Saturday, September 7, 2013

Gunslinger Girl Omnibus 1: Review...

Gunslinger Girl Omnibus 1



Yu Aida
Seven Seas Entertainment


Gunslinger Girl is probably one the most brutal and intriguing fictional worlds. Taking place in modern day Italy, where the Social Welfare Agency rescues young girls who suffered some sort of traumatic event, and brainwashes them to be elite killers for the Italian government.

Thats pretty much the premise of this manga series. The series was created by Yu Aida and first appeared in the Japanese magazine Monthly Comic Dengeki Daioh in 2002, and ended last year. Henrietta is the main protagonist of the story. Shes a young girl who survived a gruesome crime, in which, she was brutalized for hours, and her parents and siblings were killed. The S.W.A took Henrietta in and made her into one of the elite assassins in the agency.

By far this manga excels in both the story and in the artwork, but yet, there‘s still some minor problems. The story does move at a sluggish pace, which can turn away readers, but it’s worth it with all of the great character development and world building. All of the action scenes feel like storyboards to a John Woo film, but yet, Aida occasionally has this tendency to sneak in some panty shots of the young girls during these scenes, which is unnecessary and tasteless. All of the character and weapons/mechanical designs are very detailed and have an unique style to them, that‘s suitable for this title.



Gunslinger Girl is a fascinating title with a lot of action and over the top violence jam-packed in the first omnibus volume. It won’t appeal to everyone with moe designs and the (dark) mature content, but the story is strong enough to keep readers glued to every page. With over 500 pages and a price of less than twenty dollars, it’s worth to give Gunslinger Girl a try. -Panagiotis Drakopoulos

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