Gunsmith Cats

A good example of the Japanese, Absorbing American TV of the 70's and 80's and beaming it back at Americans, With that definite Japanese twist.

If you enjoy action car shows like "Knight Rider"?, Then the corny loose plot, Weak Supporting cast and excessive explosions shouldn't bother you much.

However, I feel It should have been edited as one movie length story, Rather than 3 separate episodes, As the episodes aren't really that strong on their own? This is great 'Beer and Curry' light entertainment, Some nice Eye candy for a lazy afternoon and the fact that the show's creator, Does actually try to draw detail is a plus too.

This short OVA is one of my new favorite animations which has a James Bond-y feel to it. It follows the story of Irene "Rally" Vincent and her partner, "Minnie" May Hopkins, a former prostitute, who run a gun shop named Gunsmith Cats in Chicago. They are also bounty hunters with Rally as an expert shooter and excellent shooter while Minnie is a giddy weapons expert. It is implied that Rally is lesbian due to the fact that Minnie lives with her and is occasionally intimate with her. In any case, she is a badass fighter in this series which has great storylines and characters, with even the dubbing of this series being great, as is the song and animation opening each episode. I wish the series had been longer because there's so much more that could have been done, especially with the themes of political and bureaucratic corruption. Due to all of this, I give this series its current rating.

Given this entire thing runs for just three episodes that are all a little under 30 minutes each, watching Gunsmith Cats in one sitting basically makes it a movie. However you want to judge it, it's pretty fun, following two young women who own a gun shop and get caught up in a dramatic scheme to take down an illegal gun running.

The miniseries/film keeps the tone light throughout, it's pretty breezy and has some good action, and I think I also have to give it props for not being quite as sleazy as it could've been (PG sleaze, really. "Pgleaze"?)

It's a fun and lesser-known piece of anime from the 1990s, and it made for an enjoyable watch.

Three part anime adaptation of the manga developed by Kenichi Sonoda in response to the cancellation of his "Riding Bean" series (which also had a one shot anime feature of its own).

Rally Vincent (originally a character in "Riding Bean") is a bounty hunter and gun store owner who, along with her short statured bomb loving partner Minnie May Hopkins, hunt down criminals for the right price. Then an ATF agent by name of Bill Collins shows up and he has dirty information on them that he uses to blackmail them into helping him uncover a gun ring which connects to both his boss and a crooked politician and eventually involves a giant hulking Russian assassin the size of a basketball player.

Kind of like a bizarre mix of "Lethal Weapon", "Blues Brothers", "Die Hard", and other big explosion action features. It's bright and it's funny and it'll kill time on a slow night.

Well, "Gunsmith Cats" was an anime that I watched back when I was 20 years old, back in 1995, and it also made me pick up the comic book afterwards, because I enjoyed it back then.

So I revisited "Gunsmith Cats" - the original Japanese language version, of course, now in 2020. And I must say that, while "Gunsmith Cats" definitely shows signs of its age, it is still an anime that is quite entertaining and watchable. Sure, it is goofy and stereotypical, but it is enjoyable - and that is what matters.

The animation is adequate, although the drawing style itself is a bit outdated in my opinion. There wasn't as much attention to detail crammed into the episodes, nor was the style actually smooth enough - it was a bit old and gritty.

The voice acting - at least in the Japanese version - was good, and they had some talented performers here. However, I am puzzled though about why people in America, with American names and obviously not Japanese in heritage, were speaking Japanese. That just made no sense at all.

There is a good amount of action through the episodes to make it interesting, and the character build and development was adequate - perhaps a bit too light on the character development side. But it was two very lovable main characters - no doubt about that.

If you haven't already seen this 1995 anime, then you should do so if you get the chance. I am rating "Gunsmith Cats" a six out of ten stars, and it was a nice trip back down memory lane re-watching it 25 years after I watched it the first time.