Anime Review Gunslinger Girl
November 21, 2009 |09:24 | Anime Girls By : Team X
After glancing at the DVD box art and perusing its written synopsis, Gunslinger Girl sounded like an exploitation film where a clandestine government organization with a deceptive cover story trains a gang of innocent schoolgirls to use high caliber weaponry for poking holes into terrorist-shaped blood bags. While the basic plot matches that guess and nothing seems new on the surface, digging further into Gunslinger Girl reveals a more dramatic look into the life of children assassins - albeit children with a few sci-fi augmentations.
Set in contemporary Italy, the Social Welfare Agency is publicly reputed as a charitable institution that rehabilitates victims of severe physical injury using state of the art science. In truth, the Agency is a government organization that modifies dying young girls into assassins with cybernetic enhancements. Adult male handlers oversee their development and together each pair is known as fratello - the Italian term for brother. Throughout the series the Agency dispatches fratello pairs for wet work missions against terrorist threats.
Bamboo is the managing editor for ANN, and writes the column Shelf Life. Casey is a graduate student currently pursuing her doctorate in sociology. Our guest this week is Erica Friedman, founder and president of Yuricon. She's also published an extensive catalogue of yuri titles through ALC Publishing, and blogs about yuri on Okazu. Bamboo: To our readers who aren't familiar with your expansive resume, could you quickly introduce yourself, Erica?
