Gungrave: Collector’s Edition Review
Gungrave was originally a PS2 third-person shooter in which its only claim to fame is having Yasuhiro “Trigun” Nightow design all the characters, otherwise it was just successful enough to get a single sequel and then vanished (modern low-budget indie sequel notwithstanding). During that time though it was decided to turn the game into an anime, and while the opening episode, where the all-but-silent undead protagonist “Beyond the Grave” (yes that’s his name…) shoots a bunch of zombie-like creatures with duel pistols and then fights a mutated guy with a gun shaped like a casket before declaring revenge against a man called “Bloody Harry” is exactly what you’d expect the series to be, to my surprise Episodes 2 through to 17 dial everything back by doing a flashback arc where Beyond the Grave is just a guy called Brandon Heat and Bloody Harry is just Harry MacDowell. They’re part of a small street gang of tightly knit friends and Brandon is even sweet towards a girl called Maria and everything is nice and pleasant until they cross the wrong people and one of their friends is killed.
This leads to Harry and Brandon killing them in return, an act that has a spiral effect leading to the duo losing another friend and in order to stabilise their lives they end up joining the mafia known as “Millennion” (that’s not a typo, that’s their name…) It soon becomes clear though that Brandon, despite being extremely talented as a “sweeper”, hates the life and especially the more violent aspects of it, while Harry is quick to learn how to manipulate things to rise up the ranks and has his eyes on the top seat through any means necessary. This takes place over several years, and tragically Brandon has to let Maria go and focus on Millennion because he values his friendship with Harry so much, while Harry betrays his friends and colleagues and even finances a scientist to work on creating the zombie-like “Necro-Risen” and other black market and dangerous technology all to get ahead. It’s probably not a spoiler given what happens in the first episode to say that it gets so bad that Brandon is betrayed by Harry and killed but a rogue scientist “Necro-Rises” him and names him “Beyond the Grave”, while Harry takes control of Millennion and becomes “Bloody” due to his methods.
It’s really great stuff, it makes you care about the characters, especially Brandon, but that all makes the final bunch of episodes a bit… naff. They faithfully adapt the game and therefore each episode is essentially a long action sequence and a boss fight where Beyond The Grave takes everyone out in flashy but sometimes slightly janky animated fashion. After the character-driven drama of earlier, it’s quite a tonal shift, even if its technically more faithful to the source material! I am happy to report though that the final two episodes go in a different direction than I was expecting and at least lives up to all the backstory that was prepared in the earlier flashback episodes.
While the character designs are pure Nightow and therefore a delight to watch, the animation is good but not amazing and has that early 2000s sheen to it though Madhouse do at least keep everyone in proportion despite some of the odder mutations later. The Japanese dub is good, the English dub is somewhat nostalgic in that it’s full of early FUNimation voice actors like Tony Oliver, Kirk Thornton and Michelle Ruff (okay, the latter two are still very present voice actors, but they were so young and inexperienced here!) and the script is fine but the direction can be a little… off. Definitely that period of trying really hard to lip-sync even if the dialogue sounds unnaturally fast rather than scripting around the issue, again all very early 2000s. Background OST is strong too, and very fitting given the combination of edgy looking/sounding characters and mafia storylines.
As for extras? Just a couple of trailers and the clean opening and ending, so not much to write home about there!
Gungrave was a pleasant surprise. I assumed it would be like a lot of the other anime game adaptations I’ve looked at over the years and just be a “monster of the week” story for the majority of its run but instead it spends roughly half its runtime telling a really good mafia story about two close friends and how the lifestyle slowly broke them apart. Definitely worth going out of your way to check out, so long as you know it does lose its way for a good chunk of time towards the end (or I guess, returns to its original source material’s way, I guess…?).
Our review copy was supplied by MVM.
