Most of us are familiar with the Gunslinger Girl anime, an absorbing tale that blended excellent production values with healthy doses of action, politics and characterisation. Even so, thirteen episodes of such a series could never be enough, and anyone who fell under its spell must surely have craved more. Luckily, by going back to the original manga, those needs can easily be satisfied.

Of course, it should be admitted from the outset that Gunslinger Girl is not perfect. The ‘government vs. terrorists’ political backdrop against which the series is set is hardly the most original of concepts, and the details of specific missions can even be quite dull at times. That being said, basic storyline is not the area in which the series is aiming to excel, for even the potentially thought-provoking moral issues behind turning children into weapons is little more than a side dish here. Instead, what gives the series its true strength is the level of characterisation, and it is that more than anything that makes Gunslinger Girl stand head and shoulders above the crowd.

At the core of the series are the cyborg girls and their handlers, and it is the range of relationships between the different pairs that makes it so absorbing. There is Rico, treated as nothing more than a tool by her handler Jean and given extreme amounts of conditioning to keep her obedient; Triela, who shares more of a brother-sister relationship with handler Hilshire; Angelica, whose handler Marco has lost interest in her ever since her memory began to deteriorate; Claes, who lost her handler and had all memory of him erased and Henrietta, who is given more of a free rein by her handler and is absolutely devoted to him. The different dynamics between the various pairs are entirely fascinating, and also raise many interesting questions along the way. These are girls who can be talking about teddy bears in one scene, and how many people they’ve killed in the next, but how much of what they think and feel are the genuine emotions of adolescent girls, and how much is simply due to the conditioning? Does it matter, as long as they believe that the emotions they are feeling are real?

Interesting as the main characters are, however, the manga also addresses one issue that the anime did not have time to cover- the development of more minor characters. From the supporting staff at the Agency to the various named antagonists, each is gradually given their turn in the spotlight; in fact, by volume five, it is possible to sympathise with the ‘bad guys’ so much that there are points when it seems only natural to support them in favour of the heroes.

Visually, the manga version of Gunslinger Girl may lack the polish and high production values of the anime, but nonetheless remains well drawn and with a commendable attention to detail with regards to locations, firearms and vehicles. The only real quibble is that action scenes can sometimes seem a little confusingly laid out.

Final Thoughts
An absorbing and addictive tale, Gunslinger Girl maintains a high standard over the course of its first five volumes, and certainly shows no sign of running out of steam any time soon. Whether you wanted more after watching the anime, or have never even touched the franchise before, this is one series to try sooner rather than later.

A while ago, I reviewed Bee Train’s works and managed to create a minor backlash when I placed Madlax in the ‘miss’ category. If I had any sense, I would probably have left it at that, but having brought up the topic of Madlax, I came to feel as if I needed to say more on just where Madlax went wrong for me.

Back when Madlax was first being released on DVD, I let myself get caught up in a wave of enthusiasm for the series, even going so far as to buy it with no more knowledge than “it’s Noir II”. And indeed, for a time, it seemed as if I had made the right choice, with the series promising an intricately linked tale between Madlax, a compassionate assassin, and Margaret Burton, an amnesiac high school student who clearly had more to her than met the eye. Unfortunately, having built up such a comprehensive mental idea of the story I wanted, the reality of the situation could not fail to disappoint.

Despite its promising start, Madlax soon managed to sabotage my attempts to pay attention to it, creating a story so unnecessarily convoluted and filled with characters I didn’t care about that it was hard to even pay attention. And even as I struggled onwards, the series took a turn towards the more supernatural side of things, ensuring a transition from the dull to the completely ridiculous. Alternate realities with psychedelic backgrounds, books that opened a doorway to another world, magic words that affect everyone who hears them, split personas living in different bodies- no matter how ridiculous and hard to swallow it sounded, Madlax seemed determined to include it.

Noir II with a splash of .hack
As the second in Bee Train’s ‘Girls with Guns’ trilogy, Madlax must inevitably be compared to its predecessor, and unfortunately, it cannot live up to the standard set by Noir. Although the characters are arguably warmer and more human than the cool and detached Mireille and Kirika, they are also shallow and lacking the development they needed to fulfil their potential. And where Noir kept a tight focus on its four regular cast members whilst unfolding an intriguing mystery, Madlax is a far more bloated and convoluted tale that ends only in disappointment.

