Jul 28, 2024
This was a passion project by the author Sonoda Kenichi, funded on kickstarter in 2018 (with the incredibly low funding goal of 15 million yen). The project fell under multiple delays, and ended up with the incredibly short runtime of 11 minutes (7 minutes excluding credits). The final outcome serves better as advertisement for the manga, and possibly as test footage for a future film or series set in the Riding Bean universe (although nothing like this has ever been expressed formally to my understanding).
Bean Bandit follows the cast from the Riding Bean manga, and introduces May Hopkins and Becky Farrah as some may
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know from Gun Smith Cats, another of Sonoda Kenichi's works, through the common character of Rally Vincent who appears as a main character in both manga, albeit as a slightly different character between them.
The short film itself has stunning visuals, an amazing soundtrack, as well as great character acting and voice acting, but ultimately fails to make great use out of its short runtime. For those already in love with the characters of Riding Bean and/or Gunsmith Cats this short film is 7 minutes of great fanservice and delight, only soured by its short runtime and lack of any plot or cohesion. For those not already familiar with the works, Bean Bandit serves as a taste of what the manga(s) and possible future works are like, with no greater plot to speak of.
I would personally be very sad if this was what I'd received as a funder, but as I got it 6 years too late, I can instead only appreciate the hard work and passion seemingly put into the project, and can only pray for a future installment of this quality with a dozen more script revisions.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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