Gunslinger Girl -Il Teatrino- 02
ガンスリンガー・ガール -イル・テアトレーノ- Ep. 02
 
SPOILER Summary:

A young boy named Pinocchio is sent to assassinate someone in his home. While he fails to shoot the man due to the man getting the drop on the boy, Pinocchio manages to kill the man. The man’s young daughter emerges to find her father dead. As a tear streams down her face, Pinocchio shoots her. Even though she’s dead, he shoots her repeatedly.

Years later, the boy is now a young man who’s still in the trade. In the neighborhood that he lives, a young girl named Aurora looks up to him and admires him greatly, wishing him well in whatever he does. Meanwhile, Pinocchio’s handler (Cristiano) is meeting with some other people after Pinocchio killed a judge for them. They want a bridge destroyed and thus have arranged for a couple of “independent terrorist” to blow it up. They are to meet Pinocchio at his residences. When he returns home, young Aurora greets him, happy to see him because she thinks he’s very cool, even if the description he gives of his job as an errand runner isn’t and his general disposition is cold.

The terrorist are a male and female named Franco and Franca. While Franca goes to shower, Franco decides to test out Pinocchio. As they sit roughly 10-meters apart, Franco pulls a gun on Pinocchio and asks him what he’d do about the situation. Despite being at a disadvantage, Pinocchio says that he’d still kill Franco, using the man’s previously injured leg against him. Satisfied, Franco puts away the gun. Pinocchio goes out to get some food and when he returns, he again comes upon Aurora, who’d also been doing some shopping. When Aurora says she’ll get her mother to prepare him and his guest food, Pinocchio coldly tells her to stop following him as he’s only trouble. This naturally depresses Aurora.

The terrorist run over their plans with Pinocchio, who’s surprised that Franca is concerned about unnecessary deaths. In his mind, this is a liability, and he says so to Franco when they go to get weapons from Pinocchio’s stash of weapons. When asked, Pinocchio tells Franco that his handler Cristiano is everything to him. He asks Franco about his relationship to Franca. Franco concedes that he’d lost his purpose but with her, he has one again.

At the Agency facility, Angelica and Rico are apparently getting ready for a session at the firing range as Angelica’s handler Marco talks with Triela’s handler Hilshire. With Angelica’s recent release from the hospital ward, she’s not quite ready for duty in the field yet. Hilshire and Triela are being sent on a mission as some guy named Cohen has gone missing. Cohen had apparently been very interested in an assassin named Pinocchio. Marco tells Hilshire to be careful since this mission is from Section 1, who may be trying to set up Section 2 for a failure. Hilshire says he’ll be careful as Triela waits for him by the car.

Thoughts:

I know a lot of people have complained about the new moé character designs as I mentioned before. This episode again showed why this was the right way to go. That little girl at the beginning who gets murdered was very moé and I felt so badly because I knew she was going to die. Then there was the very moé Aurora, who is treated so coldly by Pinocchio. Again, I felt so badly for her. Isn’t that what the moé element of any anime is about? Its a character (usually young female) who is cute and innocent, whom you’d want to protect (though the moé element has become more “lolicon” over time with the sexual fetish crowd’s view washing into the more mainstream anime view). Having such innocence crushed (or otherwise harmed) or killed ads to the horrors of the subject matter of the series, and I believe that’s how it should be.