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alt title(s): Gunslinger Girls 
Claes, Angelica, Rico, Henrietta & Triela
Gunslinger Girl is a manga and anime series that tells the story of a group of young girl assassins.
In Italy the Social Welfare Agency scours the country for little girls who have been traumatized or abandoned ostensibly to give them a second shot at life. In reality the Agency (as it is usually called) subjects the girls to cyberization, drugs and brainwashing and uses them to do the government's dirty work. Each girl in the Agency is partnered with a male handler into a unit called a "fratello". Her handler oversees the girl's training, determines the level of drugs and conditioning she receives and is ultimately her control when out on a mission.
The stories focus on relationships between the girls and their handlers. The relationships range from handlers who care for their charges like daughters or little sisters to others who regard them merely as disposable tools. Rather than glamorizing these little girls with guns, "Gunslinger Girl" shows their lives as ultimately tragic. The back stories of how the girls come into the custody of the Agency are routinely horrific (Henrietta, the new arrival, had her family murdered in front of her and was then assaulted all night by the intruders before being mutilated and left for dead. We won't even go into what happened to Triela.) The girls' cybernetic implants as well as the drugs and conditioning they receive are killing them while slowly destroying their minds and personalities. None of them will see adulthood.
The anime series was licensed and released by FUNimation while the manga is released by ADV. Both are well worth your attention but prepare yourselves for a light version (well, comparatively anyway) of the " Grave of the Fireflies" experience.
This show provides examples of:
- Accidental Aesop: the apparent theme of how horrible it is to treat the girls like this was not the author's original intention and isn't supported by his initial lolicon dojinshi and his later works.
- Adaptation Decay: The second season (Il Teatrino). So very much.
- Anime News Network
 says it best: "Gone is the internal conflict, replaced with bland little girls who are more than happy to carry around big guns, simply because they're expected to."
- Your Mileage May Vary but it seems like a case of They Changed It Now It Sucks, the art style is different but the story is still every bit as enjoyable to watch to this troper.
- Aloof Big Brother: Jean.
- Anime Theme Song: A melancholic song by Scottish band The Delgados, fitting the mood of the series nicely.
- Il Teatrino got a very solid, somewhat more driving piece in Japanese by domestic artist KOKIA, which also fit the escalating conflict portrayed in that series.
- Antagonist In Mourning: Although most likely never taught the philosophical and spiritual side of Martial Arts in her training, Triela solemnly and sadly returned Pinocchio's treasured key-ring to him after slaying him in single combat, paying her final respects to a fellow warrior.
- At The Opera Tonight: One of the missions involves an assasination at the opera. Notable because it's the only time we've seen Rico wear a dress (a nice blood-red number).
- Badass Normal: Pinocchio doesn't have cybernetic implants, yet in his first encounter with Triela he is able to knock her out with an uppercut, amongst other things. He ends up fracturing bones in his hand, though, since she has a carbon fiber-reinforced skull...
- Pino is also generally shown to be a rough equal to the girls in skill, due his being trained by a former CIA agent.
- Big Brother Complex
- Bishoujo
- Bleached Underpants: The series' original incarnation was a Lolicon doujinshi series with some graphic sexual material.
- Blessed With Suck: The girls have superhuman reflexes and reaction time as part of their "conditioning". However, each new application greatly reduces their life expectancy.
- Bloodless Carnage: averted, though you normally do not linger on a body long enough to see a bullet hole the targets shot definitely do have blood in them.
- Brainwashed
- Brand X: Section I Agents are seen using a 'Nakia' phone in one episode of the second season.
- Break The Cutie
- Cain And Abel: Jean and Guiseppe. They lost their father and sister (and Jean's fiance) to a roadside bomb (aimed at their father). Jean has become completely obsessed with vengeance. Guiseppe's feelings are much more conflicted, he's turned Henrietta into a Replacement Goldfish, and has confessed to having been distant from his father (who was just as obsessed as Jean). Hinted at in the Manga by Jean's reaction to Claes's movie.
