GUNSMITH CATS BURST VOLUME 5

"MINNIE-MAY'S SOUVENIRS" | "REHABILITATION" | "BECKY FARRAH"
"DRUG TRAFFICKING" | "ANYTHING BUT DRUGS" | "HAO SHIFU" | "LIFT THE BAN"
"I CAN'T BACK UP" | "150 MPH SHAKE!" | "PERCY" | "MISTY'S DETERMINATION"
"GOOD NIGHT" | "FINAL CHAPTER: FACES OF CHICAGO"
Presented by Kenichi Sonoda
Translation and Lettering: Studio Cutie

Forget everything I said last week about Goldie's name. I mean, except for the part where it should be "Goldie Musso". For whatever reason, in this volume she's identified by the original series' English spelling of "Goldie Musou", rather than the previous volume's "Goldy Musso".

Anyway... the final GUNSMITH CATS BURST book opens with May and Ken returning from their honeymoon in Japan, to find a glum Rally waiting. She tells them that Misty now lives with Goldie, and the group sets up a plan to figure out why. They know Goldie's new drug is called Dark Ball (an evolution of her "Powerball" drug from the original series), and suspect it has brainwashing capabilities similar to Goldie's older products. Becky gets Bean on board to procure a Dark Ball sample, and May brings the sample to her contact in Chinatown, Granny Hao.

But the only way Bean can get the Dark Ball is by agreeing to run drugs for one of Goldie's dealers, breaking his promise to Rally. Word of Bean's run is leaked to the police, and Detective Bacharach returns to action, ambushing Bean when he picks up the drugs and coercing him into a race to the state line. Bean, who actually enjoys his little back-and-forths with Bacharach, agrees.

GUNSMITH CATS BURST VOLUME 4

"THE POST-BALL STORIES" | "CHATTING AWAY"
"A FAMILIAR FACE FROM THE PAST" | "GOLDY" | "THE SCAR'S MEMORY"
"GUARD GOLDY!" | "ONE-HANDED" | "THE WOUNDED ONES"
"A SHOOTOUT IN THE SMOKE" | "FLASHBACK?"
"LOST MEMORY, RECOVERED MEMORY" | "AFTER THE HOUSE PARTY"
Presented by Kenichi Sonoda
Translation and Lettering: Studio Cutie

Before we get started, I should make a general note about the translation of GUNSMITH CATS and GUNSMITH CATS BURST, and a specific note regarding the spelling of Goldie's name. Dark Horse's original run of GUNSMITH CATS in the nineties was credited as being translated by Dana Lewis and Toren Smith (collectively known as "Studio Proteus"). The pair handled the entire series from start to finish. I commented a bit on some of their scripting when I looked at those volumes last year. Mostly everything read fine, but there were some tics here and there that I didn't like. But the main thing to note about the Lewis/Smith work is that they adapted their script for a pretty natural and flowing English language experience.

BURST, on the other hand, is translated by a group called Studio Cutie -- and they seem to take a much more literal approach with their script. Obviously I don't know what Sonoda's original Japanese script looked like (and I can't read Japanese so it wouldn't matter if I ever saw it), but Studio Cutie's work feels like a straight translation with no liberties taken to adjust the words and phrasing for an English-speaking audience. More or less, it reads like some of the "scanlations" of manga I've seen on the web now and then -- somewhat stilted in places, with occasional weirdly archaic words thrown in (such as Roy, in this very volume's opening chapter, asking Rally if she considers Bean Bandit a "comrade").

Overall, I think I like the script from Lewis and Smith, which, while occasionally mired in tics I disliked, had a more naturalistic style to it, over the BURST script from Studio Cutie.

GUNSMITH CATS BURST VOLUME 3

"KING COBRA" | "HOW TO AIM AND SHOOT" | "THE MONEY-SUCKING CAR"
"THE V8 FREAKS" | "THE DIRTY COP" | "TRAFFIC JAM"
"THE AMBUSH" | "RPG 7" | "THE STANDOFF" | "STALLED!"
Presented by Kenichi Sonoda
Translation and Lettering: Studio Cutie

The third installment of GUNSMITH CATS BURST opens with a few one-off chapters to fill space between last volume's Bean Bandit serial and this book's sequel to that story. We open with Rally getting a new car in the form of a Mustang "King" Cobra, and catching a bounty as well in the process. Then comes one of those "interesting" mainstays of the series, a chapter about Rally doing some teaching at a shooting range and allowing Kenichi Sonoda to have his characters blabber nonstop about guns, how to fire them, and how their internal workings function.

I will, however, give this story a little credit for bringing up one of my favorite subjects in serialized fiction: a timeline! At one point, Rally says that she's only been a bounty hunter for about two years -- which is approximately the amount of time covered by the original GUNSMITH CATS. I talked a bit about the series' timeline when I looked at the final volumes of the original run, specifically how certain facts didn't quite jibe with regards to characters' ages, how long Rally had been bounty-hunting, and when her father disappeared from her life. I haven't gone back to check those notes, but I strongly suspect this little tidbit doesn't really hold water either. Rally being a bounty hunter for only two years feels way too short, since she was already established in her profession when the original run of stories started.

Anyway -- after the gun range snoozefest ends, we move into the story which fills out the remainder of the book: Rally learns that Bean is entering an illegal street race, and that Bean has learned Detective Percy is entering the race as well. Bean makes no secret of his desire to see Percy dead and off his trail, but he tells Rally he won't murder the detective himself -- he does, however, plan to get Percy killed in an "accident". Percy, meanwhile, hires some terrorists and arms them with a rocket propelled grenade launcher, setting them up along a detour in the race and instructing them to kill Bean when he approaches. To make certain the race will follow this path, Percy leans on its organizer by threatening the lives of his wife and daughter.

