Riding Bean

I love trashy 80s anime about hyper masculine crap such as cars. It's silly trashy fun. The dub in this is beautifully bad purely because the main character who has a very enjoyably tricked out car has zero charisma. The dubbing of Percy, his arch rival, is a riot though. Percy is the over the top police detective obsessed with catching our hero, The Road Buster!!! The Road Buster (aka - Bean Bandit) does criminal underworld driving jobs and trashes many police cars every time. This anime has a strong sense of fun to it. Percy is especially fun, but take time to enjoy theridiculous things Bean does, like the taser bit, or the drinking coffee from the coffee machine (if my memory serves correctly). Express disbelief! That's all in the fun of this show. The car chases and stuff are fun. There's even a mission impossible vibe with one aspect of the anime, which is great fun because it's so ridiculous. The plot is weak but it serves its purpose well. One link in it is especially difficult to go along with. But whatever. It's 45 minutes, so I'm happy they cut out the crap and go straight to the good stuff - the action! Come to think of it, there's one point at the end where a brand new baddie turns up declaring that they're 'desperate enough at this stage' and its like, who the hell are you? This anime gets ridiculous at the end. Roll with it. Understand that this was meant to be the pilot for a series, so presumably it had justifications for the direction it goes in. Sit back and enjoy. Seriously, just roll with it. It is what it is. There's a bit of partner abuse and lolita-ish stuff thrown in there. So, beware if these are things that put you off. That aside, my recommendation is to watch this being aware that it sucks, but it very enjoyably sucks and actually on its own terms totally doesn't suck. HAVE MUCH FUN. (please do let me know yours feelings about this review via private message!)

Ever imagined an anime version of "The Fast and the Furious"? Well, me neither. But if there was one, it'd probably be something similar to "Riding Bean" (okay, I concede "Initial D" might be a more obvious choice, but I haven't seen that yet). "Riding Bean" is about cars. Cars, gangsters, and more cars, to be exact. All the action centralises around fast and furious car chases down the highway, or the main character (nicknamed "Bean Bandit") doing some incredible things with his incredible sports car (named "Roadbuster" - you just know it's a badass car because it has a name) to get him out ofwhat seem to be impossibly tight spots. The action is very satisfying for the most part, but does get a little *too* over the top - by the end, this Bean Bandit guy was dishing out carnage comparable to Superman. While "Riding Bean" is an action heavy OVA, the story is surprisingly clever, as it has more than its expected share of twists and turns that kept me guessing what was going to happen next. That said, the story is sometimes compromised by the OVA's appetite for over the top action. For example, I'd hardly think people who are attempting to get hold of a captive from a car would resort to shooting the car with anti-tank guns in order to try and stop it. On the animation side of things, "Riding Bean" does well with its great action sequences. However on the negative side, there's something weird about some of the character designs that I can't quite put my finger on. Perhaps it's that ginormous chin sported by the Bean Bandit... I just can't get over it. I gathered from other reviews that "Riding Bean" is considered the prototype of "Gunsmith Cats", as the two share the same creator. I can certainly see the resemblence in the style and setting (as well the fanservice), and in fact, the two both feature the character Irene "Rally" Vincent (something that I didn't pick up at the time). The general consensus seems to be that "Gunsmith Cats" is superior to "Riding Bean", but I have to disagree. I thought that "Gunsmith Cats" feels a bit stale, and does not really standing out in anyway. On the other hand, while there are times when it seems like "Riding Bean" doesn't quite know what it wants to be (at one point I thought it was gonna go down the perverted path, but the moment passed without amounting to anything), it has a much more nifty plot and action that gets the adrenalin pumping a lot faster. Overall, it's a well spent hour I'd say.