- And as of the manga chapter "Fantasma", things may well be moving in an even more blatantly Cain-and-Abel direction, what with Jean now hallucinating about Enrica being angry over Guise's surrogating of Henrietta. The implication of her words at the end of that chapter were not particularly encouraging.
- Child Soldiers
- Cool Big Sis: Triela.
- Cool Down Hug: Hillshire, on Triela after her second go-round with Pinocchio.
- Cowboy Cop: Hillshire. This supposedly is what got him kicked out of Europol. The true story is a bit more complicated.
- Creepy Child: The girls during their missions — and increasingly outside of them as well.
- Cultured Warrior: The girls are exposed to varrying amounts of culture, depending on their aptitudes and handlers. Henrietta is a skilled violinist, Cleas is very well-read, and she and roomate Triela have discussed Balzac and the opera "Tosca" in a "matter of fact" way. On the other hand, acres of art have had little effect on Rico, and Angelina can barely remember anything anymore. Triela notes that she knows virtually nothing of pop culture while guarding Mimi. Likewise Pinnochio can play the piano, but has little interest in cars or girls unlike other Italian boys his age.
- Cute Bruiser: All of them.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Played up for all its tragic and tearjerking worth.
- Cycle of Revenge – Both Agency handlers and the terrorists are obsessed with avenging family members killed by the other side. Those who aren't are invariably either corrupt leaders or disillusioned veterans.
- The exception that tests the rule is Hillshire, who works for the program for personal reasons that have nothing to do with Italian civil wars.
- Dark Skinned Blond: Triela, and it adds to the mysteriousness of her origins. She is, however, decidedly non-ditzy, breaking type a little.
- The most recent manga collection in Japan nails down her origins a little by revealing that Triela is from, and is at least part ethnically, Tunisian, fitting with the trope in being of mixed ethnicity.
- Dead Little Sister: Guiseppe and Jean are both seeking revenge for the death of their sister Enrica at the hands of terrorists. The names of their chosen weapons, the cyborgs 'Henrietta' and 'Rico', reflect this. The difference is that Jean is cold-blooded towards Rico (perhaps deliberately), whereas Guiseppe has created a surrogate in Henrietta, even (in the manga chapter "Fantasma") making her wear one of Enrica's dresses. Though Jean is visibly shocked by this act, he is unable to find the strength to reprimand his brother.
- Department Of Child Disservices: The Agency is more or less this, although considering most of the girls' backstories, they are still arguably better off.
- Distaff Counterpart: Pinnochio, an operative for Padania, for Triela, leading to a very, very bloody fight between them.
- Does This Remind You Of Anything: While meticulously polishing her assault rifle to the extent of almost caressing it, Elsa goes on to elaborate and describe her obsession for her handler.
- The show lives for this trope. Another example, Claes isn't allowed on the shooting range since her handler is dead. She comes back one evening and roommate Triela notes the scent of cordite on her. Claes just smiles.
- In Il Teatrino Henrietta clasps Giuseppe's shirt to her body while lying on his bed. Cue Luminescent Blush.
- Driven To Suicide: Elsa
- Early Bird Cameo: Perushka, pre-transformation shows up in a middle episode of Il Teatrino.
- Emotionless Girl: Between drugs and conditioning all of the girls are more than a bit emotionally stunted. Beatrice however, is an extreme case, we never see her get angry, excited, or anything.
- Enfante Terrible
- Ensemble Darkhorse: While Henrietta is ostensibly the focus character and the Henrietta-Guiseppe-Jean-MemoryofEnrica plotline is the main narrative thrust of the work, fans at large have noticed over the years that the emotional impact, narrative depth, and generalized awesomeness of the series tends to get turned up to 11 any time Triela is involved in a scene or plotline.
- Worth noting, Triela is the first of the girls we see "on the job".