Magical Books
In the world of Madlax, there are three magical and powerful books (yes, books) that effectively enable those with equally unbelievable supernatural powers to access an alternate dimension where ridiculous plot related events can occur. The actual point of these books is, however, doubtful, as the magical effects seem to be contained in a mere six words, rendering the bulk of the text within the books negligible.

As if to add insult to injury, these three books are individually named Firstari, Secondari and Thirstari, names which simultaneously display and incredible lackof imagination and a stupidity that goes beyond mere Engrish; for even if the first two names could be accepted, the third sounds like “Thirst Diary”, a journal of one man’s search for water.

Character summaries, a ranting convention

Madlax: Our eponymous heroine, Madlax (her code name) is a seventeen year old assassin living in war-torn Gazth-Sonika. Since she is technically not a real person but actually a split persona of Margaret Burton, she has various special abilities, such as enhanced combat skills, near immortal endurance and most remarkably, a tendency to magically change from her normal attire into a clinging white dress in the middle of missions- surely practical wear for any assassin. Madlax was created twelve years ago when Margaret Burton killed her father and then used her special gift to separate the part of her that committed that act. Towards the end, they briefly become one, but upon realising that HARD YURI is difficult in a single body, they choose to separate again.

Margaret Burton: The other protagonist of the tale, Margaret was forced to kill her father in self-defence after Friday Monday used the magic ‘Words of Awakening’ to make him shoot her. No one would want to remember shooting their beloved father, but in Margaret’s case she has the rather unique solution of splitting into three personas- herself, Madlax and Laetitia, with only the latter retaining any memory of the event. From that point onwards, Margaret becomes quite an irritatingly spaced out person who seems barely able to look after herself.

Elenore Baker: As often happens, Elenore has compressed her entire high school education into a single year, enabling her to graduate and become Margaret’s maid as soon as possible. Her motive is ostensibly to look after her beloved Margaret, but it may just be so that she can wear a maid’s uniform for no real reason.

Vanessa Rene: The face of HARD YURI in the series, Vanessa is actually one of the more inoffensive characters during the times when she wasn’t tempting Madlax away from all possibility of STRAIGHT. Vanessa’s role should not be underestimated, however, as it is her actions that drive the plot forwards.

Friday Monday: When you’re a villain, you don’t want to be like everyone else- that’s why you have to name yourself after days of the week and wear a custom made but unlikely looking mask to cover your damaged eye. You also need to have a burning desire to plunge the world into never-ending war for no apparent reason, which is exactly what Friday’s agenda is. The laughable pointlessness of his goals goes beyond that of any final boss before him, and his lengthy diatribes only serve to ensure that the series ends on an extremely underwhelming note.

Limelda Jorg: The anti-heroine of the series, Limelda’s job is to chase relentlessly after Madlax, but never mess up the plot by actually killing her. Her character can be summarised by the line “I’ll get you next time, Madlax!” as she runs away after passing up yet another opportunity to kill her.

Carrossea Doon: As a child, Carrossea fell in love with Margaret within the space of about two minutes after the pair survived a plane crash. Unfortunately, he died protecting Margaret soon after, but thanks to several plot contrivances, he was resurrected without his memories, and became the bishie face of evil as an adult, spreading STRAIGHT in order to combat HARD YURI.

Quanzitta: The guardian of a magical book and the gateway to another dimension, Quanzitta’s debut was the first indication that the series was getting too bloated with characters and convoluted storyline for its own good. Her job is to offer exposition and plot advancement for the more supernatural side of the story.

Nakhl: Quanzitta’s assistant, Nakhl is a blade expert and spiritual successor to Noir’s Chloe. Aside from adding to the character count, she seems to exist for the sake of action scenes that do not involve the shooting of generics.

Laetitia and Poupee: Separated parts of Margaret and Carrossea respectively, these two children live in the alternate dimension and possess the lost memories of twelve years ago. Throughout the series, they appear to utter cryptic lines. Laetitia also bears a distinct resemblance to .hack’s aura.

