If you haven’t heard of The Social Welfare Agency, and you don’t know anything about their operations, consider yourself lucky. This top secret program has been picking up little girls in dire situations and turning them into indentured assassins through brainwashing and cybernetic implants, in order to serve the best interests of the Italian government. This program isn’t perfect, as you can probably imagine, but they’ve been getting more or less consistent results ever since they were green lit. At least, that WAS the case, until a new threat recently popped up and started to become a real thorn in their side. A pair of vengeful terrorists have come into contact with a former child assassin of their own, and they’ve become a real headache for the Agency and their pint sized killers. The Gunslinger Girls are back for a brand new adventure, and it’s no lie that Pinnocchio is going to be their toughest opponent yet.

It’s never a good sign when the second season of an anime comes out a whole five years after the previous season. It’s an even worse sign when that second season is picked up not only by a different studio and director, but by a far less well known studio and director with less primary production credits to their names. The original Gunslinger Girl was produced by Studio Madhouse, which to be fair doesn’t sound immediately promising, as their work has been hit or miss over the years, but it was also directed by Morio Asaka, who is one of my personal favorite anime directors of all time. Not only does he have a keen eye for the best aspects of the story and design of an anime, he also usually knows just the right way to change it for the medium of animation without running afoul of gatekeepers and purists, often surpassing the quality of the original work. He’s also great at working under strict budgets, which makes him the perfect fit for Madhouse, who sometimes genuinely seem to treat their directors the same way Vince McMahon treated his NXT call-ups.

Unfortunately, the second season does not boast either of these well known and established names. It was produced by a studio called Artland, and directed by a man named Akira Mano, and through some strange coincidence, I’ve only seen one title from each of their limited resumes. With Artland, the only title of theirs I’ve seen that they had primary production duties for was Mushishi, which I haven’t seen in almost fifteen years, and while I’m not going to pretend that I remember it well, I can at least recall it looking better than this. As for Akira Mano, Il Teatrino is one of only two anime that he has ever directed himself, the other being Ghost Hunt, which is a show I absolutely adore, even if the direction and visual quality could be a bit hit or miss. These were the primary entities behind the production of Il Teatrino, and I’m just going to rip the band-aid off right now, this season looks like absolute ass. If you have any sensitivity to animation quality whatsoever, you will NOT be able to get through the first episode of Il Teatrino without feeling shocked by how terrible it looks. Throughout the entire episode, there are maybe three shots that actually featured any noticeable animation, period?

Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but you wanna know what’s not? There’s an extended sequence in the first episode that shows still images of rioting and public turmoil in the Italian streets, and I swear they just placed a gritty filter over them and shook them for dramatic effect. Don’t get me wrong, most anime will do something like this at some point, especially during fight scenes and high tension action sequences, but this is like a dozen or more still images in a row, that’s the kind of shit people notice. Sure, the original series didn’t have a high budget, but it was directed more than well enough to compensate, but it takes Mano over half the series to figure out how to direct it competently, let alone well. The visuals are constantly switching between long key frames featuring little to no movement(lip flaps, posture switches and the like) and sequences featuring so many quick key frame cuts in a row that they can honestly start to feel disorienting and make following the story kind of a chore.

When there is motion on screen, you better believe they get their money’s worth out of it by putting that shit on a repetitive loop. I’ve been noticing how character images are bounced in rhythm to create the illusion of walking for decades, but I don’t think it’s ever stood out as starkly as it does here. There’s a shot in a hotel where one of the girls is jumping on a bed, and it’s literally just the same animation of her bouncing on the same leg over and over again, and this kind of animation cycling shouldn’t be so damn easy to notice. The character designs have also changed dramatically, which I’m pretty sure was done to make them look more like they did in the manga, but they looked a lot more cartoony in the manga, which translates here. Their color palettes are brighter, they blush more, their eyes are bigger and slightly more moefied, and I get that it’s probably more accurate, but the redesigns of the first season worked a lot better with the tone of the story.

