Like ogres and onions, and parfaits too, many of the best anime have layers.
Beneath neat high concepts, strong characters, and fun action scenes lie hidden depths, themes
and messages, that hardcore fans can uncover and understand upon multiple rewatches, through
careful consideration of how the show’s constituent parts work in concert.
That might sound intimidating, boring, or pretentious, depending on your tastes; but
therein lies the brilliant trick that makes these layered shows so good.
Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, Neon Genesis Evangelion, One Punch Man; these anime are
all eminently accessible.
They speak to a primal part of our brain that wants to see cool people do cool things and
make cool explosions in the process; that wants to imagine and escape to worlds of possibility
beyond our own.
They make a sincere effort to be fun, first and foremost; but beyond that, if you care
to look, you’ll find each is about something more.
Fullmetal Alchemist is a cool shounen action thing about a steampunk cyborg wizard kicking
the shit out of other wizards and monsters; it’s an exploration of how wallowing in
grief and refusing to accept loss can cost us everything we still have; it’s a pointed,
cautionary tale about how those in power maintain it by consuming the lives of those beneath
them until nothing is left.
Some shows make their intent more obvious than others; Evangelion is famously an exploration
of how Hideaki Anno’s otaku obsessions both fight and feed his depression.
The last two episodes of the anime practically shout this message at you as the cool robot
shit fades away, but there’s still deeper layers to be found; pay attention to the movie
and you’ll see Anno’s whole mental landscape laid bare through animated symbolism.
But you’ll also see some of the coolest big fuckin robot fights ever put to film.
Layered narratives allow these shows to entertain laymen, anime analysts, and everyone in between;
and No Gun’s Life is a beautiful example of that approach in action.
Glorious, high octane, balls to the wall action.
As I said in my fall anime rundown, No Guns Life is an anime about about a MAN WITH A
GUN FOR A HEAD, explode-punching trains with his revolver fists to save kidnapped children
from evil business robots and sexy cyborg assassin nuns.
Zany as it sounds, the show presents that story with utmost sincerity and not event
a hint of irony.
Gun Head detective man Inui Juzo is a fully realized character, with goals, values, anxieties,
and flaws; a hero, who uses his strength to protect the weak from the powerful.
No Guns Life is an anime about a MAN WITH A GUN FOR A HEAD… a former soldier, or…
living weapon might be a better word.
A man whose whole life was conflict and combat, until one day it wasn’t, and he had to figure
out, on his own, how to live for himself.
A man who tries to do good by his neighbours, using his power to keep the criminals who
might hurt them in line.
A man whose gruff demeanour and literal cold metal exterior, belies a (metaphorically)
beating heart yearning for real human connection.
A man who sees a bit of himself in a young boy who’s been chopped up, experimented
on, mechanically augmented, and left immobile… but still ardently refuses to just be a tool.
A man who thinks that maybe, with his kindness, guidance and help, that boy can find freedom
in a brighter tomorrow.
The world that gave Juzo his 40 caliber cranium is likewise fully realized: a dystopian future
where cybernetic enhancement is commonplace, and where the transhumanist potential of the
technology has given way to a dehumanizing reality.
Common people fear the extended, while elites exploit them; some as slave labour, others
as a captive marketplace, pressed into brand loyalty by a need for continuous maintenance,
medicine, and replacement parts… with potentially incompatible black market yakuza parts being
the only alternative.
Don’t like apple and google owning your whole music library?
Well, what if they owned your arms?
Your eyes?
Your heart?
What if by taking your phone to a third party repair shop, you risked incurring a fatal
seizure as punishment?
Now… what if you needed it to LIVE, and couldn’t afford the real deal?
By exploring these questions, No Guns Life makes its cyberpunk world feel chillingly
REAL.
This is the second layer; a world you can believe in, full of characters you want to
learn more about; a story with a hero you really want to ROOT FOR, no matter how ridiculous
the odds stacked against him may be.
None of this makes the show any less RIDICULOUSLY FUN AND AWESOME than its premise promises
it will be; but it’s there for you if you want to become a HARDCORE No Guns Life fan.
And if you want to dig deeper still, there is a third layer.
A greater point that the series is driving towards, with both its nakedly awesome, silly
concept and the surprisingly delicate worldbuilding that supports it.
No Guns Life is an anime about a MAN WITH A GUN FOR A HEAD… a “Gun Slave Unit”
whose entire identity has been supplanted by a singular fucntion – trapped in a capitalist
nightmare world, where people like him are literally THINGS for the rich and powerful
to own and use.
