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The girl has a mechanical body. However, she is still an adolescent child.

Gunslinger Girl is a manga created by Yu Aida, which also received two anime adaptations, telling 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 to form a unit called a "fratello" due to their supposedly sibling-like relationship. The girl's handler oversees her training, determines the level of drugs and conditioning she receives, and is ultimately her controller when out on a mission.

The stories focus on the relationship between the girls and their handlers. These relationships range from handlers who care for their charges like daughters or little sisters, to those who regard them merely as disposable tools. The 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. What happened to Triela was even worse.) 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. Despite this bleak backdrop, the show is interesting for its fairly nuanced and even-handed approach to these relationships and the girls' situation as child soldiers — while it does not glamorize the girls-with-guns concept, neither does it wallow in cynicism or mawkishness and treat their lives as entirely despairing black tragedies. Instead, the series has a tinge of optimism: of the girls finding solace and worth in their new situation where they can.

The manga began publication in Dengeki Daioh magazine in 2002 and finished in October 2012 with 100 chapters in 15 volumes. Two separate anime seasons were produced in 2003 (by Madhouse) and 2007 (by Artland). Both seasons of Gunslinger Girl's anime series were licensed and released in the US and Canada by Funimation. The manga has been continuously published in French, Italian and German, but the English version was more troubled: six volumes were released by ADV on an erratic schedule, then lapsed when ADV shut down its manga division before the company folded entirely. Seven Seas Entertainment revived the English license and began republication of the manga with a new translation from February 2011, this time compiling the volumes into omnibuses. Both the anime and manga are well worth your attention but prepare yourself for a moody introspective on mortality and identity mixed with gun battles.

The sequel/second season Gunslinger Girl: Il Teatrino gets a crossover with Girls' Frontline, which features all of cyborg girl protagonists including the dead ones.


Provides examples of:

  • 20 Minutes into the Future: Nearly everything about the world seems modern except for the film cameras, which were phasing out even when the manga started, and the cyborg girls, who are well beyond today's technology.
  • Adaptation Expansion: The first series of the anime adds several original incidents that did not appear in the manga (e.g. filling out Elsa's backstory), but they remain complementary to and consistent with established continuity, rather than setting up a different canon.
  • All Periods Are PMS: Justified; in her introductory episode Triela is having her period which gives her intense cramps and implied nausea, made worse by the fact that she is forbidden pain killers by the Agency because of her conditioning. The irritation arises naturally when her pain is compounded by the attitude of her handler and their target.
  • All There in the Manual:
    • The radio drama fills in the cracks during manga volume 6 and the first half of 7. It's mostly the girls elaborating on events that were shown (Triela's 2nd fight with Pino, Rico's whole day in Venice and her reaction to falling in the Lagoon, and Claes's reaction to her Berserk Button moment with Petra). We also learn where Angelica got the stuffed dog we see in volume 9 (and its name) and just how widely read Claes really is (enough to shock Hilshire). Plus, Triela scolds one of her bears.
    • A manga reader was able to do the research and compile a timeline.
    • We're shown a Distant Finale with Triela's daughter and a page with Jean, but we're never really told of the fates of any other characters. However the omnibus collections added a half-dozen pages about the remaining girls. They were put on a boat, along with the technical staff.
  • Alternate History
    • The Padania (the northern 5 provinces of Italy) separatist movement has a Real Life analogue, the "Lega Nord" party, but it's much less of an active threat. As of now, it's mostly working inside constitutional frameworks, but in their beginning they weren't that nice, at least in their declaration of intents.
    • There was an ethnic conflict in the Balkans that involved the explosion of a nuclear weapon in the Preševo Valley.
    • There's a battle at a nuclear plant which, in reality, got dismantled in 1987 after the Chernobyl disaster. Here the plant was shut down but demand for power that didn't have to be imported caused the government to build a new nuclear plant on the site.
  • Amulet of Dependency: Seen when the girls forget to take their medicine — Triela becomes weak and unable to fight properly, while Angelica becomes so desperate to get her hands on a weapon, she breaks Priscilla's wrist.
  • And Your Reward Is Clothes: Someone calls Jose on the expensive perfume he's bought his cyborg. Jose points out that the gifts he buys constitute Henrietta's salary. To all the girls, the meaning behind the gift is far more important than the gift itself. Triela places little value on the bears Hilshire buys her as a matter of routine until she realizes her handler really does care for her. After that, she refuses the option of a nice dress in exchange for another bear.
  • Anime Theme Song:
    • "The Light Before We Land," a melancholic song by Scottish band The Delgados, fits the mood of the series nicely. Incidentally, the same album from which this song is taken also contains the track "Child Killers".
    • Il Teatrino got a very solid, somewhat more driving piece in Japanese by domestic artist KOKIA, which also fits the escalating conflict portrayed in that series.
  • Anti-Hero:
    • The girls themselves are Punch Clock Heroines. Though older girls like Triela and Petra might express some moral outrage about the terrorists and criminals they fight, their motive for fighting in the first place is the desire to please their handlers that's been conditioned into them.
    • Most of the handlers. Jose has some serious mental issues, and a drinking problem, to boot. Marco is too straightforward and simple a person to make a good handler. Jean's a Knight Templar with a personal vendetta (and way too much influence over his brother). Sandro is in it for himself, period. Hilshire is an actual hero-slash-Knight in Sour Armor, but he is in way over his head (not for the first time).
    • While some of the SWA staff are portrayed as good people, all of them are working for an agency that brainwashes children and engages in extralegal assassinations—including in one case a congressman who's tough on terrorism, but he happens to be a rival of another politician who's backing the Agency's budget and wants him out of the way.
  • Anyone Can Die: Several cyborgs and agency personnel die over the course of the manga, including main characters.
  • Armor-Piercing Question: After the death of her handler Captain Raballo, Claes is reconditioned to forget him. During a standoff between the Agency and soldiers sent to take them out, Claes grabs a squad automatic weapon and goes out to confront them single-handed. Their commanding officer asks Claes if she knew Claudio Raballo, whom he once served with. Claes drops her weapon and collapses in tears, because no matter how hard she thinks, she still can't remember him.
  • Art Evolution:
    • The character designs changed quite a bit between the first and second seasons of the anime, due to a new studio. The new designs matched those of the manga better (except for Angelica), but the fanbase was less than pleased.
    • The manga lasted ten years, so, understandably, the art style changed drastically from start to end.
  • As the Good Book Says...:
    • Claes frequently shows off how widely read she is. Bad developments such as Henrietta's recent breakdown prompt her to quote Ecclesiastes 11:8-9 note  to Rico. She never names the chapter or verse, answering Rico's question "Is that poetry?" with "Not quite. It's Biblical".
    • When Triela compares Claes' willingness to act as The Bait to being a grain of wheat, Claes gives the John 12:24 quote in full, though she denies she's making a Heroic Sacrifice and rejects the idea of being a passive victim.
    • The central chapter of the Triela/Victor and Sandro/Petra team-up in volume 7 is called "The sheep and the goats" (in English) again without explanation.
    • Bianchi advises Jose to be "as clever as a snake and harmless as a dove" (Matthew 10:16) in his dealings with Henrietta.
  • At the Opera Tonight: Rico and Henrietta assassinate two men during a performance of Tosca at the Teatro Reale dell'Opera, with the girl's handlers explaining the plot to them. Back at the compound, Claes and Triela muse over how Rico and Henrietta would react if they saw the opera but when they return, Rico and Henrietta just say they hadn't paid much attention as they were working, being more interested in what their handlers thought of their performance.
