how Angelica is portrayed

Something that bothers me in the Gunslinger Girl fandom is that Angelica is portrayed all too often as being weak and/or useless. In my opinion, nothing could be further from the truth.

While I do agree that fate has indeed dealt Angelica a bad hand, in my
mind, she's made the most of it despite the occasional stumble such as
at the end of episode 12 of season 1.

Through it all though, Angie pushes onward with the help of the other
girls and works hard (in my opinion) to do her job and help out her
handler Marco.

Anyone who thinks that Angelica is weak hasn't read volumes 3 and 5 of
the manga and hasn't looked properly at episodes 8 and 12. I episode 8,
she prevented two ADULT co-workers from killing each other while
blocking a knife with her arm. In the same episode, she mowed down a
group of armed men in her debut mission which is no small feat.

In episode 12, while Angelica did slip up somewhat, it was in my mind a
mixture of pushing herself too hard and lacking sufficent confidence in
herself. One should take note that during the villa mission in that episode, she pulled off a successful scaling the wall/crash through the window maneuvour with Triela which is something that I consider a very tough move to pull off for ANY operative.

Her critics might point out her various errors but think about it. She's constantly in the hospital, has an addiction to the conditioning medicene, is constantly having memory problems AND her handler Marco shunned her for a while as well as sometimes calling her useless/a burden. How can anyone be expected to operate at peak effectiveness under all of those conditions?

Despite all of this though, she presses onwards and does her absolute best to do her job and to help out her handler Marco while maintaining a sembelance of her innocence and all of her kind and gentle personality. All of this along with her super cuteness (^_^) causes me to like and respect Angelica and that's why she's my favorite Gunslinger Girl.

Angelica is perhaps the most maligned character in Gunslinger Girl, and very unjustly so. To deem her 'useless' is to ignore all the evidence to the contrary that abounds in the canon. It's about time other people besides individuals like Ryan and myself offer this angelic heroine tribute where tribute is due, and write some stories in which she kicks ass instead of moping in her hospital bed or being dead - be it by her own hand or by wasting pitifully away.

Angiegarde wrote:Something that bothers me in the Gunslinger Girl fandom is that Angelica is portrayed all too often as being weak and/or useless. In my opinion, nothing could be further from the truth.

While Angie is not my favorite girl, I’ve never considered her useless or weak and for the life of me I’ve never understood why some people just flat-out hated her. How anyone could feel that way about a girl who showed such bravery and determination in the face of so much adversity is a complete mystery. Far from being pathetic, she was down right inspirational.

And on a scale from 1 to 10, her cuteness rating was an easy 11.

I think I know who scores twelve or perhaps higher on your scale, Danjo. Welcome to the club.

Well I can see where the Angelica being useless sentiment could come from given how ineffective she could seem at times.

However I think the people on the board here know that Angie is as deadly as her sisters when she wants to be. IMO, the main problems for her right now are her lack of self confidence and over eagerness to please Marco, which leads to reckless behavior, which occationally leads to her seeming like she's inept. In short, she tries too hard.

Which is part of her charm really. Good 'ol Angie, never stops trying even after all the calamities she's been forced to endure. Unfortunately this is part of a ever propagating cycle, but at times her real worth as the SWA's first operative really shines.

Of all the girls, I think Angie is the most adorable, even syurpassing Henrietta becuase of her ernest personality. If they ever need a poster girl, she'd be it.

Nachtsider wrote:I think I know who scores twelve or perhaps higher on your scale, Danjo.

If you’re referring to Triela, I’m not sure how I’d classify her. She falls somewhere in between the kid-cute scale and the adult-pretty scale.

What was the Britney Spears song again; I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman…

Never considered Angie useless. it may look like so in my fanfic but that's not the case. i always felt that being the 1st of the 1st generation she represents the future of the other girls, and that she has always proved to be usefull at the very least. + the fact that she 2nd's Henrietta in my cute scale. Angie being the future of the 1st generation cyborgs thou, don't you think that Yu Aida has a "trend". kill of Angie today, Triela tomorrow... eventually it'll usher the entire manga into a new generation of Gunslinger Girls!!! a new season containing completely new girls!!!

Someone PLEASE TELL ME IM WRONG!!

Didn't read the thread throughly. Sorry. But, I'll say this:

GSG is not intended to be a happy story quite the opposite. In fact character death is to be expected, it is part of the message. I think the new gen is completely redundant, but, ironically, the thing that (I think) brought about the new gen (a futile attempt to increase the shows popularity by reaching out to the "wide/popular audience") is in fact a factor that will work against character deaths.