The Anime Western GUN FRONTIER - Anime Review

Leiji Matsumoto is a really interesting creator. He makes massive true space opera stories about loss and tragedy amidst the vastness of space, while avoiding the traps of tightly knit timelines. His stories are set in a universe that can feel the same without following exactly the same timeline in every story. Gun Frontier, however, changes things around a bit. It trades the vastness of space for the vastness of the American wild west. Adapting several of Matsumoto's most popular characters into characters in a big western. There are no spaceships or laser guns here, just horses, stagecoaches, rifles, and six shooters. Interestingly though, Matsumoto created Gun Frontier in the early 70s, before his space opera works hit it big in the late 70s with Galaxy Express 3-9's Captain Harlock and his work on Yamato. This works surprisingly well. Matsumoto's stories have always contrasted big empty spaces with very personal human stories, which fits the western genre pretty darn perfectly. The story in this case introduces what was then a new character, Tochiro, the protagonist. A small samurai wandering the old west. Tochiro would go on to be a staple side character of the larger Matsumoto space opera universe. While here he's the hero, albeit a comedic one, with a grumbling gunslinger named Harlock tagging along as they search for a lost tribe of Japanese people who have been forced to craft weapons. And that is one of the weird things about Gun Frontier. Most of the time it's a buddy comedy western, alternating between action scenes and laid back humor, poking fun at Tochiro's terrible aim, and the duo's tendency to get into trouble. There's also a female character that gets involved for a little bit of sexiness. But then it'll dive into the backstory, and you're suddenly confronted with topics of slavery and loss. While it never feels like terrible whiplash, those heavier themes do sometimes imbalance the tone of an episode. Unfortunately, the anime was made in 2002, a period where animation budgets dipped very low in the anime industry. As a result, Gun Frontier features minimal but effective animation, just barely enough to tell its story, but rarely looking special or pumping the blood. Which is a shame for an action-focused western, already a relatively small niche, where high-budget animation would have helped bring it to more fans. Fortunately, the staff does use relatively bold colors, and Matsumoto's trademark of partially obscuring bits of characters, like eyes and things like that, for some interesting artistic flair, legitimately. All told, Gun Frontier does provide standoffs, shootouts, hijinks, and tension. This is a full-scale western series, told with anime's flair for crossing genres and playing around with wild characters. Now, I gotta finish this out by revealing a little bit of a spoiler if you're interested. The main plot deals with Totoro trying to find, I believe it's his lost sister, in the anime series, as part of this tribe of people. And the story kind of builds up to this idea that they're going to find her, but I will not reveal whether it all gets tied up neatly with a bow in the end, but suffice to say that, well, it does not get tied up tightly with a bow at the end. I, you know, I'm not going to explain all the details of that, but it does definitely leave it open for more stories. I thought this would be a simple lead-up to, you know, completion and done, but that's not the kind of story it's telling. It's more of an ongoing story, where we get to sort of a story climax, but not a full resolution of all the plot threads at the end. Just be aware of that. You're not going to get everything completely done and finished at the end of the Gun Frontier anime series. Just be aware. Also be aware that there are some slightly supernatural elements, with the stuff that these Japanese people are making are kind of fantastically powerful weapons, so there's a little bit of that kind of woven into the show, but that's also a typical thing in westerns, where there can be slightly supernatural elements, ghosts and things like that in those stories, so it doesn't feel out of place. It's just not completely, you know, historically grounded or anything. I should also point out, if this is relevant to you, the original manga had quite a bit of sex scenes. Nothing explicit, but there's one in, I think, every issue, so just be aware of that, and there can be sexy times quite a bit over the course of the story. Much of it non-consensual, so it can be icky. It's certainly not presented that that kind of stuff is preferred. It's not presenting that as, you know, oh, well, it just kind of happens, but it is common, so just kind of be aware, and that is Gun Frontier the manga. Anime, again, much lighter on that. You're not going to have that problem.