Main Feature	Special Features
	Video	1080p High Definition 16:9	480i Standard Definition
	Audio	Dolby TrueHD 5.1: English Dolby TrueHD 5.1: Japanese	Dolby Digital 2.0
	Subtitle	English
	Rating	TV 14	NR
	Running Time	300 minutes
	Released By: FUNimation Entertainment
	Release Date: March 09, 2010
	Review Date: March 08, 2010
	Reviewed By: Rommel Salandanan
	You have not seen “Gunslinger Girl - Season One” until you’ve seen it in High-Definition Rating:

STORY IN A NUTSHELL:
Children who were badly injured, abused, and abandoned are chosen and taken by a covert child welfare agency. They claim to be there for the benefit of the children, but in truth this secret branch of the Italian government turns these innocent victims into lethal cybernetic killers. Those few who have survived the transition are paired with men, called Brothers. The innocent assassins learn to kill all to please their male counterpart. Murder, misfortune, and the lives and deaths of these children are told in a riveting and heartbreaking saga complete in this box set.

REVIEW:
Never has a more heartrending saga been told unless you include Grave of the Fireflies. Based on the ongoing manga by Yu Aida, the anime covers the lives of a group of these children. Henrietta is a kind girl and out of all of them, may have the kindest brother in the man Jose. Rico is a sniper that struggles with the cold indifference of her caretaker. Triela, one of the more outspoken of the children, also must struggle with her search for affection from her ‘brother’. One of the more tragic of all of these sad characters is the story of Angelica. She does not work as well as the other cybernetic children and the apathy of her handler tears at the heart when her health begins to fail.

What cuts through this assassin series is the purity and innocence of these girls. They murder people without thought to please their ‘brothers’. Their longing for love and affection is sorrowful and realistic. That they retain innocence while being turned into murderers is the great calamity of the story. To be turned into a monster is one thing, to keep your soul through the transition perhaps the true harm done to these girls with their fragile and futile hope for love and belonging.

The series shows their various lives, often touching on flashbacks about their diverse and always sad backgrounds to reveal complex relationships and layered emotions to an unforgettable anime.  The show reveals a striking reaction of one of the girls when love is not returned. The anime ends with the passing of one of the group to the most emotional rendition of Ode to Joy ever heard.

The animation production is beautifully rendered by MADHOUSE. This is the same studio that delivered the heard hitting subject matter in Texhnolyze, X, and Death Note as well as the horror in Hellsing and Hellsing Ultimate.  The poignancy of these girls’ tragic lives is given tender life in the animation design, imparting the fragility of their hearts while delivering the ruthless acts these children assassins are forced to undertake. The animation takes no shortcuts, cuts no corners and touches the heart with the tragedy depicted within the tale.

IN TECHNICAL TERMS:
Video in this series comes as a mixed bag. The series will show its true form in high-definition in certain scenes, but it swaps places with fuzzy images back and forth throughout the series. While I would venture and say that this might be another version of the series that FUNimation acquired, it must also be one of the series that the Japanese would not allow them to make any type of modification to the video. 

Both Japanese and the audio transfer for the English dub from 5.1 to TrueHD is clear and precise, and both runs on 48 kHz. The subwoofer LFE was not much used in this series; however, whenever guns are blazing and blasting across the scene, it is very evident.

EXTRAS:
If you have the individual or complete collection standard definition, then the extras are the same sans the building of Triela – only the building of Rico and Henrietta are available in the extras.

Bonus DVD features include clean opening and ending animation, Gunslinger Girl Dossiers which offer character sketches, bios, and weapon design illustrations, a step by step visual of drawing and coloring three of the girls in Building Henrietta and Rico, Meet the Real Gunslinger Girls feature that has the five English voice actresses portraying the five girls speaking about their roles, audio commentary from the case and production crew.

IN SUMMARY:
Gunslinger Girl is tragic, ruthless, and unforgettable. It is an assassin story unparalleled in its poignancy. But this is a story that should have been given a well deserve high-definition presentation.