Gunslinger Girl: Il Teatrino (sloppy sequel)

Synopsis: Time has passed between the end of the first season and the start of the second one and Italy has become more restless with each passing day. There have been growing protests in Rome and the Social Welfare Agency has been on active alert in order to ensure that the growing discontent does not get taken advantage of by the number of separatist movements and bring Italy into the throes of a civil war. The Social Welfare Agency, a secret government counter-terrorism force has been experimenting around with cyborg girls who are conditioned to serve as loyal special forces units and so far, the experiment has been quite successful. However, the separatist movements have been increasing their resistance, and along with that comes a single individual who may prove to be the most difficult opponent that the Agency has come across.

Thoughts:

Discusses a lot of spoilered details:

The first season brought with it some high expectations as it was able to tell a complete story and filled it with sympathetic characters, great animation, and a brilliant soundtrack scored by Toshihiko Sahashi. This second season on the other hand seems quite soulless in comparison. Without anything else to go off of, I can only say that Artland managed to take Madhouse's brilliant adaptation of Yu Aida's manga and do it a grave disservice.

Starting from the beginning, I had already had my reservations, especially with how most of the voice actors did not portray their characters accurately. Or maybe it was the scriptwriting that was poor. Regardless, they felt the need to have Rico and Henrietta make cute-sounding noises every so often. Why? I have no damn clue myself. Maybe it was to fill in the silence or something. However, that detracted just slightly from the series, but enough to make it an annoyance. A graver matter was how Triela and Rico's personalities were way off the mark. Both the two were made to be very happy-go-lucky in such a way that they didn't seem real or genuine. Triela, for her part, seemed too happy when out with Hillshire when their relationship in reality is more strained. Triela herself was the most serious-minded girl of the group, but it certainly didn't seem that way from watching this. Rico also seemed a bit too outgoing and happy. Something about her just really got on my nerves and made me want to give her a good sock to the jaw to bring her back to her senses.

The sound direction was also a travesty. Early on in episode 1, there's a scene involving some protests in Rome... except the protesters didn't sound like protesters. Unless the protesters you see are weird and grunted instead of actually shouting slogans or anything of substance. This seemed like a really cheap shortcut and a half-assed way to go about doing this. If they're resorting to grunting, I can only imagine how they could take shortcuts elsewhere too.

Along with the crappy sound direction is the music, which, while listenable and decent, just doesn't mesh as well as it could. Another protest scene called for some tense sounding music, and the composer delivered unto us some electronica with a heavy beat to it. Given how the first season had a majestic soundtrack to it, season 2 just seems lame in comparison. Whatever happened to the awesomeness of the TEMA tracks anyhow? Yeah, what we have here is a definite downgrade in the music department.

OK, so we have to accept that the characters and the sound direction is terrible. Well, to add to that blow is the crappy animation which, like the sound direction, saw the animators take quite a few shortcuts. Seeing the poor treatment of Henrietta's P90 was already pretty bad, but looking at the scene where you can see Jan's bullet hit one of the terrorist in the legs (LOL BULLET TIME??) and the splotchy paint that they put over Triela's clothing in place of blood was absolutely inexcusable. And to top it off, they had Triela snipe with a shotgun. WTF??? I'm certainly no gun expert, but if I can catch all of those details, something is obviously very wrong with the show. ARGH!!!

All right, the criticisms above can easily be considered nitpicky and to be perfectly honest, this series isn't omfg downright terrible or anything of the sort. The story (if they follow it faithfully) is quite good and if anything, they have a very strong plot to work off of. Unfortunately, that's really all that still remains intact after that trashy excuse for a first episode. Artland better bring the momentum up or heads are going to roll.

Fans of the first season should avoid watching this if they don't like an awesome series ruined by a half-assed effort.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

At the risk of sounding too nerdy:

Originally Posted by Greykin

Ah, to answer your shotgun issue though zzeroparticle, the choke on the end of a shotgun barrel can be modified. Choke is basically narrowing down the end of the barrel like a funnel, so the more evident the choke, the greater range you have. So Triela could have indeed shot those dudes in the car from that distance :3. I can't tell you the distance increments on different chokes though since I don't remember them off hand haha.

OK, I'll defer to your expertise on this one and accept that. What I'm also curious about (since you seem to be a ballistics expert) is whether the whole scene where

Spoiler:

the bullet goes through and leaves that guy with that nosebleed is accurate and representative of the particular firearm that Triela was using? I'm not saying it's fake, but it sure looked that way.

Thanks!

There's nowhere I can't reach.

OK, with episode 4 out of the way, I think I can say that this series is decidedly poor and not worth anyone's time to pursue. Even if you're a hardcore GSG fan like I am.

The music still feels out of place during certain scenes and the same can be said for the girls who appear to enjoy making cutesy noises too much for my liking. Furthermore, there's just this sort of emotional disconnect from the characters and the narrative that made the first season and the manga so damn good. All in all, it's ironic that the production of an anime that involves the manga artist is flailing much worse than the first season which was done without the manga artist's involvement.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Of course, if it was actually faithful to the manga, then there'd be a lot of heart in it. As it stands, this show is the most soulless show I've seen in quite some time.

Soul Eater has more heart than this, and that's not even a show that takes itself seriously.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?