Gangsta.

Episode 6

After last episode's action spectacular (by Gangsta.'s low production standards), we come back to ten minutes of our heroes lounging around a dark hospital: and it's the best episode yet! This week played up Gangsta.'s dubious strengths with some rainy-day introspection. It provides context for Nic and Worick's relationship, as well as catharsis for Alex's disintegrating mental state. It's still not any color other than brown, but I'll take what I can get at this point, and if Gangsta. wants to be a character piece, that's just fine.

Before I get into the episode, however, I checked out some of Gangsta.'s source manga. The major differences are the quicker pacing (these six episodes take up the first two volumes) and the sense of humor. There's also a joy to the manga that doesn't come across in the anime, where everything seems to be framed as bleakly as possible. The manga benefits from not having color and thus not having bad color design, as well as not having animation and thus not having bad animation. That isn't to say that Gangsta. is a total wash production-wise. The direction continues to be quite good – it just feels like its style is being applied to the wrong show. Manglobe has done a good job of characterizing Worick, Nic, and Alex, but this isn't Haibane Renmei or Serial Experiments Lain. It's a raucous action story that happens to have a good heart.

However, there are still moments when Gangsta. works as an anime. This episode was the best example so far – twenty dark, dreary, moody minutes of our characters confronting their hearts of darkness. More of Worick and Nic's backstories are interspersed with the fallout of Alex's breakdown. The common thread between both stories is that they're all good people who have been victimized by a cruel world, but find solace in each other.

The primary difference between this anime and the manga is that Worick and Nico's backstories are interspersed with the present-day narrative. It actually works very well – the contrast between them as battered kids versus their current intimacy is intriguing. It also provides a silver lining to an otherwise unbroken sequence of horrible things happening to children. Worick's dad was a mercenary kingpin who threw bottles at his son and berated him for his “slut” mother. (Daddy Arcangelo also hurls the prime insult, “miserable jinx.” I might use that later.) Nic's dad is a mercenary leader who only kept his son because he'd have some resale value down the line. You see, Daddy Brown is a Twilight exterminator, and Nic was born to some “rogue hooker” he got pregnant. Who he later killed. Yeah. Not a nice guy.

So baby Worick and baby Nic form a heartwarming friendship in the face of hardship. Worick (then known as Wallace) teaches an illiterate Nic to write. They also learn sign language in order to communicate. Slowly, Nic and Worick begin to realize that all they care about is each other, but then Nic is taken away on mercenary business in Ergastulum's worsening political climate, separating the two. They won't be apart forever (kiddie Nic still needs to take out Worick's awful family) but that's where we leave them for now.

Worick is a surprisingly solid character. I've been on board with Nic since the beginning – he coasts along as a great idea for a character from the beginning – but Worick has surprisingly grown into his own too. I think it has something to do with how different he seems as a child. Little Worick is reclusive and sullen. It's such a far cry from his boisterous adult self, revealing how much he was beat down by his awful home environment. More than Nico, Worick seems to understand what they have in each other, and it's his actions that pull Alex – another battered individual – into their fold.

On the Alex front, I'm both surprised and impressed that Gangsta. successfully connects her struggle with trauma-induced fears with Worick and Nic. It's hard to find decent portrayals of sex work, and Gangsta. is one of the better ones I've seen, because it's nonjudgmental. Alex is purely a victim of her awful pimp and in no way responsible for what happened to her. For these past few episodes, she's wanted to get closer to Worick and Nic, but has been afraid that they'll abuse her as previous men have. We know that they're good people, but it's a legitimate concern, and the show tests them. We've seen her grow increasingly paranoid over the past two weeks, and the doctor's unannounced arrival sends her into a violent fugue. She wanders the streets for a while, eventually encountering Worick. She immediately starts coming on to him, I believe because this is how she's used to behaving with men, and also because the fear of not knowing whether Worick is safe or not has been driving her mad. Fortunately, he rejects the obviously sick woman's advances and ushers her indoors for some medical care. With this out of the way, their relationship can now proceed with honestly. I'm excited to see where it goes from here.

Other than that, there's some business about rival gangs vying for control of Ergastulum. There isn't much to say about that yet. I know that Nico and Worick are affiliated with the Monroe family, who used to employ them. Gina Paulklee runs her own gang of Twilights, and there are two more families called the Corsicas and Christianos. At this point, I'm way more invested in our three leads than the details of the city's worsening political climate, but I'm sure it'll become relevant eventually. Maybe that blonde girl from the opening is affiliated with one of the families? She's been popping up every once in a while.

A broken clock is right twice a day, and badly conceived production decisions have to work sometimes. Gangsta. is a one-mood show, but sometimes that one mood is all it needs.

Grade: A-

Gangsta. is currently streaming on Funimation.

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