Gunslinger Girl – Il Teatrino – 04


Really, this episode rocked! I’d much rather see badly animated, but well-coordinated fights than godly animated, but abysmally coordinated ones. Flashy graphics is one thing, but if all the characters do is hurl flashy beams towards each other until one goes down, then I’d pass. I’m really impressed at how the plot has developed up till now.

You can say a lot about this series, but for me, it remains really well-written. The creators make sure that lots of stuff happens in one episode, and I actually feel that Artland did this better than the first season by Madhouse. The current episode is a Marco/Angelica-episode. One thing I also noticed of the second season is also that even though the character-designs have been supposedly “moefied”, it’s not like the girls are the only ones who get attention. One of the problems with the first seasons was that the guys didn’t really get that much attention, though here it feels that they get about just as much attention as the girls. If the creators really wanted to use the cute girls to sell this series, they’d have included random moe-moments, of which I haven’t seen any thus far.

In this episode, it seems that one of the major subordinates of Christopher gets arrested. The episode starts with a bit of his family, and I like how he’s portrayed in a way that doesn’t care about any clichés. Interestingly enough, there was no sign of Pinocchio, nor Franco or Franca. This clearly was an episode to build up, but still I’ve found this to be the best episode of the second season yet. I really like how this series has been getting better and better with every episode.

12 thoughts on “Gunslinger Girl – Il Teatrino – 04

  1. “I’d much rather see badly animated, but well-coordinated fights than godly animated, but abysmally coordinated ones.”

    but here’s the thing,GG season 1 fight were BOTH well coordinated and godly animated :)though the fight in this episode was allright I thought,I wonder what the animation will be like in the 2 OVAs.

    I can understand where you’re coming from about the story,to be fair,i know i repeat myself,but artland has the benefit of working with what is generally considered better source material (books 3-5) than what madhouse had (books 1 and 2).That’s why the expectations were so high.
    and i definatly agree,the girls are only the tip of the icebergs, there’s really a whole lot of characters surrounding them.

  2. It’s quite normal that the storyline is progressing better than in the first season, cuz as totoum says, the original material source is much more consistent.

    And it’s likely that this second season will have rock-solid storyline : heck, the mangaka is behind everything that’s script, storyboard, screenplay, etc. But gosh, it’s such a waste with this animation : if it had True Tear’s godly animation (yet True Tears is nowhere as dark as the Madhouse version was), it would easily have been the best show of the season and probably a good candidate of the best shows of the entire year. And what’s more frustrating is that the action scenes are so well written, but so DAMN badly animated, it’s a waste, I can’t think of any other word.

    In other terms, Madhouse version had everything but good, consistent and crisp storyline ; Artland version HAD this good storyline, but lacks everything that the Madhouse version had.

    And as Solaris has stated : I really feek like they fucked the first season’s dead body while showing Angelica. She’s supposed to be dead, and the scene was so much more intense in Madhouse’s animated version than in the manga, it was THE climax of the first season, while in the manga, it was just some normal scene. Angelica had to die. It’s like the mangaka had too much pride and felt like going to his own version, even if Madhouse’s version was 1000x better. This pretty much ruined everything in the first season and it left me a bitter after-taste. In some way, it’s not a bad thing, thinking how what they’re doing is quite good (top notch storytelling, that is), but I just feel like cheated and I really wanna go in the streets screaming : “THERE IS NO GUNSLINGER GIRL II ANIME §§§”, ignoring all Fraco-Franca references in the first season and considering it as a stand alone.

    Of course, I’m semi-kidding, but this is how it is, actually…

  3. The above commentors definitely spoke my mind in terms of this anime. When I was blogging the series, it just feels like the storyline is very good but let down so much by the animation. Of course, it does not make GSG crappy totally, but it’s more of the loss in potential that the series can be from above average to awesome due to the weaknesses of graphics. Sigh.

  4. …I dunno, I couldn’t get past the first episode itself. I can stand bad animation pretty well (Uh, Disgaea anyone? XD) but when the characters opened their mouths… OMG MY EARS BLED >_O I was too pampered with Madhouse’s stellar cast of VAs. Now I’m off to just reading my collection of GSG manga ;_; Well, it has the storyline, art and coordinated fights already XD

  5. CherylHew:you havn’t heard nothing yet since you havn’t heard marco’s VA 🙂 that was really weird lol but i’m actually starting to like it,at first i was upset about angelica being brought back from the dead but it’s true that her and marco’s story has the potential to be great in il teatrino,it would have been kind of a shame to see it cut since i do like it.And since there isn’t any intense action scene (like triela-pino) it doesn’t need the great animation.
    And I don’t care about continuity,madhouse killed angelica,she dies at the end of episode 13,artland brought her back to life,i refuse to have the climax of the first season ruined by il teatrino.

  6. totoum: Haha, I heard him actually >_O I’m a fan of Lia so I downloaded the 2nd episode to hear the ED sung by her… And well, my scrolling skillz0rz put me about 10 seconds before the ED… OUCH T__T The continuity issue didn’t bug me as I follow the manga and Angelica wasn’t killed in there XD;; Well if the anime follows the manga closely she’ll get more development too, though it’s hearbreaking watching her condition T_T

  7. I admit i didn’t watch to neither ep 4 nor ep 3 yet. 🙁 They’re here ready in their nice folder but i don’t feel like clicking on them. I want it but at the same time i don’t want it 🙁

    I watched other stuff this past two weeks. I continued watching to el cazador, bokurano end started a new serie jus for a try.

    Damn, it’s a fucking kids show, it hasn’t the deep story nor the characters Gunslinger has.
    It’s Powerpuff Girls Z. It made me laugh and cleared my mind. And ZOMG, that stupid kid’s show has better fights, graphics and animation than Gunslinger … this really pisses me off… ¬_¬”

  8. “it hasn’t the deep story nor the characters Gunslinger has.”

    I just can’t agree with that,it’s following the manga (except for the action in episode 1),the manga’s story is deep,like windspirit and psgels have said,the one thing il teatrino has is the storyline,the problem is that that story is not being told really well due to the animation,voice actors etc…

  9. Ops Totoum, i was referring to powerpuff Z being a kid’s anime and not having the same deep contents as Gunslinger II, but beating it in the graphics and animation, where Gunslinger had to excel.

    I know the story of Gunslinger is rocking and it’s a pain to watch something that’s being ruined cause it’s bad drawn on the screen

  10. i agree GG has a really amazing story and dynamic characters with feeling and emotion.

    personaly i prefer the 1st season, animation wise it can go both ways, as well as art and directing, the thing that threw me off with the 2nd season was the eyes, way too brightly coloured kinda creapy in a way. other than that the transition from season 1 to 2 is almost seamless

  11. The transition is seamless? Are you ignoring the wailing of the fans? The characters have almost all morphed beyond recognition. The only girl who resembles the first season version of herself is Claes.

    And even that remains to be seen, as she hasn’t had enough airtime yet.

  12. I’m with our commentator: good story and good direction trumps big budget animation. I was worried at the change of studio and cast, but I’m not worried anymore – the second season is on target.

    And Angelica and Rico were *really* spooky. (paraphrase)
    “Rico, will you let ME kill the next guy?”
    “Sure! I promise!”
    Brr.

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