Who do you think is the best sniper in anime?
From trick shots to barrages to one-shot kills, marksmen (and women!) can be responsible for some high-adrenaline fight scenes in anime. Whether they're blowing away their opponent through sheer, overwhelming firepower or calmly picking off the enemy as an anime sniper, the following girls have made a name and sub-genre for themselves as the top girls with guns.
Come check out 15 of the popular anime sniper and gunner girls!
Shino Asada
From Sword Art Online II
Shino Asada, better known as "Sinon", is an expert marksman. She specialises in long-range combat, and is known for wielding the PGM Ultima Ratio Hecate II in Gun Gale Online. And although guns do not exist in ALfheim Online, Sinon maintains her ranged role by wielding a bow and arrows. Her motto is "One shot, one kill".
Her favored sniper rifle is a real gun that is the standard sniper rifle in the French Army, and also makes an appearance as Elsa de Sica's anime sniper of choice in Gunslinger Girl. The Anti-materiel rifle in Fallout: New Vegas is also based on the Hecate II's design.
Akane Tsunemori
From Psycho-Pass
Akane's gun is the Dominator, a tool for delivering justice upon latent and non-latent criminals. This nifty firearm works by stunning, destroying, or decomposing its targets depending on their perceived threat level. While the other girls with guns in this list are known to be excellent shots and combatants, what makes Akane special is rather her reluctance to use her gun to kill.
"Two-Hands" Revy
From Black Lagoon
The polar opposite of Akane, Revy is a Chinese-American girl known for her foul mouth, violent tendencies, and berserk manner in a gunfight. Dual-wielding two modified Berettas 92FS's, Revy has no qualms about killing both targets and innocents alike.
Beretta is a real Italian gun company, and they tout their 92FS series as the most accurate semiautomatic pistol in existence, an excellent choice on Revy's part.
Major Motoko Kusanagi
From Ghost in the Shell
A female cyborg, Motoko is not your conventional gunner-girl. Major Motoko Kusanagi leads her team of Section 9 with the same calm efficiency she uses while handling a gun. She wields a "Zastava", a fake gun based on the real-life CZ 100 from the manufacturer Ceska Zbrojovka Uhersky Brod, which also appears in the movie Bourne Identity.
Yoko Littner
From Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
Calm, cool, collected - Yoko is a talented anime sniper that wields a vast range of firearms but favours a long-range sniper rifle modeled after the Barrett M82.
The Barrett M82 sniper rifle is very popular in various forms of media, and appears in everything from movies like Robocop to video games such as the Call of Duty series.
Canaan
From Canaan
An assassin from the Middle East operating in Shanghai, Canaan wields a Beretta Px4 Type G 9mm semi-automatic pistol. A quirk of hers is the ability to use synaesthesia to tell friend from foe on the battlefield so she doesn't accidentally open fire on an ally.
The Type G in the name of her gun means that her version does not have a manual safety. Other variants of the Beretta Px4 appear in Inception, The Cabin in the Woods, and Watch Dogs.
Homura Akemi and Mami Tomoe
From Mahou Shoujo Madoka★Magica
Both these girls favour firearms as their weapon of choice when taking down witches. While Mami utilises an arsenal of pistols and double-barrelled shotguns, Homura makes use of modern firearms.
Homura wields several different guns throughout the series and in the movies. For example, like Canaan, she too wields a Beretta Px4 in Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie Part III: Rebellion, and a 92FS like Revy.
Mami uses Brown Bess Flintlock Muskets, which were standard-issue in the British army in the 18th and 19th centuries. These guns are also used in the Assassin's Creed video game series, as well as the Pirates of the Caribbean movie series.
Special Ops Section 2
From Gunslinger Girl
Every young girl in this series has been trained to use and kill with a gun. Saved from the brink of death, the girls are drugged, conditioned, and brought up as assassins with no memory of their past lives. Here's Henrietta with her favored sidearm, a SIG-Sauer P239 handgun.
Kirika Yuumura and Mireille Bouquet
From Noir
This pair of women have both been raised to the life of assassins. Wielding their trusty handguns with uncanny skill, they team up to try and uncover the mysteries of their pasts.
Kirika's favored weapon is the Beretta M1934, a subcompact pistol also seen in Casino Royale among many other movies, games, and shows.
Mireille's preferred gun is the Walther P99, a semi-automatic pistol that also appears in Cowboy Bebop as well as The Dark Knight.
Aria Holmes Kanzaki
From Hidan no Aria
Aria the Scarlet Ammo is a show all about learning gun combat (though the feats they perform are not possible in real life. The main female character, Aria is not only a cute anime sniper, but also the descendant of Sherlock Holmes, and one of the highest ranked individuals in the Assault department. She dual-wields Colt Government Model handguns with custom grips. Bishamonten from Noragami wields a similar version of this Colt handgun, the M1911.
Black★Rock Shooter
From Black★Rock Shooter
Known only as Black★Rock Shooter, this mysterious girl with black hair, black clothes, and a vivid, glowing blue eye wields a massive cannon that's bigger than she is. Depending on which version of Black Rock Shooter you watch or play, the Black Rock cannon can alternatively shoot bullets or blasts of energy, even transforming into different types of guns/weapons.
Yuri Nakamura
From Angel Beats!
A sweet girl with pink hair, as well as a frilly yellow ribbon to match, battling the "Angel" of the Afterlife. Sounds like your typical magical girl anime protagonist, right? Wrong. Yuri Nakamura is the leader of the Afterlife Battlefront, fighting to defeat the dark evil that threatens their world. Destined for trouble, this anime sniper can use all the firepower she can get!
Yuno Gasai
From Mirai Nikki (TV) (The Future Diary)
Okay, so this crazy yandere may not just be an anime sniper. Knives, poison, bare knuckles, Yuno has no exact weapon of choice because she is her weapon of choice. However, the way she rocks her rifle with a bright smile definitely makes her one of the hottest and scariest gunner girls in anime!
