[six 4 sure]

In a recent trip to Wal-Mart I was browsing through their DVD selection looking for something I didn’t already own or haven’t already seen a 100 times. Lo and behold I see a Speed Racer DVD containing the first eleven episodes. Cool I say to myself, I haven’t seen Speed Racer in YEARS. So I pop in the DVD the other night. While I’m watching I notice the bad guys have guns and actually shoot at people. Now no one was actually shot but I couldn’t help wondering if this kind of cartoon would ever be broadcast today. I know MTV played a few episodes a few years back, but I don’t see this cartoon making it on the air in today’s PC world.

I remember getting up early on Saturday mornings just so I could watch Speed Racer. I don’t think watching it or the old Loony Toons caused any harm other than thinking cars could run underwater, cut down trees, and jump over rocks. Anyone else have any thoughts or do I need to get out more often?

six

[David4516]

Ya, American cartoons have become way to PC, thats why Janapese stuff is becoming so popular...

[ietrash]

Johnny Quest was my favorite !

[Kevlarman]

Yeah, I still love old cartoons! The Cartoon Network still shows the old Loony Toons with the guns and violence and profane language (nitwit, dummy, etc).

If you're really into guns, check out the Gunsmith Cats anime and manga!

[Mark Tyson]

Check out Samurai Jack. Not a whole lot of guns, but a very good pro-self defense message.

[StuporDave]

I'm showing my age but......... Johnny Quest was my favorite !

Johnny Quest was my favorite too. Found a few episodes on video a few years back. Still watch them every so often. Cool stuff.

[Kamicosmos]

Get into Anime. Much more serious cartoons, usually not meant for kids under 13 or so.

Gunsmith Cats (both the video and the manga) full of very accurately drawn guns. You name it and it's probably in there especially the manga.

Cowboy Bebop and Noir are a couple others that are pretty good on the guns. Cowboy features a Jericho in 41, Noir has P99s and Beretta 1934s.

Ghost in the Shell, Battle Angel Alita and Armitage are also good. Futuristic guns, and GitS has a Mateba too.

[BryanP]

Get into Anime. Much more serious cartoons, usually not meant for kids under 13 or so.

There is plenty of anime for kids under 13. There's also plenty that's not. Hmm. Good anime with guns in it. You've mentioned several good ones already. One of my favorite character-driven shows with some violence is Patlabor: Mobile Police. Big robots driven by police whose main weapons are a huge stun baton and a gigantic revolver that fires 37mm shells. One that hasn't been released in the US yet is a far-future show called Kiddy Grade (strange name and no, it's not about or for kids). One of the main characters carries a Walter P99. Trigun is another of my favorites. Vash carries something that looks like a Mateba, except that it's a top-break.

[Abominable No-Man]

Johnny Quest was really good. I liked G.I. Joe, at one point in time, too. Hey, it was kind of like the A-Team, don't you think? Everyone gets into a firefight, expends 80,000 rounds and no one ever got shot? LOL.

Speaking of which, I found out something the other day, kind of OT, but did you guys know that the laser rifle everyone had on the G.I. Joe team was actually the Advanced Combat Rifle? The one that fired the flechettes? Nifty, except that the pistol grip was actually the magazine.

Gotta see if I can dig up a picture of it......

ANM

[Black Snowman]

I really liked Johnny Quest. Bad guys killed people for their own gain, good guys killed people in self defense and to save the world. It was an honest depiction of what it takes to defend people and their rights.

As for anime I'd recommend watching Gunsmith Cats. It's all available on 1 DVD so you won't get sucked into buying a huge series and it's technically quite accurate for a Japanese production.

[hksw]

...and it's technically quite accurate for a Japanese production.

Pretty much true for most of the current time period anime. Check out Crying Freeman too for accurately drawn firearms, particularly the manga. (An older series from the early '90s.)

And always the favorite, Robotech/Macross.

[Aikibiker]

About 5 years ago Cartoon Network was showing a remake of Johnny Quest. Lots of violence, people died, the guns were actually depicted acturately, and Dr. Quest and Race Bannon didn't come off like they were shopping for his and his towel like in the original series.

Anime unfortunately is getting the "PC treatment" when it is shown on American TV. Just watch YU-GI-OH sometime. There are a couple of scenes where guys are standing in weaver stances pointing radios or their fingers at other people who are acting real scared of the motorola. *sigh*

I heard in the Gunsmith Cats manga that they ocasionally drove on the wrong side of the rode or had the stearing wheel on the wrong side. I guess the author had a hard time remembering how we do it in America. The guy sure liked his guns though, we should make him an honorary member of the Highroad.

