Between past and present
What They Say:
In the crooked city of Ergastulum, “Handymen” Nick and Worick are the guys to call on for dealing with trouble. During one of their jobs, they get mixed up with a prostitute named Alex, who’s pimp is next on their target list. However little do they know that their fates are about to become intertwined…
The Review:
Content (warning as portions of this review may contain spoilers):
Gangsta’s been on a trip down memory lane for our two leads over the course of the last few episodes, but this one finally brings it to a conclusion. It’s one heck of conclusion, though, as it not only manages to tie things into the present in a pretty big way but also puts a much darker spin on the dynamic between the duo. The ensuing result makes for the show’s strongest episode yet, and one that ensures things will never be the same.
Diving right into where things left off with their backstory, after returning from his last bit of mercenary work injured, Worick finally discovers he’s a Twilight. Needless to say he doesn’t take this revelation well since up to this point, all he’s ever known about them is that they’re supposed to be superhuman monsters and that’s not Nic at all. The fact that the two boys are very similarly emotionally damaged only further plays into how painful a revelation it is. However his denial of who Nic is ends in a pretty rude awakening on his part, as Worick learns first hand what Twilights are capable of.
After seeing he’s no longer physically fit for mercenary work, Nic’s father promptly abandons the poor kid and it clearly causes something inside of him to snap. Worick decides to let Nic stay with him in the meantime, but when Worick’s abuse at the hands of his own father goes too far, Nic decides to kill both him and the rest of the family. While both we and to an extent, Worick know that from Nic’s perspective he’s “protecting” the only person left who actually cares about him, from Worick’s perspective, he’s rightly horrified at the action as it’s far from the escape to his problems that he was looking for. Worick curses his existence and gives him an order not to die until he’s suffered for what he’s done, but Nic is so utterly broken at that point it completely fails to reach him and he instead can still only see the master he has to keep safe.
This all ties into a conversation in the present where after hearing that Nic could end up being a victim of the recent Twilight hunts, Worick states that he couldn’t care less since he hates Twilights and says that Nic’s just a burden to him. There’s certainly a large degree of truth to it, but at the same time we’ve also seen over the course of the last few episodes that he also values Nic as a close friend and companion. There was a conversation back in episode 3 where Alex asked him if he ever thought about why things in his past happened the way they did and at the time Worick’s only answer was that he’d thought about one. Now it’s clear what he meant by that, as rather than not having an answer he simply can’t bring himself to choose one. He’s stuck between his friendship with Nic and his feelings over what happened to his family, and to him choosing one or the other would mean losing a part of himself in the process. In a bit of a cool directional choice, the show decides to visually frame his troubled state of mind by showing flashes of both his kid and adult selves in the current conversation which really goes to show how many issues the guy has to work out, and it’s certainly making him a more compelling character than he initially appeared.
Perhaps to retroactively balance how dark the twist in that character dynamic is, the remainder of the episode is surprisingly light. There’s a couple of scenes further delving into the Twilight murder conspiracy and Corscia’s potential hand in them, but aside from that it’s pretty chill. Nic spends half his time playing with Nina, and even manages to form something of an odd friendship with Doug in spite of the two being at each others throats two episodes ago. Alex is also starting to show signs of recovery from her ordeal and while she’s still not sure where she fits into things, or if it’s really okay to keep staying with the boys, but Nic (in his own tsundere-ish way)manages to reassure her that she can stay as long as she needs to and its kind of sweet. That said, darkness does seem to be looming on the horizon as the killers behind the Twilight murders make their debut and it seems it won’t be long before they clash with Nic.
In Summary:
Gangsta brings the remainder of Nic and Worick’s backstory to a pretty dark conclusion and it really changes the relationship between them. Rather than being stuck between seeing Nic as a friend or a tool, Worick’s really torn between seeing him as a friend and seeing him as a monster, and trying to make a distinction between the two is something that continues to haunt him. The rest of episode aside from that is mostly just setting things up for the next big point in the story, but what we learn about our lead duo here easily makes up for it and makes for it’s strongest material yet.
Grade: A
Streamed By: FUNimation
