wakes up at 2 pm central...

huh, wah day is it

Tuesday?

...shit...

I'll apologize for the sort of shift in tone for today's art analysis, review, gushfest. I've been rewatching a lot of Demoltion D+ lately and want to refine my own writing style as an artistic retard so I'm going to try to add a sense of humor...

Emphasis on try.

So let's begin. Gunslinger Girl is an anime who's premise on paper sounds ridiculous and not at all something that would garner any attention other than, "wow that sounds really stupid," and instead showcases a deeply psychological and intense interpretation of fatherhood, and the relationships of children with their parents. The premise is simple, in near future Europe the UN or some sort of higher governing body, has started a civil service secret agency that takes young children, specifically prepubescent girls, and changes them into cybernetic assassins that operate above an emotional level, effectively turning them into emotionless killing machines. And at first, you may responde, "Link, from the sounds of it you are trying to pitch some sort of preteen, action, loli bullshit, why do you keep trying to get us to watch your weird ass chineese cartoons."

And believe you me, I thought the same as well when I first heard about it

But once the show starts, the premise circumvents all these initial judgements, and rather than do possibly the worst thing it could with it, knowing the perversion that is the average anime enthusiast's sick and twisted dementia, it delves deeply into the psychosis of children and child soldiers, as well as the relationships of a father figure to their children as they try to guide their cybernetic, altered killing machines from an unbiased position.

The thing about Gunslinger Girl is that its face value, even its name, does not speak to the complexity that is hidden in this short, 13 episode series, who's only main problem I have can even hand it is it being only 13 episodes, with a clear, "welp, that's all the budget we had. Back to animating softcore porn, and bad sequels."

*(I'm just kiddin, I hear the second season is actually pretty good, I've only watched the first at this point)

Gunslinger Girl does a fantastic job with everything it handles. It's characters are fleshed out and realistic. It setting is imaginative an fresh (being outside of the grand land of feudal japan). And the guns. audible pleasured moans

Everything is handled with such care and delicate finesse that anyone who claims to like guns, and anime, and say they dislike this show, confound me. And I do sit confounded, as I have been in multiple discussions with weapons enthusiasts that have told me that they did not like the show. But its fine, Cowboy Bebop has a lot of gun porn and is highly regarded as one of the best animes of all time. Surely it is because it's just a great action show, right?

Sure the show is slow paced. I will say while not exactly ball crushingly gripping, the action sequences that happen are punchy, but short, and serve to continue contextualizing how effective the girls are at their job, and act as set pieces of genuine hype to contrast the otherwise somber but appropriate mood depicted by the characters.

Some scenes are even just completely for tone, with the girls firing at target practice, (though being a huge gun enthusiast is fine because it is still fantastically animated) or a dinner in italy, or a stroll through and art gallery, with a heavy emphasis placed on character interaction. With all the things the show offers in its portrayal of guns and action sequences, the primary focus is its cast. At the end of the day it is arguable that none of the characters are really good people. They aren't evil either but there is no fight between good and evil here. And that is one of its greatest strengths, acting as more of a "what if scenario" and just running with how the consequences of such a setting existence, and how it would affect living human beings, rather than trying to focus on a single, innate moral value to give your own personal compass a complete, if any, sense of direction, and I appreciate that. It is something I want out of anything I consume. And I just wish more people appreciated it too...

Because Gunslinger Girls, to me, isn't just about depressed people being depressed. There's a lot of charm in the characters and while at face value no one is happy, no one is just a depressed sad sack either. It is just humans being humans, even when they are changed into killing machines. A compelling story about the different kinds of fathers that exist, the stress and moral pondering of having to care for any child, the deeper questions of what it means to be human, wrestling with humanity at a young age, and how daunting the world is to a child, regardless of their talents.

It's a good show. A damn good show. And if you disagree... uh go watch Jormungand. You'd probably love it.

Link to material for viewing pleasure. There is also a sub, but the dub is spot on, and probably one of the best I've ever heard, up there with Cowboy Bebop in my books.

Be sure to let me know what you think, and share any other art centric things you have on mind, as always.