The story is fairly simple, two contractors work in the grey areas between crime families, doing jobs that would cause a turf war if anyone else did them. They're hard as nails but smooth as silk - they're designed to be cool and it works pretty nicely. One is a ladies man, the other is a drugged up sword slinger. They rescue a working girl from the streets, and the show follows these 3 characters as they go about their daily "business". Fair enough, I'd call that a decent start for setting up characters. What got me to watch All of Gangsta is this: the sword slinger is deaf, and that's represented incredibly well throughout. He can't answer the phone, he can barely speak, there's a lot of sign language... It's one of the most memorable and well done mechanics in the entire show. The actual dialogue between talking characters is great too.
The art goes from great initial character design, some wonderful backdrops, and fantastic detail shots that any show would be proud of, to reusing the same shots again and again while the characters get further and further into "full anime" mode. C'mon, what's a lollipop sucking scythe wielding super woman doing in a seedy crime town? I found this a little disappointing, because the show starts off so strongly with it's own identity, but loses it as it progresses. I get why though, I mean Manglobe went bankrupt making this (Goodbye season 2).
The sound is a mix of good and bad, there's a few wonderful pacing tracks and the action sequences feel more tense and thrilling because of this. It's not overly memorable though, even if the opening and closing themes are both pretty good on their own. The voice acting is absolutely gorgeous, especially the deaf character's lines. Heh, wow, never thought I'd say something like that, that sounds pretty dumb.
Half way through this show, the pacing was quick but not break neck, their was mystery and intrigue about who the villain was, as well as explaining how these "drugged up warrior people" function. You've got an opening world and enough to fill it with. The biggest problem this show had was biting off too much at once. It's only 12 episodes and it falls right into my biggest peeve - failing to deal with escalation. This is where all those points start to fall off. By the end of the series, there's enough characters to fill a stadium, all of which don't get enough dialogue or screen time to become actual characters rather than plot devices. Come episode 8ish I think, you can tell that they can't close the loops they've opened, and the finale really lacks any sense of conclusion. I had such high hopes for this show at the beginning, and I'd definitely give season 2 a shot, but right now Gangsta feels a bit like it didn't defrost right before they cooked it. If I'm honest, I'd probably say give this one a skip.
