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Plot Synopsis

Officially The Social Welfare Agency is an Italian government sponsored corporation that is in the business of saving lives. However, in reality it is an agency on the fringe of technology that gives terminal children another shot at life using cybernetic implants, shaping the patient into an efficiently deadly machine, and then using them to handle all the governments dirty work. Each child assassin is assigned a handler known as a fratello, meaning 'brother' in Italian. Each Fratello is set with the task of overseeing the cyborg's basic welfare and training. The anime focuses on the conflicts arising from the needs to create an efficient weapon along with the needs of a growing adolecent girl, the relationship between each girl and her Fratello, and the conflicts that arise.

Story & Characters

13 Episodes. True to life sci-fi, touching, and very down to earth anime. Very dramatic, very intelligent, all in Japanese. Easy to pick up on for the most part, if you study. The delgadoes do all the music, so just limewire you're way to the psudo-soundtrack. I highly recommend watching this at least once just for the experience. Basically, little girls are adopted by an Italian government agency which operates in disguise as the Social Welfare Corporation, and they are turned around through medicine, surgery, and hypnotism into terrorist gunning instinctal killers. The focal character is Henrietta, who is taken care of by Jose. A girl and a chaperone together are called a "fratello," meaning "brother and sister" in Italian. The girls are very emotional and lack common sense, leaving the caretakers to immediately respond to the under-the-surface critical gaps when it comes time for work to be done. At one point, Rico's caretaker even says "She can't do anything by herself (lit: there's nothing she is able to do alone)." The caretakers, with the exception of Jose, are very harsh (kibishi) and cold. Elsa's shows her so little compassion that she ends up killing him and herself out of heartbreak and self-dispair. Shitsumongaarimasuka.

Rating

10 (excellent)

Art

Animation is beautiful, and I admit tat some of the villians are drawn better than they deserve to be. Backgrounds are based on real Italian buildings, scenes, streets and cities, and one epsiode with Rico even portrays some famous Italian paintings by Amanati. As usual, there is an appeal to classical music (especially the violin) in this series, and I found it rather odd that when Henrietta plays it, the notes are out of sync of the bow motions. She's the only one who ever used the violin that came with the case (every Gunslinger Girl uses the cases for gun-touting) by the way. The element of astronomy is another visually appelling feature of this series.

Rating

9 (very good)

Sound

As I had already mentioned, the delgadoes do all of the excellent music (not as good as that from AIR), and you should listen to it. The voices are good, as I've heard some from other animes that are not (the english from the Evangelion movie is terrible at parts). There is a need for more music in the anime though, and dialogue is used to fill in the spaces for the most part. Discussions are mainly focussed to reflect morals and responsibility, and in fact the entire anime seems a lot like a ballpark of verbal and nonverbal proverbs. The sounds in the anime are realistic, and I can't get enough of those reassurring boot-thump footsteps. I admit that the gun sounds are not spot-on, and despite the tremendous apparent knowledge of firearms in the series (and the use of them), I rarely heard a clip sound. ???

Rating

8 (good)

Presentation

Not much humor at all. A lot of sympathy is demanded and it is always enjoyable unless you've already seen it a hundred times and are just watching it to pick up grammatical patterns. I heard about the game version of this but haven't tried unfortunately. The story sounds a bit like Inspector Gadget (believe it or not), as the little girls were next to death and are miraculously repaired with synthetic pieces (tansu ito (carbon fiber) pieces), and are then prepared for anti-criminal work that ironically goes against the very evils that have damaged them (at least for Henrietta and Triela). The Japanese really do make everything their own after all I guess. Carbon fiber by the way wouldn't have applicability to the circumstances of the girls. They would be better suited to aramid fiber tissue and paladium alloy joints. How much do I have to write to submit this thing! Let's see, the characters are very like the little children were used to seeing but the training and "conditioned response" they endure makes them a bit beyond their roles. They listen to their chaperones sharply and adopt their values as their own. What they reflect is the perfect soldiers, albeit in some senses the perfect children.

Rating

8 (good)

Final Verdict

8.83 (very good)

Reviewed by ayanamiX, 2y 47wk ago