Of Swords and Parasols

So, I'm so glad I ignored the person a few years back who told me this sucked and decided to check it out(though, come to think of it, every anime he praised I only "liked well enough" but the other 2 anime I watched he hated I also loved...)

I covered most of the pertinent parts in my other post, so I think I'm just going to babble a bit about Brandon/Beyond the Grave(as he's called after being reborn)

Started Gungrave on a whim after my long anime/manga post the other day.  Gungrave is about Brandon Heat, a mobster who died around fifteen or twenty years ago(as of the first episode) who’s resurrected, bulletproof and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound while carrying a damsel in distress, to fight giant bald white(as in albino) skinned monsters. 

At least, that’s the first episode. 

After that we backtrack to when Brandon was a street hood and he and his friend Harry are part of a small gang.  The gang pretty much survives by virtue of Brandon’s fists and Harry’s mouth, up until Harry sleeps with the wrong girl, setting off a chain of events that leaves the rest of the gang dead.  At about the same time, the uncle of Maria, the girl Brandon loves, died(in Brandon’s arms, of course) and she’s taken in by an old friend of her uncle’s, not realizing that he’s “Big Daddy,” the head of Millenion, the largest mob family around.  After one of Big Daddy’s men saves the boys for Maria, Harry decides to join up and climb the corporate ladder, and Brandon joins with him to be close to Maria and to stay with Harry(yeah, he’s one of those “my friends are my life” guys.)

I like Brandon quite a bit.  He’s a pretty simple and straightforward guy and utterly loyal.  He goes into the mob with his eyes wide open about what he’s getting himself into, but he doesn’t particularly care about that, he just wants to be able to stay with Harry and be close to Maria, even though she is, technically, “untouchable” now, and has no idea, even a good 6 or so years after moving in with him, that her nice guardian runs the mob, or that the same mob is the company her old friends Brandon and Harry work for(to be fair, they all make sure she doesn’t find out.)  He also wants to redefine “the strong silent type”…man says more than 5 words in a row and I kind of go into shock.  In the first episode, I figured it was the whole resurrection thing that had him saying one word the entire episode but nope, that’s just Brandon.  He said about as much in the second episode, but he’s up to about 15 or so words an episode now(not counting narration.)  Personally, I think he became friends with Harry because Harry talks so much that people just wouldn’t notice how little Brandon talks(I love the one mob guy who’s driven nuts by Brandon’s silence.)  Brandon doesn’t join the mob and magically avoid stuff…he becomes one of their hitmen, and one of the best.  When a hitman who’s killed around 300 hundred people(that anyone knows about) meets Brandon, his character assessment is that Brandon is one scary guy, to which Harry replies “he’s also very reliable”(or dependable…typing this up at work so I can’t check which.)

The jury’s still out of Harry…yeah, he has the “nice friendly talkative” guy routine down pat, but is far too ambitious for anyone’s own good, and I’m pretty sure he’s the on we saw running Millenion in the first episode, and the one responsible for Brandon’s “dead” status.

Now, while I’m enjoying Brandon and Harry’s rising up in the ranks of Millenion and all the side characters, I signed up for a monster killing undead mobster…I am not getting what I signed up for right now.  However, as of the end of ep 9, it looks like it’s going to start wrapping up the backstory and move on to the undead monster killing. *I sign up for certain things, I expect to get them, and I get snippy if I don’t*