If YOU were in charge of writing "Gunslinger Girl"

Here's the general idea......

In the Gunslinger Girl fan community, many people (including myself) constantly complain about how the writers of "Gunslinger Girl" tend to do things to the story or its characters that we don't like for whatever reason or reasons.

The question is, what would YOU change in Gunslinger Girl if you have control over the series? Keep in mind that you can't mary sue everyone and make it into a nice happy place where no one ever suffers, only change certain details.

For me, this is what I'd do.....

1. In the manga, keep Angelica alive and have her push onwards despite her problems. Killing her off was a bad idea in my opinion as she was an interesting character that you would want to root for.

2. Don't bring in teenage cyborgs to gradually replace the girls we all know and care about. The series is called "Gunslinger Girl", NOT "Gunslinger teenagers"!

3. Expand more on Beatrice. We didn't get to see much of her in the manga before she died. The 2nd anime of course showed more of her so the manga should have done this too.

4. Keep Elsa alive. She was interesting and had a distinct personality from the other girls. Even if she became less hostile to others, she'd still likely have retain her cool and distant personality that had a touch of grimness to it. I know that her death was supposed to be a key plot point in the series but they could have worked something out that would've made the series still work.

5. Have more interaction between the girls as it would show how co-workers and comrades in arms get along. While there WAS some of this, there could have been more. It would be interesting to see Henrietta and Angelica interact more for example.

6. Give Angelica a roommate. Out of the 5 main girls in the series, Angelica's the only one without a visible roommate. This of course left me an opening to create an OC cyborg to fill this spot to show her friendship with Angie but still.......

7. Have Rico in dresses more often. To be fair, this is because Jean doesn't want to end up thinking of Rico as like he and Jose's little sister Enrica but still, it'd be nice to see Rico wear dresses more frequently. She could wear them on days off for instance as she looks kawaii in them..... ^_^

8. Have the 2nd season of the anime have the animation of the 1st season. The 1st season had superior animation to the 2nd season in my opinion along with a better angsty and dramatic feel to it which fits the theme of the series better.


These are just what I'd do if I had control of the series, how about you guys? What would YOU guys do? What would you change?

Hmmmm, personally......

I would fast forward to a post apocalyptic distopia where the girls are a bunch of salvage operators(called junkers)who run a mercenary business on the side as a means of making ends meet.

Along the way the make friends, mostly enemies, and it is a cruel shootout world where only the strong survive and the merciless thrive done to the soundtrack of heavy metal classics (new and old) and power punk anthems (again, new and old).

To most, it's hell in a handbasket. But the the boy's and (mostly) girls of the GGHC(Gunslinger Girl: Hard Corps) it's just another day in trying to get by.

In regards to Elsa (and Lauro), Yu only gave us three real points of data on Elsa: she loved Lauro totally, Lauro treated her indifferently and the two of them together were an excellent fratello.

Everything else we know about her comes from the anime, and Yu didn't write that. So in a way, the fleshed-out Elsa we discuss is the result of someone else being in charge of writing Gunslinger Girl.

Angelica is my second-favorite character behind Claes and when she died, I felt really bad, but Yu did write it really, really well.


If I was given the task to write for Gunslinger Girl, I'd have expanded Beatrice as Yu did, though not just to set her up to die.

I also would not have brought in Chiara and Silvia for four panels just to kill one of them.



I'm on record as liking Petra, so I would have expanded the three other teenage girls (as I have done in my OC fiction) instead of just having them as cameos.

In general, I like how Yu's been taking the story in the manga, so I would not make any major changes.

It seems like everyone would expand on every character...Yu will need to drop an issue on us every week to make that happen.
_____________________________________________________________

I'll focus on how I'd end the series...

Once Giacomo Dante and his bunch are taken care of the Prime Minister decides it's time to close shop on Section Two. The handlers get wind of this through covert channels and are ready when the GIS attacks.

Knowing their girls will be quietly "destroyed" the handlers mount a defense, giving the cyborgs orders to meet them at a pre-arranged location. When the girls (led by Triela) get there they find out that their handlers never had the intention of joining them...in fact all but one has died in the battle.

The handlers have set up secret bank accounts and supplies of the medication so that their cyborgs can live out the rest of their short lives in peace at the hidden location (Flanca's vineyard perhaps?). None of them know how long they have left, but the story leaves them safe & hidden.

