YMMV / Gungrave

Tropes That Apply To Both Series

• Adaptation Displacement: Wait, the anime is loosely based off of a lesser-known arcade-style third person shooter?
• Broken Base:
  • Those who like the games tend to complain the lack of cool actions in the anime, while those who like the anime can hardly get into the games due to the lack of plot and Character Development.
  • The anime's ending. Is it too depressing or just bittersweet and fitting for the whole plot of the anime?
  • Grave's cowboy outfit and most of the character designs. Those who enjoy the anime (or watch the anime first before playing the game, and ends up preferring the anime over the game) frequently complain that the design is ridiculous and out of place despite having been simplified in the anime. On the other hand, those who enjoy the game does not like the fact that the character designs for the anime are mostly simplified.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Bunji is the most popular out of the Big Four.
  • Especially in the anime, Bear is right up next thanks to his Conflicting Loyalty, sheer love for his daughter, and his last moments.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Gungrave is a 2002-2004 series. Harry's title as Millennion's boss is 'Bloody Harry,' and he creates a lot of zombie fighters (Deadmen/Orgmen) to do the work for him. One of the jobs is protecting him from the undead gunslinger Brandon 'Beyond the Grave' Heat, who aims to kill him. Then there's a title of a 2014 flash game titled 'Bloody Harry,' which involves killing zombies.
  • In both version, Brandon is dead and wakes up to fight 13 years later as a deadman/necrolyzer. Gungrave OD is the last game of the series before it becomes dead silent, and 13 years later, the series is coming back as a VR game.
• Ho Yay Shipping:
  • Bob Poundmax and Balladbird Lee seem to be "very close friends".
  • There's some slashy implications between Brandon and Harry as well. Arguably more than "some."
  • Come to think of it Bunji and Brandon as well.
    • Pick any two guys and you can conceivably see this: Harry and Lee, Cannon Vulcan and Blood War, Bear and... Okay, maybe not Bear.
    • Bear and Sid.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Harry shooting an unarmed Brandon after Brandon can't bring himself to shoot Harry. This single incident is what sends Harry Jumping Off the Slippery Slope, and in the anime he's so fully aware of it that he has to convince his own conscience to the contrary.
  • In the anime, Harry claims that Randy betrayed him and sends Bunji to kill him by setting his car on fire while he's trapped inside. Randy is just sending some spies to watch over Harry's money laundering activity...and Randy is also the person who lets Harry and Brandon join the Millennion and recommends them into the Family, which helps them climb the ladder rather quickly.
• Narm:
  • Although it applies to the games way more than it does the anime (mainly the first half), the series wears its symbolism on its sleeve to a rather excessive degree, and just plain gets over-the-top with its action. We also get names like Rocketbilly Redcadillac.
  • And if that doesn't get to you, Grave running around in a cowboy outfit as an undead super soldier carrying a portable cannon inside of a coffin while going Guns Akimbo with a pair of overly-fancy handguns while channeling Equilibrium is just so gosh-darned filled to the brim with craziness that it can be downright unintentionally hilarious.
• Narm Charm: Of course, for those that don't find it too crazy or cheesy, it gets the intended effect across of just being awesome for the sake of awesome.
• Strangled by the Red String: Maria and Big Daddy.
• The Woobie: Arguably Mika and Grave.

Tropes That Apply To The Video Games

General

• Awesome Music:
  • As to be expected of Tsuneo Imahori. The soundtrack has a cool classic rock and jazz infused feel to it, with the boss battle theme, and Here Comes The Rain being particular standouts.
  • The sequel has an even better soundtrack, bringing in more styles to the mix. Fangoram's theme is a particularly good one.
• Common Knowledge: It's often thought that the cancelled Trigun video game The Planet Gunsmoke was reworked into Gungrave. In actuality, Gungrave and The Planet Gunsmoke were revealed at the exact same event, with Gungrave being announced before The Planet Gunsmoke.
• Moment of Awesome:
  • When Brandon gets his revenge, after a long and TEDIOUS fight you're treated with a cutscene, and Harry says that you must finish him off, in a bit of a twist, nothing happens, because it's A GAMEPLAY SITUATION, the camera is put in an angle that looks like a cutscene, so all you have to do is press square, you hear the shot and the screen fades to black. After that, Grave and Mika go out to live in somewhere else.
  • The boss-ending Demolition Shots. All of them. The ones against Fangoram especially.

