Customer Reviews

Gunslinger Girl, Vol. 1

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Girls with guns is not anything new in the Japanese story canon, and as one can expect, Yu Aida's manga has plenty of the conventional plotting elements. Dying girls are given a new chance at life, their memories wiped away, their bodies enhanced to create a unit of highly deadly assassins. The agency pairs a trainer/brother up with each cyborg girl and uses these pairs to deadly effect within a world of terrorists and warring political factions.

Despite the premise, it was a bit of a surprise to discover that the story within the pages was neither an action-packed fight fest with bullets constantly flying or full of scenes of high emotional outbursts. There's plenty of violent gunplay within the story's context, but this volume focuses primarily on psychological exploration of innocence and violence, and the unusual relationship between cyborg and trainer. This is not a comedy series, despite the indication on the cover jacket. In GUNSLINGER GIRL the emotional energy appears as controlled as the girls themselves. There are no exaggerated takes, no crying scenes. Small smiles and frowns dominate the emotional landscape, but become much more powerful for their restraint.

Since this is not set up as one smooth-flowing story, but rather broken into five chapters, the narrative does lose a bit of its action-adventure energy, and makes for a slower paced story. A sense of bittersweetness underscores this manga from beginning to end, the feeling that what has happened to these girls is terribly wrong, and yet unescapable. There is some concern about the young nature of the girls and their relationships with their brother/trainer but I found the overall relationships did not imply anything salacious. While the love attachment fostered may not be exactly proper, this is part of the poignancy of this story. There are no inadvertent panty flashes or seduction scenes to imply otherwise. It is possible that the story arc will gain momentum from this introductory volume to come up with an interesting storyline for our heroines--with so little in this story that's not conventional, it may be difficult to pull off this manga series, but it has potential.

To my mind, the artwork is one of the best parts of this particular manga. Beautifully drawn, the images consist of clean lines and borders, with little ornamentation, allowing the frames a clear and Spartan quality. The action scenes contrast nicely with the more static dialogue scenes, really evoking the sudden transition of these girls from innocent children to deadly killers. And while the violence is brief and refrains from being overtly gory, it is nevertheless effectively drawn. Yu Aida clearly knows his weaponry, and the attention to accuracy of the various guns the girls use will likely be appreciated by readers who are weapons enthusiasts.

This is a decent action/drama manga containing moderate violence, minimal sexual reference and no sexuality of a truly graphic nature. No chibi cuteness and plenty of realistic weaponry. But be aware that the psychological explorations certainly mean this manga is for a mature audience and may not be appropriate for the preteen reader. I'm looking forward to seeing where this series will go.
Happy reading! ^_^ shanshad

Gunslinger Girl is set in Italy in the near future. Blah blah blah. If you want a summary read the back cover. What you want to know is, is it any good?

The answer is a resounding "Yes, but...." Gunslinger girl is not for the faint of heart. Though the graphic gore is minimal, the story definitely has the darkness that one would expect of a story about early adolescent girls brainwashed into deadly assassins.

Once one gets beyond the violence and the somewhat chilling premise Gunslinger Girl is an amazing work of graphic fiction. It maintains a perfect balance between the focus on two "main" characters (Guiseppe and Henrietta) and a very well developed cast of secondary (but not at all minot) characters. Two of these even have whole stories devoted to them.

The depth of emotion in this book is startling and unexpected, and in fact probably merits a second read-through once you've absorbed the rich and exciting storyline.

A final note: I've seen GG accused of being mildly paedophilic, either in that the plot has undertones of paedophilia or in that it caters to paedophiliac impulses. I disagree. On the second count, when compared with other contemporary anime and manga GG doesn't particularly portray the children as sex objects (I can think of a lot of other mainstream a+m that does so a lot more). On the first point, I think that this reflects a misinterpretation of what is going on in the story. What the story does so well is showing the conflict raised when a child develops a romantic attachment to an older person, and the effects of the varying responses from the targets of this affection (indifference, paternal love, etc.) This of course is not an unrealistic situation; who among us never had a crush on some camp counsellor, student teacher, or friend's older sibling? Gunslinger Girl lovingly and carefully explores this quintesential experience of frustrated youth.

This manga is definitely worth a buy if you can handle a few scenes of violence. The only downside I can think of is that ADV has given no indication of when we might get another volume, which you WILL be begging for immediately upon finishing volume one.

