So the latest blessing from NetFlix was the Samurai Gun series as mangled by ADV films.

The setting is a little interesting, a time near the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate, with the appearance of some elements of the Industrial Revolution.  But that's about the end of the interesting bits.  The rest of it is purely by the numbers.

The "Samurai Gun" are probably more accurately called Ninjas, simply because they USE guns, which were the downfall of the Samurai as a warrior class, and they operate for a secret underground anti-shogunate "Council" which we don't see.  The earliest members were trained from youth, and often come from a background of personal tragedy.

Our Hero (meh) is one of these, a half-breed Japanese, we get endlessly reminded that his sister was raped and murdered in front of him before he got taken in for the intense Samurai Gun training.  And as a result, when he's fighting, he's some kind of mythically good fighting machine.  Of course, in Anime, he can't be a hero if he doesn't hate himself for being good at killing.  He keeps saying he'll refuse Kill missions, and yet, the missions they give him always result in him killing Mooks by the magazine-load.

He has regular partners, the deadly woman stereotype, who daylights as an entertainer at the tavern where our hero has a cover as a bar back, and another fellow who gives him someone to talk to.  There's nothing special about him, really.

He's also got a hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold girlfriend.  I guess it's a Japanese trope that the hero has a girl in the bordello he spends his time and money on, but doesn't sleep with.

There's not much point in going into any more detail.  The series is incomplete.  Just about the time they let the hero know that someone in the shogunate might be someone who used to be with the council and might have been behind his sister's end JUST to get him as a trainee, it's over.  Guess the second season didn't happen.  Probably for good reason.  The stories are pure overused tropes.

I also get a trifle annoyed at the writing when they try to talk about guns.  These professional shooters try to talk shop about their weapons, and show that the Japanese really don't have any actual experience to base the dialog on.  A real shooter might talk about how the weight of a gun helps steady one's aim or absorb recoil, but an anime writer who's only read about them would say something about a really light but powerful gun being "Faster" and therefore better.

And as for ADV mangling it.  The dub was SO bad and irritating, I HAD to switch to Japanese with Subtitles.  ADV must be run by a bunch of teenagers or twenty-somethings who think you can make something hardcore and edgy by stuffing the dialogue full of profanity and slapping an "adult" label on it.  It was so forced, as well as poorly acted that it just pulled you completely out.  And you can further see their respect for the source material by an Extras feature called "Fun with Audio" where the vouce actors basically make fart joke level humor with their lines.  It's not out-takes, but deliberate, and each outing features an even worse parody of the song the deadly woman sings in the bar.  Although I have to admit, they did save one good joke each time for last.

They also screw up by including an un-aired episode that occurs near the 2/3rd's mark through the series at the END of the last DVD, rather than inserting it in sequence where it might have actually made sense, since the events in it are referred to in the later episodes.  And if I had been buying these, I would have been annoyed at the 3 episodes per disk packaging.

If you like kinky stuff, on each disk there's at least one episode where semi-random females are abused by the bad guys to help prove that they're bad.  But the electro-torture, target practice, and sexual abuse are toned down to broadcast standards, since these were shown on TV.  Perhaps that's part of why it failed.

Posted by: Mauser at 04:40 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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