Gungrave

• Has it's own page.

Gungrave Overdose

• Anticlimax Boss: Garino's second phase leaves a lot to be desired. Due to him constantly slowing the player down with his time power, even if you use your own time slowing power, the fight boils down to taking advantage of your auto-Demolition Shot refills and them blasting him with said Demolition Shots to tear away large chunks of his HP.
• Contested Sequel: While the characters and certain quality-of-life improvements introduced in Overdose have been praised, opinions on the the game itself is divided. The length and Sequel Difficulty Spike are particular dividing points, with many either appreciating the longer campaign and higher difficulty, or feeling the game suffers from padding and Fake Difficulty. The Visual Novel-style cutscenes, however, are unanimously panned for their poor quality.
• Padding: The major flaw with Overdose is a lot of the levels are stretched too long or has obtuse and tedious ways to progress. And the game is not always clear on where you're supposed to go or destroy to progress. You have the first game which was 2 hours at most, stretched to an 8 hour game with not much to support an overly long campaign. Other than multiple characters, who go through the exact same levels as Grave with only small dialogue changes and different gameplay styles. It doesn't help that if you don't do well enough to upgrade your Demolition Shots, you'll have to do a second playthrough to get the ones you missed.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Though it does streamline the movement from the first game, the camera in Overdose does not improve that much and there are plenty of levels that put you in tight, narrow, corridors where the camera is at its worst.
  • Platforming whenever it shows up in Overdose. Especially in the final level where failing a jump respawns enemies to an absurd to degree, the platforming is very finnicky, and failing a jump spawns suicide bombers on the ground floor every single time.
• So Bad, It's Good: On one hand, the name Rocketbilly Redcadillac is trying so hard to be awesome that it's just stupid. On the other hand, it's so stupid that it loops back around to awesome again.
• That One Boss: Fangoram will absolutely make your day miserable if you try to fight him as Gungrave. His attacks hurt like hell and also restrict your movements immensely by creating metallic pillars whenever he uses certain attacks. If he successfully boxes you in with his pillars and you don't have Gungrave's stronger Demolition Shots to destroy them, then god help you because it's ensured that he'll tear through your HP very, very quickly.
• That One Level: Stage 4 is a Difficulty Spike where the enemies can tear you to shreds and overwhelm you in numbers, and ends with a fight against one then two drones, which are considered to be one of the hardest fights in the entire game.
• They Wasted A Perfectly Good Cast: More than a few fans have said that the characters introduced in Gungrave: Overdose would have been better off in their own series'.

Gungrave GORE

• Author's Saving Throw: Iggymob have been very receptive to player feedback and have rolled out patches that address a lot of the issues people had initially with the game. Such as rebalancing of enemies and bosses, altering or outright removing annoying aspects of some stages, adding a cel shading filter and even some additional content like the option to unlock Bunji Kugashira as a playable character for every stage.
• Broken Base: There are various things about this entry that can be divisive such as the different art-style, Bunji appearing again despite dying off in Gungrave Overdose, if the gameplay has aged well or if it's a relic of the PS2 era, if the plot is better than the previous games or if the boss fights are any good.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The more realistic artstyle used for the characters in this game akin to Devil May Cry 5 doesn't exactly gel well with Gungrave's character design, which seemed to be more suited for the cel-shaded artstyle used in the first two games. Somewhat alleviated with a post game patch that adds an optional cel shading filter for the game.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The final boss Who Knows Who is effectively a non-entity Man Behind the Man in contrast to Toronty, the villain who has been driving most of the plot until his death.
• Unexpected Character: The Reunion Trailer of the upcoming Gungrave GORE shows the return of a character from both the first game and Over Dose that no one was expecting: Bunji Kugashira. However, some people see their return as a Pandering to the Base and received quite a bit of backlash, Ensemble Dark Horse status or no.