Orphaned, sick, or physically deeply damaged, the 10-12 year old girls of "Gunslinger Girl" are rescued by the Social Welfare Agency and turned into chemically and emotionally brainwashed, cyborg political assassins. They bond deeply with their older male handlers, and obey these men implicitly. And love them too - and therein lies the tense inner workings of these bitterly noir, nearly surreal stories. --- If you expect a shoot-`em-up with cute sexy little Lolita nymphets, forget it. The style is Italian film noir realism (the story is set in Italy) and everything centers on the *relationships* among the girls and between them and their handlers - quiet, withdrawn Henrietta and the genuinely loving Giuseppe, or Elsa de Sica, whose handler does *not* love her, as we find out in a grim two-part story. --- How do people fall in love? If we are all killers (one of the undertexts of "Gunslinger Girl"), then why do we even think that love is possible? These girls live in a Gulag created by nameless adults. Against the brainwashing, conditioning, chemicals, and loss of memory, how can anyone act with even a shred of humanity, let alone personality or rebellion? Against the radical and totalizing power of drugs, manipulations, and emotional pain, the girls simply don't give up. They're very proud of their abilities to assassinate terrorists and of the police services they provide. Dubious means; desirable end: and they become human, in poignant and very moving stories of endurance, resilience, and revenge. And if you say that *their* Gulag is not so different from *our* consensus reality, well, then you've got the point.

Reading descriptions of Gunslinger Girl might make it sound like a grim action series along the same lines as Noir, but in reality, it ends up being something much different. That's not to say that there aren't beautifully animated action scenes and impressive gun fights, but this is not really an action series. At its core, this manga is about the relationship between characters and questions the essence of humanity.

Each of the story's young assassins is paired up with an older man who serves as her supervisor and guardian. These pairs are referred to as 'fratello' or 'siblings'. Instead of having any true plot to connect all the episodes, each installment focuses on a single fratello and explores the dynamic between the girl and her supervisor. These relationships vary greatly; some supervisors act as loving parents while others only use the girls as tools to get the job done. The manga does a commendable job developing the character relationships and showing how it affects each of the girls. It comes across with a depressing realism that adds to the emotional impact of the series and raises some interesting and thought-provoking questions about what makes a person human.

All in all, this is a unique, intelligent and gripping work that I cannot recommend highly enough.

Note: A persistent and inaccurate myth that has grown like moss on the Gunslinger Girl series is that Rico could not have cared less about her brief and tragic crossing of paths with Emilio at the Hotel Villa Gatti. This misconception persists despite being in contradiciton with the facts recorded in Episode Two of the series, which documents the incident in full.

After returning from her survey of the target area, during which Rico met Emilio for the first time, our heroine requested violin lessons from Henrietta. This action would be meaningless if she had not harboured the hope of somehow seeing her newfound friend again and fulfilling his wish for her to play him a song.

In the wake of her mission and her final, fateful brush with Emilio, Rico could clearly be seen shdding tears. It has been widely assumed that Rico's weeping was a result of her nightly subconscious reflecting over her bleak early years, our heroine being deathly afraid that she would rouse from her slumber to find that her new, healthy exisistence was but a dream. However, a proper examination of the episode clearly indicats that crying was never a part of Rico's reminicising, thus telling us that she was, in fact, greiving over something else, namly choosing duty over affection and losing a friend by doing so.

In the final analysis, Rico did feel something for Emilio and was traumatised ovr her awful deed, but attempted to bury her sadness and guilt by telling herself that performing her duty as an assassin was the least she could do to repay the SWA / Section 2, who had given her the fit, strong body she always dreamed of possessing. Whether or not she will continue to repress her feelings in this way we may never know.

The Social Welfare Agency in Italy is a government organization directly accountable to the prime minister that takes care of physically challenged children, ostensibly to give them a second chance at a normal life. Well, that's at least the cover for its true purpose. In actuality, they take these unfortunate children and turn them into cyborg assassins that do covert work for the government. Their memories are wiped clean and they are given doses of "medication" to make them more pliable to the control of their partners, adult agents. Together, they are known as "fratello".

This first volume tries to show the different types of relationships between partner and cyborg and the different levels of dehumanization that they bring about. For example, Giuseppe and Henrietta are almost a father daughter combo, with Giuseppe doing what he can, feeble though it is, to let her experience a modicum of normality. On the other hand some "handlers" see their cyborg partners as merely tools to be used and discarded. Neither option seems particularly wholesome to me. And therein lies the disturbing subtext of this manga. No matter how strong the love a person feels for you, it can never be genuine if they're brainwashed into it. The girls here know they have been programmed, but they're ok with it. One second they're having girltalk between each other, and then on the next page, they're killing someone. At least there are a few characters in here that feel guilty about the whole situation.

The art is above standard and the story here is for mature readers, with scenes of graphic violence.

