English Dub Review: No Guns Life “Owner”
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
Pepper and Seven formally introduce themselves to Juzo, as well as the fact that Pepper is supposedly in love with him. She intends to defeat whoever “owns” him and take him for her own, though Juzo begs to differ. He also determines that they work for Beruhren based on the fact they hold illegal Gun Slave tech that only Beruhren would allow them to have. They fight, with Pepper showing full control over Seven’s Gun Slave weaponry and easily overwhelming Juzo, only being saved by Tetsuro’s return and use of Harmony, though it seems the Pepper’s been told not to lay a hand on him. The next day, as Tetsuro recovers, Kronen arrives with the EMS for questioning, but tells Juzo that they won’t be pursuing his attackers. On top of that, Beruhren’s request to find Tetsuro has been suspiciously retracted.
Juzo reflects on Pepper’s words about his “owner”, recalling a memory during war time as his former partner Suiso drove him through a war zone and realized he was just a tool. When Tetsuro wakes up, he and Juzo discuss how everything happening lately has been because he’s been targeted, though Juzo tells him not to fret. Mary also brings in Juzo’s next client, someone who needs Juzo to watch over a girl who’s “haunted” by an Extended. Once Tetsuro is left safely behind, Juzo and Mary head out to see the girl and the so-called ghost. They arrive at a nice mansion, but the sinister music tells us there will be spooky scary skeletons about.
OUR TAKE
Huh, feels like we keep being flung from one potential arc to the next! One minute I’m thinking the stuff with Cole and Victor is going to be the finisher for this half of the show, then we meet Pepper and Seven and that looks like it’ll end on a big fight, and THEN we’re off to the Haunted Mansion starring Eddie Murphy and Marsha Thomason. I feel like either of the first two would have been appropriate places to have a halfway point, but I guess the studio or director or whoever decided that it was THIS arc (which starts off feeling pretty throwaway for something they expect to finish in one episode) would be the place to leave viewers before the show goes on a three month break until it comes back with the back half.
But with that confusion aside, let’s discuss the obvious highlight of this episode which set off a series of interesting and likely consequential things for down the road: the proper debut of Pepper and Seven. As expected, the two of them offer a sort of dark reflection of Juzo and his own crew, as Seven is totally subservient to Pepper as a tool while Juzo acts as his own person independent of any “owner” or even partner. We’ve gotten clues as to why that is throughout the series thus far, though this flashback with Suiso (who I think we wouldn’t have gotten a name for if not for the closed captions) looks to be pretty telling as to a major reason. That berserk state he went into back when he fought Mega Armed was also probably used a lot in the war, probably by Suiso too, but seeing it likely made him seem less human and more like a weapon. Hard to say exactly, but it may contribute to why Seven sees himself that way, especially since Pepper looks to have full control over him while he’s in that state.
But yeah, one more episode to go until the break and it looks to be an odd choice given all the alternatives. Not that it would spoil my enjoyment of what we’ve gotten so far or what we could get in the future, it’s just…really odd to end this with a haunted house story over literally anything else we’ve had to offer. I already really like the world we’ve been given and the characters we see interact in it, so I don’t doubt they’ll be used well in the other batch of a dozen episodes we get. Ah well, see you for the mid-season finale, which I hope is a blast.
