[Review] Gunslinger Girl: Il Teatrino

Written by Fernando Ramos

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Gunslinger Girl: II Teatrino There’s just something about little girls packing massive firepower that never fails to fascinate. I blame Natalie Portman. Certainly Japan does too. Gunslinger Girl, first produced by Madhouse in 2003, was something of a pleasant surprise despite its ridiculous premise of little girls taken by the Italian Government to become pint-sized cybernetic Jack Bauers. Even so, the show ran with it and turned out to be an engaging character study. Five years later, the follow up Gunslinger Girl Il Teatrino nixes most of what made the original intriguing and becomes just another action show; and not a great one at that.

This time handled by Artland (perhaps best known for Megazone 23 and, more recently, Mushishi), Il Teatrino first seems to hold the same promise of introspective drama spiked with explosive action. Eschewing the original series’ more episodic approach, this time there’s an overarching story to drive things along.

Taking place not long after the first series, the Social Welfare Agency (the front group for the aforementioned premise) has been tasked with rooting out the Padania Republic Faction (PDF), a terrorist organization seeking political autonomy from the country. As a trio of vengeful PDF assassins plot to blow up a bridge and single out Agency members for elimination, a wider web of connections becomes revealed and the definition of family and obligation become tried with no side being what it seems.

In the hands of a different studio, this might have made for some amazing film noir-style drama. Given that we have two violent factions facing off against each other and not above playing dirty achieve their ends,the material sure is rife for such potential. After all, if any government that is willing to use children to ensure its grip on power, certainly that is sufficient cause for violent resistance? It’s a question that doesn’t go completely ignored as the forces behind the PDF gradually become more humanized over the course of the series but it never comes anywhere close to being dealt with in any satisfying way.

I hate for this to become a break-down of how this go-around pales in comparison to its predecessor. However, this becomes impossible given that original creator Yu Aita is far more involved in the anime this time. Penning the scripts and handling series composition with assistance from Tatsuhiko Urahata, it seems strange how diluted the atmosphere of the series has become. The differences, cosmetics aside, become impossible to ignore and beg exploration.

In the first series, Morio Asaka’s (a Cardcaptor Sakura veteran of all things) direction was always keen to underline inherent insanity of the Gunslinger Girl world. Certainly there was some genuine warmth tucked away somewhere in each fratello – the codename for each pairing of adult 30-something man with gun-toting pre-teen – but Asaka treated the material in a detached fashion, letting the inherent illness of the story speak for itself. Madhouse’s Italy was a menacing place swashed in dense shadows and subdued colors with Hisashi Abe providing realistic, sharp-edged character designs. Likewise, the characters were all self-doubting trauma cases that happened to have guns.

Yet under Aida’s pen, the show is simultaneously more emotionally involved but far blander. On the aesthetic front, gone are Abe’s slick designs. Noboru Sugimitsu’s take on the manga’s designs, while by no means bad, just feels generic and lacks the extra finesse. The color scheme also becomes simplified to a brighter, almost pastel palette to match.

This is made even more apparent since the budget has taken a significant hit, with still-frames replacing the fluid (pun fully intended) action from before. Yet another shame given Artland was the group that wowed audiences world-wide with Megazone 23.

Frame rate aside, the biggest sin is that the subversive qualities that boiled underneath are all but squelched. Before, an ominous air loomed over the brief moments of tenderness. The aforementioned emotional detachment also lended a matter-of-fact quality to the proceedings. However, Hiroshi Ishiodori’s infuses the show with a bittersweet emotional quality and this to the overall detriment. Before, the sweet smiles were a respite from the brutal killings that book ended them. Here, they came off as merely disturbing and not in the way perhaps intended.

To wit, little Angelica gets ecstatic and blushes over her ex-cop handler Marco praising her for Trying Her Best to kill some guy, it’s done with the same maudlin “You did it, kid!” flair as the fresh rookie scoring the winning goal in a sports movie. Asaka sought to play with the moe metaphor in the fratello arrangements to its most extreme end; Ishiodori seems content to stay sane by going mad, as Douglas Adams would’ve put it.

Finally getting past all these comparisons, the question becomes one of how well Il Teatrino stands on it’s own merits. The answer is not too bad actually. The pulpy terrorist scenario moves at a steady clip, building up with the antagonists various motivations becoming clearer to the point where they become sympathetic, if not heroic, against the increasingly reckless actions of the Agency.

If the core premises’ morality goes unquestioned, then at least the characters get some depth and they become watchable, if not. Similarly, by halfway through, the momentum rolls into something that would be fine forgettable entertainment for a rainy Sunday, but nowhere near the must-see that was the original. Still, if a 13-episode show requires 6 episodes to get anywhere interesting, there is little in point in tuning in the first place.

Even so, it’s not as if there aren’t little flourishes of brilliance throughout. For one, the music by Ko Otani, who also served as composer for Haibane Renmei and the recent Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, is absolutely stunning. Driven in pounding piano and strings, you canal most see the streets of Tuscany just by listening. Similarly, the dream-like blend of Lomography by way of a Rorschach test that makes up the opening perfectly captures the quiet desperation otherwise lacking here.

This is all milk spilled by machine gunfire though. Il Teatrino is to Gunslinger Girl what Kite Liberator is to Kite. The thinking man’s girls-with-guns ultraviolence this is not.

Rating: C-
Written by: Fernando Ramos
Director: Hiroshi Ishiodori
Animation Production: Artland
Licensed by: Funimation