The only survivor of the battle is Giuseppe, but he is horrendously wounded. Henrietta and someone else (Triela or Claes) comes out of hiding to go to him...sneaking into the hospital. There she must make a choice; stay with Giuse and inevitably get caught, or leave him and live her life out in safety. In the end she must leave Giuseppe...a symbolic end for all the fratello bonds.

Giuseppe is converted into the first adult cyborg, and lives out his life in a heavily conditioned state with no memories of his past. In the last scene he see's a young girl who looks like Henrietta, and gets the vague feeling that whatever happened to make him a cyborg it was all worth it.

Professor Voodoo wrote:It seems like everyone would expand on every character...Yu will need to drop an issue on us every week to make that happen.

This. Honestly I think Yu's doing pretty well to develop the number of characters he is in the space he has.

As to what I'd change? Not a lot really. I think I would have shown a bit of Chiara and Silvia in earlier volumes, just to show that they were there and not just characters to be red-shirted. Even if it was just a few words spoken in the dorm or a reference in someone else's speech. That's about it.

(wouldn't this thread be better-placed in the main GSG anime/manga/videogame forum?)

Assuming that Season Three of GSG has just been announced and I've been appointed chief writer, even though "Il Teatrino" ended immediately before her arrival on the scene I would not start off with Petrushka.

This hasn't got anything to do with the character's appeal, rather it's a question of narrative. Being the only second-generation principal in the cast Petrushka is a unique character and really, a deviation in her own setting - if the new anime began with a straight adaptation of her first manga chapter the audience's reaction would be bafflement. There needs to be time to re-establish the GSG's scenario. While a cold-start with Petrushka could possibly work by making the third season entirely her show, making the younger cyborgs 'alien' and having her discovering the Agency as we do - so that she is the audience's avatar descending into the world and everything is revealed to us through her developing character and expanding experience - I would be wary of this. It could be a sophisticated and involved approach, certainly, but I don't consider the shutting-off of the rest of the cast in this way, losing the value of their own perspectives, to be an acceptable trade-off - stroking my author's ego comes secondary to that. I doubt that the audience would have the patience for it too.

So, a new GSG season would need at least a full story arc of original content before we could be ready for Petrushka to dance onstage, or maybe that the series itself omits Petrushka but her story can be included as additional OVA content to get people buying the DVDs.

My personal preference would be for a new series to pedal back a little and detail events during that four-month summer timeskip that was experienced during the Pinnochio arc. The Agency wouldn't have been sitting idle while the Padanian trio were hiding out in the vineyard, and so that is a neat self-contained capsule into which original incidents can take place without them impacting on and forcing revisions of events when the show does get round to adapting the manga again.

The main focus when it comes to individual script should be: Location, location, location. Italy still is a relatively unqiue setting for this sort of story that's only infrequently touched on in other media, and it should be constantly emphasised. Every effort must be made to arm-twist in landmarks and the wider environment, from skiing down the Alps to sniper-duels across Bolognan rooftops taking in medieval and baroque architecture at every opportunity. Any incident which occurs in a warehouse or a generic backstreet is time wasted. Similarly, cultural quirks of the country should also be emphasised - for instance, one villain doesn't call himself a 'mere' mercenary but styles himself on the historic condottieres, and so on. A good seinen educates the reader/viewer with notes and observations like this, it helps give it that extra gloss of improving maturity. In brief: one of the advantages of animation is that you don't need to pay licenses for location shooting (well, you do still have to stump up for the crew holiday - sorry, "research excursion" - but you know what I mean) - so make full use of it!

I would have loved to see more Beatrice, but the little that was given us makes her all the more tragic. Plus, she is practically clay for the enterprising fanfic writer

I haven't seen past chap 64 yet, but I always envisioned a scene in the end:

The Padania has more or less been defeated. The SWA is leading an assualt on what is considered Dante's final holdout and the fighting has been fierce, but the Padanias are crumbling.

Jean stands in a room that has been absolutely destroyed by what was clearly an intense fight. He is staring down at a brutally wounded and unconscious Rico. His right hand is in the pocket of his pristine coat and his left hand hangs limply at his side. His signature sunglasses are on and his face is steady and emotionless.

The sounds of continuing battle have moved off into the distance. Rico finally stirs and looks up at her handler. Recalling the events that brought her down, she fears for her handler and starts searching for her gun. Her attempts to move are pitful, but she manages to find it. She reaches a bloody hand out but Jean puts his foot on the gun and speaks in his usual gruff tone, "They're all dead. Don't worry about it."

