What They Say:
In the crooked city of Ergastulum, “Handymen” Nick and Worick are the guys to call on for dealing with trouble. During one of their jobs, they get mixed up with a prostitute named Alex, who’s pimp is next on their target list. However little do they know that their fates are about to become intertwined…
The Review:
Content (warning as portions of this review may contain spoilers):
Now that’s a lot more like it. I’ve made my grievances with the Gangsta anime adaption pretty clear, and have been less than pleased by some of the shifting around of the source material. This episode though, plays things a bit straighter letting the material speak for itself, and also seems to have found some of the much-needed direction that was missing in last week’s episode. All of that together makes for the strongest episode of the show so far, and some hope that it can still prove to be a worthwhile adaptation.
The main gist of the episode features Nicholas and Worick getting hauled in by the cops after a string of murders occur in the city. Of course Chad, knows they aren’t really behind it, but wants to use them to help with the investigation. Specifically Worick due to his incredible photographic memory. However things get cut short when a mafioso named Monroe asks for the duo’s help with some trouble as they end up getting targeted by a Twilight who looks like a little kid with a grown man’s voice (brought to you by Hiroyuki Yoshino in all his hammy glory). Monroe’s family has a Twilight of their own named Delicio, but he’s no match for the other one, and things wrap up with Nic arriving on the scene and getting ready to square off against him.
Of course while that’s the main gist of the episode, the real meat of it is in the side plot, which provides some much-needed flashbacks to Nicholas and Worick’s childhood. Worick was born the son of a wealthy scion, but was the illegitimate child of an affair between his father and a prostitute, causing him to be ridiculed by the servants. Nicholas was assigned as his bodyguard, but their relationship doesn’t exactly get off to the best start. When Worick finds out Nicholas is deaf, he assumes he’s gotten a defective bodyguard pawned off on him and that it’s a (presumably correct) sign his family doesn’t really give a crap about him.
During this time Worick (and the audience) learns about Twilights and how they’re people born from those who were affected by a drug called Celebrer. As a result, they have superhuman abilities, but in exchange have various physical and/or mental defects (such as Nic’s lack of hearing and the antagonist Twilight in this episode looking like a kid) and extremely short lifespans. While Worick doesn’t know that Nic is a Twilight (yet) he does form a sort of kinship with him after hearing about them as the two share a common bond in both being defects of sorts, thus beginning their friendship. These scenes are all really nice (also thankfully directed well) and it really helps in giving Nicholas and Worick more characterization than the first three episodes combined, while also giving some good exposition. There’s still more to that story though, so hopefully the rest of it is handled just as well.
Sadly Alex doesn’t have much to do this episode, but what we do get with her is also pretty interesting. The local shopkeeper told her it wasn’t a good idea to hang around Nic and Worick too long, especially with what happened to the last girl who stayed with them, with said girl likely being the woman we saw on life support in last week’s episode. Alex is starting to take that advice to heart though more because she doesn’t want to burden them than anything else. Though she has a much larger problem to deal than that when she has a hallucination about her former pimp Barry coercing her into using her sexuality to convince the boys to let her stay with them. This is significant because it shows Alex is still struggling to overcome her former life, and that even if she knows on some level that her relationship with the duo doesn’t have to be one based on sex, it’s still something she has to ultimately convince herself. While I still kind of wish they’d kept in more of her little bits of characterization beforehand, this at the very least gives her a bit more to do than before as she now has her own personal arc to deal with. Production-wise the show still looks a little janky and they really need to add some variety to the soundtrack because I swear I heard the exact same song playing for almost half the episode, but those annoyances aside the show’s finally starting to come into it’s own a bit more, and I’m back to being excited to see where this adaptation goes.
In Summary:
After a couple of episodes of questionable choices in how to handle the manga material, Gangsta seems to have finally gotten it’s act together and delivers on an extremely solid episode. While the main plot of the episode doesn’t do things all that differently, the flashbacks to Nicholas and Worick’s childhood really helps to flesh out the main duo a bit more and Alex’s struggles with her own past are finally helping to give her a bit more to do in the show. Some issues with the production still remain but for now things are looking up, and hopefully the next episode proves to be just as good of a ride.
Grade: A
Streamed By: FUNimation
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