Manga / Gunsmith Cats

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Gunsmith Cats is a manga and anime about the action-packed story of gunsmith/bounty hunter Irene "Rally" Vincent and her teenaged partner Minnie May Hopkins, a precocious explosives enthusiast with a penchant for hand-made grenades that emit pink smoke.

The manga originally ran from 1991 to 1997 in the Seinen magazine Monthly Afternoon, with a sequel manga called Gunsmith Cats BURST that ran from 2004 to 2008. Three OVA episodes were made by OLM Incorporated and released from 1995 to 1996, though the OVAs don't do nearly enough to get into the extended story that runs through the original manga. Instead, it settles for being a short, episodic, high-energy action-adventure story with a lot of fast cars, loud explosions and vigorous gunplay. Created by Kenichi Sonoda, the famed character designer for Bubblegum Crisis, Gunsmith Cats is descended from an OVA called Riding Bean. Riding Bean featured Rally as the partner of Bean Bandit, a professional wheelman with a soft spot for kids. Bean would later appear in Gunsmith Cats first as an adversary, then later as an ally and friend of Rally's.

Gunsmith Cats is noteworthy for the degree of research and accuracy it possesses. The action takes place in Chicago, and the entire animation team visited the city to scout locations and take reference photographs. So accurate is this attention to detail that many Chicago fans of the series can identify specific intersections, and even the time-period the anime was made by certain key features, most notably the construction scaffolding that surrounded the Field Museum of Natural History during that building's renovation. Storefronts tend to look remarkably similar to actual stores near the locales, and even such things as stoplight specifics have been attended to. Also, all the cars and guns are rendered with precise, technically-accurate detail, and their sound effects recorded especially for the anime from the real thing (for example, the roar of Rally's Shelby GT-500 Mustang was recorded off an actual GT tricked out with exactly the same options as its animated counterpart).

On May 18, 2018, appropriately in Chicago, Kenichi Sonoda revealed Project Bean Bandit, a sequel to Riding Bean. The project, a pilot for a new series, was successfully funded at ¥23,343,872 (pledged of a ¥15,000,000 goal) and was released in May 2022.

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Gunsmith Cats contains examples of:

• '80s Hair: Riff-Raff, of the "punk" variety. Of course, like her spiritual sibling Lufy from Gall Force, Riff-Raff is basically double-dipped in eighties style.
• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Bounty hunting, as well as commercial bail, has been outlawed in Illinois since 1963.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Rally and May in the anime - Rally mocks ATF Agent Bill Collins coming into her store almost immediately (though, to be fair, he was shifty-looking), complains about the ATF (especially when it turns out her collection is basically illegal as all hell), and attempts to kick Bill out when she learns he's not going to pay up for a favor, which is at least somewhat understandable. Odd, given that she shares a neutral view on Federal agencies (well enough to work with, and speak well about the FBI) and tries her damnedest to keep up with licenses in the manga. They're also more curse-prone than in the manga, though they aren't exactly Miss Clean there, either.
• Agony of the Feet: In Chapter 37, an extremely heavy jacket falls on and breaks Misty's foot. Cue the Symbol Swearing Angrish.
• Amazon Chaser: Part of the reason that Goldie pursues Rally.
• Arm Cannon: Bonnie, after her first run-in with Rally and May.
• Armed Legs: Bonnie replaces her lost leg with a prosthesis outfitted with a shotgun (and her other foot, also lost, with a prosthesis that holds a "Bouncing Betty"). The 3 part OVA gives a Continuity Nod to this when one of the two exotic weapons Washington offers to Rally ends up as this (the other one is Grey's machette prosthesis from later stories).
• Armor of Invincibility:
  • Bean Bandit's Bullet Proof Jacket is completely impervious to handgun rounds, and it's allowed him to survive salvos of nearly everything from shotgun slugs to armor-piercing rifle fire. Of course, it has chainmail underweave, kevlar lamination and ceramic plating in it and probably qualifies for the mythic class V of body armor. He can only wear it because he has Super-Strength ; Misty could barely lift it, and the jacket was heavy enough to break her foot when she dropped it.
  • Radinov in the anime has a coat that at least as bulletproof as Bean's, and is also full of a ridiculous number of weapons. It weighs a ton; when she hangs it on a wooden coat rack, the coat rack breaks.
• Artificial Limbs: Rally's signature move tends to have catastrophic consequences for the recipient. A Mythology Gag appears early in the anime where one arms dealer shows off weaponized artificial arms and legs to Rally, which were the signature weapons of Gray and Bonnie.