[Kevlarman]

Nah, he didn't forget. Japanese read from right to left, and when the manga gets to the US, the translators have to mirror the frames so that we can read from left to right. Of course, this makes it appear that the steering wheel is on the wrong side, people are left handed, and why guns have their parts on the opposite side.

[Black Snowman]

Now that manga is getting more popular there are translated versions that are read right to left through the book so that the graphics aren't goobered up. Takes some getting used to but frequesly helps the action flow better and things not to flip-flop.

[Brian Dale]

Another vote for Johnny Quest. The other family favorite was the Roadrunner -- not for the guns, but for the mind-set. Yeah, it was watching Roadrunner that damaged me as a child. :neener:

[GSB]

The one thing I always wondered about with Speed Racer was why anyone would want to be in these races where about 90% of the contestants died in horrible flaming wrecks or at the bottom of thousand-foot ravines before the end of the race.

[Nightcrawler]

I remember Johnny Quest. Made in the 60s, watched it on TV in the eighties.

I saw one episode a few months back, real late at night on Cartoon Network. Race Bannon, Johnny Quest, Hadji, and Dr. Quest are travelling down a river on a small boat in Africa. They get attacked by headhunters, who start throwing spears and such at them. Race grabs a rifle and returns fire.

Interesting, I thought. But then Race yells, "BACK! BACK, you heathen monkies!"

I was like, "NO ****ING WAY! He did NOT just call black people from Africa heathen monkies!" It was hilarious; so un-PC it's not even funny. I can see how that kind of, er, comment might offend people, though.

Which is NOT to say the show had racist undertones. It featured, for example, black doctors, scientists, police officers, and other good guys.

And, of course, Hadji, while not black, does represent what is a racial minority here in the United States. Like all people from India, he can perform magic tricks, make things levitate, and get out of scrapes with his powers. All he has to do is say "SIM SIM, SA LA BIM!" and off he goes! :D

[BryanP]

I heard in the Gunsmith Cats manga that they ocasionally drove on the wrong side of the rode or had the stearing wheel on the wrong side. I guess the author had a hard time remembering how we do it in America. The guy sure liked his guns though, we should make him an honorary member of the Highroad.

As someone else pointed out, Kenichi Sonoda drew it correctly every time, but then the manga was "flopped" to get it to read left to right for the US market, thereby swapping them back. Sonoda-San is a major league car and gun nut, his drawings are painstakingly detailed and accurate.

Gunsmith Cats is based around a gun shop in Chicago (so you KNOW it's fiction ...). Sonoda comes to Anime Central in Chicago almost every year, and I've heard that he's had the opportunity to make side-trips to try out the hardware he'll never have a chance to play with in Japan. AR's, AK's, various pistols, full auto etc... and absolutely loves it.

[Mike Irwin]

I also loved, and still love, Johnny Quest.

Lots of gun play, and I believe people actually getting shot.

[cool45auto]

After I'd get home from school I'd fly up to my friend Darin's house to watch GI Joe because I couldn't pick up channel 4 at my house.:mad:
My favorite was Snake Eyes and his Uzi!:cool:

[Abominable No-Man]

LOL. Yeah, Snake Eyes was cool. I liked Roadblock and Recondo, too. .50
M2 and (I think) and M14E2, respectively.

ANM

[Alan Fud]

The early Winnie the Pooh cartoons (made by Disney, no less) had Pooh Bear investigate noises in the night armed with a shotgun. It was loaded with a cork but is was still a gun.

[SodaPop]

There is no greater Jap cartoon than this https://www.starblazers.com/

[jsalcedo]

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-7/269565/poohgun.JPG

[SodaPop]

LOL!!

Was that the "Blustery Day" episode?

[aikidoka-mks]

GSB

The one thing I always wondered about with Speed Racer was why anyone would want to be in these races where about 90% of the contestants died in horrible flaming wrecks or at the bottom of thousand-foot ravines before the end of the race.

And that was just in the credits and theme song! lol - I really enjoyed speed racer when I was a kid.

I remember getting up early for Starblazers. Crying Freeman was pretty good. If you like other weapons - swords and such try Vampire Hunter D - BloodLust.

Mark

[Matt G]

Check out the series of Bubblegum Crisis/Bubblegum CRASH!/A.D.Police anime fllicks, in which they battle giant cybornetic monsters. A.D. Police officer Leon has a 3-shot revolver that appears to fire projectiles of approximately 20 mm. Leon is the only cop to carry a pistol with enough oomph to drop most of the cyborgs.

Very kewl pistol. :)

[David4516]

I've seen several animes and I'm really starting to get into it. Just becasue it's a cartoon doesn't mean it's for kids :uhoh:

Gunsmith cats was really REALLY cool, but only 3 episdoes? Way too short...