She pulls her arm in and rolls onto her back, "Sorry Jean. I messed up pretty bad."

"I said not to worry about it." After a silent moment he adds, "You did ok, Rico."

The cyborg's eyes go wide at the tiny praise. "I did?" she manages weakly. Jean only nods but a smile creeps across her face and she breathes out a deep, satisfied sigh, "I'm glad. Don't worry Jean. I'll be ready to kill more for you in no time."

"Don't worry about that either. After today the Padania is done. There is no one left to fight. You can rest for now."

"There's no one left to fight?"

Jean nods again to give credence to the lie, but much slower this time.

Rico visibly relaxes. Her shoulders slump and her body shakes with a contented laugh, "Thank God. You can finally be happy again..."

She closes her eyes, whispers "I did it", and dies.

Jean's face is still made of stone, but he swallows hard. He stands there for some time, the automatic weapons fire in the distance angrily demands his attention, but he does not move. He can only stare down at his broken weapon and wonder: could this thing have made him happy? Certainly, no one else had ever cared enough to try. Ever since the attack, he knew only one thing could make him happy. Men like him could only ever feed the void. Yet, without his realizing, this girl had made it her personal quest. Could she have made him happy? Now, he would never know.

"Its just the conditioning." He spoke to no one in particular. Only the dead were around to give an answer. Somehow, it felt appropriate for him.

What I would say and do about Gunslinger Girl, I did and current do on my fanfiacts.

If I was truly writing Gunslinger Girl, it would be totally unrecognizable. I can only create with what I got and in that, I would write my own. Thus my fanfiction shares this. Therefore everything I would say and do, I do in my writings.

We can gripe about how Yu has treated the story, but in the end it is his story.

I have to say I agree with Elfen on this one, but I also wouldn't mind seeing more of Beatrice. I think what Yu did with Elsa was good but it would have had much more of an impact if her character was fleshed out more than what we saw in the manga and anime.

Angiegarde wrote:The question is, what would YOU change in Gunslinger Girl if you have control over the series? Keep in mind that you can't mary sue everyone and make it into a nice happy place where no one ever suffers, only change certain details.

http://www.fanfiction.net/~nachtsider

Please read and review.

I'd like to know more about the support characters. We know Priscilla was in the Guarda de Financia, Olga in the Russian FSB as protection detail, Georgio and Amadeo were in the military, and we suspect Ferro has been in covert intelligence forever.
But what do we actually know besides that?

Why does Priscilla call herself the fallen angel of love?
What did Olga screw up or become dissatisfied with to leave for Italy?
Why does Ferro always seem as if she could really benefit from getting laid?

Yu might have benefited some from the occasional side chapter to hit up these kinds of things, if not in DC, then in the tankoban. It would be a treat for the readers and go a long way to firming up the world he created. While you can't always know everything about someone you meet in real life, a literary world needs every piece it can get to increase the emersion in it.

Angiegarde wrote:For me, this is what I'd do.....

Damn Angiegarde! You practically read my mind. Your 8 points are right on the money.

I guess I could add that Hillshire keep his pants zipped, but I knew all along that he’s never let anything develop between himself and Triela, so it’s kind of a mute point.

boomer_gonz wrote:Hmmmm, personally......

I would fast forward to a post apocalyptic distopia where the girls are a bunch of salvage operators(called junkers)who run a mercenary business on the side as a means of making ends meet.

Along the way the make friends, mostly enemies, and it is a cruel shootout world where only the strong survive and the merciless thrive done to the soundtrack of heavy metal classics (new and old) and power punk anthems (again, new and old).

To most, it's hell in a handbasket. But the the boy's and (mostly) girls of the GGHC(Gunslinger Girl: Hard Corps) it's just another day in trying to get by.

I think i c wut u did thar

I'll chime in with what I would do later.

Planetarian was a great game. Also had a great soundtrack CD.

If I was in charge of writing GSG there would be SO MUCH MORE Triela! XDDDD

Seriously though, I wouldn't have killed off Beatrice, and expanded on her.

Second gen girls wouldn't exist. >_<

I'd just put my OC in every other shadow.

Chris Hansen wrote:

I think i c wut u did thar

I'll chime in with what I would do later.

