Gunslinger Girl Chapter 100 Discussion

Master_of_Fear said:
I got to admit though, my first thought was that the guy was going to be a pedophile and was going to try to do something to her, especially when he mentioned putting her on the net, I'm guessing the author did that on purpose because that's what happened to Triela.

a1oner said:
What makes you so sure she didn't suffer, wasn't kia or, in your own words, torn into pieces in another mission/experiment she was likely used for prior to the skip?

Anyway, glad to see this one wrap up nicely. Seeing a photo of Rico on Jean's desk gave me the impression-- a slight glimmer of hope (as the finale would have it)-- that even if she did went through the same shit as either Henrietta or Triela during her last months/year, at least she had Jean to share and ease her suffering even by a bit.

As for Claes, I can only hope she went as peacefully as I imagined Rico did. Rest well and farewell, dear angels.

Valefor said:
THIS IS A MANGA ONLY DISCUSSION POST. DO NOT DISCUSS ANYTHING BEYOND THIS CHAPTER.
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Powerful end. Maybe it left too much side stories open but it was indeed a worth and moviing finale for this great manga.
9/10, hope to reread it soon, editor in my country almost dropped this series.

sugarbee said:

I agree too, but i feel i saw Jose and Henrietta again, like reincarnated

kusushi said:
Nice end. I have to re-read it. There's one thing I wonder.
Did Jean know that gifted girl is a reincarnation from Triela?

Mien said:
I don't get it, that ending showed a lesson about hope but I already knew about the concept of hope beforehand. And did Henrietta had a crush on that special forces GIS guy back in volume 60, and she saw the similar GIS unit and remembered her past then went psyched and basically killed Jose and some random GIS guy.

Henrietta became human for once and the shock was definitely killing her.

Jean has survived it all because he doesn't let emotions take control in a battle, Rico was so ideal to his operations and livelihood since she was probably the most disciplined and great fighter. A present of the display between the gap of the emotional being and cold hearted soldiers.

mapperky said:
Also, that last page in the epilogue really says so much if you think about it. In it's conclusion, we see the similarities between Cleas and Jean. There personalities couldn't be more different, but there the same in the way that they both ended up in the same place. There the only surviving members of their "Platoon" per say. In the end, after Jean's revenge has been taken, and all of the cyborgs have reached the inevitable end of their lifespan, they both just wander the boat alone, having lost all their friends to the war. Almost like ghosts upon the ship. Claes is to die soon, and Jean has no purpose anymore, so in all likelihood, he is to die soon as well from suicide (Forget about hopey changey final chapter). Jean's first line when he wakes up after the battle was "So I failed to die again". All Jean wanted was to fulfill his purpose and then die. Rico gave him a purpose, but when she died, I suspect he was only waiting for all the cyborgs to die off to kill himself, because it was something he was still "Needed" for, in his mind.

Claes's last line holds buckets full of meaning. She states that she can see the back of a man walking towards the sun, which isn't just a final pretty sounding line to end the manga on, it means her memories are returning. This last line is simply the reminder that, just like the other cyborgs, Cleas is gonna die soon. It's bittersweet though. She says the line fondly, as if she would be happy to be able to meet the man once more, but it also means that Claes is gonna die soon.

The manga uses the metaphor of "Fantasma" and "Ghost" a lot. I think the ending was a reflection on the concept of fantasma. Throughout the manga, we see most of the characters have lost loved ones who still influence what they do in present day. It seems that whenever a person dies, everyone still has their unfinished buisness with them, and things are left unresolved because of their death. When Enrica died, he idea and memory haunted Jean and Jose for the rest of their lives. The doctor's memory haunted Hilshire for the rest of his, and infuenced how he acted in his present day, and to Triella. But in the end, when we see everybody die, it gives a more grim look at this metaphor. The agency is but a fantasma now, and all the cyborgs who died are as well. In the epilogue, I get an overwhelming feeling, reminding me that Hanrietta, Triella, Jose, Hilshire, are not here any more. That may sound obvious, but the epilogue really makes me feel the weight of that. All the remaining members of the agency wandering around the boat, a fair amount of them just waiting for death, it feels like all the previous chapters never happened. Like all they were was a distant memory for all the characters, or a fairytale, or a fantasma. Usually I don't like it when a story wraps up with a summary of what happens to everyone in a monologue, but I think it really worked in this. In the mono, Claes just says what happened to them, and you just feel like, "They died, they just died, that's all". We just see everyone fades into a fantasma for all who still remain alive, but we know that in not long all of those people will be fantasma as well, and before you know it, there will be no one around to remember any of them, because that is how death works.

