Gunslinger Girl, ep. 01-08

[oyceter]

The anime is based on the manga, of which I've only read two volumes.

The little tagline above the silhouetted girl and her violin case reads: "The girl has a mechanical body. However, she is still an adolescent child." That basically sums up the series.

The Social Welfare Agency takes young girls who have been in some sort of traumatic accident, rehabilitates them with mechanical parts, and trains them to be assassins. The girls are all assigned a fratello, a partner who is always an adult man. It sounds like a set-up that could lead to many squicky scenarios, and yet, the anime is a very slow character study of all six of the girls and their relationships with their fratellos. Some, like Henrietta, are lucky and are basically treated like daughters or younger sisters. Others are treated as mere tools.

The animation isn't gorgeous, but it's not shoddy either, and the movement makes up for a certain blockiness in the character design and the manga panelling that made the manga more difficult to read. I also love that it's set in Italy and that it has completely gratuitous landscape shots of Florence and the Duomo and Rome and the Spanish Steps and etc.

There's not a real plotline so far. Each episode is very much a stand-alone, and while Henrietta gets most of the focus, the other five girls each have episodes dedicated to them as well, and their Tragic Backstories, along with the Tragic Backstories of their fratellos. (Tell me I'm not spoiling anything. This is anime! What did you expect?)

As a whole, the series seems to be playing off on the girls' innocence (most are pre-adolescent) and their bloody work. Strangely, though I could see this being fetishized, it really doesn't feel like it. We see that the girls are doing it for their fratellos, sometimes in a dysfunctional way, but that's more the fault of the Social Welfare Agency. What they do isn't presented as cool or glamorous; it's grunt work that they do because they have to.

Also, I love that the series can have lines like:

Triela (the only adolescent girl): Man, I hate cramps.
Henrietta (unemotionally): Oh, I never get them. They removed my uterus.

All spoken calmly over a nice cup of tea.

Comments

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

I read about this and couldn't help but wonder about BtVS influences.

[oyceter]

Huh, interesting! I didn't really read it as a BtVS influence, largely because of how passive the girls are and how much of it seems to be an exploration of the idea of childhood and innocence, while Buffy concentrates more on fate and destiny and being about to change those things.