• Artistic License – Chemistry: A key element of Goldie Musou's plot arc is her basically being the Einstein of pharmaceuticals, having created the recreational chemical equivalent of the atomic bomb; "Kerasonin Citrasine" AKA "Kerasine" is basically an excuse for one woman to come out of absolutely nowhere to dominate organized crime in Chicago;
  1. It's as cheap to make as methamphetamine - though possibly requiring expensive equipment as Bean is sent halfway across the country to New York for a shipment - so Goldie can undercut all her rivals.
  2. Goldie expects her rivals to take several years to reverse engineer it, making it basically a license to print money.
  3. It replicates the effects of three entirely different and distinct drugs - a small amount is a stimulant like cocaine, a larger amount is a euphoric similar to heroin, and the entire contents of a vial combines both with a powerful hallucinogenic effect like phencyclidine or lysergic acid diethylamide. She thus takes customers from three existing groups and keeps them, especially as...
  4. It has very low toxicity, as in no-one in-story - even in the background - ever overdoses on it. Long-term users don't even seem debilitated in any perceivable way. The resulting Functional Addicts just buy and buy and buy. This eventually gives Goldie Vetinari Job Security once she abandons her obsession with Rally, as the city can either have Kerasine addicts and her as its sole overboss or their previous morass of crackheads and the constant war between the gangs and numerous crime syndicates.
  5. It does have one exactly one downside; It puts users in a hypnotic state, enabling them to be used as catspaws. She gets a lot of mileage out of this, tearing through the few rivals she can't buy out by simply subverting their forces. One person she suborns such is Rally's father. This doesn't diminish its customer base, as junkies aren't exactly rational or forward-thinking.
• Artistic License – Law: The bail bond industry, and bounty hunting, are illegal in Illinois since 1963. But then we wouldn't be having much of a series.
• Author Appeal: In a huge way. The author of the manga has said that pretty much everything that appears in it, from the guns to the tricked-out cars to the way the girls look, reflects his various interests and/or fetishes.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Lampshaded by some nameless mook when Radinov kills a Security Guard with her Ballistic Knife.
  Mook #1: What kind of a psycho uses a weapon you have to recover every time you use it?
  Mook #2: Shut up, she'll hear you!
• Axe-Crazy: Radinov just loves killing people, preferably with sharp, pointy objects.
• Babies Ever After: May and Ken at the end of Burst.
• Badass Driver:
  • Rally has impressive driving skills which she puts to good use during her adventures.
  • Bean Bandit and Riff-Raff make their living this way.
  • Rally says that Bean Bandit is a much better driver than she is. Bean for his part thinks she's damned good herself, even offering to take her as his partner, saying it'd be fun. The streets of Chicago would never have been the same if she took him up on it.
  • During a car chase, a little girl runs after her ball, into the street in front of Rally's car. Rally yells 'Coming through!', throws the car into a sideways slide, opens the drivers' door, picks the girl up, hands her off to her passenger, who opens her door and sets the girl down on the street as Rally straightens out the slide and takes off with no loss of momentum.
• Badass Long Coat: Radinov's trenchcoat from the OVA: it's weighted, almost bulletproof, and can carry an assortment of weapons.
• Balls of Steel See below.
• The Baroness: Goldie.
• Big Damn Heroes: Sonoda isn't afraid of the dramatic just-in-the-nick rescues. Everyone gets their chance to do it at some point... Rally, May, Bean, Riff-Raff, practically everyone but the pure villains.
• Blade Enthusiast: Bean Bandit prefers to carry a lot of sheath blades; but his armory has a lot of knives and swords. Misty is shown to use throwing knives as well.
• Blasting It Out of Their Hands: This trope is present, but it's shown to require multiple shots; firearms don't deliver enough force to knock stuff around because Reality Is Unrealistic. Rally finds it simpler to simply shoot off the weapon's hammer. Or its safety. Or the shooter's fingers.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Minnie & Rally when grouped with either Becky or Misty.
• Blown Across the Room: Averted for the same reason as above. Instead, the author goes to great extent to point out the internal damage bullets can do even with armor. A close-range shotgun blast leaves Bean helpless despite his armor, as it was basically like taking a sledgehammer to the torso.
• Bounty Hunter: Technically, Rally's a gunsmith, enabling Sonada to geek about guns. He knows that most people prefer car chases and gunfights to this, so bounty hunting is actually her side job.
• Brainwashed: One of Goldie's specialties — and it's debatable whether Misty is brainwashed or not towards the end of Burst
• Break the Cutie: Surprisingly, Goldie had a bout of this when she was younger.
