Gangsta.

Robert Murphy


You would often expect that a town would be run and protected by the police and it's government officials but every once and awhile you run across a town like Ergastulum with it's own way of doing things. The city is a breeding den for crime, drugs and violence on a daily basis but is kept in balance by the three laws and the families that run the city behind the scenes. Things here also fall under a special case since the town is filled with people known as Twilights, people with super human abilities that must regulate their life style with special drugs in order to live out their limited life spans. The story follows one Twilight in particular as well as his partners in a "Handyman" agency where they take any odd job that comes their way.

Gangsta. immediately caught my attention as it bore so many similarities to another drug and violence fueled anime Black Lagoon. The shows share similar styles in their environments and their approaches to action, Ergastulum is a vibrant city that offers just about anything a criminal might ever dream off but it is held together by a well balanced system. Nicholas (a deaf Twilight) and Worick (smooth talking ladies man) work in a sort of neutral area of the city where they take jobs given by anyone who pays them but they stay on friendly terms with each of the families that lord over it. Their jobs usually involve showing off a good degree of muscle or taking out some pesky upstart trying to make a big name for themselves in the city. The most recent punk to try to cause trouble leads the two to meet Alex who is a former prostitute with a muddled past due to years of forcefully being made to take drugs, she now joins Nicholas and Worick at their agency until she gets back on her feet.

While the series starts off focusing on the three of these characters and unraveling each of their sorted pasts, along the way the story gets pretty muddled. Nicholas and Worick have known each other since they were both young and their is an obvious history there. Even though Worick is not a Twilight he is still an outcast in his own way and grew up in a tortured household. Alex on the other hand has a whole other situation on her hands as she struggles to regain any semblance of her life before entering into prostitution. This was all compelling stuff through and through especially when you add in the action sequences that present day Worick and Nicholas get involved in. Nicholas is a high ranking Twilight with an A/0 on the Tag that all Twilights have on their person (rankings go D/5 to S/0) so he is capable of amazing feats with his katana at his side. Worick too is just as impressive and while he can't jump across buildings he is quite handy with a regular weaponry, mainly a knife and two suppressed pistols.

I feel that Nicholas also deserves some special recognition for he is the all around draw to the show. Worick is an equally valuable character to the show but he often takes a back seat to the appeal of Nickolas and his skills. There are also some secrets revealed about Nicholas' rank later on which garner some attention but what makes his character appealing most is the fact that he is deaf. I have never seen this sort of thing done before in an anime and you certainly wouldn't expect it to work for a main character. The fact that Nicholas does so much but says so little is a real winner for the story I was watching, it also makes his past that much more interesting to get wrapped up in. Twilights in the present are now protect by the three laws which are brought up time and again but in the past they were used as tools for killing and looked on as freaks. This doesn't ever appear to have bothered Nicholas but it all around his journey is an interesting one. 

About midway through Gangsta. is where we lose sight of all this however and diverging stories begin to flood in from every direction. Many nonessential characters are introduced into the main storyline at an alarming rate and just when you start to get some interest in them they are steamrolled right over in order to keep the story going. Between the families that run the city, the group of armed Twilights that do odd jobs around the city and a number of lesser character, there is just no end to characters bogging things down. This is particularly annoying when the mysterys behind Alex's past start to slowly come to light and a key character is left out in the dark for the remainder of the series. There's also a redundant love story, a lost brother and sister story and numerous other points that the story tends to get lost on. Various and quite frankly awesome action scene are picked up along the way but the story itself is all over the place and by the end I didn't know exactly what was trying to be accomplished, there seemed to be no clear goal for the ending.

Though it gets bogged down it's story and the sheer number of characters it throws at it's audience, Gangsta. had something unique come out of it in the end. The adventures of Nicholas and Worick start of the show with quite a bang and I loved watching the two of them work, Alex also became an interesting partner in the two's lives as she searched for answers to who she is. If the overall story had focused more on the core group rather than getting lost in a sea of characters and side stories then I could have seen the show working out for the better with it's excellent action, backstory and catchy tunes.

Good:

- Worick, Nicholas and Alex were fantastic

- Some enjoyable side characters

- Excellent story and action till the halfway mark

Bad:

- Far too many characters are added and left unexplored

- Story gets lost with all of it's characters diverging interests

Scully Rating: 6.0 out of 10