Gunslinger Girl (series 1)

I’ve now finished this all-too-short series, and I was very impressed. Explaining what is so good about this anime is difficult, because to summarise it is to oversimplify a complex and elegant story, and the concept sounds admittedly childish when explained – much like the title. Nonetheless, over the course of thirteen episodes, we are shown a secret wing of the Italian government that takes teenaged girls who have lost everything - through crime, disaster or personal loss - and turns them into soldiers. Many have tried to commit suicide. Others have lost all use of their limbs. The government division replaces much of their bodies, giving them superhuman strength, and wipes their memories clean: they use teenaged girls because their bodies accept these modifications more easily. The girls are then trained as elite assassins, and used on important secret missions.

All this sounds like the premise to a very cheesy, forgettable series, and when you add that these brainwashed girls are each allocated one adult male partner, and implanted with such strong feelings of devotion and such powerful protective urges that they are essentially in love with them, and it starts to sound like perverted teenaged wish fulfilment. But at the same time, this is what gives the series its impetus. You see what the writers do with this concept, and that is what makes a classic anime.

The characters are what matter here. The delicacy and innocence of Henrietta, who despite everything is still a sweet little girl who wants to be loved. The confidence and bittersweet awareness of her position that Treila shows. The sadness of watching Angelica trying to keep up with the other girls when she simply is not capable – and more than that, the human touches. The sight of four girls singing Beethoven as they watch shooting stars; the room full of teddy bears from a man who doesn’t know how to show his affection to the teenaged girl suddenly introduced into his life; the big sister figure who goes to help adults with their work just so that she can make sure there’s someone there to take her and her friends on a trip. The horrible perversity of the scenario is explored, and the lingering uncertainty as to which feelings are true and which are created creates an atmosphere of pathos, affection and pity throughout.

On one hand, I wanted much more. On the other, I knew that as it was written, more would have been a mistake. There is no plot to speak of – only individual stories, backstories and standalone episodes. If anything could have improved the series, it would have been a consistent through-storyline, but only if there were a full 26-episode season over which to tell it. As it was, the slow, elegant pacing and slice-of-very-strange-life presentation worked well. The tone would not suit a saving-the-world-from-evil plotline, but that’s not to say that there couldn’t have been an intelligent and compelling storyline. In lieu of such, however, we have a superlative prologue and introduction, but nothing more.

(originally written 10.3.05)