    Claes: (quoting Tosca) I lived for my art, I lived for love...
  • Augmented Reality: In the final chapter, which takes place 10 years later, Speranza has a pair of AR glasses. Realistically, they are used much like a modern smartphone: for timetable management, taking photos, navigation and communication.
  • Badass Adorable: As noted In-Universe, the First Generation cyborg girls are of an age when kids are most adorable. Henrietta and Angelica in particular are subject to Cuteness Proximity. Of course that's the point, as they're meant get their targets' guard down.
  • Badass and Child Duo: An entire Government Agency of Fiction full of them. In an inversion, it's the child who is the most badass. The Agency even recruits handlers who have been forced to retire due to disabilities because they can rely on their cyborg to protect them.
  • Badass Normal:
    • Pinocchio has no cybernetics but is able to defeat Triela in hand-to-hand fighting.
    • Triela's unarmed combat instructor, Major Salles of the GIS. Moments after Triela flips a GIS trooper twice her size, Salles takes her down twice without showing a great amount of effort.
  • Battle Trophy: Pinocchio claims Triela's SIG pistol after knocking her out, a particular humiliation as she was personally issued it by Hilshire. After fleeing though, Pinocchio realizes the necklace given to him by his cell leader and Parental Substitute has been left behind. Triela claims it for herself until she has the opportunity to leave it on Pinocchio's dead body.
  • Bavarian Fire Drill: Early in the series Jose has to fill out forms just to take Henrietta to a restaurant. On her first day, Sandro takes Petra into the city and tells her to just smile and give a cheerful greeting to the guard as they're leaving the compound. It works.
  • Big Door: There are large vault-like doors in the medical wing where the cyborgs are conditioned. It's never mentioned why they are necessary.
  • Blessed with Suck: The girls receive 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.
  • Bookends:
    • "I heard a rumor about a government agency that uses children as assassins."
    • The first season anime opens with Jose taking a walk with Henrietta, overlooking the city as the bell tower rings. The final shot actually reuses those frames, albeit without the dialogue.
    • Though not applied to the exact beginning and end of the story, the cases of Elsa and Henrietta are clearly intended to mirror each other. Elsa, who was not loved enough, and Henrietta, who was loved too much, both reach the same point of killing their handler and committing suicide for those directly contrasting reasons, though in Henrietta's case it was a mutual suicide rather than Murder-Suicide. In a further Bookend, their bodies are cataloged by the same pair of detectives who investigated Elsa's death.
  • Brainwashed: A central part of the conditioning process, which tends to end up being More than Mind Control as the mutual danger makes handler and cyborg closer.
  • Brand X: "Nakia" phones are used in Il Teatrino by bombmaker Franco and Section One agents.
  • Break the Cutie: Downplayed as all the girls are taking what hope and joy they can from the situation, despite their horrific backstories and short lifespan. However Henrietta, whose adorability is lampshaded several times, has her traumatic memories resurface whereupon the trope is played straight.
  • Bring It
    • Dante has his men take over the New Turin Nuclear Power Plant, calls up the Prime Minister and tells him to send in the Social Welfare Agency, promising worse violence if they send them anywhere else.
    • Aragon of the Italian National Security Council brings three companies of paratroopers with armoured support to attack the SWA compound, but first she rings up Defense Minister Monica Petris, who's holed up inside, and encourages her to surrender. Petris tells Aragon that those Agency personnel who refused to evacuate have chosen to stay and defend what honor they have left. "So come at us then."
  • Chekhov's Gun:
    • The literal version with Triela who is attached to her obsolete trench gun but doesn't know why due to her wiped memories. In the flashback chapter which reveals how she came to the Agency, Mario Bossi and Victor Hilshire are shown using this shotgun when they rescue Triela in Amsterdam.
    • During the investigation of Elsa and Lauro's deaths, Henrietta is the one to figure out what happened (that Elsa killed Lauro and then herself). While demonstrating, she heavily implies that she would take the same course of action were she to learn that her affections for Jose were hopeless. After Henrietta frags Jose and he lies there dying, she remembers this moment through her Laser-Guided Amnesia, and Jose holds a gun to her eye and tells her to fulfill her promise.
  • Child Soldiers: The first-generation cyborgs are adolescents while the Second Generation are mid-to-late teens. There's also Pinocchio who was trained as a Padania assassin after being discovered as an abused child.
  • Children Are Innocent: Zig-zagged. Yes, they're basically child assassins, but there are several moments that remind you that at heart, they're still adolescent girls.
    Alphonso: It's just the thought of these little girls who can kill terrorists and speak three languages, and here they are singing Beethoven in the bitter cold. It's a shame they have to be cyborgs.
  • Children Forced to Kill: Pretty much the basis of the plot.
  • Cleanup Crew: Bruno and Vincenzo, two Punch Clock Villains who dispose of bodies for Padania.
  • Combat Parkour: Cyborg girl Rico backflips toward terrorist leader Dante while he shoots at her with an assault rifle during the Turin Nuclear Plant siege.
  • Conditioned to Accept Horror: The main dramatic theme of the plot before it was streamlined into more mainstream action.
  • Conveniently an Orphan: Done plausibly. The Social Welfare Agency only selects girls who don't have extended families who'll be concerned about them. As a victim of child sex trafficking, Triela's background is unknown even to the Agency. Henrietta's entire family was murdered and Angelica's parents are in prison. Petra's family are too poor to travel to see their daughter, which is just as well, as her appearance has been altered completely—in the final chapters it's hinted that they (and the dance school she attended) were told that she died of her cancer. As Rico is one of the few cyborgs who retains memories of her previous life, the occasional visit from her estranged parents is no doubt enough to reassure them that their ill girl is receiving the best of care, and the Agency would have no trouble getting Rico to play along.
  • Cooldown Hug: Hilshire on Triela after her second go-round with Pinocchio, a Bookend to how Triela refused to let Hilshire comfort her after her first defeat by Pinocchio.
  • Creator's Culture Carryover: Though it's set in Italy, the series had many of the adult handlers be quite reserved towards their charges, probably causing Values Dissonance for any Italian viewers. They even bow sometimes. The girls don't act much like typical Italian girls either, though you can put that down to the way they've been raised and conditioned.
  • Creepy Child: Cute as the girls are the series takes pains to remind you that they are also cold-blooded killing machines. Rico, with her tendency to kill and torture with the same cheerful enjoyment that she faces everything else in life, easily takes first place in this trope.
  • Crush Blush: Henrietta does this the most, starting with the Title Sequence, but it happens any time there's physical contact between a girl and their handler, even with Triela or Claes.
  • Cultured Warrior: The girls are exposed to varying amounts of culture, depending on their aptitudes and handlers. Henrietta is a skilled violinist, Claes is very well-read, and she and roommate Triela have discussed Honoré de Balzac and the opera Tosca in a "matter of fact" way. Rico expressed great interest when she visited an art museum. However Angelica can barely remember anything anymore, and Triela notes that she knows virtually nothing of pop culture while guarding Mimi. Pinocchio seems to be this trope when we see him playing the piano, but it turns out he can only play the one tune and his Parental Substitute kept him out of school. The trope is lampshaded when Raballo shows Claes his extensive library and says that reading makes you a good soldier... then notes ironically that he's reading a book on growing vegetables.
