title_name=Gunsmith Cats
|
| |
DVD cover for ''Gunsmith Cats''
|
| |
ガンスミス キャッツ
|
| |
Gunsmith Cats
|
Animanga/OVA| Information
|
is a series of
Manga and
Anime work by
Kenichi Sonoda . The story centers on two young women, 19-year old Irene "Rally" Vincent and her partner, 18-year old "Minnie" May Hopkins.
Rally and May operate the gunshop in
Chicago, Illinois . Rally also works as a
Bounty Hunter , assisted by May, which is the impetus behind many of the stories. Rally characterizes bounty hunting as her "hobby" though it is in fact her main source of income.
Rally is an expert combat shooter and marksman with just about every firearm in existence, as well as an expert driver. May is an explosives expert, knowing the inner workings of and many uses of all manner of explosive devices.
In 2004, the author created an extension to the original nine volume series entitled . Like the original, this manga centers on the exploits of Rally and May and is serialized in Kodansha's Monthly Afternoon magazine.
A gunshop owner by trade, she dabbles in bounty hunting to pay the bills. Her father was an Olympic champion marksman, taught Rally a great deal about firearms, and ran a gun store in Chicago. Her mother opposed everything to do with guns and eventually was murdered at the store by robbers when trying to file divorce papers on her husband. After Rally's father disappeared while searching for her mother's murderers, she took over Gunsmith Cat as her own entrepreneurial venture, and recruited Minnie May to help her run the store. Upon making May a partner, the shop became known as "Gunsmith Cats".
A taciturn girl when it comes to men, she feels most natural among the cold steel of firearms. While all her ID states that she is 21 (necessary to sell firearms), her actual age is 19 (18 in the original Japanese version). Her weapon of choice is the
CZ-75 original model, a handgun made in the former nation of
Czechoslovakia . She has also been seen wielding a
SIG P210 and various assault rifles. She drives a blue
Shelby Mustang Cobra GT500 with white racing stripes. (The CZ-75 and the Cobra are signatures of the series.)
Rally's father is Pakistani and her mother was English. As a result, she has dark blue eyes, dusky skin and dark hair. She is highly skilled in hand-to-hand combat, with great speed and physical agility, and is an expert but reckless driver. Although she does not always respect the letter of the law, she has a strong moral sense of right and wrong and is reluctant to kill unless absolutely necessary. Her marksmanship ability is unsurpassed, and she often targets her opponents' trigger fingers in combat rather than going for a lethal shot. As a result, she has sometimes been hunted by angry enemies mutilated at her hands.
Rally Vincent also co-stars ín the OAV ''Riding Bean''. But it was made before the ''Gunsmith Cats'' series, and there Rally is a blond Caucasian.
(It is not clear from the Japanese whether Rally's name is intended to be "Irene" or "Eileen" but the official English translation uses Irene.)
A "Bomb Specialist," as she refers to herself, May learned the trade from her boyfriend, Ken Takizawa. While only being 18 (17 in the original Japanese version; her age was raised for international translation because she performs explicit sexual acts), she is considerably more mature than the average 18-year old girl. She ran away from home at 13 for undisclosed reasons and was found and cared for by Ken. When Ken had to go underground for several years, she worked at a
Brothel in
Chinatown - even advancing into teaching other newcomers - before leaving and joining up with Rally to run the gun shop.
When action is called for, May carries a wide range of explosive weapons with her. She typically uses a self-modified grenade called a "May Special," an impact-only grenade with no shrapnel. However, she is not averse to using
High Explosive grenades when necessary.
May is tiny and young-appearing for her age, having taken growth-stunting drugs in an effort to stay attractive to her possibly pedophiliac boyfriend Ken Takizawa (this plot element was modified in the English translation). She can pass for a child of ten or twelve and often takes advantage of this. She is a very cute blonde with blue-green eyes.
A tough-as-nails driver for hire known for his steel-padded
Kevlar -lined wardrobe, he is typically seen wearing a bulletproof leather jacket, blue jeans and an armored headband.
Overall, he is an even better driver than Rally, capable of movie stunt driver level feats. He prefers American
Muscle Car s of the
1970s ; a couple of his personal favorites being a modified
Ford Boss 302 and a 1971 supercharged Mach One. However, he owns a whole garage full of famous muscle-car models and is often seen driving a 1968 LS-7 Corvette. Later in the series he acquires The Buff, a monster custom-designed car with armor plating and bulletproof glass. It can drive sideways and has special air brakes and wheel spikes to aid in sudden stops.