Final Thoughts
Where Noir succeeded with its minimal cast and intriguing storyline, Madlax seemed almost determined to fail by introducing more thinly developed characters than the audience could ever care about and placing them in a world with ridiculously convoluted supernatural elements. There was certainly potential in the initial setting, but the execution left far too much to be desired.

Before you flame me, these hits and misses are partly based on what the series was supposed to achieve; for example, Medabots was clearly meant to be a kids’ show rather than a piece of high art- but for what it was, it wasn’t bad.

THE HITS
Even the series I would consider as successful examples of Bee Train’s work are not universally beloved; in fact, more often than not, I see them labelled as ‘painfully slow’ or even ‘tedious crap’. I’ll admit that all three of these series are slow burners that really are something of an acquired taste, but I honestly believe that all of them have worth.

.hack//SIGN

Seconds later, this poor grunty walks into the wall.

I have to admit, when I watched the first volume of .hack//SIGN, it wasn’t at all what I was expecting. I had assumed that a series set inside an MMORPG would contain some degree of action, so discovering that The World was more of a beautifully rendered chat room was a bit of an unwelcome surprise. Nonetheless, I remained determined to persevere with it (not least because of Yuki Kajiura’s wonderful score, which remains one of my favourite anime OSTs to this day), and by the series’ halfway point, I was duly rewarded with a slowly unfolding mystery that sucked me in and made me want to know exactly what the answers to the questions were going to be. Admittedly, the ending proved that this part of the story was really about Subaru and Tsukasa, but it was still a worthy introduction to the .hack games.

Memorable moments: Standing at the red Chaos Gate; Balmung’s arrival; the death of the little grunty; Crim charging in on a grunty; Tsubasa realising that his memories were deteriorating.

Meine Liebe
Based on a reverse harem dating game, Meine Liebe TV took away the girls and made all the guys HARD GAY for each other. Set in a fictional European country in the 1930s, Meine Liebe combined the allure of the past with what was effectively a male version of MariMite. A short yet surprisingly addictive series that brought us one of the five Pillar bishies in the form of the delectable Ludwig-sama.

Memorable moments: Ludwig outmanoeuvring Beruze; Camus fainting at the sight of women; Orphe explaining how he used to get into mischief with Ed.

Noir
The first truly original Bee Train production, Noir was unique in being a 26 episode series that only had four regular cast members, with pretty much everyone else getting killed off in short order. Another slowly unfolding story, Noir tells the story of a pair of assassins who take on the codename Noir, only to uncover the dark history behind the moniker they have chosen. First time around, I love every episode, but I have to admit that on rewatch, the standalone episodes in the first half of the series didn’t seem as entertaining, although the main storyline was as compelling as ever. It’s not quite good enough to be an all time favourite, but it’s the sort of series that appears in the top ten lists of people who have only watched a limited number of series. It also benefits from a top quality soundtrack from Yuki Kajiura, which also happened to be my first experience of her work.

Memorable moments: Kirika admitting she can kill people and not feel sad; Kirika wandering around town to the strains of ‘Salva Nos II’; the early assassination scenes; Chloe in the colosseum.

NEUTRALS

.hack//Legend Of the Twilight
Some might argue that LOT was the dose of light-heartedness that .hack franchise needed, and whilst it was certainly something a little different, it also suffered for that. The bright colours and action elements were most welcome, but the story could never hope to be anything more than light entertainment, and, inevitable as it perhaps was, it was a shame to see the manga story altered. The music was also the weakest link in the .hack chain; whilst the simplistic electronic sounds worked well in the context of the series, the soundtrack is somewhat underwhelming on its own (I only have the CD because it came with the artbox).

Memorable moments: the baby grunty; the very first scene of a generic actually battling a monster.

Arc the Lad

He was weak in the later game levels, but I have a soft spot for Pandit.

One of Bee Train’s earliest series, Arc the Lad hails from the studio’s initial video game adaptation era, back in the days when they still knew how to do action. As with most RPG adaptations, Arc the Lad doesn’t have the most sophisticated of stories, but it scores a few points for its darker themes, such as the often stomach-turning transformations of humans into monstrous chimeras. Although it’s not something I’d particularly recommend (I only watched it because it happened to be on TV), I do feel a pang of fondness for the series since it kick started my love-hate relationship with the games.