  • Curse That Cures: Rico is a cyborg, Professional Killer, Child Soldier, and, for all practical purposes, a slave owned by a Government Agency of Fiction... and she loves her job. Why? Because it beats being a quadriplegic.
  • Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Downplayed as it's the loss of memory that's shown to have more effect than the cybernetic conversion.
  • Cycle of Revenge: The self-destructive nature of the spiral of revenge and recrimination is a central theme and oft-repeated motif. One chapter is even entitled "To break the cycle of retaliation" and an entire story arc is entitled "Vendetta". Several SWA handlers and Padania terrorists are obsessed with avenging family members killed by the other side.
  • Day in the Life: A Day In The Life Of Claes is a surprisingly moving episode (especially in the anime with its rendition of "Scarborough Fair") showing how Claes tries to mourn a handler she no longer remembers.
  • Decoy Protagonist: A good portion of official artwork, the logo, and the earlier part of the series focus heavily on Henrietta and Jose over any other pair, and even though the others begin to get more screentime as the series progresses, this makes most people automatically assume that they are the "main heroes". By the end of the series, it's clear that there have been two main plots: Triela and Hilshire's hope, and Jose and Jean's revenge.
  • Department of Child Disservices: The Social Welfare Agency is more or less this, although considering most of the girls' backstories, they are still arguably better off. In fairness, we're shown that lessons learnt by having cybernetic technology Tested on Humans are being applied in a genuine manner to others. When Marco and Jose go to visit Angelica's distant relatives in order to retrieve her childhood dog, they meet her cousin Ricardo, who received a new prosthetic leg from the government that was only possible due to the data collected from the cyborgs' implants.
  • Diabolus ex Machina: Just when you thought Petrushka might have escaped the "Everybody Dies" Ending, she's told that the implants she received only cured the symptoms of her cancer (by allowing her to function normally and so on), not the disease itself, which has now already spread throughout her remaining organic parts and will soon kill her. Mind you, the SWA knew all along; they just didn't consider worthwhile to pay for treatments for a cyborg who's going to die young anyway. To make things worse, Petrushka was a second-generation cyborg, meaning she would've otherwise lived far longer than the other ones (if still not nearly as long as a normal human).
  • Dirty Cop:
    • A lot of them (mostly Polizia di Stato and Carabinieri) are on the side of the FRF, either due to bribes or political sympathy.
    • There is an episode where the SWA is deployed to take down a team of corrupt paratroopers from the Tuscania Regiment. One of them was Jose's friend from his Carabinieri days.
  • Distant Finale: The epilogue of the series happens many years later, featuring Triela's daughter living with Roberta in California. Meanwhile back in Italy, Jean Croce has become chief of an anti-terrorist unit. He keeps a photo of Rico on his desk.
  • 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.
    • Henrietta clasps Jose's shirt to her body while lying on his bed.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: Despite the massive losses the SWA faced against Dante and the near annihilation of the Agency due to the PM trying to cover his own ass, the SWA eventually turns into a legit research center in Europe to advance cybernetic prosthetics in the hopes that they can help disabled persons. Some of the SWA survivors like Jean are spared from being imprisoned or killed and are instead, shuffled to various law enforcement and intelligence agencies in order to combat future criminal/terrorist threats in Europe while others are continuing their research work on improving the research on cyborg-based prosthetics.
  • Edgy Backwards Chair-Sitting: In the first season Title Sequence, Triela is shown sitting like this in a chair. Her pose is relaxed and calm, which is deceptive considering that in the previous scene she was running and shooting a pistol.
  • Elephant in the Living Room: Angelica is in hospital, shunned by her handler after stuffing up on a mission. Her friends are trying to cheer her up when she suddenly bursts into tears, declaring that they are all going to die without having the chance to know anything about life. The other cyborgs maintain an embarrassed silence until Claes punches Angelica in the face. Claes later returns to visit Angelica in private and admits she's just as frightened of dying as she is.
  • Elites Are More Glamorous: The GIS, being the Carabinieri's elite anti-terrorist unit. There's also the 1st Regiment Carabinieri "Tuscania", the Carabinieri's elite special forces paratrooper unit.
  • 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.
    • When Angelica finally dies, it affects the handlers more than her friends. Even Triela is surprised how little she's affected.
    • Inflicted on Henrietta when her deteriorating emotional state forces the Agency to redo her conditioning, which "resets her to factory settings," so to speak. One of the doctors explains to Jose that while she is a usable assassin again, her personality is little more than that of a robot soldier. However this is only shown to be a temporary effect, as she regains her emotions with fatal results.
  • Even Evil Has Standards:
    • Franca and Franco are terrorist bombmakers, but several scenes have them intervening to prevent children from being harmed.
    • 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, because they're conservative terrorists, and those icons represent the things they believe they are fighting to protect (this becomes Dramatic Irony when we have a Padania hitman who refuses to kill someone in the Galleria Degli Uffizi while, unknown to him, Jean is torturing his accomplice in the men's room). Furthermore, they limit civilian casualties as much as possible by only attacking government locations. Their enemy is the government itself, not the people under them.
  • Extranormal Institute: In one scene Hilshire is shown in a classroom teaching the girls German. Triela is helping Rico with translating her test questions, which consist of weapon calibers and the words: Man, woman, father, mother, and... student (not child, or girl, or daughter).
  • Fan Disservice: The obsession the girls have for their older male handlers (though Yu is careful not to have things the other way round; even Sandro doesn't put the moves on Petra until her Anguished Declaration of Love), the occasional suggestive shot in early chapters, Henrietta's pre-cyborg rape and mutilation, the detached manner with which Sandro checks out his new cyborg, and a half-naked Triela in the Snuff Film scene.
  • Fanservice: While not at the forefront, it is there — Gun Porn (every character uses a different firearm, all well detailed), Triela has a Shower Scene with Godiva Hair, and Petra has a lot of Leg Focus.
  • Fast-Roping:
    • Done in episode 12, when Triela and Angelica break into a mountain terrorist base. The glass is weakened beforehand to enable their subsequent Super Window Jump.
    • Triela and Beatrice 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.
  • Faux Fluency: A problem with all the Italian in the series: the grammar is correct, but the pronunciation is bad enough that actual Italians have serious problems even recognizing that it's not Japanese.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • One of Claes' lines from the very first episode foreshadows what will go wrong with Henrietta and Jose's relationship: "If it were me, I'd resented being that devoted to."
    • On several different occasions, Jose tells Henrietta the story of Orion and Artemis. The legend foretells their fate; Jose is accidentally shot by Henrietta, and they end up Together in Death when they commit mutual suicide.
  • Friend or Foe?: Jose gets shot by Henrietta when he tries to stop her Unstoppable Rage during the nuclear power station attack. He assumes this is a matter of The Dog Bites Back, though it was actually her Berserk Button set off by memories of her original assault.
  • Front Organisation: The Social Welfare Agency carries out legitimate research and charity work involving cybernetics and hypno-therapy, which provides a cover for the few patients who get diverted into Section Two's assassin program.
  • Gender-Blender Name: Some of the cyborgs are given male names to make it easier for the handlers to disassociate themselves from what they're forcing these young girls to do.
  • Government Agency of Fiction: The Social Welfare Agency.
  • Grey-and-Gray Morality: The Social Welfare Agency mostly fights terrorists and extremist factions, but all sides have understandable motivations for their actions and use morally reprehensible means to accomplish their goals.
