FAKE MATURITY
Gangsta is a show which keeps trying to fool you it is mature, with a setting that is suffocating, deprived, and gritty, filled with criminals and prostitutes. It quickly fails to maintain said maturity by adding rule of cool, resulting to making you not care about what is going on in that society as much as seeing some guys doing improbable acrobatics.
DULL ACTION
And it’s not even successful at being about rule of cool, since the production values are not good enough to suspend your disbelief. If you have people that can kill dozens of gunners with a sword, you are supposed to make it seem like they are fast enough to dodge a volley of bullets. But that is not what it makes you think is going on, and it’s not like we can imagine time moving in slow motion to excuse it. The gunners are shooting once every ten seconds, and never as a group, so it’s like you see them waiting in line to be killed without doing anything to defend themselves.
The addition of the dog collars was also a stupid idea that didn’t fit the setting. I understand the need to have some sort of an excuse for why some guys with swords can kill dozens of gunners, but by making them a result of human experiment, they become detached from the otherwise realistic setting. The creator wanted to make the whole thing a spectacle of improbable martial arts instead of keeping it down to earth, and thus more relatable to the viewer. It would have worked if it was simply about highly trained soldiers, but that way they would be snipers, hiding all the time behind walls or in the shadows, instead of storming the opponent with crazy acrobatics.
And even that fails as a spectacle, despite being the highlight of the show. The battles amongst Twilights are very disappointing to the most part, since they all play out in the exact same way. I felt like I was watching a Bleach rip off. Some poser kills dozens of pitiful thugs, meets another poser, they start measuring their cocks by talking about how amazing their skills are, and how high the number on their collar is, how they are going to mess their opponent, then they fight for awhile, while on-lookers keep commenting about irrelevant crap nobody cares about. The only major difference is how they don’t reveal hidden sword transformations, somebody always jumping in to stop them, and leaving the battle inconclusive. Rinse and repeat in the next episode.
NO PROGRESS
There is not even a sense of progress in all this mess. Nothing really moves forward, we get battles taking place in alleys, mafia leaders talking about minor irrelevant stuff, more characters getting introduced, dozens of people getting constantly killed, and nothing changing. You don’t feel like this is a power struggle amongst mafia bosses because nobody seems to gain or lose ground after every event. And no, having Alex showing signs of post traumatic stress disorder once, before forgetting about it, is not progress.
Although we might get more character development and plot progression in a possible sequel, the show completely fails to make the viewer care about what will happen next. Even if they make another season, it will be too late to make a difference.
SIMPLE CHARACTERS
All characters in general have very little about them to make you care. They are easily separated into three simple categories.
1) Defenseless women and children who are constantly victimized to make the world they live in, a cruel place
2) Criminals who act like cartoon villains, laughing maniacally, mistreating women and children for fun so we can hate them right away
3) And poser vigilantes who use cool martial arts and kill the criminals while smirking sardonically, so we can cheer for them.
There is nothing wrong with the categorization by itself, but it simply doesn’t fit the setting. It makes you expect characterization of the level of Scarface or Casino, and instead you get Vizards fighting Arrancars. Fist of the North Star is one of my favorite anime and has the exact same categorization. And yet it was working there because guns were kept to a minimum, the setting was fairly bland and more like a sandbox, and the strong dudes were changing the world with their actions. There was a strong sense of presence and achievement, something that you don’t get out of Gangsta, which is just constantly introducing more and more characters, without doing something with them.
IN CONCLUSION
This anime is an average, forgettable time waster. The animation is weak, the characters are bland, the story goes nowhere, the setting goes to waste, the action scenes are repetitive and inconclusive. Go watch the flashback arc of Gungrave, and skip this one entirely.
