As a shameless anime dork, I have seen a ton of horrible, horrible animated television shows. It comes with the territory—there are some masterpieces, and a lot more series that really are not worth the time it takes to even watch the opening credits. Luckily for you, this also means I can save the pain of struggling through yet another episode of drivel and direct you straight to the good stuff. Let’s have a look at a forgotten classic from the writer of Gunsmith Cats.
We’ve touched on this a bit before, but it bears repeating that Riding Bean is worth viewing. The movie follows the daredevil Bean Bandit, an infamous getaway driver, and his partner Rally Vincent, a weapons specialist, as they are pursued by rival criminals and essentially the entire police force of Chicago. It’s a single short-movie length story (known as an OVA in anime circles) that plays out sort of like Baby Driver was drawn, instead of filmed (and also much, much more gratuitously violent and sexual—it’s a pretty hard R of a film). Bean himself drives the imaginary Roadbuster, an apparently V8-powered grand touring coupe outfitted with bulletproof glass, gun portholes, and the most extreme four-wheel steering known to man.
Plenty of other cars in the show, however, are real models, and it’s clear that this show had creative input from car enthusiasts. The head investigator tasked with bringing down Bean and his Roadbuster proudly proclaims that his ‘67 Shelby GT500 will finally be able to defeat the criminal duo, and the main criminal rivals are seen driving an E32 BMW 7 series in the final chase sequence.
The movie is short – only 45 minutes long – and the plot is not exactly Oscar-nominee-worthy. But for just under an hour you get John Wick crossed with Gone in Sixty Seconds, animated in that deliciously-80s style, with a killer soundtrack and excellent choreography. Check out the trailer below and tell me you don’t want to watch it. [Fair warning: The trailer itself contains quite a bit of gun violence and nudity in 90 seconds.]