English Dub Review: No Guns Life “Will”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Tokisada explains to Juzo about how the Extended experiments got started during the Great War, as well as how he has been tasked with acting as a symbol for those who died in those experiments. Juzo’s type of model, the Gun Slave, was decommissioned before the end of the war due to how dangerous they were. When Juzo refuses his offer to work with him, Tokisada crushes his neck and then goes to kill Gondry to get rid of witnesses, but doesn’t notice that Juzo has gone berserk due to the lack of medication. He quickly gains the upper hand on Tokisada, shaking off gunfire and explosives while gravely injuring him.

While limping away, Tokisada unwittingly confesses to manipulating Gondry to kill, which an arriving Olivier (and Tetsuro possessing a machine with Harmony) overhears. One of Gondry’s casualties was her father, driving her into a rage and wishing Juzo to finish Tokisada once and for all. But he regains consciousness and remembers her orders to take the culprit in alive, and so spares him. Tokisada takes this as a sign that he is the only reason that progress in helping Extendeds co-exist with normal humans, but Olivier disagrees. She revives Juzo with smoke CPR, stopping Tokisada and arresting him. The police also move in to arrest Juzo and Tetsuro, but Olivier lets them go. She sends the recording of Tokisada’s confession to the courts, but he tells her it’s pointless because of who set him up to be a hero in the first place, Berurhen. On the drive back, he’s assassinated by Seven and Pepper, the latter of whom is a Gun Slave like Juzo.

OUR TAKE

This brings the arc of the past few episodes to a close, unearthing more of the bigger conspiracy that Berurhen controls in regards to the Extendeds. While a lot of Tokisada’s dialogue feels pretty expository in nature, but it’s helped to get a lot of important information across, particularly how the Extendeds were utilized during the Great War and how dangerous Juzo’s model, the Gun Slave, can really be. We still have no idea what the war as actually about, though I’m starting to wonder if we’re ever really supposed to know, as much of a waste as that might sound. So far, the main thing to take away from there being a war at all is that it was used as an excuse to make human beings into living weapons who now can never break away from that part of their lives for as long as they live, with Juzo being the prime example of this.

As for Tokisada’s status as a “hero” or protecting Extended rights and such, I have to admit that I am drawing a blank on exactly what he did or how he was helping the progress he claimed to be helping. I can understand how having a member of this group being seen favorably and as a celebrity is important for bridging the gap, since it helps their overall image, but I can’t quite figure out how Tokisada was managing to be the only one to gain a fanbase that has maintained for so long when he doesn’t seem to be doing all that much since he became a “hero”, or even much as to HOW he became a hero. Yeah, we do learn that it was Berurhen pulling his strings and boosting his image, but that only covers a fair portion of the explanation. Though I have to admit I do like how he acts as a foil to Juzo in both design and personality: Juzo has an opposing gun face while having a heart of gold, while Tokisada has a gold human(Buddha?) looking face with a heart of mud.

But now he’s been laid to rest by the two who look to be the main threats for the last few episodes of the season (if it really is ending at twelve): Seven and Pepper, who also work for Berurhen. Seven looks an awful lot like Karen from the first episode (the lady pretending to be the nun), to the point that I actually thought it was her, but there’s definitely some sort of connection between them. Pepper, who I cannot determine the gender of currently due the voice being so high, looks to be another good foil for Juzo, especially since they are also a Gun Slave model. We’ve gotten to know really well how lethal Gun Slaves can be this episode after Juzo went haywire, so seeing one on the enemy team means we are certainly in for a crazy battle going into the last third of the season.

Also, what happened to Olivier? Did she die too? She was in the same car as Tokisada but we never get any confirmation about if she survived the blast that killed him. Unlikely, but we should still be told soon.