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REVIEW: Gunslinger Girl BLURAY

Regarding manipulation: as discussed in the "Why hate on moe" thread, all art and entertainment is manipulative.

The writers did not reason out "We're going to make a mafia thriller, what would be the best candidates for brainwashing?" and logically arrived at little girls. The writers (or mangaka, actually) said to themselves "Let's make a story where little girls are forced to become killers so we can push a few buttons. NOW how do we rationalize it?" That's exactly what this is.

My take on it may be a little different than what others have said so far. I recall Isaac Asimov saying more than once that good science fiction takes one scientifically-plausible assumption about how the fictional world is different from the real world and develops it realistically within that assumption.

I don't think it matters that Gunslinger Girl may have started out with "What if little girls were made into cyborg assassins?" instead of "Who would make the best brainwashed assassins? I know, little cyborg girls!" It only matters that it started with an idea for a story, where it went after it started, and how it got there. As part of its development, Gunslinger Girl, as science fiction, attempts to make a reasonable case for why little girls would make the best brainwashed assassins, but that's just the creators trying to keep it real given the admittedly far-fetched, but not utterly implausible, initial premise.

So, yes… this is kinda where I’m at: despite what I’ve talked about, I must concede that it is very possible that I’m too in love with the classiness of the show’s filmmaking to accept what might be obvious flaws in the setup…

But when you have shots with composition like this (most likely cribbed from a movie I’ve not seen):

More pictures.

It’s hard for me to resist liking it.

That being said, I’m surprised that you still remember me dude.

Naw, man, that's perfectly understandable. A good director can definitely elevate material -- whether it's below them or not -- to something more substantial -- like culling character and thematic nuances you've mentioned. (It's certainly convinced me to give Gunslinger Girl a go in the near-future, although I'll probably check out Aoi Bungaku first... didn't the director of Mouryou no Hako get involved in that, as well?) It could even be something which may not exist in the source material... or necessarily apparent in the concept of the script, like with Nagisa Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses or Empire of Passion. (Have you watched any of his work, by the way? The former work is his most popular, sadly, although it's still worth watching and interesting, but it's still far removed from what he was doing in the 60s. I know you like Shohei Imamura, so if you can imagine him being less humorous, more political but still equally feminist and socially progressive, then you're kinda at where Oshima is.)

This is one of my favorite scenes in Chobits volume 1-- not only is Hideki nervous about the idea of a cute girl in his room-- even a plastic one-- he's apprehensive in the same way that a new PC user is apprehensive, only instead of an intimidatingly featureless gray box, he has an intimidatingly featureless girl. Hideki has no concept of persocom software and is too embarrassed to examine his new technological wonder too closely; meanwhile, Shinbo is completely blase about monkeying with the girl and finding out what makes her tick.

My best (or is that worst?) example for comparison is that at least they didn't say something like "How can we start off a show with a scene like the Fidelio sequence in Eyes Wide Shut? I know, we'll have a genetically engineered telepathic bio-weapon that gives ordinary people X-men-like super powers!"

I thought it was a really good anime considering it gave girls a second chance at life and also to be with people the love. But it should have had more story to the girl's pasts. don't ya think.