GUNSMITH CATS BURST VOLUME 2

"FINDING SHELBY" | "EXPLOSION" | "GT 500"
"SHOOTING RANGE" | "BREACH OF CONTRACT" | "GET OUT OF HOSPITAL"
"INRUSH" | "THE PRICE TO PAY" | "MACH 1 COP"
Presented by Kenichi Sonoda
Translation and Lettering: Studio Cutie

GUNSMITH CATS BURST's first story arc wraps up somewhere around the midpoint of this second volume. As described last time, the mob had stolen Rally's Shelby Mustang and threatened to use it in a terror attack if she didn't hand over their errant accountant, Howard. This book sees Rally gather her team to stop the attack. Becky locates the car, May and fiance Ken (making his first real appearance in the series here after a cameo in volume 1) work together in an attempt to defuse the bomb, while Rally keeps watch.

But of course things go awry -- Rally is forced to start the car before May and Ken have finished disarming it, then learns that the bomb is set to explode if she drops below eighty-five miles per hour, so she's forced to drive it into an abandoned construction site where it explodes. No one is killed, but Rally is down one dearly beloved automobile.

Other stuff goes on here, but like I said last time, it all feels very repetitious from stories we saw in the original series. The mob, a bomb, Rally and Bean on opposite sides of a situation -- it's like Sonoda threw some darts at a board spelling out his standard plots and then ran with whatever result he got. I suppose it's possible that with GUNSMITH CATS out of first-run circulation for a few years, he wanted to ease readers back into the story with something familiar, but I can't help feeling he misfired (no pun intended) if that was the idea. Familiar it is, but because of that it's also kind of boring.

GUNSMITH CATS BURST VOLUME 1

"SHORT SERIES #1" | "#2 GUNSMITH CATS MINI THEATER HP (HIGH POWER)"
"#3 HIDDEN GUN" | "BURST" | "OASIS" | "MONROE INN"
"MUZZLE TO MUZZLE" | "GIMME MORE SLICES OF TAKE!" | "RETURN" | "DEAL"
Presented by Kenichi Sonoda
Translation and Lettering: Studio Cutie

After the original GUNSMITH CATS series ended, Kenichi Sonoda revisited the characters a handful of times before eventually restarting it as an ongoing story with BURST. Those few intermediary appearances are a trio of one-shot stories called the "Short Series". The first of these is a pretty straightforward affair in which our heroines Rally Vincent, Minnie May Hopkins, and Misty Brown protect a hooker who's seen too much from a group of hitmen dispatched by a cocaine-dealing senator. It reminds us that in Sonoda's version of Chicago, nearly everyone in a position of power is corrupt in some way or another (which may not be far from the truth, though this heightened reality has a crooked senator conspiring with a crooked assistant district attorney to kill a hooker, which seems a bit extreme).

The second "Short Series" installment is one of those dreadfully boring affairs in the gun shop, where Rally and Minnie May work on a custom weapon for a client and gab away about it as if it's supposed to be interesting. I think I said this when I looked at the original GSC last year, but these scenes absolutely kill me. Sonoda is a gun nut, of course, and it's his prerogative to gush about them in the context of his stories -- and I suppose it's to his credit that he doesn't do this sort of thing too much -- but devoting an entire manga chapter simply to two characters talking about a gun is absurd. There's no story here; it's like I'm reading an infomercial for a Browning pistol! (Though there is a funny bit on the last page: when May learns along with readers that the client is Rally's information broker, Becky, May says that had she known, she wouldn't have put as much effort into polishing the gun.)

Our final "Short Series" story is short and sweet; a straight action affair in which Rally attempts to bring in a bounty but is attacked by his cohorts. They disarm her and hold her at gunpoint, but she manages to get the drop on them with the tiny pistol she keeps hidden up her sleeve. Sonoda throws a bit of pathos into this one, as the bounty's daughter witnesses the entire thing and cries for him in the end as Rally hauls him away.

GUNSMITH CATS BURST

That's right, if it's the start of a new year, it must be time to read some manga here at NOT A HOAX, and for 2019 that means it's time for one more round with Rally Vincent, Minnie May Hopkins, Bean Bandit, and the rest.

Last year I looked at Kenichi Sonoda's popular GUNSMITH CATS manga series as released here in the United States by Dark Horse Comics. That was the original run, which spanned 1991 through 1997. But, after taking several years off to work on other projects, Sonoda revived the series in 2004 for five years of further adventures. GUNSMITH CATS BURST was also released by Dark Horse in the U.S. not long after it concluded publication in Japan (indeed, there may even have been some overlap between the Japanese series ending and the American editions starting, though I'm not certain).

Unlike the original GUNSMITH CATS, which I'd read a number of times when I started my review project last year, I've only read BURST once, a volume at a time, as it was released by Dark Horse in the United States circa 2007 - 2010. So while I remembered a great deal of the original series' plot, this next round will practically new to me, as I recall very little about it.

Where I covered the original series in eight posts, each looking at half a volume of the huge GUNSMITH CATS REVISED EDITION books, this will be a shorter project. BURST didn't last as long as GSC, and was released in five normal-sized manga volumes -- so for this project we'll just cover one book a week for a total of five weeks, taking us into February.

Stand by, because we begin... one week from today!

Available on Amazon: Volume 1 | Volume 2 | Volume 3 | Volume 4 | Volume 5