Memorable moments: the moment we see the Holy Mother.

Medabots
Yes, I might as well admit, I have watched Medabots, and while I can’t say it is either particularly good, well animated, or anything like Bee Train’s usual style, if you treat it as a parody of the average shounen series, it is actually quite amusing (for the first season, anyway, it does take itself a bit too seriously in the second). Once again, it’s not something I’d particularly recommend, but it was fun at the time.

Memorable moments: for sheer cheesiness, the English OP.

Meine Liebe Wieder
As I’ve already said several times before, Meine Liebe Wieder simply couldn’t live up to the first season; after promising that it would have some kind of a plot, it turned out to be a disappointing rehash of season one, with more HARD GAY and a whole new bevy of uninteresting characters.

Memorable moments: The return of Gandalf Barty.

Tsubasa Chronicle Season One
Back when I was watching it, I would certainly have classed Tsubasa as a hit, but in retrospect, I can’t help wondering if it was really all that good. Certainly the story didn’t really take off until the Outo arc, although for this season, the series was very faithful to the manga, so Bee Train cannot really be faulted for the content. Even the action scenes were supplemented by another excellent score from none other than Yuki Kajiura, which certainly helped me to disregard any lack of actual movement.

Memorable moments: Syaoran fighting in Outo.

THE MISSES

.hack//Liminality
As interesting as it was to have a look at the non-game side of the .hack universe, in all honesty, Liminality was not that marvellous. Not only was the animation disappointingly simplistic, but for all the interesting titbits of information it gave, the story didn’t really go anywhere, leaving the viewer with an “and then what?” feeling once it was all over. It works well enough as part of a greater whole, but is fairly lifeless on its own.

.hack//Roots
There is probably nothing more I can say about Roots that I haven’t said already, and so I can only reiterate the feelings of disappointment it brought me. More so than even SIGN, Roots was a hideously slow chat room, this time filled with a huge cast of dislikeable characters, most of whom needed to be arrested by the fashion police on sight. Unlike SIGN, which was actually building up to something, Roots eventually revealed that it had no plot whatsoever; even Ali Project’s turn at the music was disappointingly weak. This series was also the first indication that Bee Train could no longer be bothered with action scenes, instead preferring to cut away to uninteresting rocks whilst the actual fighting occurred off screen.

Avenger

Even though I went through a brief obsession phase with Avenger, the beauty of hindsight has enabled me to see that, in fact, it wasn’t really all that marvellous. The sort of series that takes its entire run just to explain its basic premise, Avenger kept me watching not only through a need to understand just what exactly was going on, but because of its superior character designs and catchy soundtrack (a shame that Ali Project has never equalled their work on this series). I must still count it as a miss, however, since the storytelling was sub par, with an awful ending that left the viewer to find their own answers to the questions raised in the series.

Madlax
Ah, Madlax, what insane impulse convinced me to ever spend good money on you? The spriritual successor Noir, Madlax takes everything that made its predecessor good, and turns it on its head in order to produce something far inferior. Yes, the leads may be less cool and emotionless than those of Noir, but in its place, Madlax has a bloated and insipid cast, not to mention a story that is mired in pointlessly complex and mostly ridiculous supernatural elements. The character designs and music are good, but the story is far too awful to ever consider it anything more than a miss.

Tsubasa Chronicle Season Two
Season two of Tsubasa marked an unfortunate new direction for the series- one that contained more than its fair share of filler. By this point, not only were Bee Train making a hash of the manga based stories, but they were also coming up with their own ideas, all of which showed a singular lack of imagination (bus world, anyone?). Admittedly, the end of season arc sounds reasonably interesting, and the rumoured lack of third season is a relief, but it’s hard to stick with a series that has three insert songs per episode.

Final Thoughts
Although the sample size is perhaps a little too small to make any extensive conclusions, so far Bee Train seems to be a studio that has been hampered by their limited style. There is no doubt that they know how to pick composers and character designers, but when it comes to telling a story or including some much needed action scenes, the production staff quickly find themselves out of their depth. Perhaps they can prove themselves worthy in the upcoming Murder Princess OVA and El Cazador de Bruja series, but based on their track record, it seems best to keep expectations muted.