- Fanservice: In the earlier volumes and shows, hilariously subverted in that any time the girls do something cute, the anime/manga takes pains to remind you that they are also cold-blooded killing machines.
- Petrushka, however, is used for fanservice straight up with no twists. This inspires a lot of heated reactions among the fans of the series.
- Fallen Princess: Triela, though in her case she's pulled herself up from even further down. Most of the adults at the agency call her "the princess", half in jest half in respect. The title of her image song is "Brown Snow White", which is probably not entirely about her skin.
- Fast Roping: Done in episode 12, when Triela and Angelica break into a mountain terrorist base. The glass is weakened beforehand to justify this.
- Triela and Beatrice effectively pull this off in reverse (climbing up a tower hand-over-hand really fast) during Vol 11 of the manga. Cybernetics are cool like that.
- Fluffy The Terrible: When Triela was learning hand-to-hand fighting with the G.I.S. she picked up a nickname. What did the Special Forces call the little killing machine? Lepretto (roughly "bunny") after a child's doll that shares her twintails.
- Girlish Pigtails: Triela. Interesting because on duty she is always Dressed To Kill.
- Government Agency Of Fiction: The Social Welfare Agency.
- The Handler: All the girls have one, and the relationships between girl and handler vary with each pair.
- Harmful To Minors: Every one of the girls has been a witness or victim of horrific violence, sexuality, or both.
- Heroic RROD
- Hitman With A Heart: Franca and Franco, who try to avoid killing children.
- Padanian agents in general, and their superiors in particular, often try to avoid choosing their own cultural and religious icons as targets, despite being terrorists.
- Hollywood Cyborg
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: All episode titles (for the first season, at least), as well as the box set volume names, are in Italian.
- Ignored Epiphany: When first hunting for Pinocchio, Triela is told to read the fairy tale story by her handler. Her reaction to reading about a "mechanical" thing wanting to be human and to please his "father"? "What a stupid story!"
- I Just Shot Marvin In The Face - Averted: Raballo freaks out when he sees Henrietta look down the barrel of a jammed pistol. He berates Giuseppe for his poor training of her.
- I Know Kung Fu - Subverted: The girls have their fearsome combat abilities programmed into them as a part of their reconstruction package, but at the increasing cost of their remaining humanity.
- Triela still gets a supplementary training to better deal with opponents who strike first.
- Ill Girl: Rico before her "enhancement", Angelica at the end of the first season
- In A Single Bound: Henrietta when chasing a purse thief.
- It Works Better With Bullets: Henrietta's reenactment of Elsa's murder/suicide scene.
- Jerkass: Jean the heartless. Though to be fair, Angelica's death seemed to rattle him enough that he was moved to hug Rico after she claimed not to be saddened by the news. This shows that, deep down at least, he's not quite as heartless as he seems.
- And earlier, even before Ange's death, he frantically jumps into sea, in the middle of a firefight just to save Rico who got shot and nearly drowned. Not really a definition of complete dick.
- This troper always saw it as a Jerkass Facade. He knows Rico will die eventually, so tries to avoid any emotional attachment.
- Kick The Dog: most of Jean's interactions with Rico qualify, but Lauro's every thought and action toward Elsa take this to a whole new level, until she kills him and then herself.
- Kill Em All: The gruesome battle between the forces of the SWA and Giacomo's cell has brought the series right into this territory, and the face-off has resulted in the deaths of three cyborgs and, likely, two handlers, with Beatrice being among the dead.
- No handlers are listed in the causualty count (Which is pretty thorough, the cyborgs ARE differentiated between "no-longer-functioning" and "required a week to police up the remains").
- Knife Nut: Pinocchio, Triela is never without her's either, though she uses a full-size old-fashioned bayonet (for her almost a sword). When they go one-on-one, it is not pretty.