To be honest this is my first time hearing about Planetarian. After checking out wiki, it's funny how some of the elements coincided. Although the above conceived idea was born simply out of being overdosed on caffeine.

Angiegarde wrote:
2. Don't bring in teenage cyborgs to gradually replace the girls we all know and care about. The series is called "Gunslinger Girl", NOT "Gunslinger teenagers"!

8. Have the 2nd season of the anime have the animation of the 1st season.

Hell yes. I won't be launching into another 5 paragraph rant this time though.

To prove I can do something else besides bash Petra and Il Teatrino, many of the characters were in dire need of more exploration in the manga. In the manga, if I'm not mistaken, Elsa's sole appearance is being found dead straight off the bat with absolutely no coverage of her character. The anime did a much better job in this regard. There were also a slew of characters in the manga that I never cared about because A) their sole purpose was to die apparently and B) they were also left completely unexplored. I really would have liked to care about them, but there seems to have been no attempt at making them likeable or interesting, especially given their very short existence. Maybe Petra took up too much time to make this possible. (Old habits die hard.) Killing off characters whose names I couldn't be bothered to remember doesn't make for good drama. Having those characters simply not exist might have been better than simply making them into a death statistic.

I'm actually much more partial towards the anime myself though (Season 1), which did a much better job with Elsa.

Angiegarde wrote:2. Don't bring in teenage cyborgs to gradually replace the girls we all know and care about. The series is called "Gunslinger Girl", NOT "Gunslinger teenagers"!

Yet the tagline is "The girl has a mechanical body. However, she is still an adolescent child."

"adolescent"= teenage


My biggest gripe isn't with Yu but the french editors who translated the tagline as " A robotised girl , an eternal childhood"

an eternal childhood"

I'd add one more character, younger, in place of Petruscka! For some reason that I can't explain, I HATE PERTRUSHKA! Anyway, I'd add another character who is maybe a year or two older than Triela. I would also have Beatrice not die just yet. I think that the deaths are perfect, sad and heart warming. But I can't let Beatrice die yet!!!! I'd also have Triela not kiss Hilshire as of yet, that freaked me out. I also have a story that I have been working on for like 3 months now in a notebook at school about an earlier generation of assassins. Ones that only had their organs replaced with fake ones, not their limbs. This time it is only a girl and a boy, they are both seventeen. They were not conditioned, but they do have seperate partners and they VOLUNTEERED for the job. Both orphans too. I placed it between Triela getting Mario Bossi and Elsa, cuz Elsa is in my story. They kind of protect the Pope when he goes to Isreal to meet with some other religious leaders, they are attacked and my character loses her long brown hair protecting her partner from a fire. Let me know if you think it's a good idea...

xochequetsal wrote:I'd add one more character, younger, in place of Petruscka! For some reason that I can't explain, I HATE PERTRUSHKA!

So do I. And so do a lot of other people here. I haven't been in the mood to start a flame war for quite a while though, so I'll leave it at that. Since you're new, you can dig through a lot of old threads in this sub-forum to see who else shares your sentiment or reasons why they do if you're interested.

First, I'd browse the net and upon finding fan communities like this one, I'd contact them and say; "Hey peoples what say thou est add thy characters/stories through doujinshi artists (or your own efforts) and submit your works so that those who visit my website,
(multi language friendly)
can browse/download those stories with fanfiction credits given to both artists and authors.
(whether the artists are the same as the authors or whether the call was put out for others to illustrate the tales)
Then as the author of the canon story, I would even critique or simply comment upon the many contributions that I enjoyed the most.
In fact as the main author, I might offer some alternative stories that divert from the original for fun too!
Oh and 'fore I forget, I'd have Olga KICK mucho butt on her very own!
'Yeah, Baby!'

I would do this;
1. Keep Ange alive, she would have been a good and great cyborg
2. Have Claes fight in it.
3. Make perkuseta or whoever, sorry..., make her a kid to make Gunslinger Girls
4. Have Guippse/Jose spend more time with Henrietta
5. Have Elsa and Lauro alive!

Petrushka = Perkoceta.... I know you didn't mean it to be like that, but that is one of the most AWESOME misnomers ever. *laughs*

Sorry....