  • Go for the Eye: The weak point of a cyborg, though Jean says they're working on bullet-resistant optics. The cyborgs know this and will use their non-firing arm to shield their eyes during combat. Shooting oneself in the eye is also used by the cyborgs as a means of suicide.
  • Gun Porn: Very realistic Gun Porn, at least until Il Teatrino.
  • Hallucinations:
    • Jose and Jean are both haunted by their dead little sister, who taunts them for failing to avenge her. It's implied this has more to do with their guilt than any genuine Ghostly Goals.
    • A symptom of deterioration in a cyborg's conditioning. Angelica imagines seeing Perro, the dog she owned before she became a cyborg. Marco is eventually able to track the dog down in the hope of giving her some comfort.
  • The Handler: Each cyborg is partnered with an older male handler, and as they have total discretion over how they're trained and how much conditioning they receive, the nature of that partnership varies with each fratello.
  • Handicapped Badass: Marco (eye damage) and Raballo (lost a leg from an accidental discharge) are both using Section 2 as a chance to get back into the field.
  • Harmful to Minors: Nearly every one of the girls has been a witness or victim of horrific violence, sexual assault, or both.
  • Heel Realization:
    • Angelica shields Marco from a car bomb, but Marco — relieved that he didn't lose his sight in the blast — doesn't even ask about her until Jose brings the subject up. The realization that she’s dying finally causes him to start comforting her. In the anime it's a What the Hell, Hero? speech by Henrietta of all people that does this.
    • In the manga Angelica's death makes all the handlers rethink their relationships with their cyborgs: Alessandro and Petrushka share a First Kiss, Jean's Hidden Heart of Gold shows through when he's moved to hug Rico, and Hilshire becomes overly protective of Triela to the extent of leaving her in a hotel room while taking on an assassination himself — leading to a further Heel Realisation when he realizes that he’s been letting Triela do all the killing as a means of avoiding guilt.
  • Hollywood Cyborg: The assassins are repaired synthesized muscles and carbon fiber frames in order to give them heightened strength and reflexes.
  • Hollywood Healing: Justified, as all body parts can be replaced through each repair, replacement or reconditioning. However this requires a drug that causes brain damage and shortens the girls' lifespans.
  • Hope Sprouts Eternal: Not the flower version, but the final scene is Speranza saying that there is still hope in the world.
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: All episode titles for the first season, as well as the box set volume names, are in Italian.
  • I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: Averted: Raballo goes ballistic (he lost his leg in a firing range accident) when he sees Henrietta look down the barrel of a jammed pistol and berates Jose for neglecting her training. Ironically this leads to another danger when Henrietta sees her handler attacked and responds appropriately, causing Claes to try and shoot her in turn. Only the quick action of their handlers averts disaster.
  • I Know Karate: 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. After her defeat to Pinocchio, Triela gets supplementary training from Italian special forces, as she's become too used to relying on her cybernetic abilities.
  • I'm Cold... So Cold...:
  • Image Song: All the girls get one.
  • Implied Death Threat: Henrietta recreates the death of Elsa who shot her own handler and then killed herself after she realised that her handler did not return her feelings. Alarmed, Jose knocks the pistol out of Henrietta's hand; it turns out to be unloaded. After all, says Henrietta, how could she possibly kill herself "as long as you're this wonderful, Jose...".
  • Imprinting: Implied in the way the handler is always introduced to their cyborg, with the girl waking up in bed, their memories wiped, to find the handler there.
  • Improperly Placed Firearms: Apart for Triela's Winchester 1897, all of the guns used by the Social Welfare Agency are fairly difficult to find in Italy even for a government-sponsored assassination force, and all of them could have been easily replaced by actual Italian military hardware (the only exception being Petra's SITES Spectre submachine gun, which is actual Italian military hardware specifically made for special forces. It's the most logical weapon they could have possibly given the girls). Lampshaded in Chapter 4 when a SIG Sauer pistol is found at the scene of a dead SWA team by local police, who comment on the rarity of German-made automatics in Italy. It is possible that the Agency deliberately sources its hardware outside of conventional channels to lessen the suspicion of government involvement.
  • Inconsistent Spelling:
    • Henrietta's handler is variously called Jose, Guise, or Giuseppe (Spanish, French, and Italian variations of the same name) depending on the translation. Maybe we should just call him "Joe", the English form, and be done with it. His brother is unambiguously Jean (French), not Giovanni (Italian) like their father, so perhaps dad gave them cosmopolitan names as part of his strongly hinted rebellion against their grandfather, lending support to Jose, which is used by the most English translations.
    • For Triela's handler, both ADV's and Seven Seas' separate manga translations and Funimation's anime dub went with "Hilshire" (English based), whereas Funimation's subtitles and the German version of the manga went with Hirscher (German based). He is German which might indicate the second form, but it's a codename which might negate that. For the purposes of this site, we stick with Hilshire as it's used by more English translations.
  • Indy Hat Roll: Rico and Henrietta slide under a closing door during the attack on the terrorist-occupied nuclear power plant.
  • The Infiltration: The SWA does this for several missions, as do the terrorists that raid the Turin Nuclear Power Plant.
  • Interservice Rivalry: Seen between Sections 1 and 2 during the investigation into Elsa's death, and at the start of the Pinocchio arc. Draghi, who runs Section 1, resents the idea of cyborgs replacing his human operatives and tries to dig up dirt that can discredit Section 2.
  • Institutional Allegiance Concealment: The Social Welfare Agency masquerades as a legitimate NGO backed by Rome. This gives them enough cover to run a black ops agency that operates in Italy.
  • In a Single Bound:
    • Henrietta when chasing a purse thief — the same incident also features a Magic Skirt and Neck Lift.
    • While in Venice, Rico leaps from the dock onto a boat moored offshore to avoid a burst of gunfire, but lands off balance and falls into the canal.
    • Petrushka also leaps multiple stories, and from the ground to the top of a crane on two separate occasions, no doubt helped by her longer legs.
  • Ironic Echo: In the manga during the initial search for Pinocchio, Triela is trying to get information out of a trio of teenage punks. When they start hitting on her to go off with them, she asks them "Shouldn't you be in school?" They laugh it off and ask her why she isn't. Before things get really threatening, Hilshire shows up to collect Triela. As they are walking away, Hilshire turns around and asks the boys "Why aren't you in school?"
  • It Was a Gift:
    • When a moped-riding purse snatcher steals the camera Jose gave him, Henrietta uses her cyborg abilities to chase him down and get it back, heedless of the risk of blowing her cover.
    • Rico's cuddling pillow is a seemingly out-of-character gift from Jean. A flashback scene shows that Enrica Croce had a similar pillow, presumably also a gift from her Aloof Big Brother.
    • The girls regard even the weapons given to them by their handlers as gifts, putting far greater emotional attachment to them than you'd expect for a tool of the trade. Both Triela and Henrietta are distraught when they lose their weapons in combat. Triela's stolen pistol later gets used against her by the person who took it, making her even more furious.
  • It Works Better with Bullets: Henrietta asks for her pistol and proceeds to reenact the events leading to Elsa's suicide. Jose snatches the pistol off her before she can pull the trigger, but Elenora had already taken the precaution of unloading it first.
  • Kick the Dog: Some of Jean's interactions with Rico qualify, but Lauro's every thought and action toward Elsa take this to a whole new level.
