Bambi and Her Pink Gun Volume 1

By Atsushi Kaneko

The word is out on the streets: a reward of five million dollars to theopportunist that wastes the courier calling herself Bambi and returns her livingcargo. Chainsaw-swinging psychos, gold-toothed Elvises, Derringer-packinggrannies, and all the other scum in these badlands could care less whether Bambiis kidnapping this toddler she christened "Pampi" or if she's snatching him backfrom his captors. With a pink gun in one hand, and a leashed Pampi in the other, can antihero Bambi's huge ego and formidable gun skills hold off anarmy?

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1569709416
• ISBN13: 9781569709412
• Release Date: July 2005
• Publisher: Digital Manga Publishing
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 8.2"
• Age Range: 16 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 11 and higher

Customer Reviews

BAMBI UNLEASHES HER FURY!

Bambi and Her Pink Gun...I mean the title alone insists that you pick it up and check it out. Do it and you are in for one of the most inventive Manga titles in quite some time. Bambi is...well a hot, punk, pink-haired, killing machine with a pink gun. Bambi has kidnapped a small boy with orders to deliver him to the mysterious "Old Men". Who they are and why they want the boy are not revealed, not yet anyway. But someone else wants the boy back. The word goes out to professional hitmen and two-bit slime balls all over the country...they are to kill Bambi and bring back the boy unharmed to collect a 500,000 Yen reward. Pretty soon every pro and amateur hitman is on Bambi's trail looking to take her out as she encounters Yakuza hoods, skull masked assassins, a deranged serial killer teacher, and gunslingers in cowboy outfits...all looking to send Bambi six feet under. The mysterious man who wants the boy returned is a slavering, fat-Elvis looking pop-star called the Gabba King who needs the boy to maintain his vitality and he will stop at nothing to get him back. What transpires is a non-stop ride that seems in part inspired by films such as "Kill Bill" and "Natural Born Killers" as Bambi severs heads, blows out brains, and stomps butt in one of the most violent books you've ever read. But while it is violent, it's Tarrantino-esque, over-the-top violence that will make you laugh. Who is Bambi? How did she become such a skilled killer? We will have to keep reading to find out. Bambi is a health food nut who's not above slamming someone over the head who tries to serve her junk food and mess up her pristine body or who dares to smoke in her presence. She also happens to loves a kids TV show about a talking bear named "Pei" and don't get in her way when she's watching it...or else!!! Meanwhile the boy who she names Pampi,does nothing but eat junk food, never speaking and constantly annoying Bambi with his disgusting habits. Atsushi Kaneko has created and uproariously aggressive and hilarious story. His art is not traditional Manga style as it is less `cartoony' than most types of Manga and complements the story quite well. Great Fun! Reviewed by Tim Janson

Transnationalism Run Amok and an Anti-Heroine

If you like girls with large eyes in pastel colors or cute animals, you'll hate "Bambi." If you like/understand Japanese social criticism, you'll love it. "Bambi and her Pink Gun" is not a nice story - pink-haired punk Bambi has to get this kidnapped idiot child to the Old Men while avoiding bounty hunters who want the 500,000,000 yen reward on her head and while simultaneously offing an amazing collection of genuinely evil folk. I've read commentators who say that "Bambi" is like a Tarantino film for sheer violence and is mindless - but not so. A lot lurks below the surface of "Bambi." --- The story is set in a Japan that has almost totally been destroyed culturally by transnationalist American uglification. Air polluting factories, gas guzzling cars, nearly toxic junk food, a villainous rock star built like an aged and perverted Elvis, hideous signs in English - traditional Japan is gone. The driver's seat isn't even on the right anymore - instead, cars and roads have become Americanized. The kindly elementary school teacher is a serial killer by night. Into this depressing mess comes Bambi - pure and serene, and a killer, though perhaps "assassin" is a better word. --- She manages to slaughter off an impressive array of gangsters, perverts, and thugs, all of whom are out to kill her for the 500,000,000 Yen reward. One warty-faced yakuza gangster has an ashtray with an almost naked girl inside, so you can grind out your cigarette on her body if your perversions run to such things; Bambi kills him by managing to get some assassins in an RV to run into a steel stanchion holding a giant Americanized grinning child, which gets knocked over and bashes the yakuza's brains and warts into mush. She mows down a diner full of thugs emoting happily over a televised boxing match where the loser is visibly having his head beaten into bloody pulp. She and the kid - whom she names "Pampi" - watch a televised kiddie show that stars an overstuffed teddy bear who eats hallucinogenic mushrooms. At least the bear is minimally cute - he's all that remains of Japanese kawaii art. The rest has been swamped by globalization run amok. --- As the story proceeds, "Bambi" mobilizes the reader's hatred against the enemies Bambi slaughters off. One can claim, as one commentator did, that it's all mindless, but it isn't: "Bambi and her Pink Gun" is fury directed at the dehumanizing uglies that globalization has brought to Japan. If "Bambi" were an American comic, its political and social premises would be blindingly obvious, but, because it's Japanese, it can be harder to see the criticisms Atsushi Kaneko levels against modern Japan and, by extension, against all soul-destroying modernization, particularly that associated with a corrupt and decadent America. In the last episode of Volume 1, an old woman guns down a man using a heavy automatic rifle. Then she gives Bambi a new gun plus ammunition and tells Bambi to find her own pathway. --- Don't buy "Bambi" if you want cute