Gunsmith Cats Revised Edition Manga Volume 4
ガンスミス キャッツ

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For this fourth and final adaptation of the bunkobon from Japan (originally tankoubon 7 & 8) of the Gunsmith Cats manga, we pretty much have more of what the earlier volumes provided — action, cars, guns, and the occasional pointless nudity.

The first story arc is what I hear referred to as the “Mr. V arc.” In it, the Italian, sadistic, lesbian mobster Goldie returns to not only to attempt to establish a new drug trade in Chicago, but also to get Rally. After Goldie makes a brazen visit to Rally, using Mary Anne as insurance, Rally takes the bait and is on the case. Goldie has a new member of her mob named “Mr. V” who turns out to be Rally’s father, who’s been conditioned with Goldie’s drug to obey Goldie. Aided by Bean Bandit, Rally and crew have to take down Goldie while saving Rally’s father.

While this chapter takes the bit of character development from last volume (where we see how Rally came to love guns), unfortunately this chapter provides no real additional character development beyond showing why Rally’s father ended up with Goldie and what happened to Rally’s mother. Otherwise, it is just another lengthy action arc which could easily be the plot of some summer popcorn action flick.

The final arc is what I call the Misty arc as it deals with Misty attempting to score some stuff on Bean Bandit and ending up being kidnapped by a group looking to score Bean’s delivery — parts for counterfeit money production unit. Now Bean and Rally partner up to save Misty and so Bean can get paid.

This story comes off rather low key considering how the other story arcs have gone. Considering this is the last one of the series, I guess it isn’t surprising. Plus, it is a shorter story.

The final story has Rally considering retiring from the bounty hunter business. May is pregnant so she and Ken are getting married. Rally’s self-searching comes to an end after the kids she helped in a previous story arc come by with presents for Rally’s birthday, helping her to see how she’s had a positive impact with her work. This final story is the highlight of the volume for me.

The rest of the volume is filled with a lengthy preview for the Riding Bean manga.

As I mentioned earlier, Sonoda-sensei pretty much follows his standard pattern of excellent, detailed artwork, fast-paced action stories filled with lots of gun play and some pointless nudity at times. I really do wish we had character development and stories with them, but that goes against Sonoda-sensei’s style big time. Heck, he couldn’t even bother to address the aftermath of Goldie’s “toys” (the young women Goldie drugged to be her sex slaves) when they attempted to commit suicide when they learned they’d been abandoned. Yeah, we see Bean is going to get them to the hospital, but then that’s it. Sorry girls — love ’em and leave ’em. *_*

I’ll write a final thoughts review but I’ll wrap this by saying that if you’ve liked the previous volumes, there’s nothing here you won’t like. ^_^