  • Knight 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 who occasionally handle unrelated kills as political favors. 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.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia:
    • The girls have been conditioned out of their previous identities, but not of their basic social skills. Some of them show traits from before their transformations. When they start remembering more of their past lives than what they did in the last year, it's a very bad sign.
    • After her handler dies, Claes has her memories of him removed as it's too difficult to bond her to another handler.
    • Rico seems to have retained memories of her past identity, as her introductory episode in the anime's first season shows, presumably because her bedridden past gives her a good incentive to be loyal to the Agency, which gave her the ability to walk.
  • Last Episode, New Character: The epilogue both introduces and revolves around Triela's daughter Speranza.
  • The Last Dance: Petra does a literal version, having Claes play the piano and Rico record her doing the ballet of the Dying Swan by Camille Saint-Saëns. Sandro delivers the video to her ex-boyfriend in Russia (who'd been told that Elizaveta, the woman Petra used to be, had died) telling him that this is a woman who'd been donated Elizaveta's organs.
  • Leave No Witnesses:
    • Rico befriends a boy working as a bellhop while scoping out her target, but Jean orders her to kill anyone who sees her committing an assassination. While leaving the hotel room after the hit, she runs into the boy and in one of the more memorable scenes of the series kills him while smiling cheerfully because she remembered the right words to use in a situation like this: "I am sorry." However, this is the only example of this trope from the Agency, and is used more to highlight her handler's ruthless nature; other handlers just use the Move Along, Nothing to See Here approach.
    • Child assassin Pinnochio's first hit is witnessed by a girl younger than he is, so he kills her. As a teenager he's entirely willing to finish off another girl who accidentally discovers his weaponry (fortunately Franca stops him) yet when he knocks out Triela shortly afterwards he can't bring himself to give her the Coup de Grâce when she's lying unconscious on the floor in front of him, as he's still haunted by the memory of that first girl he killed.
  • Left Your Lifesaver Behind: Triela runs away in tears after realizing Hilshire went on an assassination mission without her and got wounded in the process. She leaves both her pistol and conditioning medicine behind, and withdrawal symptoms make her too weak to defend herself when she gets grabbed by a couple of Camorra thugs.
  • Let's You and Him Fight: During the Turin Nuclear Plant siege, it's strongly implied that the Italian Prime Minister is hoping that the politically-dangerous Section Two and the militant wing of Padania will wipe each other out.
  • Literal-Minded: When Raballo first starts instructing Claes, he's annoyed by her lousy shooting (actually because she's not used to her cyborg implants) and tells her not to leave the range until she can consistently hit the target. The next day it's pouring down rain and Raballo grouches that he hasn't seen any sign of the girl he's supposed to be teaching. He's told to go to the firing range where he finds Claes cold and shivering, still trying to hit the target as instructed after practicing all night. Henrietta also stays up all night stripping and assembling her pistol because Jose told her to get proficient quickly. When the SWA begins developing the second generation of cyborgs, they specifically mention that they'll be making the conditioning milder and more flexible to hopefully avoid instances like these.
  • Littlest Cancer Patient: An Invoked Trope by Jean, who presents recruits to the SWA with a sickly girl in a hospital bed and tells them they can give her a second chance at life. By the time it sinks in what they've signed up for, it's too late to back out as that would mean abandoning their 'sibling' who can't be reprogrammed for another handler.
  • Made of Iron: It takes heavy weapons or a bullet through the eye to harm a cyborg. This occasionally works to their disadvantage as well, since it causes them to underestimate threats and neglect their defense.
  • Meaningful Echo:
    • An angry Marco tells a wounded Angelica that's she's "freaking useless!" after she stuffs up on a mission. However, his tone (as opposed to Lauro's curt and derisory "Useless!" after Elsa's mission-related stuff-up) shows that Marco is putting on a show, as opposed to Lauro, who was just being a Jerkass.
    • Captain Raballo's final advice to his cyborg Claes is "One must think clearly before pulling a trigger" (instead of blindly obeying orders like she'd been conditioned to do). Fortunately the commander of the troops sent to crush the SWA also served under Raballo and got the same advice. As a result, he doesn't shoot Claes when ordered, enabling the situation to be resolved peacefully.
    • When Rachelle Belleut is trying to resuscitate the snuff film victim who will become Triela, she says that she has to believe there is still hope in the world. Roberta Guellfi says the same thing to Hilshire when she thinks she's dying. Roberta later becomes the surrogate mother of Triela's daughter Speranza (aka Hope), who says this as the final line of the series.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • You can't really expect anything good from a character named Dante.
    • Triela's daughter Speranza (Hope).
  • Memory Trigger: The "Conditioning" to turn the titular girls into assassins represses their memories, but they can sometimes resurface.
    • Angelica loses her memory of everything she's been taught since coming to the Agency, but when Marco brings her pet dog to her hospital bed, she remembers her pet and the 'accident' that put her in hospital.
    • Henrietta sees a man in a ski mask, which triggers the memories of her being assaulted by a masked maniac. The first time this happens, she panics and drops her weapon off the roof, leaving her unable to give supporting fire. The second time this happens, she flies into a fit of rage and accidentally shoots her handler.
  • Mercy Kill: Winds up becoming a part of Henrietta's suicide pact with Jose after accidentally shooting him during her rampage during the nuclear plant fight.
  • Mistress of Disguise: This is a quality of all of the cyborgs — few suspect a sweet young thing to be a Spec-Ops killer, allowing them to hide in plain sight — but is a particular proficiency of the Alessandro & Petrushka fratello, who are well-acquainted with wigs, make-up, and quick wardrobe changes.
  • Mood Whiplash:
    • Every time the cyborgs switch between little girls and ruthless killing machines; i.e., Angelica on her first mission — she massacres half a dozen terrorists in as many seconds, then turns and gives the camera a "Did I do good?" smile. Marco, watching the scene later on video, is noticeably disturbed.
    • The tenth episode of the first season opens with Jose and Henrietta departing for a vacation to Sicily Island and having a pleasant conversation, which then abruptly transitions into Jose informing Henrietta that one of her fellow cyborgs was murdered, and we cut to her dead body and the investigating officers.
    • A similar moment happens later on with Jean and Rico. Rico is practicing at a shooting range and does well enough to get an outright compliment from Jean, an occurrence so rare that she practically starts glowing, and then Jean tells her that Angelica passed away.
  • Moral Myopia: The cyborgs kill without a qualm and are indifferent to their own injuries, but regard any attack on their handler as an outrageous affront worthy of immediate vengeance.
  • More Dakka: Once Dante gets involved in the scene, we see increasing firepower being used to counter the fearsome abilities of the cyborgs. This includes claymore mines, portable anti-tank launchers, 50-caliber and 20mm anti-material rifles, a Blackhawk helicopter with minigun and a cruise missile warhead used as a suicide bomb. After taking over the Turin Nuclear Power Plant, Dante's forces use captured IFV's, self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, sentry guns and an atomic bomb. The Agency responds in kind, deploying remote-piloted armoured vehicles and airborne drones firing Hellfire missiles. The government then one-ups the Agency by calling in Ariete main battle tanks.
  • Multinational Team: Downplayed, since most of the SWA personnel are from Italian security forces and intelligence. A few, however, are recruited from other parts of Europe. Victor Hilshire is a Polizei officer from Germany and was formerly attached to Europol. Olga is from Russia and was an ex-Russian embassy employee. As for the cyborgs, Triela has Tunisian roots, Claes possibly has some Swedish roots due to her surname before being reconditioned, and Petruska is from Russia.