• But Not Too Foreign:
  • Rally is an unusual case in that she's half English and half Asian Indian, though whether her father was from Pakistan or India itself was never made clear. This actually makes her a Token Twofer in Japan But Not Too Foreign in Chicago where the series is actually set.
  • They significantly lightened Rally's skin tone for the anime.
• Canon Immigrant: Inspector Percy emerges onto the scene in Gunsmith Cats Burst, a character only before seen in the OVA Riding Bean. Amusingly, not a whole lot has changed in his quest to stop Bean Bandit, although he's a little more homicidal.
• Car Porn: Both the manga and the anime are full of cool cars described and drawn with loving attention to deta
• Catchphrase: "This sucks" is said by many characters throughout the manga when they see things have gone From Bad to Worse.
• Caught with Your Pants Down: Minnie May is masturbating to a photo of her missing boyfriend when Becky walks in on her. A far less amusing case is when Goldie jumps Rally in a bathroom. Luckily, it's just to remove the remnants of her Brainwashing - though she also boasts that she's keeping Misty before doing so. May finds her in time for Rally to run upstairs with a sniper rifle and put a bullet through Goldie's hand from several blocks away before Goldie can yank Misty onto a boat and out of the country.
• Celibate Hero: Rally, much to the dismay of Misty.
• Chase Scene: Lots, often involving gunfire, insane car tricks, and - at least once - a missile launcher.
• Close-Call Haircut: Rally gets a goodly portion of her hair slashed off by Gray and it takes a few chapters for it to be back to normal.
• Cool Car:
  • May's Fiat was never actually sold in America.
  • Bean's car, the Buff, is a car he had custom built for a million dollars. Said in the liner notes to the Riding Bean OVA to be completely plausible except for the Speed Racer tire spikes, and would cost an estimated 1.2 million. Also, it's a Porsche chassis over a COMPLETELY different engine.
  • Rally drives a Shelby Cobra GT-500, which is not only cool but rare as hell. When it finally bites the big one in Burst, Rally is very reluctant to purchase a Mustang II as a replacement, even thinking of it as The Alleged Car, until the seller points out the multiple post-market modifications that have been added to it.
  • The Cobra GT-500 seen in the OVA is not only cool under the hood, but is based on an actual customized model that the animators used as the basis for their animated model. Many of the details seen in Episode 2 are present on the real-world model.
• Cool Garage: Bean has a sweeeeet one, with dozens of cars, mostly Fords. Car nut Rally drools over it.
• Consummate Professional Bean Bandit has a fantastic reputation for this. Both he and Rally make mention of unwritten rules that they follow regarding their work and the lives they lead. It becomes a very important plot point later on.
• Cowboy Cop: Bill Collins. Inspector Percy from the Riding Bean OVA appears on Burst as a very, very dark (talking "hiring hitmen with rocket launchers to take out Bean, to hell with the collateral damage, and blackmail and strong-arm anybody (including my superior officers) that try to stop me" dark) version of this.
• Courier: Bean "Road Buster" Bandit is the best driver around - whether it's a delivery or a getaway you need. Rally getting him to stop doing drug runs is a major plot point. He even seems happy about it.
• Crippling the Competition: Rally has a habit of shooting the hands (specifically the trigger fingers) of opposing gunmen. Some have come back looking for revenge because of their crippled hands.
• Deception Non-Compliance: Rally knows something's wrong when Becky (who is being held at gunpoint) doesn't end the call by reminding Rally she still owes her for past information.
• Downer Ending: At the end of Burst, Goldie is in charge of the mafia, Misty is still brainwashed and in love with Goldie, May and Ken are no longer working at the gun shop, and Rally gives up bounty hunting due to injuries hampering her shooting abilities.
• Embarrassing First Name: Rally's real name is Irene. Only her mother is shown using it, in a Flashback. It's used a lot more when Rally's father is around. Later, Roy uses it on Rally.
• Even Evil Has Standards: One of the few things Goldie won't do is literally hurting an animal. In her Start of Darkness story, after becoming a mob boss and inventing an early version of her brainwashing drugs, the family dog (Which had adored her when she was just a Mafia Princess with no direct involvement in the family business) attacked her. Her subordinates tried to put it down, but she insisted that the dog be spared.
• Expy: Riff-Raff is pretty much an update of Lufy from Gall Force. Radinov's character design is similar to both, although she only appears in the anime.
  • Goldie is an expy of Semmerling, one of the villains from the original Riding Bean OVA.
• Face–Heel Turn: Misty towards the end of Burst. She decides to associate herself with Goldie and become her lover, because both of them want a Replacement Goldfish for Rally.
