"Girl Gun Lady" drama: Episode nine of ten recap

 

 Air Dates: April 7th until June 9, 2021 on MBS at 1:00 am, total of ten episodes

Subs are done by Bandai and the shows can be found at their YT channel

Bandai YT channel

 Main Cast: Each team has four members, the bottom character is the leader while the top three are students at the Minamoto high school. As you can see the team names go by the alphabet.... A, B, C, D and there may be more.

Team ALPHA TANGO

Sei Shiraishi as Koharu Tachibana.... Heroine of the show for lack of a better word. Koharu was an avid model builder who got out of the hobby but resumed it in the first episode. She made a figurine called Alice and the next thing Koharu knew she had been whisked away to a parallel world where her classmates were shooting guns at each other!

Momoka Ito as Natsuna Usui and Fuyumi Usui.... The school's track star and will be competing in the 800 meter Japan championship. But will she as Natsuna has only one live left(?). The answer is no as Natsuna was killed at the end of the sixth show. But her replacement on the Alpha team was her younger sister Fuyumi starting in the seventh episode.

Natsuki Deguchi as Akiho Inada.... Good friend of Natsuna's and loves science.

Yuno Ohara as Alice.... Commander of the team who lives in a parallel world as do the other commanders. Koharu first met Alice when she built a model that resembled her and think that's how all of the students became part of their team.

Team BRAVO TANGO

Manami Igashira as Chizuru Mizuno.... Killed for the third time in this episode which means she's been 'erased' in the real world.

Anna Ishii as Matsuko Kadaowaki.... In the third episode she replaced Mizuno as the fourth member of Team Bravo. At one time she was good friends with Koharu but they had a falling out two years ago. Matsuko is by far the toughest of the fighters and also the best at making models which means he guns are the most powerful.

Yuuka Suzuki as Rin Otake....

Yura Someno as Aoi Umebayashi....

Rio Teramoto as Bianca.... Team commander

 Team CHARLIE TANGO

Azusa Ohara as Ichika Ikushima....

Rina Kannami as Futaba Ikushima....

Hina as Mitsue Amemiya....

Momoka Ishida as Charlotte.... Team commander

 Team DELTA TANGO

Ai Mikami as Rei Kitamoto.... Very ruthless killer

Momoko Tanabe as Natsuki Higashino....

Utano Aoi as Kana Minami....

Sakura Ando as Daisy.... Team commander

 Rest of the cast, twenty characters in all though won't be talking about them too often.

Aya Asahina as Mirei Hoshimiya.... Teacher for many of the students.

Masanari Wada as Kaoru Moriyama.... School's physician and is a model freak.

Gaku Hamada as the shop owner.... Owns the FFF shop where the girls purchase their models. He also has some ties to the games which are unknown at this point.

 Links to the previous recaps:

Episode one .... Episode two .... Episode three .... Episode four

Episode five .... Episode six .... Episode seven .... Episode eight

 

 Would probably help to read those above recaps as I won't be talking too much of what's taken place, like this post they're not too long. Do recommend reading the last recap though if you haven't, so much took place and it must have been difficult cramming so much into a 24 minute show. They're not similar but this kind of re-sparked my interest in "Gunslinger Girl". The manga was just four volumes but what an intense story that was and have read them at least five times. Will be starting on them again soon and when they're done will be watching the anime once again which may be better than the mangas.

 Really zipped through this series mighty quick, didn't do the first pair of recaps until May 29th which was just fifteen days ago. On to the recap, in the last recap was the final 'Girl Gun' battle of the season. The Alpha team led by our 'heroine' Koharu stormed from third to first in the last three matches which gave them the victory but now what happens? Koharu thinks their commander Alice will be able to transform into a human and the other contestants will be battling in the next season. That won't be the case and while not as much fighting the intensity level was certainly way up there. For the most part Matsuko is the key character in this episode, she's been so important throughout the series but we never did find out about her background until this show.

