English Dub Review: No Guns Life “Degeneration”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
Tetsuro finishes his fight with Wachowski, though is injured in the process. He refuses to finish the job, so Seven appears and kill Wachowski instead. Meanwhile, Juzo faces Kunugi and Shimazu, the later of whom is revealed to be a woman once Kunugi gives her a boost that makes her body burst through her armor, flustering Juzo in the fight. He still manages to beat her, though Kunugi reveals he’s been working against Wachowski this whole time anyway, being an agent of Berurhen in order to fund Spitzbergen to keep their terrorism going, which would then give the company more reason to escalate their own Extension pursuits. Seven and Pepper show up to fight Juzo, Pepper as obsessed with owning Juzo as ever, but Kunugi is confronted by Kronen, who he’s apparently old friends with.

OUR TAKE
After a lot of build up, we are finally getting down to the fight between Juzo and Seven, and not a moment too soon. I was honestly starting to wonder if we were ever going to get to it, though now that the business with Wachowski is concluded, we can now get down to it. I can’t imagine that it will take up the last three episodes of the season, but it will probably be resolved in some way before the end. With the second ED being mainly focused on their inevitable clash and the last few episodes setting up how only Juzo can bring down another Gun Slave like Seven, it’s good that they’re finally going at it, though it also can’t help but bring to mind how sparse of a relationship the two of them really have despite having so many unique qualities in common. Yes, they’re both Gun Slave Units, of which there are only a handful left in existence (thanks in part due to Juzo taking most of them out), but that’s about where their similarities end. Juzo’s pretty happy being a free agent while Seven is a willing lapdog for Beruhren, specifically Pepper, though Juzo’s independence seems to be what makes Pepper drawn to him and makes Seven jealous. So it’s more like an unwilling love triangle.

Also gotta say that this is a bit of an underwhelming end to Spitzbergen if indeed it is the end. Now that they’ve been revealed to be a tool of Beruhren, their presence as a villainous force is pretty diminished in order to bring Beruhren back into the spotlight, which they’ve surprisingly been away from for most of this half of the season. The scenes between Tetsuro and Wachowski are very poignant and provide closure for both Tetsuro’s part in this and Wachowski’s own involvement in the story, but that’s a bit undercut by the fight with Shimazu whose reveal as a woman through becoming a bouncing, veiny monster is a bit of a mood killer to say the least, and that’s without mentioning that her motivations turn out to be driven by a guy. This show has never been great with trying to force in typical anime pervert humor (the episode with the guy with the x-ray eyes for peeping being a prime example) and this is no exception to that, though hopefully that’ll be the end of that for the rest of the season.