To keep up with something I wrote a couple weeks back, my next review will be on Gunsmith Cats, a series I listed along with four others but included with this review is also Riding Bean as both series occur in the same universe and are short enough to be reviewed together, so here is the review for Riding Bean & Gunsmith Cats.

That is one sexy car
Kenichi Sonoda is a familiar face to anyone whose watched 80s anime Bubblegum Crisis and Gall Force as he is the character designer behind them, although he's a lot better at drawing cars than drawing humans, judging by how good the picture looks.
His first work Riding Bean is about a transporter called Bean Bandit who receives money for courier jobs on both sides of the law, in the OVA he's framed for a kidnapping which he responds by chasing down the real criminal using his custom made car, styled using a Porsche 959 chassis with a Corvette Stingray engine and a few small design features similar to a Honda NSX. The series is definitely 80s due to the ultra violence shown in some parts but all in all extremely toned down compared to it's predecessors, it's an extremely early dub as well, nothing special to look at but it can be forgiven for the time period it was dubbed. Not much else to say about it, creator Sonoda fell out with the production company so another series wasn't made, instead we got Gunsmith Cats.
Existing in the same universe and taking a character who was originally Bean Bandit's partner, Rally Vincent is a bounty hunter and Gunsmith who takes jobs much in the same way Bean Bandit did, her partner in crime is an explosive former call girl Minnie-May Hopkins who custom makes hand grenades which becomes a form slapstick in the first episode.
After the introduction were introduced to Natasha Radinov a former KGB and a juggernaut type character who takes a number of explosions and bullets to kill which is trademark to the series as Bean Bandit himself could take bullets to the head and chest and tear through a car's bodywork with his bare hands; the rest of the short series is Rally & May taking down Radinov with their trusty Shelby Cobra GT500, not much else to say, both series are exactly the same in content, all feature more stylized art on the cars & guns and both series contain Rally Vincent, okay one version is blonde hair & Caucasian and the other is black hair & Indian but both characters look exactly the same; you know that's all you really need. Most series and movies based on the typical Chicago police vs violent criminals don't always see it's audience as being smart, so you see a gun you fire it, you see a car you drive it, but both these shows actually tell you what cars & guns are and why they are effective for the current plot which is Sonoda's greatest strength as a writer.
Final Verdict: Cheap entertainment that was good for it's time that has a lot of style and will easily draw you into the manga, and also translates well for a western audience.