Sometimes you gotta pay attention to editorial remarks on your mango, an here one on the cover says “SF hard boiled the gun smoke drifts muzzle talks” (like that, without commas). And it’s surprisingly accurate – the protagonist, Inui Juuzou, is ya rogue private detective, always smoking cigarettes, smoking hot, smoking with gun smoke, because he is a cyborg made of revolvers, his head is a revolver, and he is the spirit of the noire revolver embodied: bitter, badass, with a dark history, seeking to break away from the hands that try to subdue him, actually a weapon. Of course, he doesn’t trust, but tries to see things right. And, of course, he’s got involved in something big this time. No Gun’s Life earnestly works on bringing together the many things that are associated with the noire today – violence, mystery, 40-s New York, femme fatales, powerful figures on all levels of social ladder. The heart of this works lies with the noire.
Or maybe half of it. The second half is taken by a retrofuturistic cyberpunk, also a proper one – with an evil cybernetic corporation, with a brutal police force tasked with keeping the modified people in check, with questions of transhumanism and alienation. Also with the punk part – bodies being spliced and spruced up in back-door undercity clinics, body horror and brain hacking. Aesthetically it’s sort of Gunm, sort of what Deus Ex could have been, if it had gone radical with designs (here we can notice an old guy with wheels for legs, people with artificial eyes, or full body mods that make their owners look inhuman).
And the two halves are connected, cleverly, by a recently ended war, which both explains why heavy modifications have been used on people and gives depth to the powerful characters. Just like this sometimes No Gun’s Life turns out more intelligent than you initially expect – the original, movie noire bigger-than-life men also brought their violence from the smokes of the battlefield. Nothing breathes life into a work of art like blood after all.
The structure is supported by memorable art: black and white in stark contrast, with smoky handsome designs, sprinkled with details and ambitious – no matter what, you don’t see a hero with a revolver for the head all that often. The covers and the colored pages are great. Though, at least at the beginning, there’re moments, mostly during fights, where the contrast and the detailization clash, making it hard to understand what is exactly happening.
No, No Guns Life is not ideal. There have been several mushy chapters, not failed, but not quite exciting – side characters not that well presented, humorous moments not that well paced or immature. There’s the annoying fetish battle garb for women that breaks immersion, though sexualization doesn’t discriminate and men too, especially Juuzou, end up being sexualized to hell and back. (There’s also a drag queen, who provides comedic relief, just fyi.) In general, the plot is not as meaty as I’d like, with separate arcs being rather light on substance.
But then there’re these slightly more intelligent things that give hope. The hooks set for the bigger plot are catchy. The protected child this time is a boy, plus annoying and bratty sometimes, which creates a wonderful character dynamics. Juuzou is connected throughout the city, which makes his encounters with different powers more lively and personal. And the handsome gentleman type rival, that has appeared recently, has these amazing nervous broken lip corners, which liven up his design.
No Guns Life is still developing, and its growth will take time. Its future is still covered in smoke – maybe it will overgrow its issues, maybe it has hit its ceiling. All still is in the air. But No Guns Life sharp originality of setting and ambitiousness of designs make it a work worth checking out for any manga enthusiast who is interested in noire and cyberpunk (both as settings and styles), and I hope that most of us are.
