Title:  Gunslinger Girl vol 1 - Little Girls, Big Guns UK distributor: MVM BBFC Certificate: 15 Suggested Retail Price (SRP): £19.99 Episodes: 1 - 5 (of 13) Audio Options: English 5.1, Japanese 2.0 Subtitles: English Reviewer:  Tom (Webmaster)

'Give me the child when he is seven and I will give you the man.'  What a shame that the Italian Social Welfare Agency decided to act upon that quote. 

In Gunslinger Girl the Italian Social Welfare Agency is a government ruse to turn abandoned and orphaned young girls into highly skilled assassins through mental conditioning and cybernetic enhancement.  All memories prior to the 'conditioning' are erased and the girls are then assigned 'brothers' - fully trained adult male government agents who are in charge of training the girls and managing them in their work.  The 'brothers' are also instructed to alter the girls conditioning if the girls show signs of insubordination, so that the girls remain ruthless killers.  The girls are only meant to protect their 'brothers' in the field and kill those who they are instructed to, they are not to question their work. 

The latest title in the 'girls with guns' sub-genre to be released in the UK, Gunslinger Girl may at first appear to be a title which has taken the sub-genre too far by making the girls too young to be believable.  It may also appear seedy at first when the viewer is told how a young girl is assigned an older 'brother' to monitor their conditioning.  The brutal shootings of enemies by a young girl in the first episode may also suggest that Gunslinger Girl is shamelessly promoting a sick premise for entertainment's sake. 
 

As the episodes progress though, I realised that Gunslinger Girl is a critique of the 'girls with the guns' genre and has deliberately made the protagonists pre-pubescent age to show just how disturbing children wielding weapons really is.  Gunslinger Girl takes this further by remaining a drama throughout and not adding comic styling to the characters and keep the humour touching and not revolved around violence. 

Despite Gunslinger Girl not advocating violence it does go overboard to purely shock the viewer and to impose a sense of guilt for enjoying such violence in other 'girls with guns'

Girls just wanna have guns....unfortunately
 

 shows.  To show such violence in every episode though does seem excessive and made me wonder if Gunslinger Girl contradicted itself by doing so.  Critique or not, watching young girls gun people down is not going to encourage me to watch volume 2 of Gunslinger Girl when it is released. 

The plot of Gunslinger Girl does make me want to keep watching until volume 2 however, as volume 1 does leave a lot of open questions which need to be answered.  The conditioning process of the girls is not quite fully explained for example, as the viewer is shown minor cybernetic operations but never quite told how these effect the girls abilities.  Likewise, the mental conditioning is not fully explained either and, for the meantime, we can only assume that it involves old-fashioned brainwashing or medicine or a combination of both.  This, along with the question why all the conditioned are girls - is it just for satires sake?, should be answered in later episodes. 
 

Killer Queens....

  Volume 1 of Gunslinger Girl may not answer many questions, but it does firmly establish that it is a strong character study and that volume 1 is more concerned with this rather then a complex conspiracy that you may expect.  This is definitely Gunslinger Girl strongest point as I felt incredible sympathy for the girls of the story, more so then many other anime of this ilk I have seen before, and the strong characterisation will hopefully continue into the next volume to produce a unique series.

The animation and music of Gunslinger Girl

 must also be mentioned as they very effectively add to the drama through some stunning animated backdrops which enhance the girl's lives through the dark, uninviting decor of the Social Welfare agency where they live.  Outside the backgrounds represent the beautiful architecture brilliantly through the representation of winding suburb roads as well grand buildings which are always detailed to the same quality of the characters.  The character's expressions convey emotions effortlessly throughout and are never overstated, essential for a anime drama such as Gunslinger Girl.  The same can be said for the soundtrack which is a gentle score which has clearly had a lot of attention paid to it.  The soundtrack effectively accompanies the plot throughout this volume and is never out of place. 

Despite some qualms with the disturbing violence throughout the first volume Gunslinger Girl, it was quite obvious by the end that the very fact I was repulsed by children slaughtering people just because they were ordered to only proved this drama's point.  Gunslinger Girl has set itself firmly in reality to show just how inhumane training children as killers is, a practice still rife in the world, and here it succeeds enormously.  Gunslinger Girl is not a series that you should find entertainment, but an experience.  There are currently no other anime series available in UK that question a sub-genre in the same manner Gunslinger Girl does.  Hopefully after the release of this series there will be more. 

Extras

A welcome extra here is Building Henrietta, which is a short animation showing how the character Henrietta is drawn from scratch - from line-art to full animated cel.  Textless versions of the opening and ending sequences are also included as well as trailers for Kiddy Grade and the superb Full Metal Alchemist.

Ratings

Feature: Extras:
___________________________________________________________________________

Back To Reviews Archive