Synopsis
After Henrietta witnesses her parents’ brutal murders and is herself left for dead, she is taken in by an Italian welfare organization. Her painful memories are wiped away and her broken body is replaced with mechanical parts. She meets others like herself, orphaned little girls who have become secret assassins, trained to serve in the war against terrorism. She is a weapon. And weapons feel neither pity nor pain.
Impressions
“The girl has a mechanical body. However, she is still an adolescent child.”—That’s the text that is displayed, in English, along with the Gunslinger Girl title.
Okay then.
In spite of this shaky introduction and all the early indications of a gratuitously violent action anime, just another girls with guns show, GSG is actually quiet contemplation of existence. The lives of the girls are presented as case studies, without obvious answers or morals or indeed any overt suggestions of what the anime’s message, if any, might be.
The show’s finale is one of the more poignant around, both sad and beautiful in its appropriateness.
- 2004-04-02 18:53 -