GANGSTA. Episode 1: NAUGHTY BOYS - Bobble Reviews

I don't know about you, but when I see my garish cartoon bear head plastered onto the front of a screenshot from the wonderful theme song of this gory anime of serious issues, it gives me no hope for the future.

GANGSTA. opens with a peek into the lives of our two protagonists – two GANGSTA.s, presumably –

Gangsta.

...who take their punk-kicking jobs from a quaint office that overlooks a rustic, peaceful town as well as a bloodied, beaten, poverty-stricken prostitute.

It's almost like they're overlooking in more ways than one...ha ha, ha.....

*SIGH*

But the story's not over yet. Nicholas (the main character without the eyepatch) and Worick (*SIGH*) have another job to do. If they want the dough, they have to destroy a punk group that's been "doing a lot of bad things lately." Eventually, as they gather information, they find a police officer from the local corrupt, kill-your-criminals-and-push-them-under-the-rug force – and 

guess who's not only somewhat involved in the gang, but also not quite overlooked by our mercenary, gray-morality heroes?

It's her, from earlier! And it sounds like they know each other, slightly! One of them chats with her. The other one gives her a handkerchief. By "give," I mean "throws gingerly onto her head." That's okay, though, because she still tells Worick to send Nicholas her thanks.

She says she has nowhere else to go but with the evil gang. But the GANGSTA.s were told to kill the whole gang, including her. What's their next move!?

Right.

Nick's on it. With that katana, he blows through drug dealers faster than bullets. He also jumps in the air, levitates for a second, does a full flip, and goes right back to slicing people apart. That translates horribly to the still images of this blog, but it can't be overstated how incredible that gymnastics feat was.

He didn't touch the ground, nor the wall.

He keeps blazing through the crowd until only a few gang leaders remain, and they're ready to surrender. That's okay, though, because someone shoots them anyway. It's...!

Just this other guy with the more conventional weapon,

Before long, it's just "Nick 'n' Wor" doing what they like with the gang boss. They shoot his side, stab his hand, whisper into his ear about how he's dumb for mistreating women, and then they shoot him, so all in all, a perfect success. Until the woman from earlier comes back and sees what they've done.

...Ha ha, ha...

Crying and broken, she takes Worick's gun, and they watch as she shoots, first at the wall, then at...the boss' body. As if to say, with bullets, that she's free from their torturing grip.

But the story's not over yet, as they still have some 'splaining to do with the cop. The three of them go to him together, like a family, and tell him that she may have been those punks' property once, but they are all dead now, so logically, she's their property now.

The studio audience gives a very hesitant "aww...?"

But the cop's still angry, so they kick his car and leave. And when they get back to that quaint office with the quaint old telephone, they don't have that woman serve as their personal prostitute at all — she just answers the phone for them. That is reasonably nice on the whole.

I mean, there's still gang fighting, drug cartels, blood everywhere, the shadows of the military past that probably still haunts Nicholas, and the very strong possibility that they will all get more entangled in everything in a very deadly way, but I said "reasonably."