REVIEW: ‘No Guns Life,’ Episode 12 — “Ghost”

No Guns Life is a sci-fi, action/adventure anime based on the manga of the same name, created by Tasuku Karasuma, The anime is animated by Madhouse Inc., directed by Naoyuki Itō, with Masanori Shino designing the characters, Yukie Sugawara handling series composition, and Kenji Kawai composing music. The anime is voiced in Japanese; however, English subtitles are available. Guns No Life Episode 12, “Ghost” is the twelfth episode in the planned 24-episode season, meaning we’re halfway through this great series.

At the end of the previous episode, we met Juzo’s latest client: Danny Yo, a wealthy man who works as a prosecutor. In Guns No Life Episode 12, Danny takes Juzo and Mary to meet Rosa McMahon who supposedly needs to be protected from a mysterious specter. Rosa’s parents recently died in a car crash and Rosa suspects the accident was caused by an Extended. After losing her leg and her parents, Rosa has a chip on her shoulder that makes her both scared and distrustful of both Mary and Juzo despite their benevolent intentions. Without much to go on, Juzo searches for the haunter while Mary tries to connect with Rosa to help the investigation. Is there really a ghost haunting Rosa? For what reason and is its intentions malicious?

The beginnings of each episode are always great; they feed that part of my brain that loves old noir detective movies. Juzo is a detective himself and the creators usually reserve the beginnings of each episode for some sort of inner-monologue moment. Juzo describes what he does, what happened in the previous episode, and often his goals for this episode. At this point, these monologues are probably a bit redundant; if you don’t know who Juzo is and what he does by now, you’ve missed a lot. Although it’s a short monologue, I really enjoy this small addition to these episodes.

Mary is also along for the ride in Guns No Life Episode 12. Even though she doesn’t admit it verbally, the audience can tell she’s being defensive over Juzo after what happened in the last episode when he lost his arm. The friendship that Mary and Juzo have always makes for a good time. Mary is silly while Juzo is stoic. But the fact that Juzo puts up with Mary’s teasing and absurdity relates to their closeness. Mary is also great comic relief but it’s not her only purpose in this episode. We also get more of a feel for why Juzo is a great character. He’s much kinder than what he would want others to see, going out of his way to help people who’ve only shown him animosity.

I have very few qualms about the art itself. The characters look like they’re straight from the manga and the backgrounds are beautiful and rich. However, as was the problem in past episodes, the characters don’t match the backgrounds. The 2D characters don’t match the shading, textures, or the amount of detail put into the backgrounds. Although these differences in elements aren’t too distracting, there are a few scenes that the characters stand out awkwardly from the background.

This episode didn’t feel very strong. There wasn’t a whole lot of deep investigation that went on and the running themes weren’t very thought-provoking. Past episodes have enlightened us on the evil-nature that are corporations in this world and the corruption that comes with power. And, although this episode adds to these running themes, there was really no depth added. It certainly felt like a filler episode due to these facts but remained entertaining simply because of the characters themselves. Though this episode doesn’t seem like a large part of the greater storyline, if you’ve read the manga, you know that the ending is quite significant.

Interestingly, this episode didn’t have the usual ending. Typically, we get a pretty anime ending that bops along to a theme song while the credits roll. But this episode does away with the usual ending and instead rolls the credits during the last few scenes of the episodes. I’m not sure if the reason for doing this was because the episode was too long or that they’re removing the usual ending altogether. Personally, it really didn’t make much of an impact. The anime ending was great when I watched the first episode, but I never watched it after that. Plus, the way they rolled the credits didn’t take away from the ending scenes or cover up the characters. So its exclusion didn’t have a negatve impact personally.

Guns No Life Episode 12 felt like a bit of a filler episode but the ending is one that is very important for some upcoming events. Having said that, the characters really carry the episode, more so than the themes and story itself. Therefore, although the story was a bit stale, the characters we’ve come to love make the episode worth the watch.

No Guns Life is available now on Hulu and Funimation.