I didn't how to spell her name... ^^; and I was lazy to search it up... ^^'

Gunslinger_Girl_Rico wrote: '5. Have Elsa and Lauro alive!'
I agree completely. I'd expand the entire story to illustrate what could
have occurred if deSica tried but failed to off her human partner. I wonder about the things Lauro said in his brief conversation with Jose.
'I know they (the cyborgs) have it hard, but so do we.'
Me thinks Jose understood Lauro meant how hard it must be to teach/put up with the cyborgs, but I ask myself if Lauro was hinting at something else. He said he needed money, for what I wonder?
Jose asked how his fellow agent had managed to get in the location they were at to make their hit and was told he had 'connections'.
What kind of connections? Whom did he owe money to?
The Mafia? Was he over his head but playing it cool?
Was the situation so serious he did not have time to entertain a little girl's
drug induced affections? In the series, After Lauro ends Elsa's awkward attempt at starting a conversation by raising the volume on his radio, he afterward contemplates her briefly as if he was aware of something being wrong. I have to learn to post a link to show that picture. I can't seem to upload pictures in the the gallery anymore. Anyway, the point is that I'd would have explored that and much more.

GunSlinger_Girl_Rico wrote:Sorry....

I didn't how to spell her name... ^^; and I was lazy to search it up... ^^'

I not mad! *grins* I thought it was a VERY funny joke, even if you didn't mean to make it. *grins*

The idea of Petra juxtaposed with opioid analgesics is HILARIOUS

So.

I'd say: expand on the politics. We don't see nearly enough of the shit that's going down everywhere else. I theorize that the only way the SWA would ever come into being would be as some sort of initiative to quell mass unrest, due to a fiscal crisis of some kind. People have issues with money and what they think they deserve, after all. Thus, the following:

---------------------------

With the onset of the Eurozone Crisis, and the associated inflation of the Euro, philosophical differences between the north and south, divided sharply across the peninsula from Rome to Pescara, had caused unrest that ranged from simple demonstrations and pamphlets to massive riots and terrorism.

In the wake of such civil unrest, the Italian Government, led by the leftist Coalizione per Beneficio della Comunità, enacted a number of sweeping reforms “for the public good”, spending billions of euros on public security and medical research. With the first, the Coalizione hoped to prevent future violence by identifying and removing “perpetrators of violence” before they could take action. With the latter, the Coalizione hoped to win public confidence by providing for the people.

This was met with decidedly mixed results.

In the north, where fiscal and political conservatism were strongest, the public rebelled against such expenditures. Spending on public security and the expansion of the Gruppo di Intervento Speciale was marginally acceptable, but the investment of billions of dollars in medical innovation for prosthetics and tissue reconstruction, among other things, was look upon with horror. Much better to leave such things to the private sector. The government’s duty was to the property of the citizen, after all. Running up such debts and leaving the people to pay it off was anathema to the north, and the sheer scale of the expenditure drove many to violence.

Leading the fight was the Lega Nord per l'Indipendenza della Padania. Commonly shortened to just “Lega Nord”, the group had risen to prominence for its vigorous promotion of such principals in parliament. Less well known were its more violent activities. Posturing in parliament could only get you so far, and the Lega Nord was determined to, in its view, save Italy from fiscal disaster. Their paramilitary arm, hidden from public view and financed very, very secretly with government funds, was known simply as “The Padania” and operated on a scale similar to the IRA.

Compounding the issue was the Italian Mafia. With the depreciation of the Euro, trading on the black market had jumped notably, allowing the Mafia to grow exponentially. Clashes with businesses and the Carabinieri climbed correspondingly, and the unscrupulousness of mafia business caused a general increase in crime nationwide.

The Social Welfare Agency was the response to this. Located on the outskirts of Rome, away from the lights and noise of the city, the Social Welfare Agency was ostensibly a government operation designed for the health and safety of Italy’s citizens. Indeed, the SWA was largely responsible for the majority of the innovations in cybernetic prosthetics, artificial tissue development, reconstructive surgery, and numerous other fields of medicine. Alone, the SWA had elevated Italy to a medical and technological leader and created many millions of euros in revenue from its products.

Underneath this legitimacy, however, was Section Two. Section Two was responsible for the vast majority of high level anti-terrorist and anti-crime work, ranging from deep infiltration to seamless assassination. To accomplish this, Section Two “recruited" young girls, generally no more than eleven or twelve, who were on the brink of death or were doomed to a meaningless existence. After arranging for them to conveniently and tragically die, the Agency gave them new bodies in the form of cyborgs before putting them to work fighting for the government against the Padania.