- Knights Templar: A deceptively named Intelligence Agency that uses brainwashed little girls to kill anyone who gets in their way or spots them on a job and occasionally handle unrelated kills as political favours. They get said girls by scouring the hospitals and are at best deceiving the staff/families about the nature of what is in store for them. Seems like they might be bending a few laws into pretzels in the name of anti-terrorism.
- Rico's Shoot The Dog moment seems to have been a one-off, I'd put it down to Jean. While they are definitely fighting a "dirty war", the others tend to play the "nothing to see here" card rather than shooting witnesses.
- They also express distaste for the political favours, but can't really say no since they're from high-ranking politicians that give support to the cyborg research.
- Laser Guided Amnesia: The girls have been conditioned out of their previous identities, but not of their basic social skills. Some of them show signs of things from before their transformations. When they start remembering more of their past life than what they did last year it's a very bad sign. see Angelica
- Laser Sight: Averted. Particularly with Rico, who is almost always the sniper/sharpshooter during missions.
- Lolicon: Basically all the girls except Petra and possibly Triela. Considering *where* the series come from, though...
- Loners Are Freaks: Elsa, who lives by herself and hardly interacts with the other girls and is Driven To Suicide because her handler Lauro, who she kills first, doesn't pay attention to her.
- Luminescent Blush: Henrietta does this the most, starting with the opening credits. And any attempt by Hilshire to bridge the gap between them causes Triela to react this way too, which says a lot about her true feelings.
- Make It Look Like An Accident: Possible case, Raballo's hit-and-run just before he was going to talk to a journalist about the Agency was very convenient. Angelica's father also pulled this to cash in on her life insurance policy, but she survived.
- Meaningful Name: There has been much speculation in fandom (no Word Of God yet) whether Jean named Rico after the Raketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations act (the "nuclear option" in US anti-mafia law, itself named after the title character in the gangster classic Little Caeser). By his background, he'd certainly know about it (military police, son of a lawyer). That it's a male varient of his Dead Little Sister name makes it even more appropriate.
- Meganekko: Claes
- Morality Pet: Given the affection Guiseppe showers on Henrietta, it's easy to forget that he too is a ruthless anti-terrorist operative, engaged in a personal Roaring Rampage Of Revenge. Lampshaded in a scene where a female politician crippled by a bomb comments on how frightening Guiseppe seems. Henrietta naturally protests that he's "the kindest man in all of Italy!" The politician wisely lets the matter drop.
- Ms Fanservice: Petra, who was converted into a cyborg as a significantly older age then most of the earlier girls. This is one of the major reasons that her character is controversial among the fandom.
- No Export For You: The series English release was handled by ADV’s troubled manga division. There was a long pause between Volumes Three and Four of the series, and nothing past Volume Six has gotten an official release. Some of Allesandro and Petra’s detractors like to blame them for this fact due to Volume Six being the first Volume that they appeared in, but whether they actually had much to do with it is highly debateable.
- Non Indicative First Episode
- No Periods Period: Averted, Triela talks at length about her period, and becomes very irritable when it happens. In the same episode, Henrietta notes she doesn't have that problem because during conditioning they took her uterus out.
- Oddly Named Sequel: Gunslinger Girl ~ Il Teatrino, the second season of the anime by a different studio.
- Only A Flesh Wound: averted, in the training sequence of the anime's first episode Henrietta is told to just aim in the general vicinity of the target as at close range hitting them anywhere will stop the target. justified elsewhere due to the girl's enhancements.
- Parental Abandonment: Taken to the extreme with Angelica, whose father actually ran her down in an attempt to cash in on her hefty life insurance money.
- Pollyanna: Most girls due to their conditioning, but mostly Rico. Jean treats her like an attack dog, and she's fine with that; it beats beings bed-ridden.
- Playing Against Type: Rico in the first series is voiced by Kanako Mitsuhashi...or let's say...Killua Zoldyck? One You Tube user who uploaded Rico's character song [1] pointed this out and claimed, "It's really pretty. But if you imagine Killua or Kouhei singing this, you'd probably choke."