• Fake in the Hole: In the "Misfire" arc, Minnie May tosses a dummy grenade at Gray to force him to back away from the fallen Rally.
• Fanservice:
  • There is little full nudity, but lots of Lingerie Scenes and Panty Shots.
  • Occasionally it borders on out-and-out porn, in May's case. Who, you know, is a prostitute. She even gives someone a (barely-censored) blowjob early in the manga.
  • With the lovingly rendered guns and cars, the fanservice even extends well beyond the more well-known T&A definition and into the true 'content made to appease the fans' one. Gun and car fans, in this case.
• Fetish:
  • May is an ekrixiphiliac — she's literally turned on by explosions and the scent of gunpowder.
  • May's boyfriend is into lolicon, apparently.^note This may be questionable given his hiring mature prostitutes before a preteen May convinced him to look at her as an adult. May thinks he is though, hence the growth-stunting drugs
• Fight Scene: Looooooots of shootouts abound.
• Fingore: One of Rally's favorite methods of incapacitating someone firing at her is to blast the shooter's trigger or cocking finger off.
• Flipping the Bird: In the OVA episode "The Neutral Zone", Rally and May flip off Bill shortly after their first meeting.
• Friend on the Force: Roy Coleman. A good examination in that the relationship gets him into lots of trouble despite Rally's most honest efforts; hanging around a trouble magnet isn't really good for one's career, and he ultimately ends up transferring away from Chicago due to the damage to his reputation.
• Gender-Blender Name: Irene "Rally" Vincent. Rally says she picked the name so nobody would know they were hiring a female bounty hunter. She might want to return to Irene now that she's an established hunter, but people respect Rally Vincent, and she doesn't want to lose the reputation. Kenichi Sonoda revealed that her pseudonym was supposed to be "Larry" - not merely androgynous but outright masculine. "Rally" came from the difficulty in translating "L" and "R" sounds from Japanese.
• Girls with Guns: Rally's probably one of the quintessential examples.
• Gun Porn: It's all over the place, manga or OVA.
  • Sonoda's very fond of awesome firearms and draws them with great attention to detail.
  • Rally's CZ75 is squee'd over in detail.
• Guns Akimbo: Discussed. Rally says that firing two guns at once isn't practical because it decreases aiming accuracy.
• Happiness in Mind Control: Played for horror with the brainwashed "pets" of Goldie. They're happier to be brainwashed sex slaves because Goldie made them do something traumatic once they were hooked (often, killing everyone they loved) and they can't deal with it otherwise.
• Happiness in Slavery: Misty accepts becoming Goldie's lover in the epilogue of Burst. Rally is not completely sure that there wasn't some coercing involved.
• Hero Insurance: Averted. Because of her tendency for destructive high speed chases, Rally "The Wrecker" (As she is known to insurance companies) can't get collision insurance anymore.
• Hitman with a Heart: Despite being a deliveryman for 'packages' that frequently involve drugs, Bean has a soft spot for kids and doesn't hesitate to drop drugs taken from a young thief and the adult drug dealer after the drugs and the kid down a manhole. Rally points this out and Bean offers her a bet with the reward being an oath that he'll never deliver drugs again just because this 'seems to piss her off so much'.
• Hurt Foot Hop: In Chapter 37, Bean Bandit's heavy, armored jacket falls on and breaks poor Misty's foot. Cue Symbol Swearing Angrish while hopping.
• I Gave My Word: Rally trusts Bean without knowing him that well because she suspects him of this. He delivers.
• I Have You Now, My Pretty: Gray doesn't just want to kill Rally for ruining his arm, he wants to rape her first.
  • Goldie to Rally and also Misty.
• I Have Your Wife: Buskie kidnaps Alan Scott's daughter to force Scott to deliver Rally into an ambush, unarmed. Buskie kills her anyway, immediately after letting her speak to her father. Judging by the fact that she was bruised with her panties bunched around her ankle, Buskie had beaten and raped her only moments before Scott called him.
• IKEA Weaponry: Rally Vincent's first gun, given to her by her father, was a AR-7, a small .22LR rifle that can be disassembled and the components stored inside the buttstock. She keeps this in the trunk of her car and still uses it from time to time.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Rally can hit anything with a handgun. Anything.
  • She's hit an oncoming RPG dead-center to detonate it before it reached her.
  • She's put a hole clean through a target's hand from a neighbouring rooftop (although that was with a precision sniper rifle).
  • She's on more than one occasion she has fired her gun in order to hit someone with the ejected bullet casings — in the eyes.
