Gunslinger Girl -Il Teatrino- #01 — Little Girls, Big Guns

January 7th, 2008

 

They seem somehow girlier than I remember.

Impressions:

The change in studios is going to take some getting used to, but it wasn’t that bad overall. The designs in general appear a bit less artistic and closer to the manga originals. Some of the characters were also reworked to be a bit closer to their manga counterparts, most notably Rico, although Henrietta also seems much more lively than before. It’s mostly her eyes that are so different and don’t express her nearly as well. The move away from the artistic style does make it feel a bit more generic overall, but hopefully they’ll be able to convery the same sense of pathos and emotional crisis in the girls when they start touching on things aside from chasing terrorists on vespas.

This isn’t to say that the show’s style is completely gone. During the action sequences, they emphasize the cyborg abilities pretty well with Henrietta’s focus shifting during the bomb explosion and Triela effortlessly tossing a manhole cover into a wall. The production values are still very high all around, while we’re on that subject. Some of the music felt off, but that could just be the fault of the style changes and me getting used to the move from violins and melodrama to a more action oriented show, at least for this episode. The action is also a lot less gruesome. It’s still blood-drenched, make no mistake about that, but the particularly juicy bullet wounds that sprayed everywhere on impact have been scaled down in favor of just showing blood afterwards.

I’m pretty pleased with this version too, though I think it’ll have to try a little harder than the original to convey the same feelings. I know Totali won’t touch this with a 40 foot gondola, so I’m pretty sure I’ll be sticking to this. Besides… what else is there on Mondays? Bamboo Blade? Some show about space yachts and hippo-cats? The first episode was easy enough to follow without any real technobabble that the series loves, so count on me to keep following this… especially for the Pinocchio stuff.

Gunslinger Girl OP

Posted in Anime | 5 Comments »

5 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • kiryuu says:
    January 7, 2008 at 8:40 pm

    Triela and Rico look like they having glowing eyes now..

  • Anonymous says:
    January 8, 2008 at 7:33 am

    I Loved the orginal, i hope they don’t reck it. The music made most of the scenes in the orginal, i can still remeber the ending episode, with the girls watching the falling stars while Beethoven’s 9th Symphony plaid into the background.

  • Anonymous says:
    January 8, 2008 at 3:43 pm

    Still waiting for a sub of this one, gonna watch it asap. I loved the original series, so I really hope this one is good, as I’ve been really looking forward to it. The change instudios has me a bit worried, but I still think they can pull it off. I just hope they don’t make things too cute and keep with the sad, melancholy feel of the original. I actually liked the end of the first series, too, though it was, at the same time, open to a sequel, so I hope they do it justice and don’t do anything to hurt the series.

  • Anonymous says:
    January 11, 2008 at 10:38 am

    Love the opening song i think it is better than the first one

    would try not to read this article cause i wanna see it as it is pretty much the highlight of the first month of 2008

    but yeah thanks for posting the opening

  • Eric Quellhorst says:
    August 3, 2008 at 6:57 pm

    I have but one question. The agency used terminal patients who were girls. Why not throw a boy cyborg into the mix? Just a thought.