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Sxottlan
05-03-2008, 08:39 AM
http://www.anime.com/Gunslinger_Girl/images/02.jpg

Gunslinger Girl is a curious little series and not always one that works. More than anything though, it's the subtext that grows increasingly distracting as I watched the box set I had picked up on sale.

Perhaps most disappointing is the overall lack of any real action. You get the occasional shoot-out, but for a series called Gunslinger Girl, I was expecting more. I was also disappointed with the story. We're just sort of dropped into the middle of this apparently ongoing fight with the RF, but I don't believe we're ever told what it is they want or why they're supposedly terrorizing the country. I sort of figured the show would eventually build towards something regarding the story, but it never really does. Then it just sort of ends. I hear a second season is now on the air, but there's nothing to indicate that would happen from what we see in Season 1 (and I hear it's not that great to begin with anyway).

Art direction wise, the series just doesn't look up to par with other similarly themed series i.e. pale static backgrounds, characters not blending into those backgrounds, a setting in beautiful Italy however with a curious lack of real detail.

Most disturbing of all is the puppy dog devotion of the "cyborgs" to their handlers. I put that word in quotation marks because for all of the talk that the little girls are cyborgs, there's absolutely nothing to indicate that they are on the outside. I understand that is supposed to be part of the conflict for the handlers, but they bleed like regular people and seem to act like pretty much everyone else. The deck is really stacked against the humans working with the girls to see them as anything else other than human. The unspoken reason for using children as assassins is disturbing enough, but then their slavish devotion to the handlers is another sticking point. The show adds a gender subtext by insisting that all of the handlers are guys and the cyborgs are girls.

So we have scene after scene of the girls fretting over whether or not they've pleased their men, which considering they appear as little girls and the handlers are all older guys just creates too bizarre an image to really get past. It's certainly not something we've seen before, but does seem to walk a fine line. The girls almost can't seem to live without the handlers although I saw no reason for these relationships to exist in this manner to begin with. One particular "couple" is dysfunctional contrasted against the main couple of Jose and Henrietta, but it's really only because the girl is hopelessly portrayed as having about the worst luck of anyone, human or cyborg. Her master doesn't seem to sympathize, which just makes us dislike him all the more.

Overall, I'd say the show is a minor misfire with the interesting subtext worth debating.

Anyone else ever see it? Or this new season?

EyesWideOpen
05-03-2008, 05:08 PM
I watched the first two volumes back when it first got released in the US about two years ago and remember enjoying it a lot but I can't remember much specifically about the series.

Sycophant
05-03-2008, 05:34 PM
I saw the first episode way back in like 2004 or something. I remember being none too impressed with it, though I've subsequently read things that have made me want to give the show another shot.

Philosophe_rouge
05-03-2008, 08:39 PM
My sister owns this, and I've promised her to check it out. MM... I should still do that.