The most defining characteristic is the art. Gun Dragon Sigma is a forward-thinking, avante-garde, auteur piece, with groundbreakingly unique visuals in the realm of manga. It's comprised of dramatic photographs of an attractive model in a skimpy outfit, straight out of a slightly high-budget porno, with constant ass shots to remind you of this. She's edited together with computer generated backgrounds and characters. Her body language is expressive, providing a very human contrast to the utter lack of humanity in every other character. The creators were incredibly wise to make this a science-fiction piece, compensating for the cheesy, unreal look of the characters by making them aliens, to avoid forcing the reader to suspend their disbelief and forget about how stupid it looks. The uncanny, fake visuals elegantly parallel how shallow and cliche every character is. The colors are vibrant and lush, the details full of life and character. The aesthetic has everything you remember from the Playstation 2 era and has aged every day since.
The story is a convoluted hodgepodge of science-fiction tropes, from illegally immigrated aliens who need earth's water to survive, banned black hole weapons, and aliens who feed off of sex that leaves human women dead or crippled. What begins with a simple police operation from the titular character, Gun Dragon Sigma (part of the special police force known as Gun Dragons), unfolds into an epic to rival the B-est of B movies. At first, the mystery seems solved — only for it turn out to be not solved, and with our sexy hero split into two. The criminal underground is explored, we see confrontations with villains with vendettas we've never heard of, sex handled INCREDIBLY tastefully with an alien lizard, and it all builds up to a character-less, motive-less, menacing villain.
Gun Dragon Sigma's greatest strength is in how groundbreaking it is, and this is exemplified no better than through its thematic depth. I have never seen another manga raise as many moral, philosophical questions. To simply scratch the surface: What place do aliens have in our society and in the criminal underground? Is it worth messing with dangerous, risky weapons, for the chance of salvation? Should children be exposed to violent videogames and sexual guidebooks? Is taking sex slaves okay if your species needs it to survive? What IS one's self, when there are two of you, and what does being the purest form of yourself mean to your womanhood? Just how many ass shots can this manga include? And finally, what force deep inside the heart is more powerful than absolute love?
Gun Dragon Sigma is truly bold, for it raises all these questions, even if subtly and requiring one to read into things, but leaves all exploration of those themes, and potential answers, up to the reader to decide. One could even say that Gun Dragon Sigma has absolutely no depth, and uses this fact, this reality, to show us that depth is truly in the eye of the beholder.
No boundaries are unpushed. No frontiers are left unexplored. Nothing in life is worth more of your time. I'm not pulling all of this out of my ass. I'm pulling it out of Gun Dragon Sigma herself's ass.
