I spend a lot of time reading manga at a local Barns & Noble. After reading what I wanted to read, then reading what I didn't think I would hate, then reading what they had just because they had the whole series, I started reading Gunslinger Girl. I admit, I did not have high hopes for it, having flipped through the pages often and always putting it back on the shelf, but today I decided to read it.

The first thing that drew me in was the art. With a lot of works having pretty shoddy graphics, even after being serialized into a manga, I was relieved that the mangaka for Gunslinger Girl was pretty good. Often, in battle manga, scenes can have chaotic effect drawings, making it hard to distinguish whats going on, but I never lost track of what was happening. The characters are all drawn similar, but not clones of each other, nor do they fall into obvious stereotypes. However, even characters from different countries seem to look like they came from the same basic mold, and it gets old pretty quickly. What also doesn't help is that none of the characters have unique personalities. What I mean is, try reading a chapter of GG imagining that every line is coming from the same character. Nothing would be out of place. No one on screen seems to have any characteristics that differentiate them from anybody else.

As far as the plot, I can't help but think the story focuses on the bad guys. We see things from their perspective, but that doesn't seem to justify their actions in my mind. Without giving away too much, Gunslinger Girls is about a section of the Italian government that takes elementary-school-aged girls who've suffered fatal wounds and makes them into cyborgs, who're trained assassins. There are a few different teams the story follows around, and all they do it kill different factions of "terrorists" that oppose the current regimen. I don't think I've seen them yet spare an innocent, and in fact, for whatever reason, one of the first kills is an innocent boy who was shot just because he's spoken to one of the Girls in an earlier panel. By contrast, some of the "terrorists" were put into the exact same situation and let their child live. With so many (at least six) different "terrorist groups" trying to take down the current government, and the lack of demonstrated morals by the protagonists, one wonders who is the oppressor.

I'll probably keep reading it, until new volumes for the manga I'd prefer to read come in, but it just seems to drone on and on, a bunch of boring handlers telling lifeless dolls to kill enemies of the state chapter after chapter. In order for GG to be serialized, I know that more of a plot has to show up eventually, but for now, it's just plain.