No Guns Life turns heads…because its protagonist has a gun for a head. (I don’t think I’ll be sick of that joke for a good few weeks now, y’know?)

Opening note: Thanks to Inskidee for making the title pun up.

Anyways, to the more serious stuff. No Guns Life is underway as I type this and…despite how it looks, it’s got some pretty good themes, so let’s lay out some of the pros and cons. I haven’t done this sort of post in a while and I only pull out this format if I don’t really know what to say, so…you know exactly how bad my slump is. Then again, I’m a bit sick right now and haven’t had enough inspiration to refill my backlog of spare posts lately, so I guess that was bound to happen.

This is just how I rank these attributes of the show, so obviously your mileage may vary on them.

Pros:

• Its themes are absolutely stellar. How human is a guy who has a gun for a head? (The answer to that is “more human than Tetsuro”, as of episode 4…in more ways than one.) How moral can the guy whose ability it is to forcefully take over other Extended’s bodies be? That sort of thing. It’s also interesting to note how the one mechanic who teams up with Juzo, Mary, is fully human.
• The noir aesthetic is something that can only be expressed in a chef’s kiss emoji.
• There’s some really cool ideas within the cyberpunk part of the show, such as giving an orphan girl a spider-inspired cyborg body. It really drives home how badly Beruhren (and its employees, by extension) treats its experiments.
• The gutpunches, specifically from Anne/Ende and Tetsuro. I think the feels game in this is stronger than 2019’s Fruits Basket, although that may have to do with the fact I was dealing with the story of Fruits Basket for the 2nd time in my life this year and I always never really had more than a slightly higher than average impression of it, even from the 1st time I laid eyes on it. (It may also have to do with my sickness, as I have been having slight chills and may be mistaking that for a true gut puncher of a feels trip.)

Could Go Both Ways:

• The CGI. It’s done with Unreal Engine according to the credits, so that’s why this show looks like it was catapulted out of the 2000s.
• The music. Having found the ED on Spotify (the OP was on there at one point, but I didn’t like it at the time), the ED is growing on me with more listens, but I still gotta get used to the OP.

Cons:

• The comedy. It causes some mood whiplash and for a show that’s holding up pretty well within my weekly rankings, it’s one of the things that really brings it down a notch (although since the comedy doesn’t show up that often, that doesn’t mean No Guns Life doesn’t take out the top spot ever…in fact, as I type this, it’s on the top of the rankings!).
• The fanservice. C’mon, there’s a woman who’s disguised as a nun who, after stripping down, only has an ill-fitting bra on the top!

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…Actually, since I’ve mentioned it, would you guys like it if I had a weekly ranking? (I do keep one, as I’ve implied here and with my start/end of season rankings, but I normally don’t do the part in between.) Normally I’m a week behind on my anime and it’s not particularly exciting at the end – it settles into its final position around the middle of the season – but I’d like to hear what you guys think.