I'll second Noir. Who wouldn't want to see a show about 2 assasin chicks? One has a Walther, the other has a beretta. The bad guys have cool guns too, one had a desert eagle, and there were Makarovs in a few episodes. The only downside to this series is that the first several episodes don't have much of a plot, but the last 2/3 of it are great

http://uqac.ca/anime/images/series/noir/t-noir2.jpg

Another good one is Hellsing. It's a bit on the bloody side (hey, it's about vampires, what do you expect?), and has plenty of guns. The main character has a giant 1911 in .454 casull :cool:

http://amen.sivan.nu/ep/hellsing01-14.jpg

[Nightcrawler]

A 1911 in .454 Casull? Kind of makes the .45 Win Mag 1911s from years back seem kind of lessened somehow... :)

[Aikibiker]

GI Joe comic books were better then the TV show. They had more realistic weapons and actually paid attention to things like tactics, operational security, and the realities of a military life. Plus they really did kill people, in a variety of ways.

GI Joe was also very pro RKBA. One of the things that set me on the right path was a GI Joe comic book. In the book Snake-Eyes had gone to visit one of the ninja masters that trained him. The master had a Cuna-Chinese restaurant in Harlem. (don't ask me why a Japanese ninja moved to NYC to open a Cuban-Chinese restaurant) While Snake-Eyes was at the counter a punk kid came in and pointed a 1911 at the shop keeper. After the shop keeper gave the young man a lesson on the manual of arms for a 1911 he "bought" the gun (told the kid he could trade his now unloaded pistol for fifty bucks or deal with the guy holding the UZI) he turned to his former pupil and said:

"Once or twice a month, some kid stumbles in here and, um... "sells" me a gun. My own perverse form of gun control... Did you know that when the Japanese conquered Okinawa they banned all knives? It simply spurred the Okinawans to invent some of the deadliest forms of unarmed combat known to man! Someday the politicians will learn that legislating against objects is utterly useless and no amount of legislation will deter men from constructing bigger and better engines of destruction."

I hope you appreciate the fact that I braved a dark attic full of spiders and nails sticking through the roof to find my copy of that book for you.

We have seen this demonstrated recently. The government banned "assault weapons" as a measure against domestic terrorism. Less then ten years later some nut started mailing anthrax to people.

[BryanP]

Gunsmith cats was really REALLY cool, but only 3 episdoes? Way too short...

You can always pick up the translated version of the manga. It's all available in TPB / Graphic Novel format from Dark Horse. (search) Ooh, the second volume of Cannon God Exaxxion is out. Gotta buy that today...

Gunsmith Cats TPB (http://www.darkhorse.com/search/index.html?sstring=gunsmith+tpb&submit.x=0&submit.y=0)

[vertigo7]

Gunsmith cats was really REALLY cool, but only 3 episdoes? Way too short...

Need more Rally Vincent? Take a look at Riding Bean.

[Mark Tyson]

Someday the politicians will learn that legislating against objects is utterly useless"

That made my day. What better motto for the RKBA movement?

[Justin]

Heh.
Agree that the old Johnny Quest cartoons were good.
The Gunsmith Cats DVD is an excellent watch. Not only are the main characters an FFL and an explosives expert, they regularly get antagonized by an ATF agent.

Lately I've been getting into Cowboy Bebop and have rediscovered Trigun. There was an early episode of Trigun where Vash finds a town that had been beset upon by bank robbers. Their crime spree was stopped when a local entrepreneur invented a low-cost, easily made handgun and armed everyone in the town.

The bank robberies stopped.

Very cool.

[Daniel T]

Aikibiker, I remember that specific comic. In fact, that's one of my favorite comics, ever. I hadn't thought about it in years until I opened this thread. I wonder if I still have my copy...time to dig through some old boxes. :)

[Kevlarman]

I don't believe you guys!

Everyone know's it's Jonny Quest (no H)! :D

I loved that show!

As for the Gunsmith Cats manga, I agree, it's very well written and has lots of guns and explosive action. I have all of them! I also have all of the Oh My Goddess manga, but that's another story. :uhoh:

http://www.thehighroad.org/attachment.php?s=&postid=540520

[Dr.Rob]

You all realize Speed Racer is HEAVILY edited, not for MTV, which pretty much showed the programs intact from when I was a kid (and I have to admit, as an adult its almost unwatchable). Speed racer was THE MOST violent cartoon ever made for years. Guns, bombs, decapitations, people burned alive etc. It was censored BEFORE it was translated to english.

Johnny Quest is THE cartoon. And don't give me that Dr.Quest/Race Bannon nonsense. Race is the only cartoon character who could ride up to an igloo 40 miles noth of the artic circle and here the follwing lines delivered by hot innuit/artic researchbabe... "Race I haven't seen you since Singapore". Ditto for every port of call Race has ever made.

