Aida Yu - Gunslinger Girl, vol. 01-02 (Eng. trans.)

[oyceter]

The cover of Gunslinger Girl has a pre-adolescent, innocent-looking girl with a sad face wielding a giant machine gun.

Have I mentioned how predictable I was?

In a manga-version of Italy (aka, set there so people can have names like Giuseppe and Tiela and go to assorted piazzas), there's a government agency that takes in young girls when they're near death and makes them into cyborgs. The girls are conditioned to be assassins and paired up with a handler (almost always an adult male), with whom they train and go on missions. The series so far is really a bunch of shorts on the girls in the program, all of whom are struggling with being human and normal when they're cyborg killing machines. There are ruminations on the messed-up nature of the cyborg/handler relationship -- some handlers treat their assignees as tools, others treat them as daughters, and thankfully, there are no horribly squickly Lolita-like fantasies. There's lots of angst.

The art is a bit blocky and not always wonderful, but of course, I love it to pieces. I have also stuck the anime in my Netflix queue. rachelmanija, I'm not sure if this hits your bulletproof kink, given that they're not mutants, but it is a school of special kids.

I was getting a little tired of the one-offs and wanted a longer, angstier arc, but I suspect I will keep reading this because... angsty little girls who are cyborg killing machines!

Comments

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Close enough! Bring them with you when come.

[oyceter]

Sadly, I don't own them! I, uh, read them at Borders. The art isn't quite pretty enough for me to buy them....

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Darn!

By the way, Her Majesty's Dog is the sweetest thing ever that isn't Fruits Basket. She's a clueless yet powerful teenage sorceress who grew up in the boonies and knows no social graces. He's her demon dog protector in the shape of a really cute teenage boy who can only survive by feeding upon her chakra life force, which he does by kissing her. Together, they fight crime lay ghosts to rest. And also go to high school, where they scandalize everyone by making out in public.

[oyceter]

I have to check that out next time! That totally reminds me of Night from Absolute Boyfriend going, "You mean I can't hug you or kiss you or take off my clothes at school?!"

[readsalot.livejournal.com]

Through some odd arrangement, issues of Her Majesty's Dog are available at Borders and Waldenbooks about 6 months before they show up anywhere else. I found this out when I started looking for issue 2 and Amazon told me that issue 1 wasn't out yet, and I started wondering if the one I had at home was a particularly vivid hallucination.

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Are you familiar with a series of books by Kage Baker about The Company? They take children, from various points in history, near death and turn them into cyborgs....

MKK

[oyceter]

I think I read the first in the series (In the Garden of Iden or something?), but I bounced off it pretty hard =(. I think it was the lack of female assassings...

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

I first saw the anime and loved it. I then read the first three manga volumes. I prefer the anime. That said, I would dearly like official versions or scanlations of the later volumes.

[oyceter]

Oooh, good, I'm looking forward to the anime, particularly since some of the manga style I don't really like. Also, sloppy panel layout.

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I should warn you: The second episode is essentially a repeat of the first. Very annoying! What's wrong with having a 12-episode series? What's with two copies of the same episode? Grr.