No Guns Life

The technology to create powerful cyborg soldiers has been released for public use by the Berühren Corporation. Those outfitted with robotic parts are known as the Extended. Juuzou Inui, one such Extended, was created as a soldier and has no memories of his former life. But now, after the war, he runs a business that takes care of Extended-related incidents around the city.

Rumors of a renegade Extended that kidnapped a child reach his ears; lo and behold, as Juuzo returns to his office, a giant robotic man with a boy on his back crashes in, asking for help. While Juuzou could just turn the guy in and be done with it, something about this situation is too fishy to ignore. It seems that everyone wants hold of this kid and, whether he likes it or not, Juuzou must find out why this Extended is on the run, how it connects to the Berühren Corporation, and just how far the treachery runs in this city.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Inui, Juuzou Main

Suwabe, Junichi Japanese

Steinberg, Mary Main

Numakura, Manami Japanese

Arahabaki, Tetsurou Main

Yamashita, Daiki Japanese

Pepper Supporting

Minase, Inori Japanese

Tokisada, Mega-armed Supporting

Horiuchi, Kenyuu Japanese

Gosling, Scarlet Supporting

Kouno, Marika Japanese

von Wolf, Cronen Supporting

Uchida, Yuuya Japanese

Vandeberme, Olivier Supporting

Hikasa, Youko Japanese

Saryshagan Supporting

Souma, Kouichi Japanese

Rosso, Bromwell Supporting

Kitazawa, You Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Oowada, Tomoyuki Producer

Yamanaka, Takahiro Producer

Tanaka, Junichirou Producer

Reviews

Dec 26, 2019

Stark700

Recommended

Walking down the dark metropolis is a man with a gun head. A man without conviction. A man filled with righteous. A man with unrivaled pride in his work. From the cyberpunk world where cyborgs exists, this man is a private detective and resolves to rid of it of corruption. He is Juzo Inui, a gun head who is here to help the helpless.

Mangaka Tasku Karasuma is not fairly well known to most audiences although some of his work incorporates the usage of futuristic worlds and science fiction. No Guns Life is no exception as we are introduced to a cyberpunk setting. Humans are now ... cyborgs and are called “Extended”. Crime is rampant and on the loose in the city. With such technology, you can just imagine how chaotic society has become. Juzo is an Extended problem solver who relies on his mental and physical skills to deal with other Extended. From the very beginning, the audience should pay full attention to Juzo’s character behavior. Despite being an Extended, he has the personality of a private detective and always seeks to complete his tasks for the right price. With the motto of “wipe your own ass”, Juzo prefers to work alone and isn’t afraid to take big risks. From a personal perspective, Juzo is not just the poster boy of No Guns Life but also a symbol. He is a symbol for people to take their own responsibility for their actions.

Now I won’t deny No Guns Life is somewhat of a niche anime. Even as a paranormal detective show, the anime leans more into sci-fi and action. The story flows with each episode introducing ongoing problems in a city and corruption. We also meet characters who Juzo associates with including Mary Steinberg and Tetsuro Arahbaki. These two collaborates together with Juzo although they also have their own personal goals. (for instance, Mary hopes to reunite with her brother) Nonetheless, Juzo acts as more of an anti-hero throughout the series. Even though he performs heroic deeds, he’s also a mercenary who takes cases for money. For the right price, Juzo does his job regardless how difficult it may be. But on some occasions, he also helps the Extended in need with his own conviction. In essence, he helps the helpless and comes across as a fairly reasonable man. Some associates occasionally assists him in his tasks although the main course of his job is undertaken by the gunhead himself. Speaking of which, how likeable are the other characters? The bottom line is that Juzo overshadows them but they do possesses unique roles in the show. Mary works as a mechanic and is important to his well-being. Tetsuro has an ability to control other Extended’s bodies making an invaluable asset. Even Olivier Vandeberme, a law enforcer, provides freedom for Juzo so he can work without disturbance. The fact is, these characters are important to the core of the show and without them, Juzo would have a harder time to achieve his goals.

But an important question remains. What is your goal for watching No Guns Life? What are you hoping to get out of this science fiction story taking place in this deluded cyberpunk world? It’s ambiguous question because No Guns Life is an unconventional show with its own identity. Sometimes, you have to wonder what the author wanted you to experience. Juzo, the gun head reminds us how the potentials of Extended and their limitations. I mean, isn’t it funny how he can’t actually fire the augmented gun on his head without assistance? In fact, many Extended in the series carries some sort of burden in the aftermath of the great war. A major social issue relating to poverty also exists as some Extended resorts of violence to survive. On the other hand, we have mega corporations such as Behruen, standing as a symbol of power and bureaucracy. It reminds of the old classic 1987 Robocop where futuristic technological inventions are treated differently than others. Crime remains a major issue in the story as Juzo deals with corruption. He finds out the hard way after facing off against rogue cyborg Gondry, the very first Extended. Standing out as a powerful individual but also victimized by the result of the war, Gondry is a poster boy of experimentation. An arc dealing with him is one of the climatic clashes exploring the ethnics of technology. And to be honest, I think it’s one of the highlights in this season. Meanwhile, No Guns Life also gains support for eliciting emotional appeal to the audience. Characters such as Olivier has their own motivations and in one of the later episodes, we find out her purpose in the story. If you made it this far, then I can say it’s safe that you’ll be staying the rest of the way.

