Gangsta.

Episode 11

One of the great things about reviewing a show for weekly streaming is that it forces me to see the good in shows that I otherwise would've dismissed out of hand. Gangsta. is one of these. Don't get me wrong – it's an extremely flawed show, and I did not like this episode. However, there is workable material here that the show just totally fails to emphasize. Gangsta. has distinct, well-written characters. It has one of the most positive approaches to sex work that I've seen in anime. It's a rare fanservice show for adult women featuring attractive men (and women) who also look like adults. These are all good things.

The anime just doesn't play to any of these strengths. It lacks the manga's quick pace and occasional lightheartedness. The shoddy animation and chunky character designs also diminish its potential fujoshi appeal. Regardless, the intensive thought I have to put into the shows I write up gives me an intimate awareness of how they function: their appeal, successes, and faults. Sometimes this makes me appreciate a show as a niche or mixed success rather than a total failure. In Gangsta.'s case, however, it just made me double down on my criticisms – from the conceptual stage, this adaptation was wrongheaded, totally failing to bring out the material's potential. Its directorial and art style, while technically competent in many respects, achieves pretty much the opposite of what it needs tonally. While characters eventually become endearing, the main plot has almost nothing to do with our leads. Right now, the story is about the long-lost sister of some guy who our heroes kind of know and her alliance with the old murder-friends of some other guy they also kind of know. Thrilling? Also, Alex's long-lost brother is there, but he hasn't become relevant yet.

Gangsta. is caught between a few different genres that it wants to be. The first, raucous action, is crippled by the aforementioned tone problems. The second, character drama, is hampered by a lack of focus. The best part of this show is the central story about three damaged people – Alex, Worick, and Nic – coming together. The problem is that there's no impetus behind this. Their backstory has nothing to do with what's happening in the show's present timeline, so it's irrelevant to furthering their journey. For a character drama to work, every action in the show needs to either reveal or further something about a character. While the show has done an alright job of establishing interiority for Alex and Worick, the main attraction, Nic, remains a sexy coatrack. He's still fun to gawk at, but even that only applies when he actually appears in an episode – and this week, he didn't show up. Gangsta. has too much dead space to come off as anything other than “nice,” but nonfunctional. The third genre Gangsta. tries its hand at is plot-heavy intrigue surrounding Ergastulum's leadership. The problem here is that Gangsta. has a bad habit of trying to explain why something matters after it's already happened. There are plenty of options for appeal here, but Gangsta. manages to strike out on all three.

In this episode's plot, Uranos Corsica's anti-Twilight squad continues their rampage. They wreck the city and kill lots of Twilights. We learn their name – the Destroyers – and that one of Loretta's men, the scarred Marco, was affiliated with them in the past. Two of their number – the axe-crazy Harley Quinn wannabe and some guy in an animation-friendly mouth-obscuring jacket – go to intimidate Gina at the Paulklee Guild, but she brushes them off. These brief glimpses of Gina continue to be excellent, although I have no idea why she doesn't just take out the two psychopaths who killed dozens of her men. She and Ginger could probably take them. Otherwise, they'll just run off to take out more of her Twilight troops. She's just that much of a desensitized badass, I guess. It also turns out that she and Ginger are lovers. In typical Gangsta. fashion, the show is refreshingly blasé about it. Okay, it could stand to be more blasé about its fixation on Sexy Clown Girl sucking that lollipop.

Alex continues to flash back to her brother, who is still not relevant. Marco's civilian girlfriend, Connie, is kidnapped by a Destroyer, his apparent ex-lover. Delico is bummed by his sister's sudden reappearance as a serial killer. His coworkers try to cheer him up, and he goes looking for her, eventually running into a child Twilight who knows her whereabouts. At the end of the episode, Doug, wounded by a Destroyer, dies in Galahad's arms. If you don't know who Galahad is, he's Loretta's dreadlocked subordinate. You can't have more than one pair of sick dreads in the cast at a time, I guess. The actual main characters, Worick and Nic, do not appear at all – just as a penultimate episode should be.

Gangsta. is the toughest type of show to write about because it's had the same exact problems from day one, failed to invest me, and is now operating on the assumption that I care. It's swimming against the current – the more it tries to make up for lost time, the more it pushes me back. There have been decent moments, but they've all been diversions that put everything aside in order to indulge a singular mood. With only one episode left, it doesn't look like we'll get any sort of conclusion. There will be an underwhelming action scene, Alex will encounter her brother, and it'll all end in a cliffhanger. Yawn. At least the leads might show up again?

Grade: C

Gangsta. is currently streaming on Funimation.

Gabriella Ekens studies film and literature at a US university. Follow her on twitter.