NOT A HOAX! NOT A DREAM!: Kenichi Sonoda

Showing posts with label Kenichi Sonoda. Show all posts

Friday, February 8, 2019

GUNSMITH CATS BURST VOLUME 5

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

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

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

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

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

Friday, March 2, 2018

GUNSMITH CATS PART 8

And now we move into the final GUNSMITH CATS story arc, a relatively straightforward affair in which Misty gets kidnapped, along with some cargo being ferried by Bean, and Bean’s client. Rally and Bean team up to rescue Misty in an adventure involving a counterfeiter and a family of criminals out to steal his equipment. We get some fun moments involving Rally, May, Becky, Bean, and Misty (Ken sits this one out), and the overall story feels a bit like a palate cleanser following the larger epic of the final conflict with Goldie.

And then it’s on to chapter 75, the very last installment of the serialized manga, celebrating Rally’s twenty-first birthday. Sonoda delivers callbacks to the earliest segments of his story as Rally brings in Gray’s son and then visits the grave of the girl she failed to save (and whose death I complained about) in one of the very first chapters. Soon after, her friends throw her a surprise party, and besides the obvious attendees (May, Ken, Becky, Misty, and Roy), we also see Jeena and her friends from the “Kidnapped” storyline.

It’s a nice little note to close things out, as Rally — after briefly doubting her career — reaffirms herself as a bounty hunter. Oh, and May and Ken have married offscreen as well, which is another bow to tie on the story. Creepy as their relationship is, Sonoda at least sells them as a couple in love, so it’s nice to see them get a happy ending.

GUNSMITH CATS PART 7

This arc would probably be considered the climax of the original run of GUNSMITH CATS. While there is one more shorter storyline following, which we’ll look at next week to wrap things up, this is where previously laid threads come together to provide something of an ending for a few of our characters.

The arc begins with Goldie’s return to Chicago, as she promptly demonstrates the suggestive power of her new, improved Kerasine by brainwashing high-ranking men in four feuding mob families to work together for a supermarket heist that ultimately lands Roy in the hospital. Shortly thereafter, Goldie gets herself arrested in a drug deal and immediately jumps bail, ensuring that Rally will soon be on her tail. It seems she’s decided Rally is the worthiest opponent she’s ever faced, and wants to challenge her skills.

This leads to a fun sequence as Rally and the whole gang pursue every lead in town in their search for Goldie. Eventually they learn she’s holed up in the mansion of a local mafia don, and soon infiltrate the place — but a wrench is thrown into the plan when Rally is confronted by Goldie’s bodyguard and top enforcer, Mister V… who turns out to be Rally’s long-missing father.

GUNSMITH CATS PART 6

As I noted last week, we’re in my favorite stretch of GUNSMITH CATS, as Kenichi Sonoda sets aside his overarching plotline, drops the mob politics and creepy sex stuff, and simply gives us a couple of fun, one-and-done story arcs. And while I like last week’s story quite a bit as the first half of GUNSMITH CATS’ highest point, this storyline is easily my bar-none favorite portion of the saga.

We begin with Rally and May on a stakeout — TV kids’ personality Mister Smart, already estranged from his family over child abuse charges, is wanted for skipping out on a parking ticket. Things begin to escalate quickly, though, when Smart apparently kidnaps his daughter Jeena and a high-speed chase ensues involving Smart, Rally, and a Hummer driven by Riff-Raff and occupied by armed men named Sharko and Borgnine.

The plot thickens when Borgnine plants a bomb on Jeena which must receive a periodic reset code, lest it explode, killing her. This ensures Smart’s participation in Borgnine’s plot to steal a large sum of drug money from the local syndicate. Of course the plan goes sour when Rally shows up, leading to an eventual showdown at the home of Mister Smart’s ex, once he realizes “Borgnine” is actually the woman's divorce attorney (with whom she’d had an affair prior to the separation and who she used to trump up the false child abuse charges against her ex-husband) in disguise.

