The story follows two men that have the job as ‘Handymen’ in their city. Nikolas Brown and Worick Arcangelo are not the typical definitions of handymen in our world, as instead of fixing a sink or other appliances they are more like hired thugs. They tend to help the law more often other thugs, however, like most ‘handymen’ in the city. The officer Chad calling on them the most often. Now the story would have been rather bland, but it is introduced that one of the men, Nikolas is something more than human, a ‘Twilight.' He has pills that he must consume to keep his powers in check, but he regularly overdoses on them so that he can be stronger than he normally is.
The season mainly focuses on the upcoming war that is coming to a head in the streets. People like Nikolas, the Twilights, are often mistreated and have rather strict laws put upon them to control them. One of the three families that control the law on the streets starts to act out however and starts to break those laws. The story is interesting as it is dealing with the idea of mistreatment of minorities by those who are not part of the minority group along with how different people in a relationship, be it a friendship or sexual relationship, have different views of those who are in that relationship. An example of this is how Worick, Nikolas and Alex (a woman the men pick up in their work) all try and understand why the others are acting the way they are.
Art -6-
This anime was trying to seek to attract a bit of a women audience I say this because nearly every man was drawn in an attractive manner. Not to say that the artists did not try to appeal to a presumed straight male audience. However, it was also the type of anime that was trying to stick close to the original art style of the manga, which wasn’t bad. There wasn’t anything that stood out as amazing or downright horrible. The most I can say is that many characters dressed the same way. This was maybe because they did not want to design a lot of different clothing choices for a huge cast of characters, but that would have made it a lot more interesting as a lot of the environment was gray. A splash of color on the characters to make them stick out more would have gone a long way.
Sound -7-
Again, there wasn’t anything that completely took away from the anime. However, I do have to praise Nikolas’ voice actor, Tsuda Kenjirou, as Nikolas is a deaf character. Even though he uses sign language to communicate most of the time, some characters and events force him to use his voice. Tsuda did a wonderful job portraying the difficulty that Nikolas has when he uses a voice that he cannot hear.
It was also a job well done on the voice actor’s parts to speak in the slang that the characters would use. As this story mainly takes place in rough neighborhoods, many characters tended to use much slang. However, since Worick and a few other characters came from more privileged upbringings, they tended to use less slang. Keeping this in mind was critical as it kept Worick and the other character’s structure in tack and did not let me down.
Character -8-
The different types of characters that are portrayed in Gangsta were one of the high points for me. Nikolas was showing that disability was not something that can stop people that have it in their mind that they can do something. Nikolas and Worick’s relationship was partially interesting because they were two children when they meet, but both were abused horribly by their fathers. Their bond was made because they found each other and cared about each other, as Worick found someone else that knew what he was going through. However, the bond may be a bit tainted because once Worick discovered that Nikolas was deaf, he felt reasonable of taking care of Nikolas. Speaking of Worick, Worick is a character who brought up something new, at least in my experience, as he is the first character confirmed to be a gigolo or a male prostitute that I have seen. It is worth noting that he worked as a sex worker because of his abuse. It affected him every day, and it was shown rather clearly throughout the show. Alex displayed the aftereffects of drug addiction and being in an unhealthy relationship.
I fully enjoyed the character portrayal in this series and would solely recommend it based on these characters, whom I have come to care about and wish to see heal from these very real issues that they have to face.
Enjoyment -7-
Despite the fact that the story is nothing that is going to blow anyone’s mind, along with the art being rather unremarkable, I did enjoy this season. With the vocal work on Nikolas being very well done, along with the fun complex characters, it was something that I wanted to finish. I do find myself not totally sure of what is happening in the main story arc, though I am confident I know how each character feels about what is going on.
I am also sure of how the characters are affected by what is happening. The anime did a wonderful job in making sure that the characters felt like real people. This makes it easy to know who is being changed by what, and why I should care and so on. Also, while it does deal with rather serious issues, for its universe at least, and has a hefty tone sometimes, there are light, humorous times that make it, so it is not always a bitter pill to swallow.
Overall -6.8-
Gangsta is one of those animes where you either like it, or you do not. You are not likely to get into it because of the art style or for its plot, but if the characters can get your attention and make you care for them by the end of its first episode, then you are going to be hooked. The good thing is that Gangsta knows that its plot is not anything that’s very special and it does not pretend like it is trying to state a significant message. Sometimes while animes seek to make a big message, the characters and plot seem as through it is far too over thought. Since Gangsta is not trying to do anything like that, it leaves far more room for making characters much more relatable, or at least complex enough to keep the audience captivated.
Gangsta can play off what it knows it has going for it with its relatable characters, and that is what makes it good. It is easy to tell much effort went into making the characters; their backgrounds are as thoroughly explained to understand why there is gray area in their moral decisions. An important part of the characters is how biased they are and that you can see where they get this bias from. I would recommend at least trying it. If you find yourself attached to the characters, then by all means, keep watching, because otherwise, you will be bored and find it very hard to watch the whole season.
