Kenichi Sonoda's manga series revolves around the adventures of Rally Vincent, a Chicago gunshop owner who also happens to be one of the city's top bounty hunters, and her best friend and partner "Minnie May" Hopkins, a former teen prostitute and explosives nut. A blonde haired, pale skinned version of Rally appeared in the 1990 anime release Riding Bean, as did the character of Bean Bandit, who appears in the manga. However, the original Rally was Bean's partner, as opposed to being someone on the other side of the law.
Much as I like the series I find Sonoda's excessive T&A annoying. An example in the The Return of Gray trade paperback occurs when Rally and May confront a pair of hitmen while trying to protect a gang member they've captured. Rally kicks one of them in the face, and as she does we're given a good shot looking up her skirt. It adds nothing to the scene. The fact that May's love interest, Ken Taki, is more than twice her age and she met him while a 14 year old teen hooker can also be squirm inducing for some readers.
A number of what could be considered nits in the series are actually the result of the process generally used to convert manga issues into the North American format. In Japan books are read in the reverse fashion from in the West ie the front of a book in Japan is what would be the back cover in North America. So manga art is usually just "mirror imaged" for North American release. This leads to things like the scene at the beginning of The Return of Gray, where the doctor refers to Rally having a broken right arm, even tho' it looks like her left arm is broken.
Other changes in manga and anime are done to meet North American laws. In the Japanese original May is 17, but the English translation ages her a year, no doubt to avoid legal problems with showing an underage person being involved in sexual activities.
Some of Sonoda's early professional work was character design for the Gall Force and Bubblegum Crisis anime series, and some of the characters in Gunsmith Cats resemble characters from those series. The teenage thief Misty Brown for example is often claimed to look like Priss Asagiri from Bubblegum Crisis, altho' I think she looks more like Rabby from the first Gall Force release.
One actual nit in The Return of Gray takes place when the hit men try and shoot Rally's prisoner Jim Logan thru a hotel window. When the bullet hits Logan Rally is drawn with her shoulder holster straps visible, even tho' she's wearing a blazer all thru the sequence.
When Ken Taki fakes his own death he tricks his would be murderer into shooting him with a Skorpion machine pistol loaded with wooden slugs that disintegrate on firing. When the killer makes his escape he appears to take the Skorpion with him, so it would seem Ken must have only partially loaded the weapon, or the hit man might find some unfired non dangerous bullets in the magazine and the deception would be revealed. BTW the manga spells Skorpion as Scorpion. This is of course the correct spelling in English, but Skorpion is the correct spelling in Czech, and VZ61 is a Czechoslovaka made gun.
The colourist who did the back cover of The Return of Gray screwed up, giving Rally a Caucasian skin tone instead of the correct light brown.
At the end of the "Bonnie and Clyde" storyline Bonnie, a criminal out for revenge against Rally and May, tries to garotte Rally. Rally ducks out of the way, but Bonnie's garotte slices half the slide and barrel off of Rally's CZ75 pistol. A garotte being able to do that seems unlikely. And Bonnie would seem to be at risk of slicing her thumb off, as part of the garotte looks to be resting against her thumb when she tries to loop it around Rally's neck.
Just before this May detonates a flashbang grenade via a remote control in her watch. This must be a fake watch, as you wouldn't think a small watch like May is wearing would have enough room for both a remote control transmitter and a watch mechanism. It would also be a very short range transmitter given the size and battery power avaible for such a device. Its not the kind of setup I'd want to carry around, as I'd be worried about some other signal setting the grenade off.
The grenade itself blows the hand off of Bonnie's brother Clyde, who is holding it at the time. This is in fact realistic. Altho' flashbangs are intended to be non lethal when used properly they have enough power to cause serious injury if you are in direct contact with one when it goes off. An early recruit to JTF2, the Canadian Armed Forces special operations unit, lost his hand in a training accident when a flashbang he was holding went off.
The Bonnie and Clyde trade paperback also includes the story "CZ75," where Rally faces a kidnapper armed with a CZ75. Rally of course stops him, and the gun ends up in police hands. It is apparently the same gun Rally later cajols Roy Coleman, her Chicago PD buddy, into giving her instead of letting it be melted down, as a replacement for the one ruined by Bonny. You'd think she'd be leery of using a gun used in a murder, as the kidnapper killed his hostage with it.
Nice to see I'm not the only one who thinks Sonoda sabotges his own (otherwise great) manga with the reckless fan scerive