Anime Review: Gungrave

I must admit I didn't expect much from MVM's latest release Gungrave as it's based on a rather unoriginal shoot-every-thing-in-sight PS2 game. Let's face it, games-into-cartoon experiments don't always work very well at all.

Wrong Mr Scott!

Gungrave proves that the impossible can be done. The first episode starts as you'd expect from an Anime series with oodles of mystery. A mysterious gunslinger, Grave, returns mysteriously from the, erm, grave in a mysterious lab and mysteriously fights off a mysterious bunch of monstrous nasties. And yes, our moody, silent anti-hero does what moody, silent anti-heroes do best and dispatches the bad guys with an avalance of style and not much in the way of chat. It's all distinctly 'ok' and pretty much what you expect. More of the same to come in the following episodes then?

Wrong again!

Episode two at first leads you to wonder if MVM have slipped in the wrong series. Yes the bizarrely jangly but atmospheric title sequence is the same but suddenly we've been dumped into the middle of a gritty, and plainly superb, gangster epic. With Grave acting as a narrator we watch as a group of young neer-do-wells dodge bullets and class with the mob with not a monster in sight. But in the back of our mind we're always waiting to see how the young Brandon and Harry of these younger days become the Grave and 'Bloody Harry' of the future events of episode one.

So a game spin-off with fab animation and a fascinating backstory. Who would have thunk it?