I know it is a little late to be blogging the 2nd season of Gunslinger Girl, but bear with me because I am extremely huge fan of the manga. Ever since I read the first volume sometime last year, it has remained my favourite manga till now. The accurate weapon designs and the overall realistic integration of robo-lolis into a terrorism infested modern Italy make for an intensely irrisistable combination.
That said, I have extremely high expectations of any anime adaption of Gunslinger Girl and when I saw the pre-season trailers and website for the 2nd season, I was sorely dissappointed. I felt the animation quality was sorely lacking, the direction was rather horrible, and the artwork just plain sucked. After the first episode aired, it was rather badly flamed by some blogs which lead to a preliminary decision to give it a skip to avoid even more dissappointment.
As Gunslinger Girl fans should know, the first season was animated by the highly acclaimed Madhouse Studios which animated Monster, Nana and Denno Coil. I actually own the full R1 boxset of the first season of which I have re-watched 2 times fully and the 3rd time only partially (beaten by a Military Police Private in my section who borrowed it from me and re-watched it 3 times fully). I have actually re-watched the first episode of the first season about 6 times (dubbed and non-dubbed) with almost full speaker volume as it is simply awesomely directed. The violin fading in and cutting off interweaving between Henrietta’s gunshots nearly brought tears to my eyes… I kid you not.
Needless to say, I felt the first season was flawlessly animated and many have agreed so. But through the many re-watches, I still felt the anime adaption was inferior to the manga somehow. When an episode in the anime ended, it simply didn’t give me the same kick I felt when a chapter in the manga ended.
It was only after I watched the first episode of Il Teatrino did I realise that Madhouse Studios missed out a rather critically important aspect of the manga: the moe. The character designs that Madhouse Studios chose left little room for moe injections, even though the manga often had panels filled with robo-loli moe. They did make up for it with incredible Western style directorial-quality though, and actually it didn’t matter much at that time: most anime in 2002 were not created with moe anyway as the general demand at that time wasn’t towards moe.
It seems that Artland Studios, who has taken over from Madhouse, has sacrificed intense Western intense action-type directorial-style in favour of creating a more fetish-induced adaption which amplifies the moe aspect of the manga which thankfully works ok with me. If I need a rush of action scenes, I can always go back to re-reading the manga.
I still have big problems with Rico’s general character design though. Henrietta’s is fine, and Triella’s and Claes’ work generally ok. And NO, I don’t feel that Henrietta blushes too much. 
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April 12, 2008 at 4:59 am
TheBigN
You’re probably the only person that I heard say this so far. And even though I don’t agree with you there, good job. :3
I thought Madhouse captured the atmosphere from the show well, including how the cyborgs felt towards their handlers. Sure it’s supposed to be “moe”, but it’s also supposed to be sorta unsettling. Do they really feel the way they do or act they way they do because they want to, or is the conditioning doing that? And other questions like that.
At the same time, adding moe in kinda “cheapens” the feel to me. Makes things less realistic to me, and that’s one aspect that I really enjoyed of the first series. But from the 5 episodes I watched, Artland retained the overall feeling of the manga, and that’s what I wanted all along.
April 13, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Setsuna
I don’t think it was meant to be moe. I really, just don’t. The first season captured the true spirit of Gunslinger Girl so much more.
April 16, 2008 at 12:38 am
dKiWi
@TheBigN & Setsuna:
As I am a HUGE fan of the manga (I have re-read the entire thing a couple of times now), it is obvious to me that it is near impossible to adapt Gunslinger Girl into animation perfectly. I mean, even a studio like Madhouse has failed to bring across the moe aspect in the manga.
In fact if you read the manga more you’ll recognise that even though moe injections appear frequently, they are rather subtle. It is also largely up to the reader to identify and define the panels that contain moe.
The first time round I ran it through, I was impressed by the brutal truth behind terrorism in Italy and of course the weapon designs. It was only after reading it a couple of times did I realise that several aspects of the manga were drawn specifically to cater to moe fetishes, which include Rico’s mouth wide open as she ate pasta and Henrietta in her sailor uniform. I mean, which government agency in Italy buys sailor uniforms for cyborg training?
Which of course brought me to the conclusion that Yu Aida is a bloody genius, and that probably no studio on this planet can ever bring across the true meaning of his/her (Yu Aida’s gender is unknown, but speculation is that he is male due to the accurate weapon designs) manga into animated frames. Which is why if you are a Gunslinger Girl fan and have not read the manga, you are missing out on a LOT.