Tuesday 12 February 2008

Gunslinger Girl - Il Teatrino - Episode 5

After improving over the past couple of episodes, part five of Il Teatrino really lost its way somewhat, offering a rather disjointed story which revolved largely around an aspect of Marco's past catching up with him, while also placing some focus upon Angelica's continuing deterioration. While the latter would probably have made for a more interesting episode, instead we were left with Marco-related flashbacks aplenty (why would sedate flashback sequences have shaky-cam effects? I know he has eyesight problems, but really...) and a plot that virtually screamed out what was going to happen next within a few minutes of that particular scene being set.

To make things worse, the whole episode was only very loosely (and again, disjointedly) connected to the main Pinocchio arc which is the mainstay of Il Teatrino, giving it a rather filler-esque feel that was lacking any real passion where there was potential for plenty. While this wasn't a terrible episode by any stretch of the imagination, it really didn't go anywhere, leaving me with somewhat cold - a real disappointment after the series appeared to be building up a head of steam, which it is now going to need to start over with. Again, I'm left hoping for better things next time around.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

To be fair, the original story for this episode was in the manga, but iirc it was at a later point in the series, the story was a lot more streamlined and the reporter didn't have a design that screamed "haha, I'm secretly evil, dontchaknow?"

Hanners said...

Yep, I figured it was in the manga (although I have to confess I haven't read it), but it just felt like an unnecessary distraction, especially considering the fact that the series had actually been picking up nicely in previous instalments.

I am quite surprised that they didn't give the reporter guy an evil laugh to go with his looks. He could probably have done with a handlebar moustache too. ;o)