English Dub Review: No Guns Life “Puppet”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Tetsuro recovers slowly from his newly extensions, but still wants to free the rest of the Extendeds under Berühren’s control. Unfortunately, he can’t do anything at the moment, especially since Harmony won’t let him speak AND is embedded in his brain, making removing it dangerous. Juzo then gets a job from a local mobster to protect their turf from an Extended stealing parts off children (likely to send a message to Juzo about Tetsuro), which he turns down. But Tetsuro decides to take matters into his own hands, using Harmony to possess Juzo’s body and investigate this case. He soon runs into what he thinks is the culprit, an assassin attacking two young girls, Anna and Ende. However, it seems the assassin was from another group while the girls are actually from Berühren and after Tetsuro. Ende becomes a grotesque monster but goes out of control, though Anna calms her down. They then report to Cunningham, but he decides to turn on them, forcing Tetsuro to save them again.

OUR TAKE
Well, I certainly didn’t expect Tetsuro to get this kind of focus so soon, but I’m all for it. We’ve gotten a lot to establish where Juzo stands on things like helping or relying on others, even having motto about everyone needing to wipe their own ass. He’s a well built and self-sustaining dude, likely even before he got a giant gun for a head. But at the same time, he’s not exactly following that rule entirely, especially with his head gun requiring the assistance of another person in order to load and fire properly. I’m wondering if this theme of helping others versus being able to rely on yourself is going to be played with more as the series goes on, because if so, I’m very much looking forward to it.

As for Tetsuro, he’s practically the opposite of Juzo in just about every way. As of now, he can’t walk or even speak on his own without the assistance of nearby machines, so he’s entirely dependent on the help of other things and people in order to get anything done. And unlike Juzo, who will only actually help those in need if they hire him, Tetsuro is determined to save the other Extendeds at Berühren out of a pure sense of duty. BUT he basically has to steal Juzo’s body in order to even get what he can to do things himself. So is he really doing things himself if he’s taking from others in order to do it? Does it being for others make taking those resources okay? We’ve probably all heard this sort of conundrum in our own lives in regards to whether we are truly independent of help or if we need to rely on the help of others in order to get where we need to be.

Only a few episodes in, No Guns Life is starting to peel back some of the thematic layers and toy around with its characters and setting to make its points and get the mental gears turning in the audience, or at least me. I don’t quite know where Anne and Ende fit into this, since they’re only shown briefly in the OP and that’s typically not a good sign for their prognosis, but I do think they’re going to make an impact on things one way or another. With seven eighths remaining in the season, I’m plenty excited to see how they take off with this very promising start. If nothing else, I’m already hooked to find out where any of this is going.