Serving as a celebration of Madhouse’s creative works, No Guns Life has distinctive elements in its artwork. The dark and noir-style backgrounds inspire a cyberpunk look for the main setting. Most noticeably, the backgrounds are animated with the Unreal Engine to make them as polished as they can be. By rendering the visuals and fuse them with the character models, it makes both parts stand out sharply. It’s not too often we get to see a game engine being used for an animated series so perhaps this opens doors more to future projects of similar nature. The Extended are also decorative with unique augmentations and modifications to the body, so much that you’ll see them more than regular humans. Characters that stand out the most includes Juzo, Gondry, and perhaps Olivier. Their character expressions sell a variety of human behavior ranging from comical, emotional, and diabolical. And if you’re in for some light comedy, there’s that too. Character interactions sometimes goofs around with their cartoony expressions. Then, there are also light jokes thrown around that pokes fun at technological themes with dry humor. We can’t also ignore how often Juzo needs help to fire his own gun, can we?

No Guns Life is a unique piece of work with its own identity. As someone who has read the manga, it’s easy to get used to even if you’re not familiar with its ideas. The more I watched No Guns Life, the easier it became to understand what the author wanted to show us. Trust me, go watch No Guns Life and experience a hallmark of unorthodox beauty.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

What did you think of this review?

Nice 0

Love it 0

Funny 0

Confusing 0

Informative 0

Well-written 0

Creative 0

More reviews by Stark700 (733)

Show all

Read more

Show less

Open

Gift

Report

Dec 27, 2019

Skarvalin

Mixed Feelings

No Guns Life shines brighter than most of its surrounding competition thanks to its central themes of corruption and dehumanization, strengthened by it’s gritty noir style. But the execution casts a strong shadow on the whole show, loaded with mediocrity.

It has a good foundation to improve from though. Most of the first season is dedicated to world-building and does so with modestly good results. But it often felt like it went all over the place and never really resolved many of the plot threads that it had built up. The characters especially took a bullet due to this. Most of them were blander than stale ... bread because of how severely lacking their development is as of now.

Our main protagonist Inui Juuzou is an Over-Extended and former gun slave unit that was used during a war. His backstory from that time is only mentioned briefly, teasing you to keep watching and find out more later. Other characters fall into this as well, which is quite frustrating since besides their backstories they have almost nothing going for them. They are at least not painfully generic like many of the villains turn out to be, who basically scream in your face about how evil they are. Though they only become a hurdle when the story needs them to be.

What ended up making me stay throughout its entire runtime was the same reason I picked this show up in the first place, it’s aesthetic. The bleak and gritty dystopian future the show throws you into is very refreshing. It’s heavily noir inspired which is something one rarely sees these days but I would gladly see more of. Aesthetics aside, the visuals are alright for the most part. There's a heavy use of CGI but it blends in with it's 2D counterpart enough to not become too distracting. Character movement was solid most of the time and they were very consistently on model throughout. The action scenes were the visual highlight and were pretty fast-paced and enjoyable. The CGI is also implemented well here and at times used to the show's advantage.

The noir style was amplified thanks to the smooth jazz soundtrack that really helped give the show it’s own identity. I can't say it did a lot for me emotionally, but was overall pretty decent for what it was. I feel pretty much the same way about the voice acting which was also decent and fitting to the characters personality. Not any outstanding performances but they did their job well and made the characters feel more real, aside from some of the villains that just sounded ridiculous.

But overall I can't say I'm satisfied at all when the characters and story haven't been properly fleshed out. I think the most harmful problem was the lack of story and character progression which makes it hard to recommend. If it’s style is not enough to make up for it then I can see many finding this quite dull. However, at the end of the day, I think it’s at least worth a shot.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

What did you think of this review?

Nice 0

Love it 0

Funny 0

Confusing 0

Informative 0

Well-written 0

Creative 0

More reviews by Skarvalin (10)

Show all

Read more

Show less

Open

Gift

Report

Dec 29, 2019

theRealGuyFieri

Not Recommended

No Guns Life? Yes, no guns should ever be brought to life.