I don’t specifically remember what the soundtrack of the first season was like, so forgive me if this also describes that, but this season’s soundtrack is really limited and repetitive... Like, there’s this one really somber track that they play during what are supposed to be sadder and more emotional moments, as well as often at the end of every episode before the ED starts, but it’s overuse kind of makes it sound ironically funny, like something you’d do in an anime that was supposed to be parodying the act of emotional manipulation. Playing the same sad song over and over again until it becomes a running gag. The OP is a decent enough song, but the animation accompanying it is borderline incoherent with how many still images it throws at you at a rapidfire pace.

There hasn’t been much change to the english dub in terms of acting quality or presentation, you still have Funimation doing some of their best work, with pretty much everyone returning to reprise their characters. Jerry Jewel makes a fantastic addition to the cast as the new antagonist Pinnocchio, and he has some genuine chemistry with Caitlin Glass, who continues to play his main rival, Triela. Unfortunately, the rest of the cast kind of takes a back seat plot wise, so while their actors DO manage to slip back into their old roles like they never left, there’s less importance to said characters, which doesn’t leave them with much to do. Laura Bailey feels particularly let down by this, because the first season elevated her to almost main character status, making her the heart and soul of the story, and here she’s kind of just a girl with a crush. The same kind of applies to the rest of the cast, who are still perfectly in-character, just without a lot of opportunities to show it off.

Sometimes it really does feel like originality in media has been slipping silently away from us, doesn’t it? Sequels, reboots and adaptations have been commonplace for generations, and even when it comes to the anime market, which is usually dripping with new intellectual properties thanks to the billions of light novels and manga waiting to be adapted, most new titles are still following the same exact trends while adding little to nothing to whatever lucrative genre they’re trying to ride to the bank on. When it comes to specific media being revisited, however, we all have different opinions on them. Some new entries stick too close to the original to be worth watching, others stray too far off the path and piss off a highly protective fanbase. You can fail by not adding anything to the franchise, and you can fail by not sticking to pre-established lore as an absolute rule.

I’ve mentioned before in my reviews, and more than a few times in my feed posts, I don’t personally consider accuracy to be a mark of quality. FMA Brotherhood may be accurate to the manga, but I still prefer the 2003 series by a wide margin. The Higurashi anime might not hit the same orgasmic quality of themes or whatever that the visual novels and manga were able to reach, I don’t care, I still love it. True, most of this is because I don’t generally read a lot of manga or light/visual novels, and I just strongly prefer to sit down and watch an anime instead of reading, but I do also think it’s kind of silly to go into a piece of media with a checklist and a pen, seeing what they got right and what they got wrong instead of just allowing the experience to happen. Then again, I’m not immune, either. I remember getting really pissed off at the movie version of the Batman storyline Hush because of a major change they made to the ending, but I digress, I USUALLY try to go into sequels, reboots and adaptations with an open mind.

On the one hand, Il Teatrino could not possibly be more different from Gunslinger Girl. The first season was quiet, thoughtful, somber, with occasional action scenes. Il Teatrino is mostly loud, frenetic action, with occasional quiet scenes. The artwork and animation are distinctly different, to a point that it can be severely jarring to anyone watching the two shows back to back with no warning. On the other hand, as a pretty unexpected side effect of this, you could technically watch Il Teatrino on it’s own, without seeing the first season at all, and you would kind of be better off for it, because you’d be experiencing Il Teatrino with fresh eyes and no preconceived expectations. For this reason, I’m going to be looking at Il Teatrino as both the sequel that it is, and as the stand-alone series that it COULD be. In case you were wondering, yes, this is why I put a distinction in the two titles.

