Gunslinger Girl, volumes 1-2, by Yu Aida

[rachelmanija]

A secret Italian government organization saves severely injured little girls by... turning them into brainwashed super-strong cyborg assassins! These girls are paired with adult male handlers (nowhere near as skeevy as that sounds), given great big guns, and sent off to chase terrorists and anyone else the government is down on.

This typically involves a lot of poignant interactions between the girls and their handlers, who variously treat them as disposable tools, or as beloved little sisters or daughters. The girls almost universally adore their handlers. But then, that's what they're programmed to do. Did I mention that any time a girl goes off the rails, she's re-conditioned - a process which erases her memories and shortens her life?

As I said, remarkably not skeevy. Though the girls may get crushes on their handlers, the handlers do not do anything sexual with them. I'm sure that's unrealistic, but a) series about superstrong child cyborgs, b) I would not read it otherwise.

The series so far focuses on the relationships between the girls and their handlers, the girls and each other, the way the girls develop personalities and make choices in a situation where it seems like they shouldn't be able to, and what those choices and personalities look like, stripped down to their eternal-present essence. Plus lots of shoot-outs, not to mention pretty Italian countrysides and monuments. Very much my kind of thing, and very well-done. So far it's episodic, but I assume an arc will start any minute now.

I read the first two volumes, then rushed to the library to get more. Looks like there's twelve volumes total, but I'm not sure it's all available in English. Does the anime have the complete story?

Gunslinger Girl Omnibus 1

Comments

[oyceter]

yeloson told me the mangaka does lolicon hentai, which makes it read much more skeevy to me in retrospect, although I feel one can read it without that subtext as well (as I did on a first read).

I like the anime a lot, and I think there's a second season I haven't seen.

[rachelmanija]

Oh dear.

I guess the question is, does the knowledge of the author's id (or desire to make a quick buck, who knows) mean that the subtext is inherently in works in which it isn't evident without that knowledge?

There's some official doujinshi of other (sweet, non-rapey) series, done by the original mangaka, which are, I hear, total rape-fests. Are those characters, who rape each other in the doujinshi, therefore canonically rapists? Should all their interactions in the main manga be read with a rape subtext in mind? Or is the author dead (mataphorically) and each work stands on its own?

[oyceter]

I don't know? It kind of depends for me. Frex, doujinshi I can kind of keep separate, whereas I reread OSC's Speaker for the Dead lately. And I loved it so much when I first read it because it was about a non-teenager with black Brazilians and families instead of the Lone Male Hero. But then after knowing more about OSC's whole gay marriage thing, it left a really sour taste in my mouth on rereading =(. Like, I can still read and see what I enjoyed, as well as thumb my nose at the author for reading things into it I suspect he didn't put there, but it has affected how I think about it?

I think some of this is also affected by knowing that the lolicon thing is a bit of a genre, which annoys me because I keep picking up series of little girls being kickass and then being skeeved out =(.