  • Oh, and she's obviously skilled enough to go around Blasting It Out of Their Hands, but rarely does it; the one time she did so, her license had been suspended and she didn't want the cops to find someone(even a maniac who fired full-auto rifles on the highway) she'd shot. That case also demonstrated why she does it so rarely; a bullet doesn't carry enough kinetic energy to send a gun flying out of a strong man's grip, so she had to hit the gun multiple times — and the psycho managed to snatch it out of the air with his other hand. Where other shooters would shoot guns out of people's hands, she regularly shoots off the weapon's hammer, or even its safety. She has also on occasion somehow managed to do this without the person holding the gun noticing until they try firing the disabled weapon.
  • One particularly notable incident occurred when her aiming skills were off due to cracked ribs and a broken arm in a cast — her dominant arm. She just plain missed — multiple times — and had tried to reload by sticking her pistol in her armpit behind the cast, only for her target to reload his Sawn-Off Shotgun and prepare to blow her away. So she dropped the magazine, let it fall on her foot, whereupon she kicked it back into place and shot her assailant (who was understandably dumbstruck at the maneuver).
  • The manga does go through a bit of work pointing out that Rally's sharpshooting depends partly on the kind of gun she's using—one chapter sees Rally limited by the short range of a Saturday Night Special.
• Improbably Cool Car: A Shelby GT500 is very rare and expensive car for a teenage orphan to own. Sonoda said that he chose it solely on the basis of its specifications without considering how rare it was. Note that after the Shelby gets destroyed in Burst Rally can't get another one and replaces it with a much more realistic Mustang II Cobra. Still a collectible muscle car but not a certified exotic. Even before that point Rally had been running out of replacement parts for the Shelby, getting forced to use parts designed for other cars in repairs whenever the Shelby got damaged.
• Inconsistent Spelling: The dossier on Rally that Radinov received from her mysterious employer lists her first name as "Larry". Kenichi Sonoda confirmed she was supposed to be Irene "Larry" Vincent, but it got scrambled in translation due to the interchangeability of Ls and Rs in Japanese.
• Intimate Hair Brushing: Subverted after Misty is kidnapped, no bonding or closeness happens when Misty gets her hair brushed. She is looking distinctly uncomfortable as one of the female kidnappers is brushing her hair. In contrast, the kidnapper is smiling happily, and even her fellow abductors seem weirded out by this.
• I Take Offense to That Last One Rally, May, Becky and even Bean take offense to being called 'old'.
• It Works Better with Bullets: Rally ends up running out of ammo often, or forced to reload. At least a couple of times, she gets back at the villains regardless because they forget semi-autos keep one bullet "in the pipe".
• Karma Houdini:
  • Burst ends with Goldie, despite all the horrors she's caused and atrocities she's committed, becoming the new kingpin of the Chicago underworld with the safety that as long as she alone has the knowledge of how to produce Kerasine she has virtual Vetinari Job Security and only a very vague word that she's become "better" (from Misty) to assure Rally that this is a good idea. And she gets to walk off into the sunset with Misty (who may or may not be brainwashed, to boot)!
  • On an earlier arc of the same manga, Inspector Percy manages to walk away from trying to kill Bean (and Rally as collateral damage) by means of blackmailing them with their bank accounts—they could kill him, they could try to put him in jail, but the funds would then be seized by the police and "disappear". He's let go and doesn't appears again in the manga. Then again, this prompts fellow good cop Roy to leave the force for the Rosemont division, leaving the Chicago Police Department down its morally dubious path.
• Leg Cannon: Bonnie's first encounter with the Gunsmith Cats went badly for her: Rally shot her thumb off and one of May's grenades blew off her legs below the knee. When she returned for revenge her new prosthetic replacements included a shotgun in one leg (with a bomb in that foot) and a thumb that included a garrotte.
• Lighter and Softer: In general, the animated OVAs are less violent and sexual than the manga. For example, there is only passing reference to Minnie May's past as an underage prostitute, and Rally's signature moves (which often leave their targets crippled and/or missing limbs) are almost completely absent. In another example, Minnie May's grenades tend to only make a lot of smoke or a bright flash in the anime, rarely causing the kind of havoc that a real, standard grenade would cause; in the manga, this is far from the case; she even once blew off a guy's hand by triggering the explosion of a flash-bang he was holding.
• Lingerie Scene:
  • When their shop is burglarized in the middle of the night, Rally and Minnie May get out of bed, sneak up on the thieves, and capture them. There's no time to get dressed, so throughout the scene Minnie May is in a very short nightshirt and Rally is in her underwear.
  • During a climactic fight with the bad guys, Rally suffers Clothing Damage and has her shirt completely ripped off. She fights on wearing just a bra and skirt.
