Gunsmith Cats

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.

This was a good comic and a good 3 chapter series, there wasn't a moment where I lost interest. Not only did this movie emphasize on Rally as the main character, but it also gave May the chance to take down a worthy opponent, which shows her skills as well.

Like I said before, great work.

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.

Gunsmith Cats the OAV is based on Sonoda Kenichi's manga series, but is even better. Rally Vincent has a penchant for guns; her partner Minnie May Hopkins takes a liking to bombs. Rally runs a gun store and is approached by the ATF to cooperate with them on a sting. After being blackmailed into it because of a lack of a gun license, Rally and May get involved in a government conspiracy and pursued by a Russian assassin (who is, in my opinion, one of the greatest anime characters ever). The animation is not the greatest but well done, the voice actors are excellent (featuring Araki Kae in her only good role), the plot is engaging (though the ending wasn't stellar), the characters are very believable, and the music compliments the series perfectly. If you like action series or good anime, this is a must.

I checked the DVD out of our library thinking it was for my 8 year old daughter. We watched the trailers (which she liked!) and I quickly realized it wasn't for kids. Since it was laying around, I peeked at one of the 25 minute episodes and got hooked. Interested how each episode gets one sexy "sneak peek" of one of the girls. I loved the art work. I just wish they had been more careful on picking the English voices for them. They didn't match the sexy but macho cute looks and actually sounded kind of tacky.