Something about Gunslinger Girl

This post contains musings on the original/first/season one of the Gunslinger Girl TV series. Expect spoilers.

Second only to stories of the second world war- Gunslinger Girl is the most depressing thing I’ve seen to come out of Japan, and it wastes no time in making you feel awful; 21 seconds into the OP we hear the line:

“In truth, there is no better place to be…”

The “place” referred to in this line can be interpreted to mean the situation the five cyborg children find themselves in (working as assassins under an organisation of dubious morals); and there is “no better place to be” because the only alternative the children face is death.

Ouch.

The OP song “The Light before we land” is performed by English-speaking band “The Delgados”, and was released in 2002, a year before the TV series first aired. It’s a safe bet to say that the song was most likely picked rather than written for the series, but despite this- the song, and that first line more than anything- fits the show to a T. (What does that actually mean?)

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Something about Rating Systems

We all have our own criteria when it comes to reviewing an event or product, and a lot of us choose to sum up our thoughts with a rating of some sort; this might take the form of a thumbs up or a thumbs down, a numerical score out of ten/one hundred/percent, or a count of stars between zero and five.

To each his/her own… however-

If you ever choose to summarise your reviews with a numerical, percentile or star rating- please, for the love of Abraham, DON’T use decimals or fractions in your final rating.

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Something about Haruhi Suzumiya

Expect spoilers.

Why is the vol.1 numeral lower than the others?

I recently rewatched the complete Haruhi Suzumiya cartoon series (including season one, two and movie); we’ve all heard the obnoxious debate about how to view the first season in particular- broadcast vs chronological vs DVD order…

It’s kind of funny that the first thing you see after selecting ep 00 on the season one vol.1 DVD is this:

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