's a pervert, he's a gun-freak, a car-nut and a perturbingly huge fan of Chicago.

He also didn't have the best of luck with his work. He's the guy behind the look of Bubblegum Crisis and because of the stupid lawsuit that followed the very likeness of the original characters can't be used (hence the drastic artistic difference in all the shitty spinoffs).

In the midst of that fun, he also got his baby off the ground a little OAV called Riding Bean.


(Trailer for Riding Bean OAV)

Riding Bean details the adventure of a mercenary courier known as Roadbuster. The actual team is composed of car-freak and ace driver, Bean Bandit and his sharpshooting, blonde bombshell partner, Rally Vincent. He costs the Chicago PD more police cars on an annual basis than the Blues Brothers have in their entire lives. For the record, that's a LOT of police cars.

His success as a courier is nearly his undoing when two high-profile kidnappings take place and the kidnappers take extensive steps to frame him for the crime. Bean's fury knows no bounds as his heart of gold, thirst for money and hunger for food AND revenge make him a force to be reckoned with. After a series of fast car chases, delightful violence and seriously disturbing situations you will love Bean almost as much as I do.

Aside from seeing Bean charge and lift an oncoming car, survive a gunshot to the head, throw a big knife with enough force to nail a car door to another car and there's this priceless exchange near the beginning where Bean & Rally are sitting down for breakfast after Rally had to resort to violent measures involving a hot frying pan to awaken Bean after yelling and zapping him with a stun gun doesn't work.

Riding Bean is currently available from Animeigo, with a so-so dub attached for about $8 on DVD. If you like the trailer, check it out. Hell scope out youtube for some more clips. It's a classic.



(GSC opening, see where Cowboy bebop got some inspiration?)

Gunsmith Cats tells a story about how Gunstore owner/Bounty Hunter, Rally Vincent (THE SAME Rally from Riding Bean) and her grenade toting partner Minnie-May are blackmailed by an ATF agent into going undercover to subdue a dangerous group of gun smugglers, only to find that there's a high level leak inside the ATF that has already cost of lives of several agents and almost gets Rally & May killed as well. The girls seem to have things neatly wrapped up when their prime suspect in the gunrunning scheme turns into an informant, but before he can testify he gets to meet an Ex-KGB assassin up close.
The Assassin then begins stalking the girls who are now trying to escape their attachment to the case, but strange things keep pulling them back into the spotlight like and anti-gun politician inviting them to an award ceremony and the assassin having her own personal invite to see the event.
Then the bullets and explosives fly as the ladies face off.

And that kind of sums things up for all three episodes.

So let's go and talk about where things went wrong.

I loved the Gunsmith Cats comic, Dark Horse brought it over and I was all over it. Rally dyed her hair, or alternatively let it go back to the natural color, ANYHOO... She decided to wear less clothing, wield MORE guns and have a younger associate who left juvenile prostitution to pursue her passion for explosives. Bean comes back in the Manga as a much badder-ass fella whose loyalties aren't entirely clear, but his penchant for protecting children is as strong as ever.

None of that is established in the anime. None of it. There is no connection to Riding Bean whatsoever. Rally & May get pulled into some local case about semi-generic gun runners. Rally gets in some entertaining gunfights and you get a good look at May's crazy face when she pulls out her explosives. With regards to the gritty cases, violent altercations with Misty, the return of Bean, etc. none of that is really touched on and the story that IS there is instantly forgettable.

Save for some high quality animation, great action and... Damn.

Okay, I admit it I've fallen in love with anime with less charm. A lot of this is just me whining, but the show doesn't do the original material justice and that makes me extra pissed off. As a generic anime it's actually pretty good and I can understand why it happened to gather such a following given that detective style stories with strong and smart female protagonists are an extraordinary rarity in anime and much of popular fiction. Rally is smart, tough, sassy and certainly sexy enough to keep guys inclined to watch and she's well developed enough as a lead character to show she's the only non-idiot in the show with a gun.


(First chunk of the GSC OAVs, English dub)

The dub is actually pretty darn good. I'd gush, but it came into their hands back when they were calling themselves AD Vision. AGAIN, it's not bad and it's the same company, but it's pretty bland compared to things like Blue Seed which were being dubbed roughly around the same time. Their genius in terms of dubs hadn't exactly been established yet save for Evangelion, which pushed them to develop tighter scripts, better voice acting and brilliant localizations. There. NOW I'm gushing.

Amanda Winn-Lee began her script writing/voice directorial debut around this time as I recall and the script is awesome, but the end result is sketchy. Radnov's Russian accent is silly at best and then there's May, whose obnoxiously loud voice and her shitty delivery of annoying stupid lines could peel paint. Oh, and the screaming, the girls scream ALL THE TIME and while that's typical of Amanda Winn-Lee's performance (screaming a lot) the girl playing Minnie-May will make yer ears gush blood.

Mostly the bland feeling is the fault of the original anime product because they squashed an epic bounty hunter drama down to a 3 episode story arc about gunrunning and tore out the teeth that made the Manga so gritty and enticing turning the anime into a floppy, impotent impostor.

Seriously.

WHY? Why would you do that?!

The fact that it didn't shine as brightly as it might have clearly didn't have any effect on its value. Nostalgia and lack of availability make it currently worth way the hell more than it really is. The DVD is currently priced between $30 and $150 on the secondary market!!! What the shit?!? What is WRONG with you people?!?!?!

I guarantee you it ain't even REMOTELY that good of an anime, but since ADV Films tanked its value can only go up until someone else intelligently snags the license. Here's hoping they have the heart to polish the dub, too.

Check out Riding Bean and read the manga, the anime sure as hell ain't worth it. But come back when it's being sold at reasonable HUMAN prices. $15 for all three OAVs together sounds about right.

DON'T BE A SUCKER!!!

Please.