  • My New Gift Is Lame: Hilshire keeps giving Triela teddy bears as gifts, being Maternally Challenged and figuring that all Girls Love Stuffed Animals. Eventually, their relationship develops enough for him to ask what she wants, but she just asks for another bear so she'll have seven. To her annoyance, she gets another bear from someone else, leaving her with eight bears.
  • No Periods, Period: Averted. During her introductory episode Triela is in pain from her period and has a lengthy conversation with Henrietta about it. Henrietta matter-of-factly notes she doesn't have that problem because during her cyberization they took her uterus out.
  • Oblivious to Love:
    • Likely deliberate on the part of the handlers as the adoration of underage female cyborgs makes them rather uncomfortable. Jose is regarded as rather odd for encouraging his cyborg's affections, but even he doesn't understand why Henrietta insists on eating an ice cream with him on the Spanish Steps in winter.
    • Triela preparing candles for a romantic dinner when she's staying in a hotel with Hilshire, who responds by turning on the lights and asking what she's doing in the dark.
  • Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: Gunslinger Girl ~ Il Teatrino, the second season of the anime by a different studio.
  • Oh, Crap!:
    • Both the terrorists in Padania and the SWA forces are hit with this: the terrorists when they learn the SWA's cyborgs have been deployed against them, and the cyborgs when they learn that Dante's prepared anti-material weapons that can easily kill them.
    • Even Beatrice has this reaction when she sees a 500kg missile warhead suspended in the rafters above her head as a suicide bomb.
  • Only a Flesh Wound:
    • Averted. In the training sequence of the anime's first episode, Henrietta is told to just aim for the center of mass, because at close range, hitting the target anywhere will stop them dead. Justified for the main characters, due to the girls' enhancements that make them Made of Iron and Feel No Pain. When the terrorists start bringing in heavier weaponry to fight the cyborgs, things are different.
    • After his cyborg throws herself in the blast of a Bouncing Betty mine, Guise hastens to assure Henrietta that the minor injury to his finger is 'just a scratch' because he sees her finger tightening on the trigger in response. When Hilshire tries the 'just a scratch' excuse after going on a mission without his cyborg and getting wounded, Triela is furious and views his action as a betrayal of her trust. She later has to cut the bullet out of him with a knife and no anesthetic.
  • Only One Name: Almost all of the cyborgs. Elsa de Sica is the only subversion; her handler gave her the name of the park they were walking in at the time because he had to call her something and that was all he could think of.
  • Past Experience Nightmare:
    • For all of her bouncy demeanor, Rico has a paralyzing, mortal terror of losing the gift of movement that the Agency has given her, and has nightmares about it, to the point where she checks her mobility every time she wakes up.
    • While undergoing reconditioning, Henrietta has a flashback of her family murdered and sees herself on a bed being raped and mutilated by a hatchet-wielding maniac in a balaclava. She goes to shoot him, only for her pistol to come apart in her hands. She wakes up seemingly cured, but the sight of balaclava-wearing GIS soldiers or terrorists brings the memories to the surface at the worst time.
  • Phenotype Stereotype: Subverted. The European characters (which is to say, unusually for a manga, all of them except for the African girl) all possess realistic features which often deviate from the national stereotype. Hilshire and Claes, for example, a German and a Swede, are both dark-eyed brunettes, while the Italian Rico is blonde.
  • Pink Mist
  • Pin-Pulling Teeth: Happens during a Killing House training exercise. Justified for cyborgs; less so when Franco does it during the Final Battle of Teatrino.
  • The 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 bedridden.
  • Precision F-Strike: From the dub of Il Teatrino: "This is such a fucked-up world."
  • The Purge: After the Croce Incident, the government used this as an excuse to conduct a purge of public service jobs of alleged "right-wing sympathizers" so only their own supporters would remain. Ironically several of these people gained jobs with the SWA as a result. Even the Croce brothers were accused of having been part of the conspiracy to murder their own parents.
  • Rambunctious Italian: Inverted. The mainly troubled cast is stoic and largely unaffectionate, the complete opposite of stereotypical Italians. This is invoked by the handlers as they don't want to become attached to their cyborgs.
  • Razor Floss: In the anime episode "Gelato", a terrorist guard goes to investigate why there's suddenly no traffic on the road outside. As he walks under a tree, Triela loops a garotte around his neck then jumps out of the tree, lifting him up off his feet and strangling him.
  • Red Shirt: The first-generation girls Chiara and Sylvia, who only get a little bit of focus shortly before they're rather graphically slaughtered in the bell tower assault (though it's suggested Chiara survives). Then there's the second generation girls who share Petra's room whose names (Freccia, Soni, Gattonero) we only find out during the final battle in the Turin Nuclear Plant. In general, the series focuses on only five 1st generation and one 2nd generation cyborg.
  • Reed Richards Is Useless: Averted as the work of the Social Welfare Agency covers for the few girls who are used for the assassination program. Meanwhile the cybernetic technology is Tested on Humans so it can be used for legitimate purposes; we see at least one boy with an artificial leg built by the SWA who has no connection with Section Two.
  • Reliably Unreliable Guns:
    • Averted — during the first encounter between Hilshire and Franca, Franca tricks Hilshire into misfiring his pistol. It instead merely caused a jam. Hilshire simply fixes the jam and starts firing at Franca.
    • There is also a scene where Henrietta is undergoing pistol training. Her gun misfires, and she looks down the barrel to see the problem. Raballo, the handler for another Fratello, promptly grabs the gun out of her hand and yells at her handler Jose for not training her properly.
  • Retcon: 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.
  • Revenge Before Reason: The Croce brothers are so fixated on getting Dante that during the Venice belltower assault, when Beatrice informs them there's a missile warhead set up as a suicide bomb in the rafters, they insist the cyborgs keep searching for Dante instead of immobilizing the bomb or pulling out. Dante of course isn't even in the building.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Jean and Jose are driven heavily by revenge and are easily distracted by it when they learn that their adversary for the arc is Giacomo Dante, their family's prime killer. Surprisingly, Jean is consumed by it much less than Jose, and when PFC Julia Aprea wanted to join the SWA attack on Dante's group to avenge her friends, he told her that she should go enjoy her youth for their sake and that he will take vengeance for them, showing that he didn't want anyone else to go down the path he and his brother did.
  • Robot Girl: Well cyborg girl anyway.
  • Say My Name: "Giacomooo!!!" invokes this response among those who have a very good reason to hate him.
  • Save the Villain: Rather than shoot Dante who killed her childhood friend Enrica, Aprea chooses to capture him, even though the captured terrorist will inspire attempts to rescue him. Sandro lets Emma and Ashiq go in exchange for them revealing the whereabouts of Cristiano Savonarola. Savonarola isn't executed, but convinced to reveal the right-wing businessman who funded Padania and ordered the bombing of the Croce family. He in turn thinks he'll be executed when Rico turns up, but he's arrested instead. Given the general desire to end the Cycle of Revenge in the country, there's at least a reason for all this, even though no-one really believes it will mean an end to terrorism.
  • Sawed-Off Shotgun: For the Venice belltower assault, Triela cut off the stock on her signature Winchester to make it handier for a reverse Fast-Roping. She comments that she should have done this long before (recoil isn't an issue with her enhancements, but size is).
  • Scenery Porn: At least the first season of the anime spends a good bit of time on the Italian cities and their architecture. Episode 7, "Protezione", is probably the most notable.