Gunslinger Girl first caught my eye in Newtpe Magazine (If you don't know this magazine, pick it up, it's amazing, and if you do, pick it anyway ^o^). I thought the anime would be good, but I was very suprised to find that before I got my hands on the anime I got to read the manga. This doesn't often happen. Let me just say, I'm glad I read the manga first. I was shocked that the drawing style of the people was so harsh! I would catergorize it with GTO or Onizuka..yetch.. but the backgrounds are very very well drawn and expressed. Also, the angles are well-done, too. It really adds to the experience of reading. Not many mangas do this (at least not the ones I read to this specific effect), so I was really grateful. The storyline was quite different from what I'm used to. I'm a shojo enthusiast, but I also have a serious side. The serious side was very satisfied with the story. I kept wanting to cry, especially in chapter three. Hoo boy. *Whimper*. It just goes to show you that these girls do not have any shred of a normal life. Also, throughout the book, I kept wondering what the girls will do in the future after they outgrow thier "young girl innocent 'I, being a young girl would never be expected to tote a gun so don't suspect it'" visad. I suppose they will probably die either in battle or due to thier "conditioning" before this happens, ne? Anyway, I didn't think that this book would be a multiple-times-reader type of a book, but it definitely is. It's a good investment in your money because not only did I read it multiple times, it also took me quite a while to read because my eyes wanted to drink in all the scenery! So, give yourself a kleenex and read this drama-filled thriller. You won't regret it.

This is a pretty interesting little series about little girls who after being severely physically or mentally damaged are given a new chance in life by the Social Welfare Agency: they become killing machines, literally. little girl cyborg killing machines Welcome to the world of _Gunslinger Girl_ set in what appears to be contemporary Italy. This book consists of five chapters: The first dealing with Henrietta a sad little girl who somehow survived brutal assult after her family was killed and her "brother"/ trainer Giuseppe. The chapter is pretty standard and serves to introduce the reader to the characters. as does the second chapter Jean/Rico and the third Chapter Triela/ Hillshire. The fourth and fifth chapter delves into a few problems that can surface in these relationships. This is an interesting series, but sometimes I think it leans a bit too much towards pedophillia. Also, unlike what ADV says on the back of the book, this is definately not comedy.

Beautiful. I read Gunslinger Girl at the bookstore, and it is the only book I have ever read and thought, "I have to get this." (Except for Lord of the Flies.)

The story telling is original; Even an author may have trouble finding where, exactly, they bring in certain information, and a lot of it is implied. The result is a style that tells you most of what you need to know, but still makes it feel as though you don't know. That's why you feel as though you just have to read it again, and then again.

As I began reading GG, I didn't think much of the art, as it's not really my style (I like slightly more realistic stuff.) But then, as I went on, I started to appreciate how well drawn the action scenes were, how well the artist showed the emotions of his characters, and how easily the art contributed to the storytelling. In the end, the artwork is really as beautiful as anything by CLAMP.

Now, the story. It's brutal, chilling, and tender, and I didn't even realize it until afterwards. The only thing that I could think about related to the relationship between the girls and their handlers. It doesn't really seem so much to me about the girls' frustration, having fallen in love with their handlers--it is about that, but what struck me most was that the girls weren't supposed to fall in love. Whoever runs the project tried to manipulate their minds to make them fiercely loyal to their handlers--but they went too far, and the girls actually fell in love because of it. Just shows that they shouldn't have tried to mess with the human mind.

This book is not just high quality as far as art and storytelling goes. It has wonderful twists on the premise, which is thought-provoking to begin with. It's like SE Lain, the very perfect example of the stories I love. It shakes up your world and makes you re-think your way of looking at everything. Though, yes, it's a bit violent, as the premise demands, but I didn't notice that much. A wonderful read, altogether.

~Arisu

NOTE: Revised Grammitcally and Structurally on Saturday October 23, 2010

When I first started reading GunSlinger Girl, it was very difficult for me to get into. It wasn't something that exactly grabs you from the get-go. Even though the story-line is intriguing in itself; I had to get used to the story-telling style. Once I did get used to the story-telling style, I got so caught up in it that I could not put it down until I was done. I still can't wait to read volume two(And normally I'm a Shoujo girl).

The idea of taking girls whom have been physically and/or mentally maimed from accidents and turning them into assassins is both a brilliant and brutal idea. Such a story as this easily could have fallen flat on its face, but Gunslinger Girl does not. The thing that makes Gunslinger Girl work so well is that these girls have to struggle with their emotions just like any girl. Even though their memories have been washed clean away, they are still girls. And they struggle between trying protect their partners, not letting emotions get involved in work, and making friends(or rather not) with outsiders.

Gunslinger girl is a very engrossing drama story, it really gets you involved in not only in the lives of each girls story, but also their partners and with the complications that come with such a "project".

I would recommend Gunslinger Girl to anyone who wants a manga that has great characters, tight storytelling, and nice artwork. I don't think you'll think of little girls the same ever again. I also recommend not letting anyone below 16yrs read this because of violent and graphic content as well as heavy themes, that will probably fly over a younger person's head, or just disturb them.

God Bless & *enjoy* ~Amy

I've been watching anime and reading manga for quite some time now and this is one of those series that is just up in the air for me. Gunslinger Girl reminds me of Ghost in the Shell (stand alone complex and 2nd gig)that it has cyborgs and people who get hurt beyond repair are put into artifical bodys. Another thing is that the cyborgs have love for those who are their "trainers" and they are usualy older men. I personaly think it's kinnda gross. The reason why it's rated 15+ is because of the blood content witch i don't think it's that bad so if you are 14 i think you should be fine.