• Lovely Angels: A strange example, in that Rally is the clear-headed, celibate one despite being, better built, a year older and a far better combatant, and May is the irresponsible sex kitten who often has to be rescued despite being a Mad Bomber who looks like a pre-teen.
• Mad Bomber: May, a tiny bit. She's obsessed with explosives to the point of having a grenade-themed condiment set (Rally snarks about the "pineapple" dressing) - not to mention the countless real ones scattered about the gunshop/home.
• Made of Iron: Bean Bandit.
• The Mafia: Goldie Musou is the leader of the Illinois Mafia and Rally's Arch-Enemy.
• Male Frontal Nudity: While searching Bean's apartment, Rally realizes he's coming out of the shower and hides in the closet... only for Bean's cell phone to start ringing. From his shirt pocket. In the closet. Right next to her. Bean walks out of the bathroom, opens the closet door, and answers his phone, completely unaware that Rally is crouching at his feet, eyes level with his crotch. While the reader doesn't see anything, Rally gets an eyeful as Bean chats away. For several minutes. And given her internalized shrieking, she's... intimidated by what she sees.
• May–December Romance: Minnie-May Hopkins is about 17 to 18. Her boyfriend, Ken Takizawa, is in his thirties. Rally and other characters have pointed out the problems inherent to this.
• Might as Well Not Be in Prison at All: Gray is able to keep control of his gang and even orchestrate his own escape from inside prison.
• Mind Control: Goldie's weapon of choice. She's even loaded bullets with her own trademark drug so people she shoots are susceptible to suggestion.
• Minor Injury Overreaction: Radinov's reaction to having her earring shot off, and her earlobe along with it. She reacts first the sight of her missing earlobe.... then the pain.
• Mugging the Monster: Rally and May keep a lot of weapons in their home, and consider using them on would-be housebreakers to be stress relief.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The Anime also has a shoutout to two manga-only characters when Washington shows Rally two exotic weapons: Bonnie's submachine-gun leg (sans foot) and Gray's sword arm. Rally tells him to stop joking around.
  • At least one of the guys that break into Rally's place is a guy who tried to rob them in the manga, wearing the same suit and shades. Like his manga incarnation, he greatly enjoys being able to use an M249 machine gun (it's his signature weapon in the manga - in the OVA's case, he pilfers it from Rally's basement.).
  • Also, Bean has a dream of building his own Cool Car from the ground up. When he succeeds, the resulting vehicle is the one he uses in Riding Bean.
  • Some aspects of Radinov from the OVA are quite similar to Bean from Riding Bean, love for sharp weaponry and a weighted bulletproof jacket (trenchcoat in Radinov's case).
• Oh, Crap!: Several housebreakers get this look when they realize that Rally and May are about to use their weapons on them for trespassing on their property.
• Old Retainer: Dennis Tombari.
• Older Than They Look: Minnie May Hopkins. While she's supposed to be a 17/18-year-old teen, she looks just as short as the 13-year-old pre-teen she was when she ran away from her home. This is due to her taking growth-stunting herbal drugs in order for her to try and stay attractive for her boyfriend, Ken Takizawa.
• One-Man Army: Radinov. Roy alludes to it, when described her as being: "not an assassin, but more like The Terminator". She proceeds to live up to her reputation by storming through a police safe house and mowing down a dozen or so officers and federal agents, in order to kill Washington.
• Only in It for the Money: What Bean says is his main motivation - that, and because he has a car he wants to build. It's likely that he also does it because he loves to drive and enjoys the thrill of the chase.
• Pistol Pose: Used a lot on pin-up art throughout the series. Justified with Rally's love of guns.
• Pet the Dog: Sort of inverted. Becky is frequently shown to be a bit difficult when it comes to helping Rally without payment. She is later shown dealing with another client, giving him false information and letting him know that she knows where he lives before upping her price when he fails to make a payment, which illustrates just how much she lets Rally get away with.
• Pop-Star Composer: The music for the OVA adaptation was composed and arranged by jazz drummer Peter Erskine. To this day, it's his only anime credit.
• The Precious, Precious Car: Rally's GT-500 is not only a cool car, but rare as hell, expensive to fix (especially because Rally has been classified as a liability by all insurance companies) and gets damaged a lot, to Rally's unending despair. One of the early arcs of Burst kills off the Cobra for good via car bomb.
• Precision F-Strike: Plenty of swearing to be found in the OVA, but the strongest swear can be found in Chapter 1, where Rally is given an empty Walther PPK from Jonathan, and says "fuck" when she notices that the bullets are missing. Chapter 2 however has a graffiti on a apartment corridor that reads "fuck you" in capital letters.