Bean insists on following his strict rules of engagement in all circumstances, and sticks to his word (and he expects his business partners to do the same). Although he doesn't shy away from violence, he prefers to remain neutral when he can and collect his hefty driving fees for almost any kind of job. He will work for criminals and legitimate interests alike as long as he is paid as agreed, although after a competition against Rally about a Kerosine delivery (see Goldie's entry) he agrees not to deliver any more drugs. His only Achilles heel is a protective instinct towards children and noncombatants.
Bean is huge and muscular, towering over most people. He can perform amazing feats of strength - like ripping the door off a car with one hand; and his jacket alone would break the back of any ordinary person trying to wear it - and shrug off most injuries. Even a pistol shot to his armored headband will barely slow him down. He has long black hair and brown eyes, and his race is not determined. However, several panels of 'Sleeper'(Issue #2 in his signature story arc) show him in the nude with a distinct lack of hair on his arms, legs and chest. This has caused many fans to speculate that he may be of Japanese ancestry.
Bean Bandit is also the star of an
OAV also written by Sonada, called Riding Bean.
"Becky the Nose" is Rally's main source of information on all the goings on in the Chicago underworld. While her fees are high and she can come across as money-grubbing, most if not all of her information is legitimate; she is also known for working in finding missing persons. When she is not chasing after Rally for her payment, the two share a friendship that crosses business lines.
Becky wears glasses and a ponytail and is usually businesslike in appearance.
An
Explosives expert by trade, he learned his craft through a combination of his connections to the
Chicago underworld and on the set of
Hollywood movies. In addition to being Minnie May's on-again off-again boyfriend, he taught her everything he knows. Ken is Japanese-American and about 20 years older than May. He also suffers from
Multiple Sclerosis , which affects his ability to handle sensitive
Explosives .
As a personal joke, he uses the short form "Ken Taki", which would also be the Japanese pronunciation of
Kentucky .
An expert sneak thief, cat-burglar and lockpick, she joins up with Rally and Minnie-May after having get caught by them and serving time for various criminal activities. She doesn't carry any guns but is quite adept in the use of knifes (wielded and thrown). She also has a lesbian crush on Rally, although at the end of the series she expresses an interest in Bean Bandit.
A detective of the Chicago Police, Roy is Rally's main contact with the force. Acting as more of an older brother at times, he watches out for Rally when she's in trouble. While considerably older than Rally, he still enjoys spending time with her, as it gives him a sense of belonging to the younger generation, and a contact of his own in the same generation.
In Gunsmith Cats,
Chicago has many large-scale villains, each crossing paths with Rally & company over the course of the series.
A fictional take on a factual pair, they go on a crime spree throughout Chicago. Bonnie harbors a particular ill will toward Rally.
A drug lord and gang leader, Grey runs a large
Cocaine distribution ring in Chicago. During a fateful encounter with Rally, she relieved him of one of his hands by means of a shotgun; henceforth, he sports a prosthetic hook hand. He is eventually caught and imprisoned, though he continues to run his drug ring from his cell. Through his many connections, he is eventually released and swears vengeance on Rally.
A small-time drug dealer, first seen with his driver, Riff-Raff.
A mysterious figure involved in the Mr. V arc.
Arguably the most ruthless of Rally's opponents. Of Italian ancestry, Goldie is a high-ranking member of a
Mob family in
Sicily . Many call her a
Mafia Queen. She is an incredible hand-to-hand combatant, and is quite skilled at creating complex plans, which, though often successful, often make plain her cavalier attitude towards her subordinates.
She is a pathological personality, the textbook definition of a "control freak." She is obsessed with controlling everything and everyone around her. People who resist her successfully, such as Rally, become even more attractive to her. She is a lesbian, though she tends to express it as a form of sadistic pedophillia. One of her trademarks is a harem of young girls who have murdered their parents while under the influence of her drugs.
She and Rally cross paths many times, and the bounty hunter is usually quite lucky to escape with her life and the lives of her friends. However, this is far better than any of Goldie's previous opponents have done, and repeated escapes quickly turn the mobster's appreciation for her skills into a dedicated sexual obsession. Finally, Goldie decides that she will make Rally her masterpiece, a slave broken to her will through sheer psychological torture without the aid of drugs.
