Gun Dragon Sigma: Unedited Audio & Notes
Added 2025-04-19 11:28:36 +0000 UTCManga Details
Author:
By the late great Buichi Terasawa, of Space Adventure Cobra fame, who passed in 2023. He was a pioneer in adopting digital techniques, such as digital colouring using a PC-9801 on Black Knight Bat in 1985, and Takeru in 1992, a manga made entirely using CG production methods, popularly considered to be the first of its kind.
Terasawa was an assistant under Osamu Tezuka. He was initially rejected for the role for having too different a style, but Tezuka apparently took a liking to him and hired him at a future date.
Run dates: Jan, 1999 - May 1999
Chapters/Volumes: 3/1
Sequel in 2004
About the Manga
Plot
With the rise of illegal aliens- Haha you probably thought I was talking about modern political issues but let me clarify I mean illegal SPACE aliens- Japan has had to create its own additional island called Dejima where aliens are allowed to dock and trade and stuff. Sigma is a Gun Dragon, a type of cyberpunk immigration officer who doesn’t wear pants and is the only photograph in a world of cgi. After a case takes her to a gross alien bar, Sigma discovers a miniature black hole which leads to a planet of mollusks that are trying to move to earth because of its ocean. She says to stop it, black holes are illegal and can destroy planets, and then jumps back through the hole at which point the devil tears her soul in half and makes an evil clone of her. An alien group of ambassadors called the Seven Stars are yelling at one of the aliens named Ipson for bringing in the illegal hole, which has now been stolen. Ipson is then killed by an alien made of electricity and Sigma tries to figure out why.
That night she’s attacked by the electricity alien which jumped out of her neighbor’s babysitter which is a robot whose head is a TV. Sigma tracks her to an alien strip club where she says that the devil told her to kill that guy and they fight and Sigma wins. Sigma then watches security footage from the seven stars meeting where she sees her evil clone in the shadows and is like whaaaat? The clone then delivers the mini black hole to one of the ambassadors named Wu who is apparently evil. She knows that Wu is actually a little lizard parasite who feasts off the sexual energy of human women because they’re so sexy. She also knows that he’s been trafficking them to his home planet and that using the black hole will make that easier. The clone is like “why don’t you show me how you steal the energy?” And they basically have weird fusion sex but he can’t eat her “ecstasy” because she has the devil inside of her.
Sigma attempts to break into the embassy to find the miniature black hole when she’s attacked by Wu who like… kinda rapes her in a weird fusion way but she doesn’t die cuz she’s strong maybe. Sigma wakes up suspended over a pool of alien piranhas by Deva who’s a small time crook she’s dealt with before. She finds out that he killed some other gun dragons and turned them into statues before kicking him in the piranha pool and escaping. She finds Wu about to eat another woman’s ecstasy and shoots him before jumping into a dimensional tunnel and confronting her clone who is hanging out with the devil. They fuse again which means that Sigma inherits her clone’s love of the devil but Sigma shoots him anyway. She reflects on how the devil is a species that kinda just wants to throw things into chaos for shits and giggles but they didn’t count on her having love in her heart and like okay?
Characters
Sigma
Ass shots
Rough or something?
I don’t think she has a personality
EVIL SIDEEE
Why it Failed
Laziest paneling of all time
CGI manga just doesn’t look good
Not subtle about the outfit
There is no energy at all to this
Wow what unsubtle exposition
Everything is so busy it’s hard to tell what’s going on like being able to see the playing card on page 42 to kill the number dude
Why did she agree to go through a black hole with the badguy and then tell them she was banishing them BEFORE LEAVING
Everything is in the service of the CGI I’m sure it drastically limits what can even happen plotwise
Because the art is so limited everything has to be explained explicitly
What it Did Well
Well the live action part looks cool
I think the actual panel composition is ok, at least you can understand what’s going on
It at least shows lots of alien races together
Goes quick
Where it Could Have Gone
Not be CGI?
Establish the alien world better
Have characters
Misc Thoughts
Ok is some of this an actual person? Or is the CGI of the MC much better
Its in the future Why is the bounty only 10k
Name Dejima is cute
How did the life scanner get confused by the boots in the stall trick
Maybe the wildest sex scene of all time
Damn Buichi Terasawa died too soon to make an all AI art manga
MaxyBee Notes
In a 2003 interview, Hirohiko Araki revealed that Cool Shock BT's initials were taken from Terasawa, though Araki has since said it wasn't really that specific.
Hirohiko Araki and Terasawa do seem to be fans of each other, regardless, Araki having contributed to a magazine celebrating Space Adventure Cobra, and Terasawa in turn writing a two-page essay about how cool Baoh: The Visitor is in the backmatter of volume 1 of that series.
Sigma is played by Yinling of JOYTOY (aka Yan Yinling), a model, singer, race queen (motorsports model, kinda), and professional wrestler. She's cool, having done provocative photoshoots with the other half of JOYTOY, photographer Hiraokanovsky Kuratachenko, both in the political sense and the other sense.
Her wrestling name was 'Yinling the Erotic Terrorist'. I just wanted to write that down
oh also, and I didn't know this until just now; she was accused of being connected to the Yakuza, RIGHT BEFORE getting cast as a minor character in a Yakuza game!
Anything else about the production of the manga is covered in the back of the final chapter, including full staff credits. I could tell you a bit about the magazine it ran in, but it's just "Super Jump was a magazine that ran sequels to Jump series for old businessmen who couldn't let go, as well as new series by the authors of old Jump series (and the odd original). It was replaced by Grand Jump, Jump's CURRENT business person manga magazine, which is very similar but aims for business men and women this time, to much greater effect".
Final Verdict
Six Word summary
David: Looks at ass - looks like ass
Jordan: more like ghost in the shit
