No Guns Life Season 2
ノー・ガンズ・ライフ (No Guns Life 2nd Season)
- Action
- Drama
- Sci-Fi
- Gore
- Episodes
- 12
- Duration
- 23 min per ep
- Aired
- Jul 10, 2020 to Sep 25, 2020
- Status
- Finished Airing
Synopsis
Picking up directly after the first season, Juzo Inui—Gun Slave Unit Device 13—finds himself in possession of Rosa’s data. Though it’s treated as something various factions either want revealed or erased, its true value proves more complicated, and few seem genuinely invested in what it contains.
Wachowski, head of the anti-Extended terrorist group Spitzbergen, pressures Tetsurō to use Harmony to compel Juzo into eliminating Gun Slave Unit Device 7, an operative tied to Berühren. Juzo ultimately clashes with Seven, but shifting loyalties, corruption, and betrayals make it clear that Berühren remains the unseen force directing the conflict.
Otaku Consensus
No Guns Life Season 2 lands as a sturdier second cour for viewers already invested in its gunmetal noir: Madhouse and director Naoyuki Itou sharpen the character work, and the Gun Slave Unit Seven material gives the season a clearer action spine than the first. Its reputation remains firmly “good, not essential,” with MAL and AniList scores hovering around the high-6/low-7 range; the recurring criticism is that its faction politics and dense continuity can make the narrative feel more laborious than thrilling.
Why You Should Watch
Watch No Guns Life Season 2 if you want cyberpunk noir that keeps the grease, paperwork, and body-horror consequences instead of clean neon wish-fulfillment. It scratches a rougher itch than Psycho-Pass and sits closer in mood to Ergo Proxy: urban crime, corporate rot, cyborg disability, and gunmetal action treated with seinen seriousness. The appeal is not a mystery-box synopsis but texture: Madhouse staging close-quarters violence around Juzo’s impossible silhouette, a cast negotiating autonomy rather than simple heroism, and a second cour that reviewers widely found stronger in character work than the first. If you like your sci-fi with corrupt institutions, terrorist politics, and gore that makes augmentation feel ugly, this is an efficient 12-episode continuation that respects your appetite for grime.
Key Characters
- TTetsurou Arahabaki(VA: Daiki Yamashita)
Tetsurou remains the series’ most uncomfortable embodiment of agency, since his power and trauma keep turning questions of control into personal stakes rather than abstract cyberpunk philosophy.
- JJuuzou Inui(VA: Junichi Suwabe)
Juuzou’s appeal is the contrast between hardboiled restraint and absurd mechanical design: a noir fixer whose literal gun-head never stops being both iconic and tragic.
- MMary Steinberg(VA: Manami Numakura)
Mary gives the cast its practical intelligence, grounding the show’s cyborg excess in maintenance, medical competence, and blunt emotional accountability.
What Makes It Stand Out
- 1
The season is a direct continuation rather than a soft reset, which makes it unusually dependent on first-season continuity but also lets it spend more time on consequences, faction pressure, and character development.
- 2
Madhouse’s production leans into the series’ industrial identity through specialized design roles: Junji Okubo handled mechanical design while Kyouko Takeuchi handled prop design, a meaningful split for a show built around weapons, extensions, and urban hardware.
- 3
The anime’s genre mix is unusually concentrated: AniList tags place Seinen, Guns, Crime, Cyborg, Dystopian, Noir, Cyberpunk, Urban, and Gore all among its defining labels, making it far more crime-noir cyberpunk than general action sci-fi.
- 4
Season 2’s fan reputation is stronger than its raw score suggests: web reviews commonly call it an improvement over Season 1 in plot and character work, while still placing it in the dependable 7/10 tier rather than the prestige tier.
- 5
Its 12-episode run aired from July 10 to September 25, 2020, giving it a compact second-cour structure instead of stretching its corporate-crime material across a longer broadcast.
Fun Facts & Trivia
- Fun fact 1
- No Guns Life Season 2 is based on the original work of Tasuku Karasuma, whose premise gives the anime one of modern seinen sci-fi’s most instantly recognizable protagonist silhouettes.
- Fun fact 2
- Director Naoyuki Itou returned with series composition by Yukie Sugawara and character designs by Masanori Shino, keeping the second season visually and structurally aligned with the first.
- Fun fact 3
- The visual pipeline lists two directors of photography, Daichi Iseki and Yuuki Kawashita, plus Michiya Katou as visual effects supervisor, reflecting the show’s heavy reliance on atmosphere, lighting, and mechanical impact.
- Fun fact 4
- The season’s reception numbers match its critical profile: 7.09/10 on MyAnimeList from 33,656 votes and 69/100 on AniList, with 235 AniList favourites.
- Fun fact 5
- Among online criticism, the most repeated complaint is not the action but the amount of narrative bookkeeping; even positive reviewers often frame it as engaging cyberpunk for committed viewers rather than an easy recommendation.
Studios
- Madhouse