As stated above, the linchpin of her power base is psychopharmacology, or the use of hallucinogenic drugs similar to
LSD . Over the years she has developed an incredibly effective method of mind control. The first thing she does after she gains chemical control of someone she considers a worthy "pet" is order him or her to kill his or her loved ones. As the alternative to the chemically-induced fantasy world she had built for her puppets is a reality where they have murdered everyone who cared for them, she has yet to lose control of a subject whom she has completely enslaved.
Her current empire is based on a powerful designer drug called Kerasine, which is also a major plot device of the series. It is a compound that she knows how to produce cheaply but has yet to be reverse-engineered by chemists outside of her organization. Its popularity is due to both its low cost and its ability to produce the effects of several different drugs: a small amount is a stimulant like cocaine, a larger amount is a euphoric similar to heroin, and the entire contents of a vial combines both with a powerful hallucinogenic effect similar to
Lysergic Acid Diethylamide .
All this comes with a nasty side effect - a user of the drug can be given hypnotic commands while he or she is under its influence. Currently, it is the most popular drug in the world of the manga. Several storylines detail Rally's efforts to prevent Goldie from flooding Chicago with this mind-bending substance, including one which involves using Rally's father, through Kerasine inducement, in which he becomes Goldie's personal assassin.
=Anime=
The anime version of Gunsmith Cats, released 1995 by
Kodansha /
VAP /
Tokyo Broadcasting and a year later in
North America by
ADV Films , is a separate story from the manga. Many major characters, such as Misty Brown and Bean Bandit, do not appear. It was also one of the most researched animes in regards to locale and feel, as the production team made several trips to
Chicago , which included visits to the
Illinois Police Academy, and an actual gun shop, which is rare in gun-controlled
Japan .
Also, several new characters appear in the three
Original Video Animation (OVA) episodes:
An agent in the
Chicago office of the
A.T.F. , Bill Collins comes across as a sleazy, nosy government agent who fancies himself as
Elliott Ness . He is investigating a gun-running operation, but he is running into a lot of dead leads... and a few dead agents as well. Desperate for help he 'enlists' Rally and May's help (by holding up the gun shop's licence as insurance). Although they had success at first by shutting down a distribution point in
Chicago , Jonathan Washington, the lone witness, along with five A.T.F. agents, are murdered in a safehouse, the assassin, Natasha Radinov, using Collins' cardkey and access code to gain entry. Now the investigation is due to be closed and Collins soon discovers a conspiracy within the A.T.F., which involves his superior George Black and mayoral candidate Edward Haints, who has Rally as a target.
Collins' superior in the A.T.F. Chicago office, George Black is, in fact, part of a gun-running operation which he co-ran with Edward Haints, an Illinois assemblyman running for mayor in Chicago under a gun-control platform. It was Black who had contracted Natasha Radinov to kill Jonathan Washington, the only witness to the operation, for which he provided her with a cardkey with Collins' ID, as well as Rally and May for helping Collins. He also supplied Radinov with the use of a supposily shut-down safehouse for her to stay in.
Also known as "Bloody Pierce", Natasha Radinov was originally an agent for the
K.G.B. and
Spetsnaz , but when the
Soviet Union fell, contracted her services out as a free-lance
Assassin . She is proficient in almost every deadly hand weapon known in the world, but prefers to work with silent weapons, especially a shooting knife, for which she often retrieves after use. She also wears a long coat lined with ballistic
Nylon and
Kevlar , the inside holding a vast arsenal of weapons.
As payment for her services, Radinov prefers to be paid in
Heroin , which she sells in Russia; she personally stays away from the drug herself. Recently, she had accepted an assignment to kill Rally and May, because the two had interfered in a gun-running operation run by Edward Haints, an Illinois assemblyman running for mayor under a gun-control platform. However, when the first attempt went wrong, and Radinov was injured because of it, she took it as "a matter of pride" and went after Rally personally.
A senator in the
Illinois State Assembly , Edward Haints is running for mayor of Chicago. His campaign style has him wrapping himself in a "All American" theme, which favors heavily on protecting
Chicago citizens by instituting stricter gun-access laws.
The truth of the matter is that Haints is also running one of the biggest gun-running operations in the state, and the strict gun laws he plans to enact will enable him to raise the prices of his own illicit operations. But when Bill Collins gets a little too close with his investigations, he asks his friend and partner George Black to hire Natasha Radinov to kill the witnesses and derail the investigation. However, Haints also hires Radinov to kill Black as well, mostly to keep the profits of his gun-running to himself.
