Review of Gunsmith Cats

Gunsmith Cats is really little more than dollar store Cowboy Bebop with cute girls. Based on the manga by Sonoda Kenichi, serialized in Kodansha's Monthly Afternoon magazine, it was produced by studio OLM in 1995. You might know it as the studio behind the original 1997 Berserk anime. Gunsmith Cats is the story of Irene Vincent, Rally for short, May Hopkins, and Becky Farrah, the members of the Gunsmith Cats freelance bounty hunter company, which also doubles as a walk-in gun store. The story of GSC is mediocre at best. Devil-may-care Spike Spiegel wannabe law enforcement agent hires the GSC girls to help him with an investigation,they reluctantly agree, wonder if he can be trusted, things go sideways, they find out there's some kind of a mole within law enforcement, an evil ex-special forces something-or-other antagonist makes an appearance, shootouts and car chases ensue.

The artwork is that of classic 90s anime, with the giant eyes and overly rigid and dazzling hairstyles. While the animation would not impress today, it would have been fairly top shelf back in 1995. Having said that, there's a car chase in episode 2 that I would argue stands the test of time and shits on 99.99% of all content from the 2000s. Watching a giant truck crash all over the place without a single CG element was impressive to say the least.

While there is some sexual innuendo in the first episode, and you get to see one of the girls wearing a thin shirt which allowed her nipples to poke out ever so subtly, there's no nudity or innuendo whatsoever for the rest of the anime, so I got my hopes up for nothing. Least they could've done is show me a titty for my troubles, honestly. For what it's worth, such as it was, little as though it was, it was sexy - not Golden Boy sexy, but sexy nonetheless.

I called it a dollar store Cowboy Bebop and I stand by that statement. Just look up the opening on YouTube. It's almost a 1 to 1 copy of the Bebop OP, except the tune isn't nearly as groovy. That said, "not as groovy as literally some of the grooviest tracks the medium has to offer" is not much of a condemnation. Point and fact, both the opening and particularly the ending feature some very classy jazz tracks. As I am writing this, I am listening to the ED on repeat.

Still, me calling GSC mediocre isn't the insult you might think it is, for I thoroughly enjoyed it. It is simply an indication that I did not enjoy it as much as I would have expected to, given its popularity, for make no mistake, it has a decent following. This leads me to an inescapable conclusion.

The anime medium suffers from a decisive lack of proper, mature crime thriller content – no, not supernatural shit like Gungrave, not zoomer garbage like Banana Fish. I’m talking about proper noir crime thrillers with guns and investigations and car chases and all that good old school DeNiro stuff. Samurai swords shooting lasers and magical girls are all fine and dandy, but anime fans are so starved for this kind of content that even something as unimpressive as Gunsmith Cats can achieve cult classic status.

I appreciate it for what it is and can only hope that, one of these days, someone will make an anime Jason Bourne or James Bond without any silly cartoon trappings like in, say, Netflix's Hero Mask.