Anime Review: Gunslinger Girl

Most recently, Sami and i finished a nifty little Anime series called Gunslinger Girl. Below is my analysis and recommendation if you are interested.

Synopsis: Set in contemporary Italy, an organization overtly called The Social Wellfare Agency secretly operates crack units of assassins called Fratello which consist of an adult "handler" and a cybernetically enhanced and mentally conditioned young girl. According to the Agency, each girl has been given a "second chance at life" as each was taken from terminal or critical medical scenarios and given their superhuman abilities in exchange for their services as assassins against the current Italian government's enemies. As the subtitle suggests, however, "the girl has a mechanical body. However, she is still an adolescent child". As a result, the series delves deeply into the psychological and relational issues of each girl not only coming to grips with her own identity and actions, but poses some fun questions about the very real upcoming issues of the limits and responsibilities of GNR (genetics, nanotechnology, robotics) experimentation, particularly as they relate to humans.

Thumbs Up: The series accomplishes whatever objectives it might have in regard to creating compelling characters and involving you in their (albeit twisted) lives. Each girl has a unique reason for being in the Agency, as well as a unique or preferred weapon of choice. Ricco, for instance, prefers the Dragunov Sniper Rifle, and is often positioned to provide cover from elevated positions for other Fratello who are engaging an enemy at closer proximity. Before being recruited for the Agency, Ricco suffered from a terminal illness that prevented her from moving her body or developing any relationships until she was a young teen. As a result, the Agency's equipping her with a body that allows her to move with superhuman strength and speed, as well as providing her with a network of "friends" who care about her (i.e the other Fratello girls) motivate her to do anything to keep those treasures. At the end of the day, Ricco's actions are horrifically cold-blooded, but her motivations are equally innocent and simple, and so it is difficult to fault her for her actions or motivations.

Similarly, each girl's "handler" as well has their own story for not only joining the Agency, but continuing to stay involved, and so each Fratello has its own unique "feel", making for a decent story line. In addition, most of the action sequences are superbly animated, combining high speed movements with at least pseudo-realistic combat maneuvers (the girls use actual marksmanship techniques, as well as "real" Judo/Jujutsu or percussive techniques in hand-to-hand scenarios) for an overall fairly accurate feel of the blinding combat efficiency of the units.

Thumbs Down: Overall, the series has an overtly melancholy tone. The girls and their adult supervisors struggle with whether they are more "human" or "machine", and so each responds to them accordingly (and not always positively - some handlers literally treat their girl counterparts as little more than dogs). In addition, as it becomes more and more apparent that the "conditioning" process has negative side-effects on the girls, it becomes a progressively more and more painful process to watch as adults continue to subject them to increasing degrees of "manipulation" in order to acquire the desired effects and wipe away their natural innocense or other barriers which could jeopardize their effectiveness as assassins. The questions that are posed through the series are often valid ones, but watching cute little girls being turned into cold-blooded murderers isn't exactly a pleasant thing to watch happen.

Overall Rating (on a scale of 5 stars): ***