As I’ve already alluded to, Il Teatrino is a jarring sequel. Just about everything about it is different from Gunslinger Girl, with the exception of the English dub. Everything about the tone, the visuals, the designs, and even the pacing is like a completely different story. In fact, probably the biggest difference that you’ll notice right off the bat... And which might just piss you off something fierce... Is that it kind of retcons the ending of the first season? Now keep in mind, I am assuming you’ve already seen Gunslinger Girl, so I’m going to drop a spoiler here... At the end of the final episode, it’s heavily implied that one of the girls die while the others are enjoying a rare moment of childlike wonder, and while her death isn’t technically confirmed, it does make for a seriously beautiful tear-jerker ending that fits the themes of the season perfectly. As of this season, she’s back, with only the briefest “she got better” explanation, and really, the only thing they do with her after reviving her is explore her degradation a little further, which, okay, sure. You’re pissing people off unnecessarily, but you do you.

I’m going to retread some points from my previous review here, sorry about that, but the reason Gunslinger Girl was able to grab hold of the hearts of so many viewers without squicking anybody out over it’s potentially controversial premise was because it was about more than just little girls being used as assassins, it had a point to make. It had something to say, specifically about how true evil is able to exist and breed in society, especially when people just accept everyday evils as ‘part of the system,’ and the slippery slope that can lead to. The concept of child soldiers and the Social Welfare Agency never missed a step in supporting those themes and backing up the point of the series. There is none of that in Il Teatrino, which is just an action series about secret agents battling it out in a game of cat and mouse against some of the most bland and unremarkable terrorist cells I’ve ever seen. Not only does it fail to represent the depth of its predecessor, but if you think about it, this season’s story never really needed child soldiers in the first place, which calls their very existence in the story into question.

In Gunslinger Girl, the Social Welfare Agency is unquestionably evil, and the girls are unquestionably victims of a predatory system that uses the altruistic implications of giving them a second chance at life as an excuse to commodify and exploit them. In Il Teatrino, it’s occasionaly implied that the Agency is fucked up, but they’re mainly written as the good guys fighting the evil terrorists. Gunslinger Girl very intentionally made me feel sorry for the girls, wishing there could be a better path for them. Il Teatrino feels like it’s trying to sell me action figures of them. I said in my previous review that Gunslinger Girl was able to skate perfect tens on the thinnest ice possible, but Il Teatrino ventures out onto that same ice without even stopping to wonder WHY it’s so thin in the first place, thus falling through at every turn. We do see some fairly unfortunate side effects of the girls’ conditioning and how they’re forced to live their lives, but none of it ever feels as visceral as it did in the previous season, it honestly feels more incidental than tragic because there’s no emotional gravity to it.

Il Teatrino has nothing to say. It has no point to make. The closest it gets to depth is having a character named Pinnocchio who struggles with his conscience, and even that turns out to be pointless. And don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against pointless entertainment, but you can not tell a story about subject matter THIS sensitive, unless you have a damn good point to make through it. Otherwise, all you’re making is edgy, emotionally manipulative, sensationalist tragedy porn. Viewed on its own, completely divorced from the first season, Il Teatrino is a shallow action fest with a creepy and uncomfortable premise that it does not need to have, and does not know how to justify. It would honestly be better if it was a brand new and legally distinct anime starring an entirely adult cast of secret agents battling it out against the same exact terrorist cell. It would be better if it were the most generic action thriller known to man, and make no mistake, that’s the nicest thing I can say about it.

Gunslinger Girl Il Teatrino was available from Funimation, which means it’s currently either available from Crunchyroll, or it’s out of print, I don’t know which one. In either case, it’s pretty hard to find for an affordable price online. The original manga by Yu Aeda is available from Seven Seas.

My attempts to be more fair to this season didn’t pan out well, did they? I don’t want to be the kind of reviewer who trashes a sequel series for not living up to the standard set by a previous installment, but a sequel/adaptation/remake can be different without being terrible. Admittedly it doesn’t happen often, but the possibility is always there, and I don’t want to have my head too far up my ass to appreciate it when it does happen. I came into this review totally open to the chance that I could appreciate this season on its own merits, but unfortunately, Il Teatrino is a train wreck no matter how you look at it. I don’t know, maybe a hardcore fan of the manga might have a different opinion of it than I do, but for me, this series is an absolute war crime of a sequel, and just not very good as a standalone action anime.

I give Gunslinger Girl: Il Teatrino a 3/10