Gunslinger Girl

(ADV Manga, 2005, 2007, 2011)
™ and © ADV Manga

This is disturbing from the first page: a beautiful color illustration of a sweet-looking lead in her school uniform, cradling an automatic weapon that’s almost as long as she is tall.

Readers know from La Femme Nikita and its endless imitators that vulnerable girls make the best government-sponsored assassins, but Gunslinger Girl has an even more distasteful twist on the concept. The “Social Welfare Agency” turns physically challenged Japanese teens into cyborg killers. Thoroughly brainwashed, the lead, Henrietta, can kill in cold blood one moment and cuddle a teddy bear in another and has a standard schoolgirl-crush-with-a-much-older-guy relationship with her Agency handler. But even worse than all its bad taste aspects combined is that it’s just not very interesting. Who knew having a license to kill could be this dull?

— S.A. Bennett

Jump to issue:

Notes

Writer

Artist