 The Trigger Happy ROSSMANThink of the most horrible thing in the world.
Well, that's probably a baby in a plastic bag with a razor
blade... The second worst thing is probably eating corn flakes
that are really bloody scabs. The third is more than likely
a helicopter
with an ejector seat. But somewhere in the top
ten is "dying little girls who are turned into cybernetic
beings, conditioned to love a secret service agent and forced
to become an assassin for the Italian Government".
Guess which one Gunslinger Girl is about.
It may sound like it could be cute (roboticized
cute little girls a la Saber Marionette J, Mahoromatic,
or half of the
ecchi dating sims out there), but here it's all played very
seriously and very disturbingly fucked up. All of the characters
in this
show, be they little machine-girls or the
government agents who partner up with the young-uns, are screwed
up one way or another. Every child assassin was brought into
the Social Welfare Secret G-Man Killers' Agency
while on death's door. The mechanical bodies that they are
upgraded with are all very new, and very untested, technology,
as is
the brainwashing
that they are forced to undergo in order to accept their new
lives as killers. Apparently adults or even boys reject the
mind and body tampering in ways that 10 year-old
girls don't. Anyway, my point is this is really screwed up.
Gunslinger Girl goes a little
something like this: The Italian Government has a CIA-type
agency that
just created a top secret "Division
2" in which the above horrendous acts put little orphan
Annies into Terminator bodies and then scramble their brains
a little in order to make them
docile and compliant to their Fratello "older brother" (i.e.
the actual government agent) and their superiors. This brother
person is the one in charge of picking
which critically wounded girl is to be his subordinate, naming
her, and training her to kill like a mini-Robocop with size
2 shoes. Some of the brother agents treat their tiny terminatrixes
like little sisters, showering them with gifts and praising
their accomplishments on the killing fields. Some brothers
think of their child as if she were nothing more
than a weapon. Some are confused and don't know what to think
of their partners, and others treat their dinky debutantes
with total disgust, as if the faux child were
mocking life itself.
What makes this scenario truly sad and
totally fucked-up-beyond-all-recognition is the fact that
the "conditioning" that the lolis
are made to take part in makes them undyingly loyal to their "brothers" in
a state that can only be described as "puppy love".
Some of the girls are conditioned way too much by their uncaring
Fratellos and ironically become obsessed with them the most.
Some girls are clear-headed enough to realize their situations
and their places in life
and just continue with the mission no questions asked. Others
just become drones in order to block the horrors that they
experience almost daily out of their fragile as an
eggshell minds before they wind up like those gay early-nineties "this
is your brain on drugs" analogies.
And others are either too messed up from the beginning and
end up dying painful and terribly sad deaths while nobody in
the uncaring secret world that they are marooned in mourns
for them. I'm telling you, this is not a show to pick up for
the kiddies or as a way to get through a bout of depression.
And by the way, don't watch Gunslinger Girl with
any razor blades or sleeping pills lying around. Just as a
security precaution.
Now, I had covered a show about a high school
girl turned into the army's number one top secret weapon before
(Saikano aka She,
The Ultimate Weapon). Honestly, Gunslinger
Girl is
exactly what Saikano was aiming for, but missed horribly. GG is deep. It's chock full of questions
about the morality of playing God, altering human emotions,
and turning the most innocent of humans into the most perfect
killing machines. Is it okay to do any
of this if it's for the greater good? Well, I'd have to say "Hell
no!" Christ on a stick, I was so
emotionally drained after plowing through this show and I felt
so bad for what those Italian bastards did to those cutie pie
little orphans that I ran out and joined a Big Brother/Big
Sister organization to save as many chilluns as I could from
a life of mass murder... Of course I soon quit when a group
of the little fuckers slashed my tires in the parking lot just
after I signed up and I found that I had to
dangle them from the flagpole in order to make them apologize
and cough up the money to cover the damages... but it's the
original thought that counts.
The two main characters (well, the two
that we follow the most seeing as all the girls and their "brother" agents
get an episode or two to call their own) of Gunslinger
Girl are little Henrietta and the other half of her
Fratello Unit, Jose (which the Japanese pronounce "Joe-see" in
their humorous attempt to mimic the Western tongue). Henrietta
is the least "conditioned" of her sister
agents. Jose feels sorry for her, but deep down understands
that his "sister's" mind is already too screwed
up for her to even be considered a real child anymore. So,
even though he shows her more compassion than his fellow
Fratello Agents show
their girl partners, he's still rather cold to her. No hugs
or anything tender, just a "Good snipering,
Henrietta. You got that dirty fucker right between the eyes
with just one bullet! Huzzah!" everytime she takes a perp
out. I'm telling ya, this is some really messed up shit.
Now, the 13 episode television show doesn't have
a definitive ending. It's really open to more storytelling
(in the form
of the inevitable sequel series which I'm sure is already being
drawn as we speak) and doesn't tie up many loose ends. But
considering
the manga that it came from is continuing,
I'm kinda glad that they stopped animation in order for the
original manga artist to get farther ahead in his plotting
and perhaps even finish his tale of woe up. Seriously,
this is what the Rurouni Kenshin series people should have
done. They basically made up everything after the glorious
Shishio
arc, and it was not good. But that's
neither here nor there... But it did suck. I'm telling you,
I don't know what the hell those Kenshin TV writers were thinking...
Christian samurai knight?... Urgh.
So the Division 2 Branch that the cyborg girls
make up is just starting up (follow me?... I'm getting back
into the plot.
It's not that confusing), and the Division 1 Branch is kinda
ticked that soooo much money and resources are being sunk into
Division 2's secret reserves. Inquiries start arising
as some of the girls start to crack, breakdown, or just go
loony. At times it's very difficult to watch. The voice actresses
do such a good job of portraying
the mixed feelings of the mental midgets that you really feel
their turmoil right in your gut. It hurts to see their brothers
scold them for being 2 inches off on a target
on the firing range. And it hurts more cause the girls take
the scolding from the only person in the world that they care
about in their little artificial hearts. And they keep
all their despair bound up inside since they really can't
talk to anybody about their feelings (it's against their conditioning)...
Man, after getting through this show, I felt
really bad for tormenting my little sister as we were growing
up. Sorry, Jaime. Please don't ever shoot me in the back of
the head with a German handgun at point-blank range.
So, what did I think of Gunslinger
Girl? In
the end I have to give it an "A-". The storytelling
and characters were great, and the whole thing was beyond uber-emotional,
but the 13 episode run was too little. I wanted
to see what happened to Henrietta, Triela, Claes and Rico.
I know that they can never have a truly happy ending, but I
did want to see what became of them and Division 2. Good stuff,
but I'd recommend watching some FLCL or Slayers or something after its done. You'll need a smile.
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