Killer Lolis

 
         I recently marathoned Gunslinger Girl, partially due to the recommendation of Shirukii. I’ve had it for quite some time now, but I never got around to watching it. Having finally done that, I’ll just give it a small mini review.

         Just a little background, GsG started airing in Japan late 2003, and continued until early ’04. Like many other anime series, it is based on a manga sharing the same name. The manga version recently had its seventh volume released by Yu Aida, the mangaka. The anime was only based on the first two volumes.

         Basically, GsG is about an organization called the Social Welfare Agency, or SWA for short. The SWA works for the government, and essentially is an assassination organization that does political and anti-terrorist missions. The story revolves around five pairs of individuals in this organization, each pair called a “fratello”, or “brother” in Italian. We follow these pairs as they participate on missions and interact with each other.

         However, these pairings are a little more complicated than simply two people working together. Each fratello consists of a handler and a young girl. These young girls are girls who have been saved from the brink of death by the SWA, only to be brainwashed and forced to undergo intensive surgery to obtain artificial body parts. Once ready, they are taken in by the handler, in which the handler takes care of the girl as well as trains her for the future jobs that await them.

         The artificial body parts and brainwashing creates a lot of stress for the girls, and in turn, they have a reduced lifespan. Another side effect of the brainwashing is that long term memory declines, and the life before working at the SWA is forgotten.

         As a whole, I thought Gunslinger Girl was an anime with a lot of unused potential. It had a lot of potential in the fact that I really liked the idea of the use of the killer lolis, and how it affected these girls. The hardships of killing, the relationships between fratello pairings, and the internal battles of the acceptance of a new body were all fine concepts that I would have loved to see. Unfortunately… I felt like they weren’t adequately expanded on. Instead they were introduced and left unclosed.

         Without any intervention, the girls would have died and that would be that, but instead the SWA saved their lives. They were given a second life, forced to kill and live under a handler. Only by mental conditioning can they keep pushing forward with this new way of life, and only with mechanical bodies can they keep up with the constant demand of work. However, despite all the modifications made to them, they are still only young girls. They’re still humans forced in a situation that any normal person would hate to be in. It’s a sad story that I thought should’ve been conveyed better.

         When GsG first starts, each episode focuses mainly on one fratello group and their situation, changing fratello pairs every episode. Although this would be good to develop each character individually, it didn’t work well in my opinion. The feeling that the girls were a single group, working together and sharing similar situations was lost as we only looked at a single fratello at a time. As well, a single episode seemed too short to really create a bond with each girl and to understand her feelings and thoughts. Instead, by the time I was beginning to understand one girl, the next episode started and another girl was focused on. Inadequate time was given and it just felt like a barrage of characters that I couldn’t relate to.
         Again, I liked the concepts of GsG, it just seemed to be underdeveloped. On that note, being based only on two manga volumes means that there cannot be a lot of content happening, and only having 13 episodes means there are large time restraints. The lack of development between the characters and the situation of the girls would be due to the lack of source material, causing the second effect of the shortness of the series. A rather large problem with the anime would be the lack of a real ending, but again that’s due to only basing the anime on the first two manga volumes.

         The animation was fine; I have no real complaints about it. There was a great deal of attention to detail, like of the different types of guns and such. I can’t say I liked the OP or ED that much, it just didn’t really appeal much to me.

         Having said predominantly negative comments within this review, I think I should say that the anime accomplished what it set out to do rather well. I don’t think the anime was trying to blow us all out of the water with its dazzling scenes and deep character development, but rather a way to tickle our interest in the series in general, ultimately a long commercial for the manga. I must say that just about all the things I disliked in the anime was due to the translation from the manga to the anime, or at the very least, can be effectively dealt with in the manga. I have not read the manga myself, but I’m definitely interested and would like to give it a look.

         Overall, I would say that the Gunslinger Girl series is one I’d very much like to get into, but the anime alone isn’t enough to satisfy me. It only serves to be a beginning to the story, and the manga is the end. It’s kind of like watching The Lord of the Ring: The Fellowship of the Ring, and wondering what the hell is the fate of Frodo and the Ring. It’s the rest of the trilogy that answers that, and it’s the rest of the manga that develops the story of GsG.

//Soda