Forum - View topicREVIEW: Gunslinger Girl BLURAY
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2254 Location: Online Terminal |
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I think Hope got this one dead-on. When I initially watched GSG, I found it fascinating, compelling, exemplary, and all the other big words, but I felt like I needed to take a shower after every episode.
I did think the end of S1 was a bit of a clunker, though. |
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vashfanatic
 Posts: 3489 Location: Back stateside |
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I think that's a good way of encapsulating why it can be bother disturbing and even reprehensible to some viewers and yet enthralling to others. Personally, I have mixed feelings on the series; I do like a little closure, and while I was hoping for it in the second season, I felt rather disappointed, quitting pretty early on when it became clear it wasn't so much a sequel as a reboot. |
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sargon16
Posts: 26 |
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Excellent review. I'm glad to see the review give the show a chance, and take the time to really understand its nuances.
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jr240483
 Posts: 4374 Location: New York City,New York,USA |
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however I liked it's nuances, it would not have made the series interesting. Also glad he gave the dub a good review other than calling it too loose from the scirpt. After all this is funi so it's gonna be loose for the american audience.
However it's those things are some viewers like . especiall those " mind thumbing, loli tendicing doujin otakus" out there. the fact that their little girls with guns is perfect fanservice in a way. |
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gerbilx
Posts: 138 |
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I'm thankful for a reviewer that actually thought about the show. The lack of even half of an analysis in Erin Finnegan's column pertaining to GSG disturbed me more than anything that the show presented.
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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The review claims that the show isn't for everyone because people might get turned away because they morally object to little girls being assassins. But I instead am turned away because of the logical objections.
The blurb states that little girls are the best candidates for being brainwashed cyborg assassins, which, frankly, is total crap. To say that only little girls have the requisite mental fortitude is hating on little boys, who aren't all that different. Not to mention all those adults out there. And then to say that children would be better physically is laughable. Their cyborg implants would have to be replaced quite often as they'll be undergoing puberty shortly. And if you can make a child strong, you can make an adult stronger. Nah, insisting on using little girls is just a contrived excuse to use little girls. Simple as that. |
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Megiddo
 Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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Little girls are far less perceptible as a threat than little boys.
After all, the mafia in Italy has been known to train young boys to be their assassins. |
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Penguin_Factory
 Posts: 732 Location: Ireland |
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I really, really wish they had gone with a different cover design for this.
This didn't disturb me, it just annoyed me. The moral quandaries associated with the concept are what I watched this for, yet they're only explored at an extremely superficial level. One character even admits flat-out that he knows they're using the girls to their own selfish ends, which made mw want to shout "Well then whythe hell are you doing it?" No explanation! Argh. Such a waste of a good premise. |
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Mad_Scientist
 SubscriberModerator  Posts: 3011 |
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In the actual series, in the dub at least, they never say little girls specifically, just children. And the implication I got wasn't that they somehow had better mental fortitude or anything, rather, it was that children were easier to influence and control. Which makes sense. Real life brainwashing is a bit easier if you start when a candidate is still a little kid I believe. The reason why they were all girls instead of boys was never stated, but I figure the answer could be as Megiddo stated, that they have less perceptible threat. In addition, it could be that focusing on only a single gender might make it easier to work out the cyborg implants, considering that it's shown that they are still highly experimental and can have some pretty nasty side effects and bizare influences on the body. Also, if I am remembering correctly there are real life cases where certain operations or proceedures are better done on children than adults (adding braces, removing wisdom teeth, removing tonsils). All in all, the premise may be a little contrived, but it's all reasonably plausible in my view. EDIT: Oh, and nice review. It's probably my favorite Gunslinger Girl review here at ANN. