English Dub Review: No Guns Life “Renegade Extended”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Juuzo Inui, AKA The Resolver, is an “Extended”, a human who became a cyborg to fight in what has been called “The Great War”. Since that ended, Extended’s are seen as forgotten relics instead of people. Juzo’s been working as a private detective in cases relating to Extendeds, but it’s hard for him to make friends since his big cyborg thing is that his face is a giant revolver pistol with teeth. He hates humidity, since it makes him rust, and kids. Only friends get to pull his trigger, and he’s not looking to make any.

On his way back from another successful case, he finds out his office has been broken into by a monstrous mechanical being carrying an unconscious child and being chased by the Security Bureau as a renegade Extended. This is pretty suspicious, but a chat with the Bureau members gives Juuzo a hunch to defend this Extended, who then hires Juuzo to protect the kid. On the way to a safe house, he encounters a nun who claims to be here to protect the boy, named Tetsuro. Juuzo sees through her ruse, mainly because of how abused the body is and how she has no reaction to his face like normal people do. She reveals herself to be an agent of Berühren after Tetsuro, but the Extended from before saves him. However, in order to save his client, Juuzo leaves Tetsuro with the woman for now and gets shot into the sewers below.

A talk with the other Extended reveals that he is actually Tetsuro himself, having had a device implanted in him called Harmony which allows remote control over empty Extended bodies. Despite the injuries they caused him to keep him from running away, he managed to possess that body and escape, but the connection is starting to cut out, meaning he’ll be their prisoner again. Before he leaves, he tells Juuzo that he was glad to meet him. Juuzo then decides to face the train taking him with a special revolving punch: Funke Faust, which blows the train right off the rails.

OUR TAKE

We begin another anime series of the Fall season, with this one being one of the most hyped of the lot. No Guns Life follows another rough looking badass with a heart of gold in Juuzo Inui, who is already making strong impressions by having an instantly recognizable and iconic character design. Though I do find it at least a bit funny at how much they are Chekov’s Gun-ing his gun head with the talk of how significant it is that someone he accepts touch the trigger OR that the gun won’t actually fire without someone behind him to do it. I can’t see any clear candidates just yet that might fit the bill for being the trigger finger, but I expect it to be a developing subplot over the course of the twenty four episodes we’ll have in this world.

Speaking of said world, we’re introduced pretty efficiently to this version of reality and how it impacts the characters involved. We don’t know too much about the Great War, but what we do know is that it was dire enough to require ordinary citizens to become less human in order to fight it, a sacrifice that has cost them upon returning home, as some turn to crime and others end up shunted from society even if they’re good people like Juuzo. Still, it seems like this series is establishing a theme of “don’t judge a book by its cover”, as while grizzly deformed cyborgs like Juugo and Tetsuro are generally decent folks, we have total hotties like the fake nun that seem to be only thinking of the bottom line. I don’t expect that reverse proportion of hotness to goodness to be consistent, especially based on the OP, but it’s a cool way of establishing stuff like that with the character designs.

And I don’t normally talk about voice actors, but I feel I should really commend the performance of Juuzo’s actor in the dub, Chris Ryan. This is the first time I’ve heard him in anything, as I’ve somehow managed to avoid everything else he’s been in so far, but he brings the perfect combination of rough noir detective with a soft gooey moral compass. I could pretty much listen to him read the phonebook (if those were still a thing people used) and I am definitely all in for hearing his voice over the next six months as No Guns Life continues.