• Title: Gunslinger Girl -Il Teatrino
• Studio: Artland
• Genre: Drama

Ratings (out of 5):

• Story: ♥♥♥

• Animation: ♥♥
• Characters: ♥♥♥♥
• OP/ED Themes: ♥♥½
• Overall: ♥♥♥ (A relatively optimistic first episode, considering that it’s a sequel to a somewhat dark drama.)

Thoughts:
Henrietta is one of a group of girls effectively “owned” and “operated” by the Social Welfare Agency of Italy; ostensibly an organization for helping orphans, but in fact an elite government-operated dissident-emoval operation featuring young, cybernetically-enhanced girls paired with handlers who they’re trained to adore. Each pair is known as a “fratello,” and the relationship between a “little sister” and her “older brother” is one of the key focuses of the original series.

If you haven’t watched the first season of Gunslinger Girl, you should at some point– but you’ll understand the setup well enough based on the first episoe of Il Teatrino, which introduces most of the main characters as well as the basic idea.

The delicate balance between adoration for a “brother” and obsession with him– and desire for him to return affections –caused some serious drama in the first season, not to mention that a world full of young girls who are turned into killing machines isn’t exactly sunshine, rainbows, and kittens. Yet as I said before, this first episode is remarkably positive considering the previous season. Granted, it focuses on Henrietta and her “brother” Jose, who have one of the better fratello relationships in the series– largely because Jose isn’t an awe-inspiring prick, like some of the “brothers.”

I suspect that the series will turn more towards the melancholy that the setting sort of mandates eventually. But it’s also worth noting that, as others have suggested, the animation budget seems smaller for season 2 than season 1. The art and animation aren’t bad, but they’re not as sharp and clean and styled as they were for the first season. You can see comparisons between the season 1 art and season 2 art at wikipedia, btw.

Also, the OP isn’t anywhere near as cool as the OP for the first season. But it’d be hard to beat “The Light Before We Land” anyway, because it’s such a beautiful song (and it fits the mood of the first season perfectly– if you want to see what I mean about the melancholy mood, just go listen to that song).

I’m going to keep watching on the promise that now that exposition is over, the show will get back to its moody philosophizing, which I rather liked about the first season. If I took the series on its own…well, I’d still keep on it, because frankly, it’s an interesting concept.