Riding Bean Review
Riding Bean was originally released in February 1989, the same month Kenichi Sonoda’s manga of the same name came to an end due to Monthly Comic Noizy going out of business, with an anime series planned but never materialised thanks to Kenichi falling out with the anime studio Toshiba EMI; so that was two different ways Riding Bean failed to become a thing in quick succession. This makes this OVA an interesting “What if?” as a short while after all this fell apart, Kenichi Sonoda created Gunsmith Cats, a manga that proved extremely popular and ran for many years with a successful anime adaptation to boot. What’s interesting is that Gunsmith Cats features most of the main cast of this Riding Bean OVA as recurring characters, showing that Kenichi got his long-running story after all, even if he had to create a new cast and story first.
So what is the cast and story of Riding Bean? It focuses on Bean “Road Buster” Bandit and his accomplice Rally Vincent. The two run an illegal courier/driver-for-hire business but are starting to worry about their prices as jobs are starting to dry up. Just as they say this, however, a bodyguard for the rich Grimwood family arrives at their door with the daughter of the family, Chelsea, unconscious in his hands, informing them that she had been kidnapped but he managed to rescue her. He says he wants to hire the team to safely transport them back to the Grimwood mansion, but he is then swiftly gunned down in the middle of their living room by hitmen across the street. Bean and Rally bundle the still unconscious girl into the back of their car and head for the mansion, but we see that the supposed bodyguard is actually a woman called Semmerling. Semmerling’s accomplice, a young girl called Carrie (whom she horribly abuses in one rather uncomfortable scene, given the otherwise light-hearted 80s action movie vibe the OVA has going for it) has already kidnapped George Grimwood, the head of the family whom they are actually extorting for 2 million dollars.
They also intentionally leak photos of Bean and Rally with Chelsea in their car to the police with the idea that the police would be so focused on taking down the infamous “Road Buster” and saving the kidnapped daughter that they’d be away and scot-free before the police realise what’s actually happened. A police officer called Percy has a specific grudge against Bean and even buys a similar high performance car to try and take him down, but really he’s just there to comedically fail in his task and then shake his fist in the air and shout “Road Busssterr!” in anger (incidentally he’s also written into Gunsmith Cats, though during its second run in the 2000s). As you’d expect, the OVA’s back half is full of some great car chase sequences and a few good shootouts, too. At 45 minutes, the story naturally isn’t massively expansive and it ends really abruptly, but given it’s essentially a pilot for a series that never got made, you can forgive it that.
The animation is very good, and very of-the-time being in 4:3 ratio and full of impressively hand-drawn scenes, with characters that similarly couldn’t look more like the time period they were designed in if they tried. It’s all so period that it felt very nostalgic despite the fact I’d never watched this OVA before. The soundtrack is also full of 80s rock tracks, or rather new songs created for the OVA that are very much of the time period, fully in English thanks to the setting of 80s Chicago (or I guess modern-day Chicago when it was made, just!) The English voice cast is… well, also “of the time”, by which I mean mid-90s zero budget dub as “adult anime on VHS” was just emerging at the time, which I found endearing, reminding me of when I first got into the visual genre via cheesy/badly dubbed anime on the sci-fi channel, but if that’s not your thing, the Japanese dub is perfectly good.
In terms of on-disc extras you have an interview with Kenichi Sonoda, an art gallery and a few trailers, including, oddly, a new translated version of the Japanese DVD trailer recreated using footage from the new Blu-ray transfer, which seems like a lot of effort for a minute’s worth of trailer, but it’s there all the same.
So, should you buy Riding Bean” I would recommend it honestly, especially if you’re a fan of 80s/early 90s anime. At 45-ish minutes it’s not going to waste your time and animation and story are good if you’re in the mood for a bit of cheesy 80s action movie, um, action with a comedic thread running through it. Obviously if you’re not in the mood for a slice of 80s action or don’t like unintentionally hilarious 90s dubbing, then this won’t be for you, but if you only have a passing interest in either, this a good, and short, example of it.
Our review copy was supplied by MVM.