As for the remakes (there have been several) I don't like race's new 'Texas" accent. He's supposed to sound like Mcgarret from 5-0. The guns are VERY cool and technicly correct.

Be really careful when shopping for manga. A lot of it out there is graphicly adult and may or may not be labeled as such. if you have kids in the house and they like cartoons (duh) it would NOT bode well to have them watching Daddy's DVD "Legend of the Overfiend".

Gunsmith cats is pretty silly light hearted fun. Sometimes they run episodes on "Adult Swim" sunday nights.

Anyone else notice the running joke on GI Joe, that "ACE" gets shot down every episode? And watch carefully. Sometimes bad guys don't eject out of their airplanes and fall into volcanoes, etc. Oh, and I have it on good autority that in one episode a GI Joe plane is piloted by Garfield the Cat. (It was a slow day in the production room).

[sw442642]

In DBZ, the citizens are shown to use firearms for selfdefense quite a bit. It is usually useless as the opponent is superpowered. But they try.

In Japan, though - ownership is nigh on impossible.

[SodaPop]

Speed racer was THE MOST violent cartoon ever made for years. Guns, bombs, decapitations, people burned alive etc. It was censored BEFORE it was translated to english


I wasn't allowed to watch Speed Racer or Duke of Hazzard when I was a kid. Speed Racer was too violent and Daisy Duke was too lightly clothed for my Mommy's taste.:eek:

[Skunkabilly]

I liked Macross for the hardware but seemed like soap operas with smatterings of tacticality.

Nightcrawler, you beat me to the sim sim sa la bim! :D

[David4516]

Macross, oh you mean Robotech right? Awsome cartoon. I read all the books (they were real books, not comics) and I even bought the video game for PS2

http://home.arcor.de/S.Kohlmann/anime/robotech.jpg

[hksw]

Gunsmith cats is pretty silly light hearted fun.

Try some Tank Police.

http://www.thehighroad.org/attachment.php?s=&postid=540520

Hmm, those are all of the trade books, not the individual episodes and parts. There were a few frames and alot of covers not included in the books that were not in the TB but in the manga. Still missing a few parts myself.

[Kevlarman]

Yeah, I don't have the time or the money to go and hunt for the back issues of every single issue, so I compromised and got the books.

Can you expound as to which stories are missing? I don't really care about the covers, bu tI don't want to miss any crucial storylines.

[Devonai]

I made the mistake of buying one of the "special edition" pseudo-Japanese style mangas from Viz Publishing (Evangelion #7). It took me twenty minutes to get my brain to adjust to the left-to-right panel orientation. All of the sound effects were untranslated as well.

Evangelion had some good close-ups of firearms, notably H&K USP .40s and Uzi SMGs. The manga, so far, has only had one poorly-rendered USP. Feh.

[spacemanspiff]

actually, isnt it SIM SALA BIMBAMBA SALADO SALADIM......

i was a robotech junkie, still am.... first cartoon i ever watched that portrayed death as a reality. i think half of the major characters wound up dead. yes, they were books, i had them all till they got put in the trash when my mom kicked me out. heck, she even threw away my limited edition queensryche Operation Mindcrime boxed set! grrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!:mad:

fyi, robotech was tame by american standards, but it was rated "adults only" in japan, for its depictions of premarital sex, cross dressing, and 'interspecies relations'.
the coolest episode was when max sterling defeated miriya in actual combat, and later (may have been subsequent episode) defeated her in a video game, and then beat her in hand-to-hand combat!

[hksw]

The episodes I've got include:

Gunsmith Cats (Intro)
Bonnie & Clyde
Misfire
Shades of Gray
Bad Trip
Bean Bandit (In the anime, it is RV's first appearance. She is blond in that.)
Goldie vs. Misty
The Return of Gray
Kidnapped
Mister V
Misty's Run

http://www.scifigenre.com/promo.aspx?nID=84

There might be more. I got sidelined moving to a different state and then back and failed to keep up at the time.

[BryanP]

I also have all of the Oh My Goddess manga, but that's another story.

Hey now, nothing wrong with OMG. No guns, but it's a fun story. Actually my favorite manga & anime of all time is another romantic comedy - Maison Ikkoku. I like to show it to people who think they know what anime is. No guns, no robots, no space ships, nobody getting killed, no half-naked girls (okay, ONE half-naked girl but with Akemi it's more of a running joke than anything sexual), just a bunch of really good storytelling.

Now excuse me, I have to go find the new Cannon God Exaxxion manga which DOES have guns, robots, spaceships, people getting killed, and half naked girls. :D