At the beginning of the series, Jonathan Washington had just skipped bail for drug smuggling charges, only to be captured by Rally Vincent. Actually, Washington was working for Edward Haints' gun-running ring and operated an entire warehouse filled with ilicit firearms... firearms that Rally, with a little "help" from Bill Collins, were able to prevent hitting the streets.
However, since Washington was now a vital witness to the gun ring, he was taken to an A.T.F.
Safehouse outside
Chicago . He had tried to persuade Rally to help him escape the safehouse because he now feared for his life... he knew that George Black, the head of the A.T.F.'s
Chicago office, was also a partner of Haints and had now sent a hitman after him. When Rally refused to help him escape, he was able to leave a fake
Rolex watch and a scrap a paper with the address of his "daughter" on it with May. In fact, the paper held an
Internet address and the watch had an access code to the shipping dates of the gun ring.
True to his warning, Washington did meet his end... along with the five A.T.F. agents guarding him when Natasha Radinov, using a copy of Collins' cardkey and access code, entered the safehouse, then proceeded to slaughter the agents and murder Washington.
Riding Bean was a short OVA that was released in 1989, some time before Gunsmith Cats, and in many ways is like a prototype of the series, with Gunsmith Cats and Riding Bean sharing overall design elements. Riding Bean, it is rumored, was to have been the first in an anime series by of same name. However, Sonoda had a fallout with Toshiba EMI over the series (rumored to have been mostly due to Toshiba EMI), and thus the series ended with only one "episode". Toshiba EMI retained the rights to the series and Sonoda was forced to abandon a direct port of the franchise to what became Gunsmith Cats. Again, as is self evident, characters and concepts were ported over and a new plot was devised. Bean Bandit is the signature star, all but identical to his manga incarnation save for three big differences.
Unlike his manga counterpart, a dedicated loner, he has a partner who shares Rally's name and skill with firearms, though she does not particularly resemble the protagonist of ''Gunsmith Cats''. She is a white-skinned blue-eyed blonde, and less moral than the manga version of Rally, being more of a career criminal who shares Bean's ethics.
He also is far more well known than his secretive counterpart with his cabinet full of license plates from every state, bearing a nickname, 'Roadbuster' (later changed to 'Rolling Bean' in Gunsmith Cats). This was obviously given to him due to his 'offensive' driving technique, which tends to tender a heavy toll on his adversaries' vehicles-particularly the Chicago police department.
This has directly produced the third major difference from the manga. Whereas the Bean Bandit of Gunsmith Cats has no urge to draw attention to himself, the animated Bandit has an with which to chase his quarry, most probably from his personal funds.
Bean drives his custom car, 'The Buff'. Although it is never referred to by name, it demonstrates every single one of its unusual capabilities throughout the anime, with the addition of a passenger-side gun port for Rally.
The anime follows one day in the life of Bean and Rally, as they find that they have been framed for the kidnapping of Chelsea Grimwood, who is daughter of Mr. Grimwood, President of the Grimwood Company/Grimwood Conglomerant. However, it Semmerling, by way of various disguises, tricks, and manipulations, that is the real kidnapper. And the real target is Mr. Grimwood himself. While the police are in hot pursuit of Bean and Rally, along with Chelsea in tow, Semmerling and her helper/lover Carrie plan to make a secret getaway with Mr. Grimwood as hostage.
This is a tour-de-force involving a purposefully-blundered bank heist, voice alterations, disguises, and an unusual job offer to transport the kidnapped girl to her home, all orchestrated by the criminal mastermind Semmerling (her name comes from the gun she carries).
Semmerling seems to be the prototype of Rally's manga arch-nemesis, Goldie Musou, and shares many traits with the sociopathic Mafia queen: a high degree of combat ability, an aptitude for complex planning, a cavalier attitude towards her subordinates, and is a homosexual with a tendency toward sadistic pedophillia. Lacking her manga counterpart's resources, she only has one sex slave, Carrie, as opposed to the mobster's Kerasine harem.
Carrie is a prepubescent girl with fluorescent pink hair and a slavish devotion to her 'lover', although 'Semmer' mainly sees the child as an accomplice as best, and a pawn at worst.
The car chases in "Riding Bean" are closely based on "
The Blues Brothers ", which was also set in Chicago.