GUNSMITH CATS PART 5

The early installments set up the characters and world of GUNSMITH CATS and provide an overarching storyline/antagonist via Gray. The next chunk of story introduces Goldie, who will go on, in the final set of chapters, to be the major villain of the entire saga. But it’s this run of material, which we’ll look at over this week and next, which I consider to be the peak of Kenichi Sonoda’s story.

It begins when Rally learns that Bean Bandit has agreed to travel to New York, pick up some drugs, and ferry them back to Chicago. Bean is given half of a dollar bill, with his New York contact having the other half to match up for confirmation of the driver’s identity. Rally, who has adopted a zero-tolerance policy on drugs since her run-ins with Goldie, challenges Bean—if she can prevent him from picking up his shipment, he will never run drugs again.

Bean agrees to Rally’s terms and initially, she attempts to steal his half of the bill by tailing him to his garage/apartment and sneaking in with Misty’s help, but the plan takes a turn when Bean departs unexpectedly and Rally is forced to stow away in his car.

GUNSMITH CATS PART 4

The next segment of GUNSMITH CATS opens with a one-off chapter exploring the secret origin of Minne-May Hopkins as she flashes back to her earliest meeting with Ken while on the way to a date with him — and, almost impossibly, yet another layer of weirdness is added to their relationship when we find that May initially posed as a young boy when she first encountered Ken, and that he took her on as an apprentice without knowing her true gender. Then, after she finally revealed herself to him as a thirteen year-old girl, they started to knock boots.

So… ick.

Following this chapter, it’s a solid eight installments devoted to the war with Goldie. The drug queen lures Rally into a trap and has her injected with her organization’s new drug, Kerasine — a potent narcotic mixing the worst aspects of heroin, angel dust, and LSD, with the added bonus that anyone high on the stuff becomes susceptible to post-hypnotic suggestions. Goldie then captures Rally, along with Misty, who’d joined her on a stakeout, and proceeds to brainwash our heroine to serve her. To test the hold of her suggestion, Goldie dispatches Rally to assassinate Roy.

GUNSMITH CATS PART 3

The next eight chapters of GUNSMITH CATS are split between wrapping up the story of the major villain to date, and introducing the next major villain going forward. To start off, Rally gets wind that Gray is planning a prison break with Bean Bandit set to shuttle him out of the country. Rally appeals to Bean to ditch Gray, but the driver considers himself an honorable professional and refuses.

Rally’s plan to thwart the breakout is complicated when when the big night arrives and Gray grabs May, who’s spying on Bean’s car, on his way out. A chase across state lines ensues, ending with Bean, Gray, and the captive May escaping. Rally, having deduced that Gray plans to exfiltrate through New York via boat with a massive amount of cocaine he’s stolen from the mob, travels to the Big Apple. When Bean tries to take May with him as he departs Gray’s service — he won’t abide kidnapping young girls — Gray turns on him.

A firefight at the harbor ensues, with Bean working alongside Rally and May to defeat Gray, who Rally ultimately kills in self-defense. Bean gets away, and Rally’s and May’s lives return to normal at long last — for a brief time, at least.

GUNSMITH CATS PART 2

The next eight chapters of GUNSMITH CATS see Kenichi Sonoda inexplicably repeat himself on more than one front, in pretty quick order. First, Rally and May have an argument and falling-out over what Rally perceives as May’s creepy infatuation with the missing Ken. They reconcile and then, just a couple chapters later, they get into another huge argument over Rally’s methodology on a case. I understand creating some friction between your two leads, but putting them at each other’s throats so much in succession makes them read as if they merely tolerate one another, when they’re supposed to be the best of friends.

And beyond that, we also have their house/shop broken into twice in these chapters, following from a break-in in the prior batch of installments as well. In fact, within the span of the series’ first ten or so chapters, Rally’s place is robbed (or nearly robbed) three times in total. Going back to this well that often comes across somewhat lazy on Sonoda’s part.

