Whether disturbing or not, any subject matter should not be shied away from being written into a story narrative because it’s too dark for the mainstream audience to handle. Since the last century, almost all the well-regarded films have implemented controversial social commentary and brought about heavy subject matter that involves sex, violence, and political corruption. These days we don’t often see anime take advantage of showing people the profound impact our world has within the dark deception of our own universal culture. Gunslinger Girl will leave some people with a sour taste in their mouths; whether they were expecting action-packed girls with guns show, as the title Gunslinger Girl represents just by saying it aloud, or because of the disturbing nature of the characters. However, the actual argument is how it handles developing those themes and characters mentioned beforehand.

It would be fitting to compare this to Stand Alone Complex in how every episode has its plot, yet every one of them is connected to the development of its characters. Execution should be the key to establishing an overall impression of how we view each character through fresh and innocent eyes before removing our innocence and making us experience the disturbing nature underneath the foreground of the show. Gunslinger Girl has one of the most heart-wrenching and almost beautiful representations of showing the development of each girl in question.

One scenario, in particular, involves one of the girls named Rico, who is now put into a position where she has to eliminate any emotion regarding the job she is given. Now she is thrust into a situation where she finds interest in someone who makes her question her existence concerning why she’s a part of the organization. What makes the execution written so well is just how subtle you see her ponder the questions coming out of her mind after the job is done in a harrowing and profound atmosphere. Typically, dealing with robotic characters who ponder about love and how they question has been done to death in some instances and can be seen as silly or laughable. But seeing how the atmosphere is so dark and hardly has any inclination of humor in the characters makes it believable. It's debatable whether there should have been a more convincing or less clichéd way of bringing up melodrama, but that shouldn’t necessarily be a massive draw on the writer’s part.

With this in mind, however, one begs whether the writers only wanted to develop the girls fully and hardly bothered trying to give the same amount of development for the “Fratello” or the girls’ master that is given to them. Some people could argue that the show's point was mainly focusing on the girls instead of their masters. Even with that said, they try to give a smidgen of development from how they question their organization. The problem is that they don’t ever go far enough, it’s as if they had an idea of how the adults would grow into a different mindset than before, but they decided that it wasn’t as important. There’s nothing for me to feel about them, whether I should pity or sympathize with them other than the girls.

Narratively speaking, the plot doesn’t gain any weight as how it’s structured since there’s hardly a plot to follow other than the fact it’s supported mainly by character interaction. There are some episodes where the story of one particular mission didn’t feel like it was written with any focus on how it was structured. They didn’t have a goal in mind when they wanted to establish any conflict or a stable plot arc. Not to say all of them did, but on occasion, it does.

The fact that the show is slow-paced does help in some cases to help us figure out what the world of Gunslinger Girl is like. The political climate and corruption are put into context, how it impacts the characters, their struggles with coping, and whether they like it. There is an issue regarding how the show hardly gives any context to the actual political office in question. Suppose you asked me now what the people in the government were like or what their motivations were. In that case, I couldn’t tell you because of how so little explanation is given to their reasons, and therein lies how narrow the political landscape is like, unlike how Stand Alone Complex did it correctly in its political realm.

While it is argued that this is entirely different from your typical girls with guns show, that isn’t to say there aren’t tropes that can be associated with the genre. How they handle the violence and action is very intelligent and almost strategic in how the characters feel in any given action scenario. While there are some questionable scenes, such as Henrietta pretending to be an innocent child to a group of terrorists inside a building where it’s evident that no one else but them is inside. How it is directed and choreographed is intense and realistic to its very core. It doesn’t glorify the violence to the point where it’s severely distracting; when you see a person get shot, you feel that he’s been shot right in your gut.

Direction-wise, the show is stellar in its animation and pacing, even if, at times, it goes a little too slow in parts where it didn’t need to be. While it isn’t impressive compared to others, the animation is still done well from how the action scenes are played out in the end, and the art designs of the characters are crisp and clear to the eyes. The one thing that typically wouldn’t be needed in discussing animations is the actual gun designs themselves that are almost on Angel Beat’s level of precision and detail in how they are portrayed as an embodiment of the girls. Almost like a subtle metaphor in how you see a gun next to a girl in nearly every scene they are on-screen, whether they are carrying it with them on a mission or if they are cleaning them.

The music in Gunslinger Girl is pretty to listen to, implementing excellent orchestration to capture the disturbing nature of the show’s framework. The sound design is one aspect of the show that I wholeheartedly admire and commend with open arms. It’s extraordinary how authentic it is from how the guns sound like actual firearms and not just cookie-cutter weapons on any other anime or movie and the subtle ambiance of the show’s natural landscape. There was a moment where I almost wanted to cry from just how beautiful and sad the people who worked on the front put forward to crafting this realistic atmosphere that gives Gunslinger Girl its unique look and feels from other anime.

From its dark subject matter to its beautiful nature, this is a show that might rub some people off the wrong way. That can be understandable, but at the same time, that should not sway people who are nevertheless intrigued in giving Gunslinger Girl a watch to see how anime can go to unfamiliar territory by using familiar tropes and pull it off in a serious fashion. It may not be perfect in how they didn’t go far enough as it needed to be in establishing a well-rounded world that deals with political corruption. But as time goes on, we have to appreciate at least the effort put into writing a gripping character drama with excellent development from our main characters, minus the supporting cast. We sometimes have to embrace the darkness of the natural world to cope with our insecurities, and Gunslinger Girl lives up to its credit as one of the most underrated that has these qualities to deal with.

Grade: A-