Review #88: Grenadier the Smiling Senshi

• Episodes – 12
• Published – 04 (JP), 05 (US)

Rushuna Tendo is a young woman sent to travel the world and bring peace to it. Her teacher, a ruler named the Tenshi, taught Rushuna the ultimate fighting technique, making the enemy surrender without fighting by taking away their fighting will with a smile. Of course, it helps that she was also taught the ways of the senshi, gunfighters in a world where the way of the sword is still seen as the honorable path. What doesn’t help however is that the world is full of rebels, thugs, bandits, and other people that wish to use their own guns to kill, rule, and extort the people. No one said it’d be easy.

It’s while traveling the world to bring peace that Rushuna is stumbled upon by the Tiger of the Rear Guard, Yajiro, a rebel who uses the blade to stop oppressive senshi from controlling others. He joins her after she single handedly defeats a gang of senshi that had taken over his lord’s castle, all without hitting any of their vital organs, wishing to know more about how her philosophy works. Tensions grow after he learns she follows Tenshi, a woman he tried to overthrow years back, as well as when Rushina finds out that there’s a price on her head authorized by Tenshi herself. The two end up agreeing to cooperate and head for the capitol, Rushuna to speak to Tenshi about what’s happened, Yajiro to see who Tenshi really is.

The two meet a lot of people along the way, friends and foes. In a village terrorized by a powerful monster, Rushuna finally shows the technique of stripping an opponent of the armor around their hearts. In a large brothel, the two make new friends, gaining a new traveling companion as well, a balloon maker’s daughter named Mikan. They run into signs of corruption, a power called “Enlightened Evil” that helps take over people’s hearts in their wish for power, directed by a powerful and mysterious man known as the Jester. They are even pursued by Tenshi’s best warriors, the Juttensen. All the while, Rushuna travels on, determined to find her answers.

Now that the plot’s out of the way, let me get the elephant in the room pointed out first; while Grenadier is not even remotely a hentai, Rushuna as a main character has one main… asset. As a character, her breasts are put on full frontal display. She uses them as ammo storage (she flips out bullets into the air out of them and reloads that way), she uses them as weapons to take away people’s will to fight, and her outfit leaves them bouncing around the entire show. If prominent breasts and a focus on them visually is something that can ruin a series for you, then Grenadier might be a hard watch.

That said, Grenadier exists foremost as an action comedy, with the perverted elements as just an extra. The sword battles are rare, but almost every episode has one or more gun battles, with Rushuna showing off amazing shooting skills. The combat is varied enough, with different weapons from the enemies to different situations Rushuna is left in (underwater combat, fighting a huge machine, shooting long distances, etc). The action’s really the best part about the series, and the top thing to recommend about it. The comedy is mostly centered around ecchi elements combined with the differences between Rushuna’s naive optimism and Yajiro’s cynical pessimism.

As a plot, Grenadier works well, something that combines with the action elements to give a more serious backdrop to the light hearted humor and cheerful Rushuna. While the plot lacks a lot of depth by necessity of its 1 season length, Grenadier keeps things simple, without a large side cast or complex issues that require a lot of explanation. That fact leads to the ending feeling conclusive, something that always surprises me in an anime. The characters are engaging, though not too highly memorable other than perhaps Rushuna herself, which is fine since that gives more focus onto her and her plot.

With the art work being simple yet well done, and a fine job by the voice acting cast, Grenadier overall comes off as a well done anime I can recommend. Even if it’s not a deep, complex anime to sit around discussing with others, the light hearted yet engaging story and simple characters are enjoyable in a laid back sort of enjoyable way. For those with a more ecchi attitude with anime, you’ll get plenty of bath scenes and bouncing bosoms. That’s the only reason I lack recommendation in the end, so to reiterate, you might want to look elsewhere for a more even minded depiction of ta-ta’s.

 

Review #87: Desert Punk

• Episodes: 24
• Produced: 04 (JP) 07 (US)

Sometime in the future, the Earth (or at least Japan) has been reduced to a desert wasteland after some unmentioned catastrophe. The Great Kanto Desert stretches as a huge desert over all the land, a land where the people live out miserable existences with scarce water, brutal weather, and an all powerful government lording over them from great Oasis cities. Life is hard, miserable, and sometimes short, but people survive however they can.

It’s in this environment that Kanta makes his living. Known usually by his nickname, Desert Punk, Kanta lives life as a mercenary for hire, taking on whatever jobs he can to make his money, from walking pets to taking out bandit gangs. Known for his clever tactics and his ability to always get the job done, Kanta is a ruthless, self serving, rude, and greedy young man with few friends and many enemies. If something can make him an extra credit or two, he’ll do (almost) anything it takes, where as if there’s no money in something for him, he’ll leave it alone, no matter who might be getting hurt in the process.

The Desert Punk only has two real weaknesses. The first is his love for money. There are very few jobs that he’ll refuse if you wave enough cash in front of his face. The other are breasts. If a woman has a nice enough figure she can usually wrap him around her little finger. This proves true for more than one client, as well as a fellow mercenary named Junko who keeps wrapping Kanta into her schemes, usually at his expense.

Punk’s life changes when, after a job, he gains a new apprentice. Kosuna is still a young teenage girl, definitely not Kanta’s type, but after she shows him a picture of a woman with a large rack and claims its her mother, he decides to take her on for his own reasons. While he has to deal with training an unskilled her apprentice and Junko, he keeps running into the same bunch of mercenaries along the way. That includes his childhood companions the Machine Gun Brothers, as well as a dark cloaked wanderer named Rain Spider. Not one of those people, not even Kosuna, likes the Desert Punk, but everyone realizes he has a genius for planning and finding a way out where none seem to exist. The question always looming is when Punk’s luck will run out.

As an anime, Desert Punk is a bit like Samurai Champloo crossed with FLCL. From the former it takes a sense of irreverence and seriousness mixed together, mixing action and humor quite well. From FLCL it borrows a very stylistic approach to a lot of its art and action, over or under exaggerating for comedy effect. At its heart, Desert Punk feels closer to a comedy than an action anime, especially to start. While the action is pulled off very well, it seems constantly interlaced with the humor the series brings. Later on, things become much more serious as the plot pulls together, yet even then the humor keeps popping up to help Desert Punk stay lighter hearted.

All this isn’t to say that Desert Punk is flawless. It IS very good, and I highly recommend it, but there are a few minor problems (as well as one larger one). For small nitpicks, the opening and closings aren’t very good productions, and the music the series has is mostly forgettable. Those are easily forgiven since the voice acting, art, and plot all shine through. What’s harder to forgive is the ending. Anyone used to watching anime series knows that an anime ending well is rarer than one ending poorly, and sadly Desert Punk falls into the majority. The series ends dramatically, but with zero conclusion. All the remaining players in the plot are shown during the last end credits, but the major twists remain unresolved. As always, it’s something you either have to live with if you find the series itself intriguing.

As I said though, aside from that one large flaw, Desert Punk is something I highly recommend, both for its action and its comedy. The setting isn’t 100% original but has a lot of original ideas, the voice actors do a wonderful job, the plot moves along nicely, and the humor was constant and grin inducing. If any of those things appeal to you, go ahead and give Desert Punk a watch, or even a pickup.