Recap & Review - Gangsta: Episode 1 & 2

Gangsta is an anime based on the manga of the same name by Kohske, and animated by Manglobe.
Gangsta's first two episodes introduced us to the world of Gangsta wonderfully, meeting our main characters, showing the  kind of work they do and setting up a threat for the future.

The first episode opens with Alex, who is a prostitute, getting beaten by her boss, Barry, straight away after seeing this i knew this anime would be brutal, we are then introduced to our two other main characters, Nicolas, a deaf soldier, who is really good at reading peoples lips and kicking ass, and Worwick, the brains of the operation  who is Nicolas' partner in crime, they are a duo known as Benriya. These two are gangsta's and do oddjobs for pay, we also meet Chad in the episode, who is a cop that hires Nic and Worwick for the hard and gruesome jobs, Chads asks them to take out Barry's gang because they are approaching on mafia turf, which leads to a great action scene with Nicolas just slaughtering all of Barry's gang, the animation in this scene was great and reminded me of Samurai Champloo with the sword action.
By the end of the episode it seems like Alex is joining Nic and Worwick in their criminal enterprise, which was nice to see, and also hinted at a romance between Alex and one of the guys, who have both been really nice to her, which was good to see because she is getting treated horribly by Barry's gang all episode.

Nicolas & Worwick

The second episode focuses on Nicolas and reveals that he is a 'Twilight', which is a human with powers after being experimented on, this was an interesting way to go with the series and very unexpected, i thought the show would be very grounded so having powers in this show surprised me.
Nicolas' fight with another twilight was very cool and shows the potential for how crazy this series can truly get.
In this episode we also get introduced to two new characters Dr. Theo and Nina, they were both used mostly for comic relief and it worked very well, the second episode was a lot funnier than the first and had me laughing out loud a few times, we also see the antagonists , the big four, again quickly at the end of the episode, setting them up to go against our main characters.
This episode left me with a lot of questions by the end of the episode, how are these Twilights made? What was the piece of paper about that Dr. Theo gave Alex? Hopefully they'll answer these questions in a later episode!

I found it refreshing to see Nicolas a deaf character in an anime which i haven't seen before, they treated the character with respect and used his disability in a positive way and even made it sound like he wasn't at a disadvantage at all and made it a power. Characters refer to Nic as the "Deaf Dwarf" which doesn't make sense as a nickname so far, seeing that he isn't short, hopefully we'll find out how he got this nickname down the line.

Alex - The prostitute with a heart of gold!

I also love the ruthlessness of the show, it is a dark show and it doesn't shy away from it at all, in these two episodes we saw prostitution, woman beating, drugs, and murder, which i loved to see because i don't usually see anime like this so this is fresh and new for me.

My only real problem with both episodes is the setting of the show, the fictional country of Ergastulum,  everywhere seemed very empty,no one was walking around in the background in any scene which i found strange, it made the world feel very small.

Gangsta is a great new anime that everyone should be watching, its got style, story and action and great anime, hopefully it continues being this good!

4/5
What did you think of these episodes?
Comment and let me know!