GUNSLINGER GIRL

__Gunslinger Girls: _A Lolita fetish or something truly unique?___

The Setting:
Gunslinger girl places you in the classic setting of the country overrun by organized crime and anarchy, the Italian mafia. However, its nothing like the noir aesthetic, it's the modern day, a world where the advent of cybernetic augmentation has surfaced. It's still the inception stage of this new technology, shrouded behind classified documents and kept out of public conscience by all-encompassing governmental agencies. Experimentation has yielded success but only in the bodies of prepubescent girls, trials on other body types leading to only short-lived unstable specimens which highlight the despotic nature of these agencies. The Social Welfare Agency has employed these cyborg girls with artificial strengths to do their bidding.

The Selling Point:
From the outset, GG sounds like a horrible fetish show without substance, seeking to only use children in dark fiction for the shock factor. The nature of the augmentation wipes out all previous memories of the host in order to provide mental stability, and to add another side-effect is the unusual fixation or love the girls start to bear for their handlers. Sounds like a very uncomfortable bad idea, doesn't it? But GG takes itself seriously and explores questions regarding the unholy state of existence of these girls. It also keeps the limelight on the handlers, who themselves are misfits in society, outcasted from their previous lives they reluctantly or unreluctantly take up their jobs as handlers.

The Agency trying to maintain some semblance of morals only converts girls who are near death with no family connecting them to this world, their life almost squashed out of existence by crime, into crime fighting cyborgs. GG shows you the uncanny nature of this situation and makes you downright uncomfortable and goads you into looking for answers yourself. It blends the search of meaning within the girls to the differing but common thread between the handlers for being hellbent against terrorism into a thrilling crime fighter, each fratello being unique in their struggles and their fitting conclusions. GG will dredge up deep profound sadness within you while soothing you with somber moments of acceptance and light a fireplace radiating the warmth of guardianship the handlers bear for their little partners.

Pacing:
The story maintains an even pace throughout its length. A contributing factor to this being the short lives the girls will have because of their imperfect cybernetics which slowly degrade their functions, the handlers being locked into this race against time to find peace with themselves and their partners which boils up towards the tail end of the story.

Art:
The art is a bit rough around the edges, being the first published work by the author, it doesn't really take the center stage but is polished enough to not be jarring.

Conclusion:
All in all, GG is a human story, it shows what humans are capable of, what they can do and what they're willing to do, whether it be good or bad. You'll experience a wild swirl of empathy and sympathy for its relatable cast of existential cute girls to depressed adults.