Review of Gangsta.

Crime life was never a warm tasty looking dish, and the streets, well, they are less of correctional cooks working on an old dirty jail pit that a sane person would never call a kitchen. “Gangsta.”, takes the idea of post-war conflicts, mafia, and life under drugs, hits, and prostitution, and comes out with an original story focusing on many vital factions that rules the streets with guides harsher and more brutal than the savage life of nature. From the same studio that made the fantastic “Samurai Champloo”, a studio that has recently announced its bankruptcy in the midst of producing “Gangsta.”, studio “Manglobe”. Anddue to the sudden report, the series gets a lot of hate mainly because of how it ended, but it was never the source material's fault, the stab of bankruptcy was too harsh with the series it left a bad image on most of the fans.

- Story (8.5/10):
Ergastalum, a fictional town in some unknown country was once home to war and conflicts, people were raised from their childhood days on the principle of killing and assassination under the influence of a drug called Celebrer that gives the user insane strength, speed, and agility. After the war, descendants of those drug users had the symptoms passed down to them and thus were treated as superhuman individuals recruited from the start to be fine killing machines called the Twighlights, for each a specific rank numbered by Tags like (A/0, D/3, C/5...etc). In the current days, the city is being maintained and ruled by four mafia families, called the four fathers that strive to make Ergastalum a heaven for Twighlights to live in. Enter the Handymen, a duo of super skilled dudes taking a neutral stand in all of that mess that rely on making deals with either the police or the mafias to earn their buck of the day. That is until they befriend a mysteriously lost soul, Alex, a desperate young woman who's found in prostitution a way to guarantee her dinner. The trio gets involved in trouble more than they could handle while keeping up a straight smile, and a conflict that shakes the relationship between the four fathers is started.
“Gangsta.” was very specific and yet a bit hard to keep up with for how frequent it switched timelines to explain past events, no episode was slow in pace of focused around uninteresting plot points, it was all a blood thrilling action centered fest that didn't fall short of being as sad and emotional when it needed most.

- Art (9.5/10):
For me, studio “Manglobe” was always a welcoming trusty guy that's always generous in his giving. I've praised “Deadman Wonderland” before for its excellent fluid animation, and here is Gangsta. setting up a new high ceil of their previous works to the top. I'm not a manga reader, but upon comparing both works, the difference in both the author of the manga and the production team's art style was unnoticeable, so loyal to the source material. What I liked the most was how the general anatomy of people was handled, leaning towards a more Italian feel on the faces, a widely known stereotypical group of people that suit the traditional mafia role.
All of the fighting scenes, the major and the not so important ones were just a splendid form of moving art that you can never get tired of looking at, I could almost move in sync with the hand to hand combat for how immersed I always felt while watching the series. I appreciate the minimalistic CGI usage, one of the rules of thumb of producing flawless animation in my opinion.

- Sound (9.0/10):
I never give much appreciation to the voice acting in most of the shows I watch, but one simple fact let me have some more consideration of this aspect. Nicolas, one of the main character is a deaf dude that uses sign language to communicate, but also can speak some barely understood words, the voice actor's performance on that part was just so believable, you could feel the struggle he puts into pronouncing every word, it never felt forced or unnatural for a deaf person (talking about the SUB head, but I've heard good things about the DUB as well). This fact alone made me pay extra attention to the other characters as well, and there was a massive distinguishment between everyone's way of talking, there is the guy with the confident tone of voice that's only complimented by his tough beastly force, and there's the hesitation and fear in the troubled character's voice, like there was a special aura in the resonance of the sound of their voice. It fills me with chills just remembering some of the big performances.

- Character (8.5/10):
I really appreciate the path they went with here, unlike Baccano! which is an outstanding show by the way, while having as big of a character cast as the latter, it did a slightly better job at keeping up all of the characters in the context of the story. We get to know more about a character than its backstory, which is by the way very sad looking how they were the first generation of the yet still fading off the war. One thing I didn't quite accept was the cliché towards linking several characters towards the end, in some cases, I couldn't care less if that was some guy's lost sibling or anything.
You would think people from the same background would have similar treats, but they weren't similar even by a cellular margin.

- Enjoyment (9/10):
The has given me a great first impression from episode one, and managed to keep up the quality I anticipated through the series, and for that, I'm most appreciative. At the very least, I added another character to my small collection of favorite-characters-in-anime, and very proud I got to see his greatness on display. I never got any sign of annoyance from any of the characters, the events were going at a considerably semi-fast pace, enough to have me focused on the plot, the animation again was just eye relaxing and kept up the same quality all the way to the end. I never thought I would find something so sad and depressing in a show like that, but I was proven wrong, but in a great way.

- Overall (8.9/10):
I would absolutely recommend this for anyone who's looking on a modern, crime, action show, but before diving in, you'll have to be reading for the partial-nudity, sexual references, violence, gore, adult-language as the show doesn't hold back on that a bit. One other thing, due to the bankruptcy studio Manglobe was faced, the show was left in one of the worse cliffhangers out there, so you'll most likely not get you to share of satisfaction from that kind of ending.