- Punch Clock Villain: Bruno, who disposes of the bodies racked up by Padania. Ideals are nice, but they don't feed your family.
- Raised By Wolves: Rico was pretty much bed-ridden before her transformation, since then she's been raised by Jean, who wasn't very friendly or nuturing BEFORE seperatists blew up his family and fiance.
- Razor Floss: Used by Triela in one episode to off a mook.
- Rare Guns: Marco’s Steyr GB pistol and Petra’s SITES Spectre submachine gun, neither of which were produced in large numbers. Another, rather extreme example of this is the Walther WA 2000 used by Henrietta in the anime -less than two hundred WA 2000s were ever made.
- There's also Triela's Winchester 1897 Trench Gun. Guns of that design are no longer in use today and that specific gun stopped being produced about half a century ago.
- But they made a BUNCH of them (hundreds of thousands minimum), finding one lying around a military base would be easy.
- Real Women Never Wear Dresses: The only time you'll see Rico wearing a dress is the chapter that deals with an assassination At The Opera Tonight. Also, Triela never dressed femininely until later issues (since then she's worn skirts with blouses, suits and/or sweaters, but never a dress).
- Red Shirt: The first generation girls Chiara and Sylvia, who only get a little bit of focus before they're rather graphically slaughtered in the battle with Giacomo.
- Replacement Goldfish: Henrietta, of sorts. Giuseppe has her as a "replacement" for his and Jean's Dead Little Sister, Enrica
- Ret Con: some of the flashbacks in Il Teatrino (in the dub at least) slightly change the dialogue from the original Anime but generally keep the same meaning and tone.
- Robot Girl: All of them.
- Sawed Off Shotgun: For the most recent mission, Triela finally cuts down her signature Winchester (stock only), to make it handier for a reverse Fast Roping assault. She comments that she should have done this long before (recoil isn't an issue with her enhancements, size is).
- Scarpia Ultimatum: Not in-story, but one of the missions takes place during a showing of Tosca, and we see just about every important scene at least in part (see kids, anime can be educational). Claes has apparently memorized Tosca's whole cry to God speech/aria, which seems somehow appropriate.
- Schrodingers Cat: Angelica is heavily implied to have died in the first anime season, but is back in full action in Il Teatrino. It is mentioned she was released from hospital, indicating that she just fell asleep while watching the meteorite shower in the first season's last episode, which diminishes its emotional impact quite a bit.
- Though, She does end up dying in volume 9. It's far sadder than the anime, too.
- The Scrappy: Allesandro and Petra in the eyes of some fans. See this page’s entry for “Your Mileage May Vary."
- Senseless Violins: The preferred carrying cases for the girls' weapons are violin cases.
- Sequelitis: Despite being based on what is generally agreed to be the best parts of the manga, Il Teatrino has been very poorly received in Japan and abroad for extremely poor animation quality, very low or incorrect details on the guns (in a series generally obsessive about firearms detail) and inferior music to the original animation (not to mention a complete swap-out of the entire vocal cast in Japan, which lead to some fairly intense debates). A hopefully cleaned up DVD release in America (where the series is enduringly popular on DVD and on movie channels) with a few extra episodes may change perceptions, however.
- She Is All Grown Up: A recent chapter has Alessandro dressing up Triela, so she will fit in with Petra while they work together. A change in wardrobe and judicious padding, push her apparent age up to late teens. This makes Hillshire (and her) a bit uncomfortable As she is unlikely to ever reach that actual age. It seems to cause her to give up her pigtails, however.
- Shell Shocked Veteran: Nino, once a bomb-happy fanatic, now derisively nicknamed "The Tibetan Terrier" by other terrorists for his apparent over-caution (which turns out to be justified). And Franco is only inspired to continue making bombs by the fervor of his partner Franca.
- Shoot The Dog: Multiple times.
