No Guns Life

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Shaping up nicely. I’ve suppressed my urge to write a review until now, because I was unsure about the overarching plot progression, but the latest chapters made me feel optimistic. Although it was obvious even before that there is a plot, and it has the potential to be interesting, but what really carries this story is its cyber noire setting.

Sometimes you gotta pay attention to editorial remarks on your mango, an here one on the cover says “SF hard boiled the gun smoke drifts muzzle talks” (like that, without commas). And it’s surprisingly accurate – the protagonist, Inui Juuzou, is ya rogue private detective, always ... smoking cigarettes, smoking hot, smoking with gun smoke, because he is a cyborg made of revolvers, his head is a revolver, and he is the spirit of the noire revolver embodied: bitter, badass, with a dark history, seeking to break away from the hands that try to subdue him, actually a weapon. Of course, he doesn’t trust, but tries to see things right. And, of course, he’s got involved in something big this time. No Gun’s Life earnestly works on bringing together the many things that are associated with the noire today – violence, mystery, 40-s New York, femme fatales, powerful figures on all levels of social ladder. The heart of this works lies with the noire.

Or maybe half of it. The second half is taken by a retrofuturistic cyberpunk, also a proper one – with an evil cybernetic corporation, with a brutal police force tasked with keeping the modified people in check, with questions of transhumanism and alienation. Also with the punk part – bodies being spliced and spruced up in back-door undercity clinics, body horror and brain hacking. Aesthetically it’s sort of Gunm, sort of what Deus Ex could have been, if it had gone radical with designs (here we can notice an old guy with wheels for legs, people with artificial eyes, or full body mods that make their owners look inhuman).

And the two halves are connected, cleverly, by a recently ended war, which both explains why heavy modifications have been used on people and gives depth to the powerful characters. Just like this sometimes No Gun’s Life turns out more intelligent than you initially expect – the original, movie noire bigger-than-life men also brought their violence from the smokes of the battlefield. Nothing breathes life into a work of art like blood after all.

The structure is supported by memorable art: black and white in stark contrast, with smoky handsome designs, sprinkled with details and ambitious – no matter what, you don’t see a hero with a revolver for the head all that often. The covers and the colored pages are great. Though, at least at the beginning, there’re moments, mostly during fights, where the contrast and the detailization clash, making it hard to understand what is exactly happening.

No, No Guns Life is not ideal. There have been several mushy chapters, not failed, but not quite exciting – side characters not that well presented, humorous moments not that well paced or immature. There’s the annoying fetish battle garb for women that breaks immersion, though sexualization doesn’t discriminate and men too, especially Juuzou, end up being sexualized to hell and back. (There’s also a drag queen, who provides comedic relief, just fyi.) In general, the plot is not as meaty as I’d like, with separate arcs being rather light on substance.

But then there’re these slightly more intelligent things that give hope. The hooks set for the bigger plot are catchy. The protected child this time is a boy, plus annoying and bratty sometimes, which creates a wonderful character dynamics. Juuzou is connected throughout the city, which makes his encounters with different powers more lively and personal. And the handsome gentleman type rival, that has appeared recently, has these amazing nervous broken lip corners, which liven up his design.

No Guns Life is still developing, and its growth will take time. Its future is still covered in smoke – maybe it will overgrow its issues, maybe it has hit its ceiling. All still is in the air. But No Guns Life sharp originality of setting and ambitiousness of designs make it a work worth checking out for any manga enthusiast who is interested in noire and cyberpunk (both as settings and styles), and I hope that most of us are.

Notes :
Story : 8
Art : 7
Character : 9
Enjoyment : 9
Overall : 8

No guns life is a manga by Tasuku Karasuma telling us the story of Juzo Inui, a "Gun Slave Unit", basicly a man with a gun instead of his head (and some more abilities, but I won't spoil here ;) ). Juzo used to be a soldier during a 50-year great war, and now he's investigating on affairs including extends : humans with mehanic parts increasing their physical abilities.

One of the greatest qualities of this manga is the universe, with complex and barely legal relationships ... between the different authorities of this post-apocalyptic world. We feel the will to make it change and the powerlessness of the protagonists in front of the mysterious people who call the shots we learn to know little by little.

The plot itself, including the characters, might be hard to get at the first reading, I fully enjoyed the story after a second reading of the five first volumes when the sixth came out in France, but when I finished reading all the published books, I felt a little despaired of being forced to wait eight months to get the seventh one... All to tell that the story is really intense.

Let's now talk about the fights and action scenes. We here have a real seinen with lots of blood, and cut limbs. However, at the first reading, those fights looked as much like a flow as like a quality : I really enjoyed the badass Juzo and his opponents, but I hardly understood the action because of the special style of Karasuma(-sensei).

In fact, No Guns Life's art is really peculiar : at the first sight, it looks at the middle point between a sketch and a finished drawing, but I really like this drawing style and think it reinforces the dark and brutal atmosphere of the story.

Finally, I really enjoyed this manga, and would recommand it to anyone who like seinen, violent fights, power struggles, and post-apocalyptic worlds. As one of the first mangas I've read, I might be overrating it, but I hope I'm not and it's really worth the value I give it.

The manga sets out to deliver a quirky, stylish, action-packed, tech noir thriller detective story and it mostly succeeds in that the end result is undeniably cool but also somewhat vapid and stodgy. It's unfortunate for a premise with so much potential but the manga does start to overstay its welcome by the later chapters. The overall plot, character motivations, flashbacks and regular exposition become fairly convoluted and you'll find that around halfway through you end up caring less about what's about to happen from a story standpoint and more about treating your eyes to the author's creative and dramatic artwork.

On the artwork, it is ... easily the best part of this manga. Very much in S-tier territory. The character designs are clean, sharp and eye-catching. It manages to keep just enough of the rough linework to be charming while also coming across as super polished and refined as a final product. Karasuma certainly didn't cut corners here and it is fairly obvious that the art style and technical quality of the art together do much to carry this otherwise very average story. No where did I feel the linework was rushed for a less important scene or that the author was particularly better at the start or at the end of the series - the art is just consistently gorgeous with a very premium feel to it.

The series does a decent job at worldbuilding but despite regular exposition there is a very strong sense of disconnectedness from the setting that these characters are inhabiting. There isn't much in the way of inhabitants in the backgrounds or wide shots of bustling futuristic cities but rather close angles of alleyways, run-down apartments, and nondescript sci-fi lab facilities and the like. This is a very personal, intimate story that the author is trying to elevate through higher stakes but it just doesn't fully come together in my view.

The writing is not bad though... the dialogue for one thing is excellent, hitting both the dry humor you expect from a noir-style story but also some very satisfying one-liners and very personalized dialogue for each of the characters. The characters themselves are for the most part likeable and the protagonists feature some very grown-up, believable friendships and endearing interactions.

Overall though the story is a bit too messy, foggy and needlessly intricate to be truly memorable or unique and the attempts at social commentary around topics like body modification and the treatment of war veterans feels half-hearted and clumsy.

Still, there is enough good here to recommend a read through for anyone who wants a Blade Runner-esque action manga with top tier art.