Riding Bean

Riding Bean (ライディング・ビーン) is an anime original video animation following the exploits of courier-for-hire Bean Bandit and his partner and gun(wo)man Rally Vincent.

There was also a manga published in the Japanese magazine Monthly Comic Noizy (月刊コミックノイズィ) that was left unfinished (due to the cancellation of the magazine) after its fourth chapter. The manga is included in the final volume of the Revised Edition of the Gunsmith Cats manga.

Voice actors

 * Bean Bandit - Hideyuki Tanaka (Japanese), J. Patrick Lawlor (English)
 * Rally Vincent - Naoko Matsui (Japanese), Brennan MacKenzie (English)
 * Semmerling - Mami Koyama (Japanese), Barbara Lewis (English)
 * Percy - Kei Tomiyama (Japanese), David Kraus (English)
 * Dick - Nobuo Tobita (Japanese), Adam Guzman (English)
 * Chelsea - Chieko Honda (Japanese), Mary Boucher (English)
 * Carrie - Megumi Hayashibara (Japanese), Susan McQueen (English)
 * George Grimwood - Jun Hatsumi (Japanese), David Arnold (English)

Plot
The anime follows one day in the life of Bean and Rally, as they find that they have been framed for the kidnapping of Chelsea Grimwood, who is daughter of Mr. Grimwood, President of the Grimwood Company/Grimwood Conglomerate. However, it is Semmerling, by way of various disguises, tricks, and manipulations, that is the real kidnapper. And the real target is Mr. Grimwood himself. While the police are in hot pursuit of Bean and Rally, along with Chelsea in tow, Semmerling and her helper Carrie plan to make a secret getaway with Mr. Grimwood as hostage. This is a tour-de-force involving a purposefully-blundered bank heist, voice alterations, disguises, and an unusual job offer to transport the kidnapped girl to her home, all orchestrated by the criminal mastermind Semmerling (her name comes from the gun she carries).

Gunsmith Cats
Riding Bean was followed up by the anime series Gunsmith Cats, which focuses on Rally and her bounty-hunting partners. More accurately, Riding Bean is essentially the Pilot episode for Gunsmith Cats.

Riding Bean, it is rumored, was to have been the first in an anime series by of same name. However, Sonoda had a fallout with Toshiba EMI over the series (rumored to have been mostly on the part of Toshiba EMI), and thus the series ended with only one "episode." Toshiba EMI retained the rights to the series, and Sonoda was forced to abandon a direct port of the franchise to what became Gunsmith Cats, which seems to be a sort of prequel to Riding Bean. Again, as is self evident, characters and concepts were ported over and a new plot was devised.


 * In Gunsmith Cats, Rally is a dark-haired, dusky-skinned woman who works as a bounty hunter (and gunsmith, hence the name). She usually works on the opposite side of the law as Bean, but considers him a friend. In one story, she races against Bean to get him to stop working for drug dealers. Rally's signature car in GSC is the 1967 Shelby Mustang GT500 used by Percy.


 * Bean's custom car is named 'Buff the Roadbuster.'


 * Semmerling seems to be the prototype of Rally's manga arch-nemesis, Goldie Musou, a powerful Mafia Queen who has an entire harem of drug-controlled young girls.

Media
Animeigo released the Riding Bean OVA on DVD on March 26, 2002 in a single disc release with Japanese and English language tracks with English subtitles. Bandai Visual released the OVA on Blu-ray on November 21, 2008 in Japan.