The typical ‘reluctant hero meets desperate town in need, doesn’t care but is slowly won over by one town member, who - half for personal reasons and half for her sake - he fights for’ setup. So essentially we have the antihero Van, whose sombre wisdom of not getting involved in other people’s fights and of harsh realities, is slowly overturned by the naivety of his new partner, Wendy Garrett.

Arriving at the desert town of Evergreen, Van witnesses the shooting of a young girl (Wendy), and tries to placate the criminals in an attempt to secure his own safety. Needless to say, Van is soon called to action, but defeating the men only reveals the greater threat looming over Evergreen: an armed gang prepared to raze the town for access to its vault, housed in the mall that serves as a temporary residence for the surviving town members. Wendy, then taking Van to the local mayor and seeing his refusal to defend the town, offers to marry him in exchange for the town’s defence. Finding his own reasons to fight the band of thugs, Van soon reveals the inkling of goodness inside him that allows the clingy young girl to join him in an adventure to find the clawed man who apparently ordered the attack.

If that sounds like a great setup for this kind of series, then pretty much everything from thereon in is the only real problem. Beyond the characters, Gun X Sword is a series that lacks focus and feels limp or half-hearted. Albeit sometimes enjoyable, the adventure just feels too disjointed and artificial, with anticlimactic Armour (giant robot) battles in the second half of every episode, as a result of the fact that almost every village, town or city faces some impending doom, but has to wait for Van to show up before the threat can materialise. The biggest problem with the series is that it’s just too clichéd. The criminal mastermind is effectively known as ‘man with the claw’, a visit to ‘Bridgetown’ allows our reluctant hero Van to fight men with moustaches that are used to bind and stab enemies, and a giant robot battle too much like ‘Transformers’ is the climax of a dull third episode. I’ll save further criticism for the summary, as the series is not without its graces.

The humour can be relatively enjoyable at times, and only serves to heighten the sense that Van and Wendy are the real heart of the series, their personalities and relationship being perhaps the series greatest strength. Van, Van the Unemployed, Van of the Dawn, Van the Cry-baby, Cheapskate Van, I Don’t Choose Where I Sleep Van, Hangover Van and Hobo, are just some of the accumulated names of the seemingly indifferent ‘hero’ of Gun X Sword, a series which is a more successful character piece than anything else. The introduction of Carmen 99, a freelance information broker, in the second episode, also adds a third wheel to the adventure, although she doesn’t feature again until the next volume.

Anyone familiar with ‘Ghost in the Shell Standalone Complex’s Tachikoma Days mini-episodes, may also want to check out the surprisingly violent absurdism of the ‘Gun X Sword-san’ extra, but it is little consolation for an unremarkable series, and one which is inferior to its alternatives; Cowboy Bebop, Coyote Ragtime Show and Trigun.

In Summary

Gun X Sword is full of clichés, its story is underdeveloped and tries to do too much at once (episode 2 especially), the Armour battles are limp and the whole adventure feels awkwardly disjointed - as though every episode were self-contained. If you want to, give it a chance, but don’t expect much more than an unfocused adventure that allows breathing room for a pair of likeable characters.