As a person outside of having to review the show, this show is pretty awesome for vintage anime and I truly injoyed it. As a reviewer… I have to nit pick. The problem with that is that the story is really very good and I believe it has the workings of becoming a whole series is the Manga-ka Kenichi Sonoda had not had a falling out with the studio. After the OVA was created, Kenichi created the manga and the manga ‘Gunsmith Cats’ where Rally Vincent was the star though her design was altered. Anyway, going back to the story, it’s pretty awesome in howit shows the action scenes and everything. It feels like an American made movie more then just an anime with how many guns and vilence is in the show. It starts out with Bean being the get away driver for a bunch of thieves and then ends him being the hero of the show. It’s not making him an anti hero and has him as a regular guy getting money. He actually is rather strong, almost like Superman strong as he had picked up the front end of a car and also rammed his fingers into the metal door of the car to rip the door right off its hinges. Rally on the other hand doesn’t really do much in the show although she is a quick shot. The only thing I really noticed her doing when she didn’t have a gun in her hand was tell Bean to keep cool or try and take care of the little girl. Going onto the cops side, the cops are damn idiots and Detective Percy should be placed into a mental hospital. Seriously, Percy is infatuated with trying to catch Bean at all cost and goes crazy when he thinks he can. He is the definition of a bumbling detective who gets into a hell of a lot of trouble but I guess I have to give him being smart enough to actually not get fired from his job. The cops don’t help the matter, always crashing into things or sounding like complete idiots or children as in the the small chant they do close to the end of ‘Bean, come out and play’ thing. And yet, in that all that’s said and done, it seemed to sort of fit to me. The animation becomes really sloppy at some points, using many speedlines and odd movements that feel a bit stiff. The times that it doesn’t have these problems though, they are ether still shots or some very detailed action scenes. The eating habits are rather laughable though. It’s very exaggerated as though the animators had no clue how to show them eating so they slowed them down and made rather huge mouths. It becomes almost discusting at how they did it. Bean was designed rather interestingly with a little to large of canines making him look rather beastly. The English voices are laughable at most, feeling mostly stale at the most intence times. It’s as though they were reading a script rather then playing the part. The words really don’t feel like they fit the mouth movements and sometimes the characters move their mouths when no one is talking. The only one that seems alright is Percy and he shouts almost every other sentence. The little children also seem to shout as though they can’t be heard any other way. Dispite that, the people that were picked to play the parts were actually what I would see for the type of voices coming from the characters. If they acted a bit more then shouted, it would have been even better. I think everyone should at least watch this one once. Even with the flaws, the show is rather action pact and won’t leave you bored. Because of the flaws, the times that it does go into a slow pace, they feel a bit comedic and the script can be rather tounge and cheek at points.

“Riding Bean” is, for the most part, an enjoyable watch. With a 46-minute runtime, it delivers an intriguing plot with a decent, yet open-ended conclusion, and doesn’t overstay its welcome or get stale. The character designs are nice to look at, the animation and voice acting are decent, and the all-English soundtrack is pleasant. It takes place in Chicago, which is kind of unusual for an anime, and that, paired with the music, gives this OVA a distinctly “American” feel that only a few other anime I’ve seen have managed to accomplish. Similar plots have been done before, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun tosee it play out, with all of the colorful car chases and gunfights, the larger-than-life antihero protagonists, and wacky twists and turns. The villains are a bit “too” evil, though, which kind of tempers my enjoyment of the OVA and gives me tonal whiplash. The main villain, in particular, can be hard to watch; she is manipulative, and gaslights and abuses the young girl working with her. There is also a fair amount of unnecessary fanservice that has nothing to do with the plot, and it seems kind of forced in there. And we also get a scene where the young girl working with the main villain offers to “help” a man they kidnapped use the bathroom, which is disturbing. Since this is just a one-shot OVA, the characters’ backgrounds and motivations are barely explained, and I’m left with more questions than answers. For instance, why is Bean so strong that bullets bounce off of him? Why are he and Rally partners, and why exactly do they do what they do? Are they criminals? They live in a big city with such a distinctive car, so why do the police have trouble finding them? How do the villains’ disguises work so well? Why does Bean stuff a bunch of nuts into his mouth before he goes on a vehicular rampage? Things like that. Overall, although the villains’ actions, meaningless fanservice and lack of background hamper this OVA, it’s a fun “America-in-an-alternate-universe”-style action romp that is worth a watch.

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