- Small Girl Big Gun: All of the girls. But most of the time the girls will use sub-machine guns or smaller caliber pistols. We've seen Rico handle some VERY large weaponry though (up to firing a G3 machine gun "Rambo style") and Triela's default weapon is a Winchester 1897 shotgun (army version presumably) with bayonet.
- Social Services Does Not Exist: Subverted in the most frightening way possible.
- Spell My Name With An S: Henrietta's handler is variously called; Jose, Guise, or Guiseppe depending on the translation. Given that his brother is named "Jean" (not Giovani, which was their father's name), it's probably an alias anyway (like Hillshire/Hirscher). Maybe we should just call him "Joe" and be done with it.
- In recent flashbacks, it's shown that his name is "Joseph" (or just maybe Josepho) and his brother is really "Jean", maybe their mom was French/Swiss (they're from Milan anyway).
- Giuseppe and Jose are (respectively) the Italian and Spanish variants of Joseph, so it's more likely that it's Giuseppe.
- The names "Jean" and "Josepho" are used (in a flashback), by their grandfather. Apparently their dad was really cosmopolitan.
- The Glasses Come Off: Justified. Raballo asks Claes to be kind and gentle whenever she wears them. When they come off, people start to die.
- The Stoic: Pinocchio.
- Super Soldier: Played dead straight for tragedy.
- Surrogate Soliloquy: Referenced in Triela's Image Song.
- Takehito Koyasu: Jean, in Gunslinger Girl ~ Il Teatrino.
- Tear Jerker: The whole blasted thing.
- This troper was really close to tears when Angelica died in the manga.
- Theme Naming: In-story. Triela has been getting stuffed bears from her handler from day one. The first seven are named for (Disney version) Snow White's dwarves. When she gets an eighth, it gets the name Augustus (Aug=8th month). After that she seems to have switched to Roman Emperors. We've seen Augustus, Caligula, and Claudius we have never seen Tiberius.
- There Are No Therapists: Somewhat subverted, as the SWA has an on-site doctor who has been seen talking to the girls, though it was only once and he hasn't really been seen since.
- Those Two Guys: Amadeo and Giorgio, section 2's resident GIS troopers.
- Tsundere: Triela, arguably.
- Twenty Minutes Into The Future/ Alternate universe: Debatable, but nearly everything about the world seems modern except for the film cameras, which were phasing out even when the manga started and the girls, which are cyborgs and thus well beyond today's technology. Oh, and the nonexistent groups and organizations, of course.
- Tyke Bomb: All of the girls.
- Values Dissonance: Any Italian would find all of the relationships including between the adults to be unspeakably cold and distant as the artists, due to cultural projection, have depicted them as Japanese relationships might be, instead of as the very physical Italians would act.
- Even to the extent of them bowing on occasion.
- For the relationships between the girls and the handlers/staff, though, this does become a bit of Fridge Brilliance as you realize that, hey, it's representative of just how uncomfortable everyone is around these walking killing machines. And, of course, the distance between Giuseppe and Jean is part of the point. For many of the more background characters, though, this is more of a straight example.
- Waif Fu: Every girl has engaged in hand to hand combat: Triela in particular.
- We Can Rebuild Him: Pretty much the premise of the series with the tragedy dialed up to 11.
- What Measure Is A Non Cute
- What Measure Is A Non Human: There is mounting confusion about how to view the girls, who lose their human traits more and more as time progresses.
- Wise Beyond Their Years: Triela and Claes.
- Worthy Opponent: In spite of her conditioning, Triela comes to respect Pinocchio as one.
- Yandere: Elsa. Henrietta is a bit like this, too.
- Your Mileage May Vary: Petra and her handler Allesandro. Depending on who you ask, responses can basically range from “interesting, well written characters who allow the author to explore new ground that he couldn’t explore with the original cast” to “have absolutely no purpose whatsoever except fan service and the author should kill them off immediately as an apology to the fans.”
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