• Potty Emergency: In Chapter 37 of the manga, Rally finds herself in this situation while stowed away in Bean Bandit's car. She even considers allowing a Potty Failure, despite the fact that it'll give her away. Luckily, Bean stops at a diner, allowing Rally to visit the ladies's room.
• Psycho Lesbian: Defied in that both Rally and Misty are rational and empathetic lesbians - though Rally is celibate and both find Bean rather attractive. A big fat example is Goldie, who is a stone cold killer with short eyes and a harem she's gathered through brainwashing drugs.
• Psycho for Hire: Radinov and a few one-off villains.
• "Psycho" Shower Murder Parody: What happens to Washington when Radinov finds him.
• Rally Vincent Is About To Shoot You: Pops up occasionally on the manga cover art.
• Race Lift: Rally in Riding Bean was a blonde, while in this series she's Ambiguously Brown. Later revealed to have an Indian or Pakistani father.
• Razor Floss: Used by Bonnie for a last ditch attempt to kill Rally. It slices her CZ-75, at least.
• Real-Place Background: Chicago, as previously mentioned.
• Red Baron: Natasha Radinov, a k a "Bloody Pierce"
• Renegade Ukrainian: Radinov.
• Replacement Goldfish: Misty is replacing Rally in Goldie's eyes — and Goldie is replacing Rally in Misty's eyes.
• Revolver Cylinder Spin: Rally Vincent demonstrates her incredible skill with guns in an early chapter by timing the spin of a revolver to do the typical "scare the bad guy by playing Russian Roulette with him so he will give information" gag. While the goon she's doing it to is Genre Savvy enough to know the gag, he unfortunately is unable to expect Rally being good enough to get the gun to click empty five times in a row, which she demonstrates rapid-fire. Rally then says her personal record doing this is twelve times and asks the goon if he wants to help her beat that record... the man provides the info on the second attempt.
• Scary Black Man: Gray.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Detective Roy Coleman ends up quitting the Chicago Police Department and moving to the suburb of Rosemont, Illinois at the end of Burst, because being involved in Rally's antics has demolished his reputation quite a lot.
• Shown Their Work: See Gun Porn.
  • Not only that, but the anime in particular is extremely exacting about accuracy regarding Chicago. A fan of the manga from Chicago wrote to Sonoda commenting that only two things were missing, the two that she'd happily see gone from the real city - graffiti and litter.
• Ship Tease:
  • The biggest tease for Rally/May is actually in the first volume of the manga, starting in the first chapter, and then the teasing mostly trails off afterward.
  • There's also Rally/Misty, which is highlighted by Misty actively pursuing Rally.
  • There's also some Rally/Bean chemistry, but with personalities like theirs, neither would even be willing to try to actually initiate anything.
    • One of Rally's gambits involves being declared dead on an underground info network. Bean gets upset, and later states that he's completing the job for her.
    • Bean outright asks her to become his partner as a third option after complimenting Rally's driving skills. Rally's reaction is rather cute.
• Shout-Out: Done using the license plates on various cars in the series.
  • BRD-529, the license plate on Rally's Shelby Cobra, is a reference to that of another Cool Car from Chicago. The latter is "BDR-529."
  • The tag on the Mustang that Bean uses in the earlier chapters is "THX1138", and the tag on Bean's custom car called "The Buff" is TT1000.
  • The tag on Roy's car is MAX 007.
  • Also, if you closely in a crowd scene in the third episode of the OVA, you can spot Hellboy.
  • The tags on Glass's car read ZZ TOP.
  • A random car in the anime has the license plate NCC-1701.
  • Becky draws Kilroy on Rally's cast.
  • Radinov tending to her wounds in her safe house bathroom is similar to the self surgery scene from The Terminator, right down her wearing the same outfit, having a bandage on the right hand, and the soundtrack sounding eerily similar to that of the movie.
    • In the scene where she kills Washington, he is found in the bathroom, with the soundtrack incorporating "Psycho" Strings as she stabs him.
    • Finally, her last scene and death is similar to Karl from Die Hard.
  • One arc has Rally race to stop Bean from doing a drug run, with Bean betting that he will completely stop doing those kind of runs if Rally succeeds. This involves, at one point, doing a drag race against Bean and Riff-Raff. Bean snarks about how he saw one film that had people doing a similar race for a gumball machine (bonus points in Bean and Riff-Raff driving a Corvette and a Shelby Cobra, the same cars the "protagonist" teams use).
  • In the OVA, Bill Collins states that he's a real Elliot Ness, possibly a reference to The Untouchables.^note Or possibly the Untouchables TV series. Or maybe just the historical Elliot Ness.
