English Dub Review: No Guns Life “Specter”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Juzo and Mary meet Danny Yoe’s charge, Rosa McMahona. She has a fierce hatred and fear of the Extended due to being around prejudice towards them growing up, but that solidified when a car accident killed her parents, seemingly caused by an Extended. Rosa lost a leg but won’t get a prosthetic due to her hatred, which makes dealing with Juzo impossible. But now she’s being haunted by a ghost who may also be an Extended themselves but definitely has real footprints. This seems iffy at first, but goes right out the window of credibility when Juzo finds the “culprit”, a pair Extended hands. He confronts Danny about it, surmising that Danny made up this phantom in order to get her to hand over her necklace, which is supposedly valuable because it belonged to her father.

Danny denies this and takes Rosa, though her suspicions are confirmed soon after as he admits that he arranged both this and the death of her parents in order to get the necklace because of the valuable data on it. He nearly kills her for it, but one of the hands sacrifices itself to save her, which gives Juzo and Mary time to catch up and save her. Juzo takes the data so Rosa won’t be targeted but one of the hands sticks with him.

OUR TAKE

Well, I was worried we’d be finishing the first half of the season on a pretty disposable episode and…I was mostly right? I think? This is certainly a story you would see in show like this, where the perception of Extendeds that make them difficult to accept by normal people is given a face and shown to be able to change when shown that they are just people with different looks for different reasons. However, after all of the progression we had already made developing the world and the characters, this feels like an episode we would get around the 4-6 range, or maybe one of the first three or four episodes of the second half when we returned from the break. Not to mention I JUST saw this in Fire Force maybe a month or two ago (child of important person is targeted by friend of said important person in order to find important thingy that’s hidden in a seemingly junk but isn’t…sounds basically like Giovanni and Vulcan).

But as it turns out, the events here might end up being longer lasting than I first thought. For one, we finally found out where that disembodied hand from the OP came from. I remember seeing that all the time as the show started and had just assumed that it was an Extended ability to be able to detach your hand, especially to take a picture, but…I stand corrected I guess. Then there’s this data, which is being hyped up quite a bit and is super tough to crack, likely meaning that it won’t be until some big plot development happens because the stuff on there probably only benefits the main cast once they’ve reached their lowest point, which has gotta be at least half a dozen episodes away.

And that’s the first half of No Guns Life Season 1, as the show will now be on break until April. And while this probably the best episode leave us on while we wait, I’m still plenty sold on the show as a whole so I can wait. These first dozen have been pretty solid, but I just don’t think this was the best choice to stop at, especially with so many other better options at their disposal, as I’ve mentioned before. It’s still a perfectly fine episode on its own and I’d probably be scoring it better if it were placed in a more appropriate spot on the queue, but here we are. See ya in April!