Gunslinger Girl and Audience Expectations

I recently watched Gunslinger Girl and it got me thinking about our expectations going into a series. Gunslinger Girl's advertising lures you in with its promise of moe girls handling powerful guns which makes one think they're in for a shlockey, shonen-fest, but eventually, gradually you find yourself wondering whether why Jose is protecting Henrietta or what's the nature of love. What happened to my anime about loli cyborg assassins (really Japan?)? Yes, this is a relationship-oriented tearjerker that's cleverly packages itself as a male fantasy of violence and cuteness. I'm finding that anime is really good at these switcheroos.

Yet, for me, the switch was welcome. If there's two things I'm a sucker for it's Italian cityscapes and angsty melodrama. And this has both in spades. Like most melodramas, this is a story of violence and exploitation where violence and exploitation don't belong. The purity of our heroes and heroines are pitted against the inhumanity of the plot and setting: the innocence of young girls versus the cynical wordliness of the adults; a violin case used to carry a submachine gun; the beauty of Italian cities and art paired with it's backalleys and crime. Everything contributes to the overriding sense of emotional warmth vying with pain and cruelty.

What elevates this anime above the genre, though, is how taughtly the story is told. This is one of those series where every detail adds to the story and will eventually have some sort of payoff. The anime is just very well-structured. Every episode introduces a theme, we see how different characters deal with said theme, conflict emerges, then there's a cathardic ending. If only every anime could so effectively tell a story. Unfortunately, though, what the anime does well inside each episode it simply forgets to apply to the series. Each episode effectively reboots the series, and there's very little by way of a macro story told over the course of the anime.

Some elements can also get a bit cloying or head toward the cliched, so this really isn't for everyone. The absurd premise (really Japan!) can also put some people off. I was just surprised that this anime had as much power as it did--considering how schlockey it looks on the face of it.

This all makes me ask:
Is finding an anime is something completely different than you expected a common experience?

It's probably not a problem in the sense that something like, I don't know, climate change is a problem, but I do think there's a couple of issues there.

One is simply a matter of enjoyment. Sometimes we get hung up on something unpleasant in an experience and let that steer us away from something we might end up enjoying in the end. The example of the friend with an aversion to objectifying outfits might fall in this category. Is Major Kusanagi's clothes really the takeaway point of that series? Mostly no, but it might be something that takes people out of the experience and stops them from going on. Is that bad? I don't think so. If it is, then they're only keeping themselves from something they might actually enjoy. I don't think they're missing out on something too important, though, if it's just one movie, book, or anime series. And maybe our particular hangup is something that's worth fighting over. Maybe there shouldn't be so many revealing outfits that push entire audiences away from viewing anime? It's certainly debatable.

The other issue I might see with avoiding things just because of the premise, however, I do think think is a little more problematic. And that's if you refuse to even acknowledge entire genres, time periods, or mediums. You may not enjoy something like, let's take the genre I mentioned above, melodrama, but there is something important about understanding how melodrama works and why it can be such a draw. It's a genre that's been around for centuries (at least since the beginning of the 19th C) and it speaks to something inherent in a lot of people's lives: the fact that we have to deal with larger, impersonal forces that are antogonistic to people's sense of morality, enjoyment, and even decency. You can't pick up a novel by Thomas Hardy, see a play by Anton Chekhov, watch a lot of cinema from the teens through 40's, or even see a bit of anime without running across this genre. I'd argue that's because it speaks to something pretty central to a lot of our lives. When you say, no, I'm only going to watch things with well-adjusted characters struggling with problems that are completely within their grasp, then I do think you're shutting yourself off from something important. You don't have to like every genre or style of art and entertainment, but it is important not to write them all off.

Sorry for the long-winded response. Oh, and thanks for the headsup about the half-way point in anime series. I haven't noticed that too much, yet, but I'm still fairly new to anime. Now, I'm off to go watch something more lighthearted--in this case, Lucky Star, which one friend refered to as "the most frivolous of frivolous anime."