doyouloveanime

Now that IFC has seen fit to eliminate Witchblade from its ComcastOnDemand/CuttingEdge/IFC/Anime lineup it has replaced Masane with Henrietta and her friends. The newest IFC addition is ‘Gunslinger Girl’ and it tells the stories of some poor orphaned Italian girls ranging in age from six up to their late teens who have been ‘rescued’ by the government. The kids are MAJOR SPOILER ALERT!!

anyway the kids are first made into ‘cyborgs’ (part human/part machines) a la ‘Ghost in the Shell’ then they are trained in all forms of fighting and killing. Why? So they can be used as the State’s personal assassins of course.

Episodes 1 and 2 introduce us to the latest recruit, a six year old named Henrietta and her ‘handler’, Josie who is a thirty-something dude. Unlike the other handlers he sees Henrietta as more than just a ‘tool’ and even begins to envision life as Henny’s adopted papa! This crap is strictly a no-no with the higher ups. Josie is already looked on with disdain because he requested (and had granted) that Henrietta not be ‘programmed’ (brainwashed basically) yet. Instead he will teach the kid the proper etiquette needed for undercover missions, how to shoot and kill without hesitation, how to identify and kill only your ‘marks’ and most important of all- never leave witnesses behind- alive!

In my next blog I’ll introduce some of the other girls like Elsa de Sica who is a hard kid to befriend as lil Henrietta soon finds out. Rico and Triela try to be friends with everyone as a rule and Henrietta just can’t understand why the rest of the girls seem so different. The music is a nice mixture of opera, classical and contemporary stuff although no hard rock at all. If you want it ‘GG’ is readily available online. I got my DVD set at Amazon.com for around $8 a DVD so it is reasonable. I paid over $115 for Mama’s Witchblade DVD set last year. Here’s a pix from the series(see below). It’s from wikipedia.org which has a great synopsis, storyline, episode list, information and the like on ‘GG’.

The voices are cool too. Laura Bailey (Shin Chan Nohara) is cute little Henrietta and Elsa is Briana Palencia who is best known as Georgie on Shin Chan where she sings the ‘Party’ theme song for both the OT and ET sorry opening theme and ending theme music. Back to ‘GG’ again. The OT music and lyrics are very hauntingly familiar but I’ll be dogged if I can place it. The ET is very operatic and is from either Carmen or Il Trovatore or that other famous Italian opera where the heroine is imprisoned in a tower of a castle.

The backdrops are authentic looking (very good matte painters that means) and although mostly Italian have many from across the globe including New York and London as well as a Swiss chalet. Josie spoils Henrietta rotten by buying her everything he can think of which the kid could care less about! You can imagine how well this goes over with his fellow handlers. ‘GG’ is very graphic with lots of blood and gore and although the cast is mostly schoolgirls this anime is definitely ‘Adult Swim’ fare! Anyway here’s the pix:

Here’s the entire cast of the girls in Gunslinger Girl. Next blog I will identify them for you with their English voice actors. These steps are near the ‘Social Welfare Agency’ aka Section 2 of the Italian government which is the cover for the GG assassination bureau. Their HQ is Rome and I think if I recall correctly you can see either St Peter’s Basilica or the Vatican in the background. The double pix above this one is Henrietta. The top pix is from Season 1 and the bottom pix is from Season 2 ‘GG- Il Teatrino’ which is sometimes shown as an OVA (direct to video) movie. From them you can see the way Henrietta matures. This kid was raped by her parents’ killers and the fiends did it to her right beside her Mama and Papa’s dead bodies! That’s why Josie felt sorry for her and none of the other handlers wanted anything to do with Henrietta.

Time to go as Shin would say and like the Angels’ ‘CC’ would say I’m gone. Bye bye. Tax time approacheth and the Keiman has to get his done soon.

SFN/SYS/JM/KBYA/KYSOTI/TTFN/Toodles-K&K

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