Josh’s Anime Blog

The Essentials

Name: Gunslinger Girl
Genre: Action, Drama
Episodes: 13
Released: October 8, 2003 - February 19, 2004
Based On: Gunslinger Girl manga by Yu Aida
Director: Morio Asaka
Produced By: Bandai Visual, Madhouse
US Distribution By: Funimation

Major Japanese Cast

Henrietta: Yuuka Nanri
José: Hidenobu Kiuchi
Rico: Kanako Mitsuhashi
Jean: Mitsuru Miyamoto
Triela: Eri Sendai
Hirscher: Masashi Ebara
Claes: Ami Koshimizu
Angelica: Hitomi Terakado
Marco: Norihiro Inoue

Major English Cast

Henrietta: Laura Bailey
José: John Burgmeier
Rico: Luci Christian
Jean: Eric Vale
Triela: Caitlin Glass
Hirscher: Dameon Clarke
Claes: Alese Watson
Angelica: Monica Rial
Marco: Jim Foronda

Scores

Animation: 10/10 (x 4 = 40 pts)
Story: 8/10 (x 4 = 32 pts)
Music: 10/10 (x 4 = 40 pts)
Coherence/Story Arc: 7/10 (x 2 = 14 pts)
English Dubs: 9/10 (x 1 = 9 pts)
Gut Score: 9/10 (x 5 = 45 pts)

Total: 180/200 (90%)

Review

Gunslinger Girl is about an Italian intelligence and counter-terrorism unit which uses young girls as assassins. The girls are typically orphans, often seriously injured and debilitated which are picked up by the intelligence unit’s cover agency - the Social Welfare Agency. The girls are then given carbon-fiber frames and synthesized muscles to improve their strength and to make them nearly imperious to small arms fire.

Each girl also goes through a conditioning program that wipes their past memories and turns off their sense of right and wrong, at least when it comes to shooting and killing people. Each girl has a “handler” who is given the responsibility to train and supervise his particular girl. This relationship also has a tendency to breed a strong, and even extreme, sense of loyalty by each girl towards her particular handler.

Most of the series is spent highlighting the past of each girl and her relationship with her handler, demonstrating the type of operations the girls and their handlers partake in, as well as some of the issues that the agency faces in their program, such as moral qualms by some people in government about using brainwashed small girls as assassins and the physical and mental toll that the conditioning and physical improvements take on the girls.

While Gunslinger Girl is ultimately still a pretty good series, I felt that it has much more potential than what was taken advantage of. It largely started out highlighting each girl. I thought this was an excellent start to the series and looked forwards to seeing a coherent story line build from the series, and perhaps looking more into the past of the agency itself and what type of techniques they use to physically enhance the girls as well as condition them. Unfortunately, many of my hopes of what the series could become didn’t pan out.

After the main introduction of the girls, the middle part of the series turned into a sort of “mission of the week” set of episodes, until finally using the last several episodes to show the difficulties of the program, including one girl who killed her handler and herself after her sense of loyalty turned into love for her handler - a love that wasn’t returned. Another story line was about one of the girl’s constant problems resulting from the mental and physical conditioning she’s gone through.

While the mission-of-the-week episodes were interesting, it just didn’t work very well in a series that was only 13 episodes long. If some of the story’s subplots were explored within a large full season, I wouldn’t have minded so much. But they largely sacrificed having any true coherent story in order to highlight the things they decided to highlight.

When it comes to technical aspects of the show, Gunslinger Girl excels. The animation and music is spectacular and the English dub is also well done. I enjoyed this series, overall, but the shadow of what it could have been still looms over it.

One thing I should note, however, is that a second season of this show is being produced, so some of my gripes out the series, which were largely due to the length of the series, may be alleviated once the second season airs. I will come back to this review upon the completion of that season.

First Watched: April 2007
Do I Own: Yes
Do I Recommend: Yes