Anyway… what happens in these stories? We get a brief encounter between Rally and Misty, a cat burglar who our heroine sends up the river, but who will return as a supporting cast member in the not-too-distant future. From there, Gray returns to the picture with plans to seize control of the local gangs. When his men inadvertently kidnap May and Becky, May learns that Gray has found Ken in California and intends to kill him.

GUNSMITH CATS PART 1

Before we get into the story content of these early GUNSMITH CATS chapters, let’s have a quick dramatis personae:

Rally Vincent*: The main protagonist of the series; Rally runs a gunsmith shop in Chicago and works a more lucrative profession as a bounty hunter on the side.
”Minnie” May Hopkins: Rally’s diminutive partner, and the demolitions expert of the outfit.
Detective Roy Coleman: The girls’ contact on the Chicago P.D.
Becky Farrah: Nicknamed “the Nose”, she provides tech support and information to Rally on her various cases.

Other characters will obviously pop up as the series progresses, but at the outset, these are the main players.

With that out of the way, on with the show. The first few chapters of GUNSMITH CATS are mostly stand-alone installments with one two-parter thrown in. There’s a loose story arc which sees Rally targeted by a brother-and-sister career criminal duo named Bonnie and Clyde, along with a few one-off bounty hunting cases. We learn in very quick order (like, the second chapter) that Minnie May (who’s only seventeen years old at this point) is a former prostitute when she reenlists in her old profession for an undercover mission.

GUNSMITH CATS

Since starting this blog, I've more-or-less kicked off each year with something manga related. It was GUNDAM: THE ORIGIN three years in a row, followed by BIG O last year, and now it's time for GUNSMITH CATS.

This series has been a guilty pleasure of mine for a very long time, since I discovered it in college. SyFy (or as it was known back then, The Sci-Fi Channel) ran an anime marathon for some holiday or another; I think New Year's, and I watched some of their offerings. Not much of it captured my imagination, but I did find myself intrigued by a three-part mini-series called GUNSMITH CATS, which chronicled the adventures of a pair of teenage girls acting as bounty hunters in Chicago. I did a bit of research and learned that the show was spawned by an ongoing manga of the same name by Kenichi Sonoda, and that said manga was currently being published by Dark Horse. I blew some Christmas money on all the trade paperbacks then available and then began to follow the monthly comics collecting subsequent storylines, the rest is history.

I think I've probably read the series all the way through three or four times since 2000-ish, and it's always enjoyable -- though as noted above, it's a guilty pleasure. The series is exploitative and pretty shameless in its depictions of sex, nudity, and violence. But it's also just a lot of high-speed, action-packed, fun, too.

At some point in the mid-2000s, Dark Horse reissued the full series in four very thick paperbacks called the GUNSMITH CATS REVISED EDITION, and I picked those up at the time to replace my mix of older trades and comic book "floppies". Thus, the REVISED EDITION books are what I'll be using for the upcoming review series. I plan to cover half a book per week for eight weeks, which will take us up to the first week of March. I hope you'll stick around for all of it!

NOTE

Friday, February 8, 2019

GUNSMITH CATS BURST VOLUME 5

Friday, February 1, 2019

GUNSMITH CATS BURST VOLUME 4

Friday, January 25, 2019

GUNSMITH CATS BURST VOLUME 3

Friday, January 18, 2019

GUNSMITH CATS BURST VOLUME 2

Friday, January 11, 2019

GUNSMITH CATS BURST VOLUME 1

Friday, January 4, 2019

GUNSMITH CATS BURST

Friday, March 2, 2018

GUNSMITH CATS PART 8

Friday, February 23, 2018

GUNSMITH CATS PART 7

Friday, February 16, 2018

GUNSMITH CATS PART 6

Friday, February 9, 2018

GUNSMITH CATS PART 5

Friday, February 2, 2018

GUNSMITH CATS PART 4

Friday, January 26, 2018

GUNSMITH CATS PART 3

Friday, January 19, 2018

GUNSMITH CATS PART 2

Friday, January 12, 2018

GUNSMITH CATS PART 1

Friday, January 5, 2018

GUNSMITH CATS