Another anime I finished watching this summer is Gungrave. This is an anime featuring the story of Brandon Heat as he adventures into the world of mafia, crime, and the afterlife. This story crafted a tale full of action, friendship, and gunfire – enough to keep most other gangsters at bay. I’ll hope to convey why I liked this story and the characters to you from this reflection of my anime experience, and the screenshots that follow. I hope you enjoy the story of this anime as well and come back and write some comments.

What I really enjoyed

In Gungrave, there’s a lot of action. And when I say action, I mean violence and fighting. Almost every episode, there’s people beating up each other (in a similar fashion to Fight Club), shooting tons of bullets, blood over the place, supernatural events, or gangs of mafia looting and killing vast amounts of people. If you like a lot of action, this will be your cup of tea (but be forewarned that you’ll have to wait to get satisfied – see below).

I also thoroughly enjoyed the main character, Grave/Brandon Heat. Brandon is a tough and physically fit man who is only motivated by a couple of simple stimuli: love for his girlfriend and the ability to protect his friends and the ones he loves (e.g. his girlfriend and Big Daddy). He also has the ability to completely decimate any enemy that comes his way with his fists and his pinpoint accuracy with any type of gun – whether that be his modified pistol/shotguns or a minigun. He completely rocks, and since I like to protect the ones I love and care for as much as I can, I have placed Grave on my list to make a costume for when I go to a con in the near future.

There were many elements of the main story and its theme that I also enjoyed a lot, too. I enjoyed how Brandon and many of the characters he met ended up changing their lives for the better through the power of protecting the ones you love and the friendship that is created through tight bonds and adversity. Just graduating from grad school and trying to pick up new friends here in Kentucky, and trying to maintain all of my friendships, this theme touched me on a very personal level. I’ll always have a place in my heart for friendship and anime that touch on these powerful themes. I also enjoyed how this anime blended mafia movies, action movies, gunslinging, and a love story (Brandon and Maria, his girlfriend). It was a unique combination that created a new experience every episode, and was interesting to watch and cheer on the main characters.

What I didn’t like as much

As much as loved this anime, which was a lot, there were some parts of this experience that I didn’t enjoy. For me, the biggest part of the anime that I didn’t like was the pacing. The frist episode featured a lot of great action, explosions, destruction, gunfire, and a whole bunch of epic epicness. Then the story did a very long backstory, which I understand why the writers did that, but there wasn’t much action during the revealing of the relationship between Brandon and his friend that would rise to power. At many times, it felt like going through mud, and I didn’t watch as much until the action picked back up within the last 10 episodes.

For me, I didn’t really end up enjoying the music in Gungrave as I thought I would. With a great mafia theme, I would have expected some great 1930s-style jazz or Italian music, but this wasn’t the case. There was mostly down-tempo ambient music with some bass and drums. Occassionally, they’ll slip in some fast drum beats during some of the action scenes, but mostly the music reflected the current flow of the anime: slow and steady, just like the revelation of the backstory. It kept me wanting more from the soundtrack.

Overall, though this anime took me a lot longer to complete because of the slow backstory, I’d still recommend it to you to watch. It had some great action and battles, and not to mention a great hero that I personally identify with. Look for some updates from me on creating his costume in the near future. I just love any anime and characters that embody what it means to love and protect someone near and dear to you.

Have a great one!