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Militaries have been subtly brainwashing warriors for thousands of years. Yes, it is good to get future soldiers when they are young, but many people join when they are seventeen or eighteen and - more often than not - they are successfully trained to kill and obey orders. And for all the supposed "benefits" of using little children, the girls in the series still experienced negative side-effects, and were conceivably no better off than an emotionally-adjusted adult might have been. So the whole basis for the brainwashing side of the argument (for using children instead of adults) just went out the window, and the series was the one which did the chucking. Eh, maybe I shouldn't be so harsh on the franchise; there are plenty of Anime titles that have even worse premises. But what I just don't like is how people get so emotionally attached to something which is just so contrived and manipulative. The main characters are children so we feel for them, and yet the only reason they were children in the first place was to get the audience to feel for them. I didn't word that quite well, but hopefully you can see how it's circular reasoning; children beget emotions which beget children. What it becomes is a blatant self-justifying hook to get people to watch the show, instead of a plot point which legitimately ties into the show. In a way, those people who watch the show and go "Oh those poor children" are being played. Maybe they wanted to be played, just like a Super Robot fan might want to see the latest epically-ridiculous-but-still-massively-awesome-transformation-of-the-titular-robot, but they're still getting played. Hopefully not for fools. |
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Kalessin
 Posts: 931 |
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I haven't seen the entire second season yet, so I can't comment on the whole thing, but it's definitely adapting the part of the manga that follows the first season, so it's not a reboot. The main problems are 1. Someone else made it, and they treated it very differently. The way it's adapted, it feels very much like a different show rather than a continuation of the first season. It becomes more action-oriented than drama-oriented, and it loses a lot of the character-centric stuff (or least, it doesn't do as good a job with it). So, I can see why you might consider it a reboot even though it does continue adapting the manga from where the first season left off. 2. It's with the material in the second season that you start to get some sort of actual, over-arching story. The first season focuses entirely on the girls and their situation rather than developing any kind of real plot. So, there would be a definite shift even if the same folks did the second season and treated it like they treated the first (though I expect that the shift wouldn't have been as drastic had they done the second season). In any case, the first season is fantastic. It looks great. It sounds great. The character stuff is fantastic. And it's quite original. This is one of the few series that I gave a masterpiece rating. Still, it's definitely not for everyone, and I think that the review covers that quite well. Also, I highly recommend that folks pick up the manga as well now that Seven Seas has saved it from oblivion (since it was ADV Manga who was releasing it). IIRC, they'll start releasing it the beginning of next year. |
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unready
 Posts: 399 Location: Illinois, USA |
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It's more about their eagerness to please, their largely uncritical acceptance of their circumstances, and their nearly codependent loyalty. Adults wouldn't put up with as much as children. Boys would have a greater tendency to vary from their orders and display "initiative." It is interesting to compare Hope's review to Erin's several. Mostly what I got out of Erin's reviews was that she didn't like it because she didn't like it, which was about equally as useful as fanboyz likez mechaz cz demz iz awezumz. I suspect at least part of Hope's review was informed by that. |
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PetrifiedJello
Posts: 3782 |
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I've seen you post this similar message before. While I understand your position, here's a simple truth: the series used little girls so you'd watch it and complain about the use of little girls as unreasonable. For some of us, we like the creepy psychology the creators were intending us to feel. Manipulative? No question. But we didn't care. We wanted our senses abused simply for the sake of having it done. We wanted those moments for our own selfish reasons. Maybe it's to help be a better person? Maybe it's a passion for seeing little girls mistreated? To each their own in this regard. One thing is for certain, dtm42, despite your objections, you still fell to the creator's intent by getting an emotion from you. Just because you don't believe the use of girls was warranted, it still made you think about the reason why. Now dance, puppet. 
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Shichimi
 Posts: 349 |
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Did you seriously just write that? Oh dear. 
The big appeal of this series (and what I realise some people will give it flak for) is its moral ambiguity. Instead of the show's creators forcefully shoving their viewpoint in our face, we're given a God's-eye display of affairs with the girls, the handlers and the higher-ups. For me, the fact that viewers are left to make their own moral judgements about events can only be a strength. I've seen mixed reviews of Il Teatrino, but I'll probably pick it up sooner rather than later, for the sake of completeness. |
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JohnnySake
 Posts: 582 Location: Auburn Hills, MI |
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I think it says something about a given anime when the review and the comments that follow are so thoughtful and thought-provoking.
Where I was hoping to get more information is the quality of the blu-ray release, and after reading the review, I'm still left sitting on the fence. The last time I watched this show, it was still on an old CRT tv. Maybe grabbing an original disk and putting it into the upscaling dvd player and flat screen tv and see how it looks would give me a better idea if a double dip would be worth it or not. |
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