Gunslinger Girl - Il Teatrino OVA - Episodes 1-2 (Completed)

While Gunslinger Girl - Il Teatrino never managed to scale the heights of its predecessor, or indeed the manga which came before that, it wasn't a complete disaster from beginning to end, making the prospect of a two-episode OVA by the same production team a potentially interesting affair. With around fourty minutes of screen time to play with, surely there's ample time to delve into the world of these girl assassin's and their lives in a suitably interesting fashion?


Well yes, there is plenty of time to do that I'm sure, but for some reason this Il Teatrino OVA does very little with the girls themselves, preferring instead to afford more time upon their handlers. Thus, the first episode sees Jean running into the man that would have been his brother-in-law has his fiancee not been killed, leading to an investigation into some more terrorist goings-on that takes both himself and Rico to Venice. Episode two also centres quite strongly around Jean, while also spending a little time with Jose as the two brothers take a vacation together with Henrietta and Rico.

The real problem here is that very, very little happens in either instalment of the OVA - In the first part, what looks to be building into an investigation of note fizzles out into nothingness, giving you the sense that even the script-writers got bored trying to pen such a mundane story. Similarly, the second episode picks up its vacation premise which has room for plenty of deepth thinking and dialogue, yet seems unsure of what to do with it and instead turns in a stilting effort that ends up invoking a ghost for want of any real character development from either girls or handlers. Yes, these episodes do try to cover some of the ground that mae Gunslinger Girl so fascinating in the girl place, via a nightmare suffered by Rico in particular, but again such scenes seem to be thrown together with little rhyme or reason to add to the disjointed and rushed feel of this OVA.

While at least Il Teatrino as a series managed to pick up some kind of pace and depth in its second half, these lessons seem to have been forgotten here, leaving us with a dull and vacuous offering that is best avoided - There's simply nothing worthwhile featured in either episode, even for the Gunslinger Girl die-hards.