Spoiler warning but I'll just give you one small one, it's not good. Don't bother watching this series because it is downright awful. I know for a fact that at face value this show seems 'cool' and 'radical' with the main character having a head of a revolver and the world taking place in the future. I know this because that was my initial thoughts when going into this show, honestly, the show was fine until everything changed when that Tetsurou annoyance entered the scene. Right away that kid alone just place this show ... in the negative zone, he is literally the embodiment of kid Naruto and that's not a nice thing to see. This is literally his format for his character for scenarios, Juno is busy with an issue, the boy's a busybody and has to 'help', in turn of 'helping' Juno he fucks up and gets beaten up, Juno saves him and the boy just apologies, then the cycle continues. This is utter trash writing from the people behind this series, even if is a copy from the books, they do not even try to make scenes or plot interesting.

I am going to be straight, the reasons why I didn't give this series a 1 because I love the concept and I like Mary and Juno, that's all. The music sucks, the art sucks (especially coming from you Madhouse), plot uninteresting and unfocused, just the show is a complete mess. Like if they just focus the whole plot on Mary and Juno alone, I bet it would come for a much enjoyable series, 'Mary and Juno's Bizarre Adventures'. That I would dig. It is so obvious the studio is placing this series out for the sake of filling the anime seasons slots, I know for a fact that Madhouse is not using the full production team due to them also working on Chihayafuru 3. Either this shows the saturation of anime titles the NHK demands to studios or that Madhouse just got lazy and they decided to just shit out series without any dazzle on them. This doesn't come off super disappointing as I can clearly see the show's flaws at the near beginning, so it really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that this series is bad. I do want to call out the ambitious aim the show was trying to go for, like the issue with robots living aside humans and the struggle to maintain peace after a long war. However I just think the studio didn't actually understand the sheer size of what they were aiming, there were tons of technological gaps in the show, not very innovative ideas despite the place being in the future, social system is like messy and politics are just obsolete. I am going to stop here, but if you watch it through yourself you would be able to intake this pile of under-produced crap.

-SCORES-

Characters- 4/10: Fuck the kid and almost everyone else, Juno and Mary are the only acceptable ones.

Art- 3/10: Boobies are big but the physics is so bad that every oppai seems dead to me. In majority of the scenes, especially when the characters turn or look somewhere else, it looks as if the turning animation was made on Windows XP. Face are fucked, environment's boring and the whole show is just trying to mimic shit. Only thing to praise them for is the use of Unreal Engine 4. It's true though, some of the visuals are pretty 'unreal' to believe in.

Writing- 2/10: Ooooweee did this part had a blast, since there is so much bad shit to ramble about I'll just say one good thing. Which is errrrrrrrr... Nevermind I can't think of anything. The show is bad at choosing whether this scene should be serious or that scene should be funny and whatnot.

Sound- 5/10: For the most part is fine, everything does it's job but not super well nor super bad. Everything is alright except the god awful outro, like seriously what is with that outro. It feels as if the singers just muttering a script with the beat off some Eurovision song.

Overall, trash. Plus there is a second season coming up, what a joke. I guess the only way Madhouse and the writers can prove themselves is by delivering their utmost best in the next one. But to comeback from a ditch as deep as this would take a miracle.

Strong 2 to a light 3

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

What did you think of this review?

Nice 0

Love it 0

Funny 0

Confusing 0

Informative 0

Well-written 0

Creative 0

More reviews by theRealGuyFieri (53)

Show all

Read more

Show less

Open

Gift

Report

Intro To Anime

by liviz-library

43 Entries · 17 Restacks

Cyberpunk anime

by Hatul

50 Entries · 334 Restacks

Trashpunk: High Tech, Low Life

by illDelusion

30 Entries · 27 Restacks

North American Anime & Manga Releases for January

Here are the North American anime & manga releases for January Week 1: January 5 - 11 Anime Releases Black Bullet Blu-ray [2021 re-release] Conception Blu-ray [E...read more

Jan 5, 2021 2:08 PM by ImperfectBlue | Discuss (8 comments)

Fall 2019 Simulcast List [Update 11/16]

In this thread, you'll find a comprehensive list of anime acquired for simulcast release during the Fall 2019 season. Anime series licensed for home video relea...read more

Sep 27, 2019 4:09 PM by Snow | Discuss (60 comments)

	Poll: No Guns Life Episode 4 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Oct 31, 2019	65 replies	by Alkimia »» Apr 4, 9:10 PM
	Poll: No Guns Life Episode 11 Discussion Stark700 - Dec 19, 2019	35 replies	by BiobulletM »» Apr 12, 2024 4:23 PM
	Poll: No Guns Life Episode 10 Discussion Stark700 - Dec 12, 2019	35 replies	by Kayarbee70 »» Mar 23, 2024 1:23 PM
	Poll: No Guns Life Episode 8 Discussion Stark700 - Nov 28, 2019	44 replies	by Kayarbee70 »» Mar 21, 2024 6:20 PM
	Poll: No Guns Life Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) Stark700 - Oct 10, 2019	145 replies	by Kayarbee70 »» Mar 19, 2024 6:21 PM

In Numbers: The Best and Worst Anime of Fall 2019

Scores, members, favorites — everything you need to know about who won and lost Fall 2019.

by Shymander

114,660 views

Spoiler