Tropes That Apply To The Anime

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Harry a person who gets consumed by his ambitions or someone who loses his cool because Brandon appears to desert him for Big Daddy and Millennion (in other words, losing his Heterosexual Life-Partner)? Or possibly both, he gets consumed by his ambition and blames Big Daddy for "taking" Brandon from him and ends up going crazy from his guilt from killing Brandon. Both interpretations need not be exclusive.
• Awesome Music:
  • The ending theme "Akaneiro ga Moeru Toki".
  • B.G.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Many do not like Harry after his actions in episode 14. This may overlap with Love to Hate, since Harry is often commended for being a Round Character with substantial amount of Character Development.
  • To some degree, Brandon. Some fans consider his Martyr Without a Cause nature as idiocy. While other fans point out that the series often raises the question by many characters of Brandon of his Martyr Without a Cause. not to mention Deconstructs it by leading to him and those around him suffering greatly for it.
• Broken Base: Fans of the anime are split between which portion of the anime is better; the first half detailing Brandon and Harry's beginnings in Millenion before they rise through the ranks, or the second half which focuses on Grave fighting against the organization after it becomes corrupt.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • When Maria sees Brandon and his gang are brawling with another gang of thugs, she gets worried. Then Uncle Jester simply tells her that they (the gang) may get killed if they're unlucky, so it's better for the two of them to stay away from the gang. Throughout the anime, the gang members slowly die one by one...until nobody is left.
  • Bear doesn't like Sherry's relationship with Harry because Harry is a mafioso. He also warns her that Harry's life is always at risk, so if Sherry is in a relationship with Harry, her life is at risk too. Much later, Sherry dies in a crossfire between Harry and a rebelling Millennion agent.
  • In episode 23, Sherry asks why Bear is leaving so soon after having dinner with her and Harry, since opportunities where the family are able to get together for such an event are rare. Bear simply departs and says, "We can see each other anytime." Not long after that, Bear dies fighting Grave.
  • In episode 24, Harry isn't looking happy since he's being tracked down by the rebelling Millennion agents. Sherry has a conversation with him as an attempt to comfort him, and leads to Sherry saying, "Please don't die before I do." Later in the same episode, Sherry is killed in a crossfire. Harry dies later in the anime finale.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: How did Big Daddy, before sending Maria away with their family butler and unborn child, comfort Maria? He convinced her that Brandon was alive (although he was already dead, or exactly just a reanimated corpse) and hiding somewhere. Later in episode 24, although Brandon/Grave was dying due to his Necrolyze wearing off, Mika insisted that he was alive. The Asagis really care for Brandon/Grave.
• Love to Hate: Harry. Having substantial amount of Character Development throughout the anime helps.
• Misaimed Fandom: Although the show has some actions, Stuff Blowing Up and various Demolition Shots aren't the main focus. The major theme is Undying Loyalty and how it is deconstructed in a mafia-ridden land, or how friendship is torn apart and then fixed.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • That Necrolyzed dog really looked like something out of a Resident Evil game. Brrr!
  • Necrolyzation is a horrifying process: you die and some mad scientists get their hands on your corpse. You're revived with the power of science...but everything that makes you you is destroyed - your thoughts, emotions, memories, all gone - and all that remains is the programming to kill. And when the Necrolyze effect is wearing off, the Necrolyzed person will literally decay while conscious.

• The Scrappy: Mika is often considered to be a very weak female character. And her shrieks don't help.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Related to Broken Base. The darkness of the anime is one of the reasons why those who like the game complain about the anime adaptation. The anime puts every single character through a wringer, and Yank the Dog's Chain is constant. If one doesn't get the show's Central Theme, the ending will be a not likable Downer Ending instead of a beautiful Bittersweet Ending.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: As cool and even likable as many of the bad guys are,(especially the members of Millenion) it's difficult to maintain that feeling when they commit such completely despicable actions. To put it into perspective, the bottom ranked members Brandon worked with were shown to be perfectly fine with offing a couple petty thieves as part of standard routine. Despite the fact that the thieves were not even aware they stole from Millenion, and that they and said thieves were the only ones who knew about this. When even the small-timers are committing needless acts of bloodshed without remorse, and the higher-ups are even worse, it gets hard to shed tears for any of them when they get theirs in the end.