  • Self-Censored Release: The series' original incarnation was a doujinshi series with some graphic sexual content.
  • Senseless Violins: The girls conceal their weapons in musical instrument cases. Henrietta is the one most often seen carrying the iconic violin case; ironically she actually does play the violin. Rico once used a clarinet case in the anime—when a boy she meets asks to hear her play, she has to make up an excuse why she won't open it.
  • She Is All Grown Up:
    • Alessandro dresses 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 the late teens. This makes Hilshire (and her) a bit uncomfortable as she is unlikely to ever reach that actual age.
    • A female soldier at the nuclear power plant that Dante has taken over begs Jean to let her take part in the attack so she can get vengeance. At first it looks like she wants to avenge her fellow soldiers who have just been killed by Dante's mercenaries. It's several more chapters before we find out that she's Enrica's former classmate.
  • 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.
  • Shipper on Deck: Triela is assigned to guard Mimi, a girl her age who notices her crush on Hilshire and encourages her to let him know how she feels. Being well aware that Hilshire isn't interested in having an affair with a fourteen-year-old cyborg killing machine whose feelings of love are likely a side-effect of her conditioned loyalty, Triela never follows her advice.
  • Shoot the Dog: Multiple times.
  • Shoot the Hostage: When Dante is using Jean as a Human Shield, Rico manages to do this despite her conditioning, as Jean had earlier made it clear they were to give their own lives if necessary to stop Dante.
  • Shout-Out:
    • While visiting Sicily, Elenora quotes from Cinema Paradiso. "Living here day by day, you think it's the center of the world."
    • In Chapter 56 of the manga Triela finds herself having to perform backroom surgery. While she's doing this, she ties her hair back into a single ponytail, leaving long strands of hair down her front. It's also one of the few times she wears a mini-skirt. She ends up looking very much like a certain other girl who knows a thing or two about medicine who also happens to share the same English voice actress.
    • In the manga, Claes finds herself on the verge of tears after watching A River Runs Through It because the fishing scenes subconsciously remind her of fishing trips she took with her handler. In the anime adaptation, she's reading The Elfin Knight and the song "Scarborough Fair" (adapted from the ballad) features prominently.
    • Henrietta is an enthusiastic fan of Roman Holiday, pointing out film locations when she visits Rome and eating gelato on the Spanish Steps like Audrey Hepburn.
    • One of the missions takes place during a showing of Tosca with the plot explained to the girls by their handlers. Claes is well-read enough to quote Tosca's "Vissi d'arte" from memory.
    • Hilshire quotes from Horatius at the Bridge by Thomas Macaulay to explain his motives to Roberta.
    • Petrushka is named after the ballet by Igor Stravinsky, and she dances the Dying Swan ballet as The Last Dance.
  • Shown Their Work: The author's grasp on Western literature and art is surprising for a Manga; references have included Horatius, Tosca, and the Rape of the Sabine Women. Also, as previously noted, the illustrators and storyboarders went to great lengths to accurately capture the culture, architecture, and major landmarks of different regions of Italy and avoid National Stereotypes about the features of the characters based on their countries of origin.
  • The Siege:
    • The climatic battle with Dante occurs when he takes over a nuclear power plant in Turin and so the Agency launches a full assault on it.
    • The SWA barricades their headquarters when the government attempts to dissolve them. However, the whole matter is resolved peacefully when the soldiers refuse to fire upon Claes.
  • Skip the Anesthetic: Hilshire is wounded carrying out an assassination mission he should have assigned to his cyborg. When Triela discovers this, she flees in tears. Hilshire tracks her down and they return to their hotel room, where Triela has to remove the bullet using a pocket knife and no anesthetic, because Hilshire is worried she'll try running away again. Hilshire passes out anyway from the pain and Triela does decide to walk out on him, but barely makes it out the door before having a Love Epiphany and rushing back inside to embrace him.
  • Small Girl, Big Gun: The first DVD volume is even titled "Ragazzine Piccole, Armi Grandi" — literally "small girls, big guns" in (bad) Italian. Most of the time the girls will use sub-machine guns or smaller caliber pistols, but thanks to their cybernetic enhancements they can handle much larger weapons if needed. Rico has fired a belt-fed MG3 machine gun from the hip, Henrietta has used a Walther WA2000 sniper rifle, Triela's preferred weapon is a Winchester 1897 trench shotgun with sword bayonet, and Gattonero uses an AW-50 anti-material rifle in the Final Battle.
  • Snuff Film: Triela was kidnapped from her home and smuggled to Amsterdam to be part of one. She was almost dead when Rachelle and Hilshire rescued her.
  • Social Services Does Not Exist: Subverted in the most frightening way possible.
  • Solemn Ending Theme: The bleak, operatic "Dopo il Sogno".
  • Spear Counterpart: Pinnochio, an operative for Padania, for Triela, leading to a very, very bloody fight between them.
  • Standing Between the Enemies: National Security Councilor Aragon has brought in the Italian army to wipe out the SWA compound. She tries to talk them into surrendering, but they're determined to go down fighting. Claes however snatches a squad automatic weapon off them and walks out alone to confront the soldiers and urge them not to attack. Aragon orders the soldiers to shoot Claes, but they're reluctant to do so. She forces her way through their ranks with a pistol to do the job herself...only to stop on seeing an unarmed Claes sitting on the ground crying. The SWA personnel then abandon their positions to stand by Claes, urging them not to harm her as she's no longer a combatant.
  • State Sec: Section 2 is essentially a death squad working directly for the Italian Minister of Defense, without any independent oversight.
  • Suicide Pact: Henrietta forms one with Jose in front of him during their investigation of Elsa's death. Many chapters later, they fulfill the suicide pact together at Jose's request after she accidentally frags him during a rampage. They fire one fatal bullet at each other.
  • Super-Reflexes:
    • A Section One agent tests the abilities of the cyborgs by throwing a coin at Jean Croce's back. Despite also standing with her back to the thrower, Rico catches the coin in mid-air and has his gun aimed at him in an instant.
    • When a Bouncing Betty mine explodes in front of Jose, Henrietta is able to kick it out the window in the fraction of a second before it explodes. Likewise Triela is able to kick away an anti-tank rocket fired at her while she's rappelling up the side of a building.
    • When a bomb goes off during the Venice belltower siege, Petra catches a piece of flying shrapnel that would have killed her handler.
  • Super-Senses: Henrietta listens in on a terrorist meeting from the other side of a restaurant. Rico hears a vehicle coming before everyone else on a couple of occasions and detects Fermi throwing a coin at Jean's head even with her back to him. Beatrice is used to sniff out hidden explosives.
  • Super-Soldier: Played dead straight for tragedy.
  • Super-Strength: Triela can break handcuffs with her bare hands. Beatrice picks up a 500kg cruise missile warhead and throws it out the window. Freccia and Soni take out an armoured vehicle by toppling a construction crane on top of it.
  • Surrogate Soliloquy: Referenced in Triela's Image Song.
  • Taking the Bullet:
    • Triela catches a 40mm grenade fired at Beatrice in the head; fortunately it's only a smoke grenade and just knocks her unconscious. She also takes a bullet while bodyguarding Roberta Guellfi.
    • Il Teatrino has Franco taking a bullet from Henrietta while trying to shield Franca as they speed away in a motorboat.
  • Tempting Fate:
    • Both Lauro and Hilshire say that their cyborg has never let them down, just before a mission where said cyborg stuffs up completely.
