Kenichi Sonoda’s unmistakable art style helped fuel my initial intoxication with anime and manga. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, along with Appleseed’s Masamune Shirow and Akira‘s Katsuhiro Ōtomo, Sonoda’s perky girls with enormous eyes and gravity-defying haircuts epitomized the anime and manga “look” for so many Western fans. Sonoda’s character designs for Bubblegum Crisis and Gall Force were iconic, so when Dark Horse brought his first major manga serial to Western comic stores in 1995, I jumped straight on at issue one, despite not, erm, meeting the “mature” age rating requirement. My local comic shop thankfully didn’t care, and my parents had no idea what kind of comics I was reading. Suffice to say, Gun Smith Cats was a far cry from staple British kids’ comics The Beano and The Dandy…

Sonoda is a self-described car and gun otaku, and this is no more obvious than in his 1989 Chicago-set crime OVA Riding Bean, which stars a nigh-on unkillable driver/courier Bean Bandit with his beloved custom-built Porsche chassis/Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray engine “Road Buster,” and his capable, sharp-shooting female assistant Rally Vincent. Though Sonoda was keen to continue further Riding Bean adventures in manga form, due to complex rights issues, he was unable to secure permission to use either the title or character he’d created. Re-tooling his premise slightly, he redesigned Rally Vincent from blonde Caucasian to brunette half-Indian, gave her a gun-smithing business, a side job as a bounty hunter, and a diminutive “bomb freak” assistant, Minnie-May Hopkins. From there, the Gun Smith Cats were born, and eventually, Bean Bandit would join them in this new continuity a short time later.

Familiarity with Riding Bean is absolutely not required, but it’s worth seeking out on Blu-ray from AnimEigo (US) or MVM (UK) as it’s a phenomenally fun 45-minute blast of B-movie action. Initially published as sixty-six separate floppy issues by Dark Horse until its conclusion in 2001, Gun Smith Cats was collected in nine trade paperbacks along the way. This version was published mirrored to read left-to-right, as was the vast majority of manga in the 90s. A four-volume “unflopped” Revised Edition, using the same translation, was released in 2007, with some previously censored scenes of an explicit sexual nature restored. Notably, the fourth and final volume exclusively incorporated some previously untranslated Riding Bean stories. Physical copies of Gun Smith Cats Revised Edition volume 4 go for insane prices online now, so I’m thankful the entire uncensored, unflopped series is being re-published in this new, chunky three-volume Omnibus edition.

Omnibus One covers chapters 1-21 (issues 1-22, or the first three volumes), while Omnibus Two covers chapters 22-46 (issues 23-47, or volumes four to six and a portion of seven). As each of the three omnibus volumes is over 600 pages long, their contents don’t match exactly with the previous 450-page Revised Editions, but at US$30 each, they are by far the most economical and easiest way to experience the entire Gun Smith Cats manga. If you appreciate crime drama with exciting car chases, tense gunfights, and very cute women, then you absolutely should.

Sonoda’s art holds up as well today as it did in the 1990s, with its clinically clean, draughtsman-like precision, especially regarding his depiction of muscle cars and weaponry. A lesser artist in our modern age might use digital models or altered photographs, but Sonoda’s almost painfully precise line work practically sparkles. His character designs are as reliably attractive as ever, even if he is prone to stripping off one or more female characters every few chapters, for sometimes implausible reasons. There are multiple instances of full-frontal female nudity, though not always in sexual situations. Sometimes girls are just bathing together or changing out of clothes. Other times, it’s because Rally’s being attacked by a burglar who grabs her pants and they somehow fall, leaving her to fend off a home invasion while partially undressed.

Probably the most controversial aspect of the story, which has always been a sticking point for readers, is the relationship between Minnie-May and her “boyfriend” Ken Takizawa. Minnie-May ran away from home at the age of thirteen and almost immediately became ensnared in child prostitution. During this period, she met Ken, who at the time was around thirty. Their relationship was sexual. One of the first volume’s main plot lines is the reunion between May and Ken (who is on the run from the mob), and the rekindling of their relationship. In localizing the manga for US publication, Dark Horse had to age-up Minnie-May to eighteen, who was only seventeen in the Japanese original, as she is depicted engaging in explicit sexual activities with older men. Multiple other female characters do call teenager Minnie-May out on her relationship with mid-thirties Ken, so it’s not like their situation is treated as normal, but its prominent inclusion is somewhat distasteful to say the least.

Additionally, Sonoda does seem to have a fascination for the sexual predator lesbian trope, as Rally’s main “nemesis” from Omnibus Two onwards is mob drug dealer Goldie, a titanic woman with a fetish for enslaving, brainwashing, and sexually abusing young girls. Riding Bean features a prototypical version of this character in the horrid Semmerling. Goldie is an effective, properly terrifying enemy, though I wonder if modern audiences may not appreciate her characterization.

Omnibus One starts with a few mostly stand-alone adventures that set the tone and establish this version of 1990s Chicago, where nineteen-year-old Rally Vincent can somehow already be established as a respected gunsmith and bounty hunter, plus can afford a hugely expensive Ford Mustang Cobra and a custom imported CZ 75 pistol. It’s best not to worry about the details, however, as this is a daft yet exciting wish-fulfillment fantasy. Rally first locks horns with crime sibling duo Bonnie and Clyde, before facing off against the more formidable foe, Gray. Each time she fights her enemies, she usually tries to avoid killing them, merely maiming, so each time they return with fewer intact body parts than previously. It’s funny in a morbid way.

The first omnibus is an excellent introduction, with some spectacular action sequences expertly paced and paneled by a master artist, one clearly with experience in animation, as the action flows so smoothly and cinematically. Omnibus Two is even more accomplished than the first, especially once Goldie appears and the plots become more complex and heavily serialized. Reformed thief Misty Brown becomes more prominent, as does Bean Bandit, taking the spotlight away from Minnie-May somewhat. I have mixed feelings about that – it means less of her gleeful explosives expertise, but less of her creepy age-gap relationship. Some extended car chase sequences practically explode off the printed page; they’re easy to imagine in animated form. It’s a tragedy, then, that Gun Smith Cats’ only foray into anime so far was a three-episode OVA back in the mid-1990s.

Sometimes Sonoda’s love for guns and cars can stray into didactic territory, with characters geeking out over the minutiae of obscure weapons or engine modifications, potentially alienating a reader who wants to get on with the plot, but that becomes less of an issue as the story progresses. Often the characters’ obsessions inform their life choices in amusingly odd ways – it seems Minnie-May’s choice of partner is at least partly because he smells of gunpowder…

There are multiple reasons why Sonoda’s Gun Smith Cats keeps getting re-published, and why it remains one of my very favorite manga of all time. It’s a thoroughly entertaining, fast-paced, often amusing story with phenomenal art and iconic characters. In these substantially meaty, 600-plus page omnibuses, they are an even more satisfying way to indulge one’s love of girls, guns, and cars. As I missed out on the Revised Editions back in 2007, I’m hotly anticipating the third and final omnibus with all of its juicy extra material when it’s published in December.