• Skinship Grope:
  • In chapter 1, Minnie-May gropes Rally after her regular target practice while commenting on how stiff her nipples were.
  • Rally returns the favor after Minnie May lets one of her custom-made grenades fly and take out Bonnie's car. She even comments on how they feel like "tiny pebbles".
• Small Girl, Big Gun: Usually averted, unless your threshold for "big gun" is pretty low. Rally several times points out that guns, stocks, and grips need to be chosen with the size of their user in mind, and her preferred pistol isn't a particularly large one.
• Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist: to Percy in Riding Bean and Burst.
• Think Nothing of It - Bean uses this excuse a couple of times after saving the girls, along with I Was Just Passing Through . It crosses over into Suspiciously Specific Denial when Rally insists on thanking him more than once. Bean actually sounds rather embarrassed about it till Rally relents.
• Throw Down the Bomblet: "Minnie" May Hopkins has a slight tendency to use home-made concussion grenades in inappropriate situations... usually clusters of them, in the OVA. However, she's every bit as skilled in their use as Rally is with handguns. A single one will just leave a couple of gang members stunned for a minute or so. She can use three to blow out a pursuing car's drive shaft. And when she's really pissed off, she'll set off a dozen of them at once, causing extensive damage to whatever building she's in (typically shown with a Discretion Shot of the outside of the building with all the windows breaking and billowing out smoke).
• Trademark Favorite Food: According to the anime, Rally and May's diet consists almost entirely of pizza (When it's Rally's turn to get dinner) and Chinese (When it's May's turn). In the manga, Rally has a fondness for kebabs.
• Transplant: Bean Bandit, who was originally the main character Riding Bean, is now a recurring character.
• Tricked-Out Shoes: Minnie-May keeps a small explosive kit in the heel of her shoe.
• Unorthodox Reload: When Rally has a broken arm, she reloads during a firefight by dropping the magazine on to her foot and then kicking it up into her pistol.
• Vetinari Job Security:
  • Goldie is allowed to get away with her crimes and get a happy ending with a brainwashed Misty because she ends up necessary to keep the Chicago underworld under control; she beat all her rivals, and now controls the drug trade in a non-lethal, non-debilitating product - meaning eliminating her would bring back the bad old days of gang wars and strung-out junkies. Well, that and remembering how Rally shot her in the head multiple times for being a psychotic bitch persuaded her to tone down the puppy-kicking or Rally might keep it up until she actually dies. It's also possible that the brain damage caused by Rally's bullets may have resulted in an actual personality shift, as Goldie seems much less psychotic afterwards.
  • Inspector Percy has enough dirt on pretty much everybody who is somebody in Illinois (even Rally and Bean) to keep his job, no matter if all he is trying to do nowadays is kill Bean.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Once, in an early chapter of the manga, when May gets (appropriately) carsick.
• Wacky Racing: One arc of Burst involves an illegal rally through Illinois in the vein of The Cannonball Run. Bean Bandit and Inspector Percy enter it just so they'll have the chance of killing each other (Percy even blackmails the race's officials so the route will go through a piece of road where he's set an ambush) and Rally enters it to try to prevent it (both because she doesn't wants Bean to die and because if Bean manages to kill Percy he will be branded a Cop Killer). Unknown to them, the race ends up being ruined anyway because the cops arrest all of the other racers.
• Walking Armory: Radinov has more guns in her coat than she knows what to do with, and that's on top of it being armored. The woman must be immensely strong.
• Wall of Weapons: Rally's closet. Also, Bean Bandit's armory full of bladed weapons.
• Weapon-Based Characterization: Rally is fond of precise semi-automatic weapons (as a gun store owner, it's obvious that it's what she can get legally) and May, while quite fond of explosives, is also precise in her work. Bean prefers knives, but considering that he is absurdly strong, tough and fast, he can afford the lack of range. Compare to their enemies, who really love to bring enough automatic and explosive weaponry to start a war and gleefully unleash it in the middle of Chicago.
• Wingding Eyes: A Spirals variation of this is used in the OVA, while Becky is being driven in Rally's car, and acting particularly terrified.
• Wire Dilemma: Ken Takizawa deliberately uses these in his bombs because, "Hey, everyone makes mistakes, huh? And I like living!" In other words, if he screws up while building the bomb (which was increasingly likely due to multiple sclerosis), he has a few minutes to correct the mistake before it kills him.
• Wrench Wench: Rally is a gunsmith after all, and she's shown teaching May in the manga. She's never shown working on her own cars though, though she does wank over its capabilities at times.
  • Not literally... at least not on page.

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