    • A Happy Flashback shows Claes being given a GIS cap by Raballo and thinking that she'll never forget this moment.
  • Tender Tears:
    • The cyborgs have a habit of crying in their sleep, as noted by the Agency doctors. Especially tragic as the audience knows why they cry, but the girls can't remember their dreams, so they don't understand why they feel sad on waking up (Claes dreams of her father figure/handler who was wiped from her conscious memory, while Triela dreams of a woman she believes to be her mother, but is actually the doctor who died resuscitating her in Amsterdam).
    • The normally cheery Rico sheds tears over her handler Jean after he's shot during the Turin siege.
  • 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: Subverted with Dr. Bianchi, whose job is to keep the girls functioning and advise their handlers how to handle them, but not to help the girls re-enter society.
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Beatrice is gutted by a 20mm shell from an anti-material rifle and then vaporized with a cruise missile warhead when she tries Relocating the Explosion.
  • These Gloves Are Made for Killin':
    • Many times when a handler physically touches one of the girls in the anime, even in a friendly manner, they're wearing sinister dark gloves. While they're assassins as well the handlers let their cyborgs do most of the killing, so it's likely Rule of Symbolism as well as a desire to avoid fingerprints at crime scenes or cold hands in winter.
    • Averted with the cyborgs who don't need gloves as their skin can be replaced along with every other organ. On one occasion, a terrorist leader sees Rico and wonders whether she's one of the rumored child assassins but concludes otherwise due to the smooth skin on her hands. The next time this terrorist encounters Rico, those hands have just rammed his driver's head through the window of his car.
  • Those Two Guys: Amadeo and Giorgio, Section 2's resident GIS troopers, used to support operations.
  • Together in Death: When cleaning up the bodies from the Turin siege, their comrades come across the Jose/Henrietta and Hilshire/Triela fratellos like this.
  • The Topic of Cancer: Elizabeta was a young Russian ballerina who developed bone cancer in her teenage years because she spent a period of her childhood in an area of the Ukraine that was heavily affected by the Chernobyl disaster. Due to the generally primitive state of public healthcare in ex-USSR areas, the cancer is not contained properly and by the time Elizabeta arrives in Italy for further treatment, the doctors decide that the best bet would be to amputate her leg before the cancer spreads. Realizing that she will never be able to dance again, Elizabeta tries to kill herself.
  • Trojan Prisoner:
    • During a raid on a Radical Faction safehouse, Henrietta is sent in and tells two men guarding the hallway that she's frightened of the "scary men downstairs". They both wonder out loud how she got in but quickly dismiss this and instead try to take her hostage. It doesn't end well for them.
    • The Republican Faction plans to kidnap a Senator's daughter and hold her hostage in exchange for some of their members who are in prison. Instead, the government gets wind of this and replaces the girl with Claes, who happens to look similar to the girl in question. Unfortunately, the agents tailing the kidnappers get stuck in traffic and lose them.
  • Truer to the Text: The second season, Teatrino, is this compared to the first season due to the artstyle more closely mimicking the manga. However, many fans will argue this isn't necessarily a good thing.
  • Tuck and Cover: In the manga, Angelica dies in hospital after taking a carbomb blast for Marco. Henrietta knocks a Bouncing Betty mine away from her handler Jose. Both girls get get distraught over the minor injuries Marco and Jose suffer in comparison to their own.
  • Tyke Bomb: All of the girls, and Pinocchio.
  • Unequal Pairing: Age issues aside, these girls are brainwashed to unconditionally love and obey their handler and are kept isolated from boys their own age, making any relationship morally ambiguous. It's noticeable that those relationships in canon with a romantic touch (Petra/Sandro and possibly Triela/Hilshire) try to emphasize that the cyborg concerned is more free-thinking than her co-workers.
  • Velvet Revolution: An expected confrontation between the military and the SWA is averted when the SWA surrenders peacefully thanks to Claes Standing Between the Enemies, and the Pope arranges a ceasefire between the government and Padania.
  • Waif-Fu: Every girl has engaged in hand to hand combat, Triela in particular.
  • Wall Run: Petra during the nuclear power station assault.
  • We Can Rebuild Him: Pretty much the premise of the series with the tragedy dialed up to 11.
  • We Used to Be Friends
    • A flashback panel shows it was Franca (now a bombmaker for Padania) who coaxed her friend Patricia into meeting Marco (now an Agency handler). Neither person is aware that they're actually enemies. Ironically it's Angelica, on Marco's command, who inflicts the fatal shot on Franca.
    • An episode of Il Teatrino has the Agency shutting down an army unit who is supplying weapons to Padania. After killing them in an ambush, Jean and Jose are shocked to find the unit is lead by a friend who served with them in the Balkans.
    • The commander of the unit sent in to attack the Social Welfare Agency, Lieutenant Meroi, served with Captain Raballo and both Croce brothers.
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?:
    • The girls are meant to be expendable Cannon Fodder in Italy's War on Terror. During the belltower assault Jean and Jose even agree that as the First Gens are nearing the end of their lifespan, it's better they die in battle than a hospital bed, and they're sent in on a frontal assault with the full expectation that they'll lose a few cyborgs in the process.
    • Dante describes the cyborgs as "demons" when giving a Rousing Speech in an attempt to invoke this trope.
  • Would Hit a Girl
    • Jean has no problem 'scolding' Rico, or giving Priscilla a black eye during hand-to-hand combat training.
    • Triela's unarmed combat trainer, Major Salles of the GIS, knocks her down twice in a row despite her combat abilities. He tells her handler that the training will also be good for his men overcoming their reservations on this trope, as terrorists aren't always going to be male.
  • Wise Beyond Their Years: Triela and Claes. In particular, do not try to hide things from Triela. She picks up on euphemisms and omissions very well for a 14-year old, let alone a brainwashed cyborg one. Fortunately, she tends to be forgiving.
  • "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The Social Welfare Agency is reduced to conducting cybernetic research, while the other personnel are either restored to their previous jobs or transferred into a new intelligence agency, of which Jean Croce eventually becomes Director. The cyborgs live out their final days on an offshore research vessel with the Agency doctors. Claes is the last remaining first generation cyborg—Rico died a year after their arrival and Petra dies of leukemia not long after, leaving a dying request that Sandro contact her family (it's not mentioned what happened to the other Second Generation cyborgs). Roberta Guellfi moves to the United States to raise Triela's daughter, who grows up to become an actress.
  • World of Action Girls: Not only are all the major characters young girls, but all of them have been trained to take advantage of how they're young girls.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Once Dante has been captured and the Turin plant secured, the Prime Minister sends in the Italian army to destroy the SWA. Subverted when, instead of a Bolivian Army Ending, all SWA personnel surrender peacefully, and the PM decides to cut his losses and make a deal to ensure the Agency is shut down.
  • You Remind Me of X:
    • Triela dreams of a woman wearing glasses that she believes to be her mother (actually Rachelle Belleut, the French doctor who died saving her life in Amsterdam). When the Triela/Hilshire fratello encounter Roberta Guellfi, a prosecutor they've been assigned to bodyguard, they're both driven to protect her because she reminds them of Rachelle.
    • Mario Bossi tells Roberta she reminds him of Triela after she jumps out a window into the trash in order to Ditch the Bodyguards.

 
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Gunslinger Girl - Henrietta

Henrietta goes berserk in this scene and takes out all the thugs with the help of Rico.

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