Riding Bean

I’d read the manga Gunsmith Cats, so it was super fun to see the pilot versions of the characters! I’d always expected Bean to have a deeper voice, oddly enough (in the JP dub, specifically). Rally’s VA was EXACTLY what I figured she’d sound like, so kudos to the director on that.

The action scenes were super good, and very well animated. Lotta funny car tricks and stunts are accomodated by the fiction. The plot was tightly written too. I didn’t feel like there were any major lingering threads. Liked how Bean’s classic headband blocking bullet was present even back then.

I got jumpscared by rally being white in this version, but wa pleasantly surprised to lern that her being given melanin was a LATER character change (more on that later).

Otaku no Video

Sadly it wasn’t anything stellar IMO. An interesting product of it’s era though! Lots of fun little details into the style of otaku activites from the era. Stuff like telephone availability and such is something I always forget about, since stuff like that was on it’s way out when I was little.

That being said, video rental stuff is still part of my chidhood, so it was fun to see that being treated as everyday occurance again.

The Daicon IV reference here was super cute, since it's the same studio.

The live interview segments felt kinda mean-spirited, but I guess that’s to give a view into how the creators got judged and such. The only other major flaw was that episode 2 covered wayyy to much story to be coherent.

Love that they included female otaku characters (Satou was really cute), and I think the animation itself was super charming! The fact that they covered a bunch of other niche hobbies felt nice too.

Gunsmith Cats

this was a SUPER solid adaptation. Really loved the voicing and animation. It played up the personality of all the characters REALLY well! The only real complaint I had was that they clearly didn’t have enough time as a production to tell a full sized story. The last episode felt a little rushed as a result.

Re-casting Rally as the main protagonist,
as well as making her Indian was a SUPER cool choice!

This is about the manga, but author’s love of guns and cars was VERY obvious. Even more so than in Riding Bean. There’s a lot of details in it are about the models and make of many individual guns and car that are on-screen.

Now to finish reading Gunsmith Cats Burst

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