But in the end, it's more bittersweet that overwhelmingly sad alone. Cleas's last line, we see her say it fondly, almost as if she is happy about the memories returning. I think both Rico and Petra were happy in the end. Even though death was coming, they just peacefully lived out their final days with their handlers. Almost how you might see an elderly couple that has done everything they want to, and all the excitement in their life is over, and they just bitter sweetly spend their days together until they die.

I have a feeling that the last year with Rico was a very impactful one for Jean. With nothing more to do, and no more jobs for Rico, his "Tool", to fix, he has to start treating her as a normal girl. I feel that in this final year, Jean finally got to learn who Rico was as a person, and learned to see her as such, rather than as a tool. And after throwing her into the line of fire over and over again for years, I imagine that he is called to reevaluate the price of his revenge. Cause in the end he got it, but he lost his brother, and so many other lives. Now, seeing Rico as a person, and possibly enjoying the time he spends with her, he thinks about what it would be like if Rico had died in the fight, and he realizes he doesn't want to be without her.

I think he truly learned the value of a life in this final year. This is of course my speculation, but it's a feeling that the manga gave me. I could keep talking about Gunslinger Girl for hours, so I'm gonna leave it off here. If anyone wants t discuss though, please reply. I'd love to get into a discussion about the manga with another fan who loves the series as much as I do.

mapperky said:



Sorry dude, I read the psychical copies so I don't know where to find it online. Just make sure you finished it all, cause there's one more volume after the omnibus's end. Volume 15. It's not included in any of the collections, only as an individual volume. It wraps up the series perfectly. Just don't read the very last chapter, stop after the Epilogue. It's a perfect conclusion, and the last chapter messes it up.

There are also 100 chapters in total, just so you can reference how far you read in the series.

mapperky said:


Yeah, that unfortunately is the final chapter. I think chapter 99 wraps it up perfectly, but 100 messes it up. Anyway, you might want to re-read some of the last chapters again just to make sure you got everything. If you read it on the internet, there's a chance you didn't get all the content, depending on the reliability of the site you read it on.

Valefor said:
THIS IS A MANGA ONLY DISCUSSION POST. DO NOT DISCUSS ANYTHING BEYOND THIS CHAPTER.
----------------------------------------
Powerful end. Maybe it left too much side stories open but it was indeed a worth and moviing finale for this great manga.
9/10, hope to reread it soon, editor in my country almost dropped this series.

mapperky said:



Sorry dude, I read the psychical copies so I don't know where to find it online. Just make sure you finished it all, cause there's one more volume after the omnibus's end. Volume 15. It's not included in any of the collections, only as an individual volume. It wraps up the series perfectly. Just don't read the very last chapter, stop after the Epilogue. It's a perfect conclusion, and the last chapter messes it up.

There are also 100 chapters in total, just so you can reference how far you read in the series.

mapperky said:


Their deaths were that of an ironic tragedy. In the start of the series, we see Jose and kind of an unopened book. He treats Henrietta almost as if he's coddling her, and he always acts as if he only really cares about her. For the first part of the series, we don't really know why he does any of this, hence the unopened book analogy. But as time goes on, learning of his sister in Fantasma, and going on and on with his past, it becomes more apparent why he acted the way that he did. He was projecting the memory of his little sister onto Henrietta, so that in a way, he could have all the moments he would have had with his sister if he life wasn't cut short. And because he holds himself responsible for her death, he also does it as a sort of atonement. He never really saw Henrietta as her own person, just another vessel for his sister's memory. But when Giacomo Dante shows up again, it changes something in him. When he started taking care of Henrietta, he took up the role as a brother he never really got to fill, but when Dante shows up again, his drive for revenge caused the part of himself that he despised and revered so much, the part of himself that neglected his family life, to reawaken. Jose was once again, a soldier. When he and Henrietta fight Dante's forces, we see him get less and less forgiving of Henrietta's mistakes, and he starts to care about killing Dante alone. Somewhere along this line, he realized his folly. Henrietta was not his sister, and he stopped treating her as such. But in no way, did he think of her as more of her own person. She went from being his sister, to being his weapon. That's why he agreed to the intense brainwashing that caused her to lose her personality, and in my opinion, that was the final unforgivable moment for Jose. Henrietta was a weapon alone, not only in mind but in reality. And during his final battle, when the phantasm of his sister reapers, asking him if he's "having fun", and he answers "Hell yes!", we see Jose has fully destroyed the other side of himself. I think the main theme with Jose's character arc is that of a split self, as he was constantly split between the side of himself that was a soldier, and was a family man. After his sisters death, he felt guilty, so he became the family man as a sort of atonement. But over time that faded, and he gave in more and more to what he really wanted to be. He realized his relationship with Henrietta was just playing house, to him, all a farce, so he gave it up. Even though, in my opinion, he was simply being dumb and selfish for not taking care of maybe the only person in the world that he actually loved.

This is why the death is ironic. Once Henrietta remembers everything, and shoots Jose by accident, Jose realizes what he's done, but doesn't really feel guilty for it. This was the one moment throughout all their time spent together, that Jose actually saw Henrietta as her own person. By acknowledging a desire that was hers alone, to die with Jose, he finally considered her who she was. And when he kills her, he does it once again, as a way of atonement. But this time, he doesn't really care. If he were not wounded, he would probably leave Henrietta where she was and keep fighting. But he does it more because he might as well, he owes it to her. And in the end, when Henrietta mistook Jose for an attacker, he got when he deserved. Because of the way that he treated her, he was treated as the man who caused Henrietta to become a cyborg in the first place, the man who murdered her family, even if it was accidental. And in the end, and it's sad to say, but Henrietta was happy. Because of her conditioned love for Jose, even after everything he did, she got her wish to die with him. For her, it was a good death.

Jose gave up on Henrietta because their relationship was all "Fake" to him. But in reality, so was Henrietta's love for Jose, as that was due to her conditioning. Henrietta and Jose are two sides of the same coin. One saying, "It's all just a farse anyway, so give it up", and the other saying "I don't care if it's real or not, because it feels real". Henrietta was okay with her love for Jose, and she made her peace with the possibility that it might not be "real". Because really, what is real in this sense? Henrietta loved him, so wasn't that real enough? That was her take on it all. Jose on the other hand, was the opposite, and in the end, he suffers for it, and pays the price for his neglect.

mapperky said:


I feel that Jose did do the right thing by killing her. I don't think it made up for everything he did, but in the end it was the least he could do for her. Even if Henrietta could have lived, they were both in a situation where they were very likely going to die. In fact, Jose does eventually succumb to his injuries. Henrietta never would have wanted to live without Jose, and as she stated, she would have taken her own life rather than live without him. So in the end, I feel it gave her a sense of peace that Jose was the one to do it, so they could go together.

And yeah, I really like how the manga doesn't really have a main. I feel all the characters get their time in the spotlight, with very few being supporting cast alone. It's more like several interconnected stories about the cyborgs and the people around them, rather than one long one. For example, back in the Pinocchio arc, Franco, Franco, and Pinocchio were pretty much main characters. Same goes for Angelica, Triella, Henrietta, the Croce brothers, Rico and Claes. They were all the main characters, and all took center stage at one moment or another. Also thanks for talking dude. I really love this series so it's been great being able to discuss it.