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"[Theme tune!] Miami Guns!"

Miami Guns is a parody Cop Show about... well, we're not sure, actually. All we can say for sure is that it's a manga by Takeaki Momose note  which was serialized in Magazine Special from 1997 to 1999, and can be considered an Affectionate Parody of cop shows and Girls with Guns series. It was later adapted into a 13-episode anime by Group TAC and Animal Ya, which aired in 2000.

The story focuses on Sakurakoji Yao and Amano Lu, two cops from a relatively fictional version of Miami City, and the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits they belong to that is the Miami Police Force. Other than that... the show's pretty random with its gags, though manages to stay funny enough to sit through.


Miami Guns provides examples of:

  • Attention Whore: YAO. A good number of incidents pretty much stemmed from her tendency to grab the spotlight.
  • Bad Cop/Incompetent Cop: The MPD in general are violent creeps who couldn't care less about public safety. Yao stands out for totally different reasons.
  • Battle Butler: Jii, apparently. According to Yao's flashback, he's served in the army, won Oscars, played in a band, been a Buddhist monk - with his hair and sunglasses intact, and a secret service agent. To his credit, the guy is The Ace incarnate, a ladies' man, and according to episode #9, essentially made of iron!
  • Berserk Button: Yao hates it when she thinks someone's stealing all the attention from her.
    • Don't make fun of Chief Amano's afro.
  • Black Comedy: The fake clip show episode (#2) plays with the tragic death of Yao's mother. Turns out she's making it up.
  • Everyone Is Armed: The antagonist of the anime's first episode attempted to rob a bank, only to find out that the only person in that building who wasn't packing heat was the baby that he later takes as a hostage.
  • Gag Series: The Anime has almost nothing resembling an overall plot; it pretty much runs on throw-away gags and cultural references.
  • Gilligan Cut: Episode 6:
    Chief Amano: That idiot girl! I really want to see what kind of creature has it as its child.
    (cut to Mr. Sakurakoji's room)
    Mr. Sakurakoji: So, you came to see what kind of creature has Yao as its child?
    Chief Amano: Uh, no sir. I didn't mean it like that.
  • Mood Whiplash: Chapter 7 of the manga. It deals with Kenji Inuda, a criminal who tries to kill Chief Amano out of misguided revenge. This particular episode is surprisingly tense and serious, with much fewer jokes than usual.
  • New Old West: One episode is a fairly straight drama about serial killings in a nuevo-Western town.
  • Police Brutality: The MPD is depicted as having very itchy trigger fingers, employing deadly force whenever possible.
  • Shout-Out: A common source of gags.
    • Episode 1: "How do you watch TV?" "At a distance in a brightly lit room."
      • Kaken's bowtie fires darts that knock people out — like Case Closed's watch, which he uses in conjunction with his voice-changing bowtie.
    • Yao's dad is directly channeling the Gendo Pose. 24/7.
    • The assassin gunning for Yao in episode 2 looks like Leon — and is named Leon.
    • Episode 4
      • The title is a play on "Mach Go Go Go", or Speed Racer in the West.
      • It also has CGI car chases, as a Shout-Out to Initial D. Not only that, the culprit is the son of a tofu shop owner and an "underground racer", a reference to Fujiwara Takumi, its protagonist.
    • Episode 6: FBI Special Investigator Bruce Tsuji, the die-hard bomb expert.
    • Episode 7
    • Episode 8: One of the corpses died in... a Saturday Night Fever pose.
  • The Speechless: Subverted with Mr. Sakurakoji. He speaks all right, but is always in the Gendo Pose that nobody ever sees his mouth. Not once through the series. He even keeps one hand covering his mouth in a hold-up.
  • Unknown Rival: Nagisa Tojo, the girl who Yao befriends in the girl's school episode. Despite constantly trying to sabotage and betray Yao, Yao unwittingly foils Nagisa's plans. Lu's suspicious, but doesn't do anything about it. Yao eventually reveals that she may have known more about Nagisa than she let on. "She won't do anything wrong -- I won't let her!"
  • Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: Yao causes a lot more problems than she solves with her stubbornness and stupidity - and it's all played for laughs.
  • Whack A Mole: The plot of the Western parody episode (#5), where Lu and Yao join a group of bounty hunters trying to find the mysterious Maria Rose before he/she can kill them all. "Lu" and "Yao" were actually a pair of gunwomen hiding in plain sight as our heroines, without letting the audience in on it.
  • Where the Hell Is Springfield?: There are some indications that the "Miami" in the show might not be in Florida — namely the largely Japanese cast and the fact that the city's name is often written in kanji. Not to mention all the mountains...

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