Be that in the form of a government-owned human weapon, a corporate mercenary, or for
the truly unfortunate, mechanical office equipment.
A world where employees and their families – from salarymen all the way up to CEOs
– are property.
Resources to be extracted and exploited at the corporation’s sole discretion, for the
corporation’s sole profit.
While the common man outside the company lives in illusory freedom; dependant on consumable
goods that their millionaire masters can cut off in an instant, should they step out of
line.
A world that, for all its fancy doodads and cool metal bits and bobs, feels uncomfortably
familiar.
Because in many ways it’s a logical, if greatly exaggerated extension of the one we
live in now.
On that note, the robots that get to decide whether I have a stable career or not currently
aren’t showing my videos to as many people, because I got two copyright strikes right
before going on vacation and putting up a bunch of guest videos, so I would greatly
appreciate it if those of you who ARE watching could leave lots of comments and – if you’re
enjoying the video so far – hit the like button as well.
Just get my channel back in people’s feeds.
Like that moment of shameless begging and… basically everything else in No Guns Life,
this anticapitalist messaging isn’t particularly subtle.
The second episode trots out Hugh Cunningham, a pudgy, gleefully cruel corporate crony – with
a fully human body that he’s all too proud to own – who lords his control of the medicinal
cigarette supply over Juzo.
Threatening him with agonizing disfunction and a slow, painful death should he fail to
comply with the beruhren company’s demands, but presenting those threats under the guise
of a peaceful, equitable negotiation.
A fair trade on paper.
A shakedown in practice.
Facilitated by police officers who seem at first to be stopping Juzo’s vandalism for
the public good… but who are in fact merely enforcers of the corporate status quo.
Like I said, it’s not particularly subtle It’s only thanks to Juzo and his back alley
mechanic Mary’s forward-thinking and class consciousness – their awareness of the true
leverage the corporations hold over them - that this plan is foiled.
As we learn at the episode’s end, Mary has already replicated the medicinal blend of
the cigarettes for our hero (though without their alluring flavour); likely running afoul
of a few patents in the process, but giving Juzo a bitter taste of freedom by saving him
from a deadly consumer dependency.
If they’d followed the law, they would have been fucked.
Tetsuro would be in Hugh’s hands.
It’s a philosophically fascinating and prescient plot point, but presented with all the gusto
and bombast we demand of our anime.
Juzo demonstrates that he will not; cannot be owned by obliterating the corporate jackboots
pressed into his back in a glorious laser light show, before staring down his would-be
oppressor with cool-headed, utterly badass conviction.
Whether you agree with or even recognize its philosophical underpinnings, you can’t deny
that this moment – and the entire show that contains it – is, first and foremost, cool
as all hell.
Contrary to what you might expect, the philosophical elements of the show don’t take away from
its ability to deliver those fun, visceral thrills; nor do its goofy design sensibilities
and over-the-top premise “Dumb down” its greater message.
Pure entertainment and thoughtful allegory are often framed as being at odds with each
other in media – that’s the crux of the “turn your brain of and have fun” mentality.
But those two sides of No Guns Life SUPPORT each other, amplifying their respective effects.
No Guns Life is an anime – a manga – with something to say.
In order to say that effectively, it needs to dig into the meat of its individual characters;
put a great deal of effort into its world building.
These requirements also having the effect of making its goofy premise feel believable
and serious; which only makes that surface-level goofiness more entertaining for new viewers.
And as you get invested in those elements, they only give you more reason to care about
the outcomes of its already cool action scenes.
Conversely the… just inherently fucking rad concept of a MAN MADE OF GUNS serves as
a surprisingly ingenious symbol of the dehumanizing effects of capitalism.
The way that, as wealth accumulates and wealth extraction strategies are optimized, everything
– and eventually everyONE – becomes a product.
A commodity.
I say on a platform that lets me sell my opinions about anime to you, while simultaneously collecting
data on your tastes and viewing habits so that advertisers can more easily sell you
other things.
And unlike this video format, where just making that statement probably made a lot of you
uncomfortable and a few viewers, I’d wager, pretty angry… by packaging those ideas up
in cool, fun action scenes and an interesting sci-fi world, No Guns Life is able to prompt
viewers to consider them from a comfortable distance, and without feeling like they’re
being lectured to.
Like its High-Caliber hero, an efficient marriage of narrative form and function.
Substance within style, and vice versa.
An anime about what it REALLY MEANS to be a man with a gun for
a head.