Gunslinger Girl follows the lives of 5 cyborg girls (and their much older male handlers) who are brainwashed to work as assassins for an Italian secret society. On the surface level, this premise sounds like a good "turn your brain off" type show, however Gunslinger Girl opts to be more intellectual and slow paced, which is executed rather poorly. This show attempts to be an Evangelion-esque character study of child soldiers and the affects of poor parenting (daddy issues) but it falls incredibly flat on it's face, it's Achilles heel being that the characters are all bland and unlikable. Excluding the final scene of this show, there is hardly any emotional levity or depth to any of the scenes. Many times while watching this I asked myself why I should care about any of these characters at all, they all sort to blend together aside from the twin tailed Triela, who manages to be somewhat tolerable at times. All the handlers manage to be extremely unlikable and abusive, aside from Henrietta's handler Jose. I am aware that's the focal point of a lot of the drama in this series, but it's really hard to get invested in or remember any of these characters when each of them are interchangeable. It feels like we as the audience are supposed to empathize with Jose the most throughout this show but he's just a bland guy who is mildly humanistic, there isn't much depth to his character at all.
The story structure of this series is rather questionable as well, the second episode is nearly a recap of the first episode, which I have never seen an anime do before. It might be attempting to show a perception shift from Jose to Henrietta, but if it is it's poorly executed since it reuses nearly half the scenes from the first episode. What were they thinking?
Most episodes in this series are just "side missions" (to put it in video game terms) that feel aimless until the last half of the series, which sets up a mystery surrounding one of the girls being murdered, which could have been interesting but instead we are treated to 1 episode to uninteresting set up and 2 episodes of meandering until the mystery is just solved with a melodramatic leap in logic by the main girl. Don't get me wrong, I like a good "slow burn show" but most of those shows work because of well earned dramatic moments punctuating long stretches of careful character development (think Better Call Saul). Every episode of this show however feels aimless and is punctuated with unearned pathos.
Outside of story content, if you are just watching this show for the action scenes, don't bother, they suck and are rather infrequent. The animation and art style are very dated, this show goes for a more realistic look but ultimately it makes the show look ugly and bland. It really confuses me how this anime could get an average score of 7.40, this show lacks any substance or depth, I don't know why western otaku of the 2000's thought this show was compelling. If you want to watch a boring and intellectually dull version of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex starring 5 lolis, watch Gunslinger Girl. If you value your time (which I obviously don't), watch anything else instead.