 When the eighth episode ended Matsuko had been talking with Koharu at school the day after the final 'Girl Gun' battle. The top three screenshots are from a flashback and a story Matsuko is telling her once best friend but in reality were they ever friends? Matsuko had played the Girl Gun game before, two years prior and her team won the championship but it was a hollow victory for her. During that conversation Matsuko revealed a bombshell which I didn't see coming and bet Koharu didn't either. When Matsuko was in that previous battle she wasn't a student fighter but instead the commander of her team. So that means Matsuko is actually a.... Plastic Model!!!! Her model name had been Amatsu and the reward for winning the Girl Gun League is that the commander can be transformed into a human which is what Matsuko decided to do. 

 But not because she wanted to be a human but Amatsu, now Matsuko, wanted to avenge the deaths of the three girls on her team. The league had told all of the students their lives will be spared but that's a lie according to Matsuko, only Koharu as the overall champion will be allowed to live. The only reason Matsuko chose to become a human was to find the person controlling the game, she wants to find that person to kill him for what he did to her team. But that's impossible because Koharu won the championship so would she kill that person for her? Koharu at first didn't buy the story but will over time, Matsuko knew she or Koharu could defeat the person alone so asked for help from the other contestants of the game. Matsuko has told the four others the only way to defeat this person who has destroyed their lives is to find the Girl Armor model which appears to be so powerful but where could one be?

 There's one key thing I almost forgot to talk about. Matsuko was explaining to Koharu what happens when a model/commander becomes a human. Te creator of the game/parallel world is able to implant memories of that new person in the minds of everyone on Earth. So Koharu was never friends with Matsuko from an early age as she wasn't in human form yet! The opposite works too as once a girl has ben killed three times in battle they're erased from the real world and all memories of them no longer exist. Hope they explain a bit more about how that works in the final episode.

 Meanwhile none of the girls were able to locate the one Armor Girl model, though skeptical at first even Koharu is helping in the search. Matsuko still firmly believes the school physician Moriyama is somehow involved with the Girl Gun game. She feels he's the mysterious Mr. M she's heard about who is the best model builder in the world though he denies being that man. The girls above even sent their teacher Hoshimiya to his house to see if the Armor Girl model was there, it wasn't and that was the last we heard of that in this show but bet it'll be found in the final episode. The weekly battles always took place at midnight on Tuesdays but with the league over there will just be one final ceremony and when that will take place is unknown, Matsuko still feels all the girls will be killed at it.

 While the girls were talking with their teacher it was ceremony time and right before Hoshimiya's eyes the students disappeared. And ended right back up on the battle grounds which is a duplicate of their Minamoto high school. While all of the girls and commanders were whisked to the school's gym team Alpha and their commander Alice ended up in a different location. That was the off limits backroom of the FFF shop where the girls bought all of their models. In not too big of a surprise the girls met the person controlling the game which was the FFF shop's owner. He's never had a name so may as well call him Owner. Before he got down to why the team was there he told the girls to watch his screen where it was showing a battle about to start in the school's gym!

 Matsuko seems correct with what she told Koharu as it appears all of the surviving Gun Girls will be killed off. Not by the Owner but by the commanders, he's told the three of them that whoever kills the most girls and stays alive will be able to become a human like Alice. Though the girls are battle trained the commanders had a bit of an unfair advantage as their suits were bullet proof save for their heads and hearts. Before we knew it three students had been slain but the ruthless Delta girl Rei was able to take out the Charlie commander. However in a sneak attack Rei's own leader Daisy killed her though just seconds later she was shot to death by Matsuko.

 That left just Matsuko and her Bravo team commander Bianca left, both despise each other. It was really no natch as Matsuko is by far the best fighter and drilled a shot through her leader's heart so none of the three commanders were able to transform from a model into a human. With everyone dead what will that mean for Matsuko and what of the girls from the Alpha championship team? We're not going to know what takes place with the Alpha girls Koharu, Akiho and Fuyumi until the next show but we did learn something about Alice. She's so hell bent on becoming a human she'll do anything and I was thinking was she also part of that commander's battle? That's because it felt as though Alice thought she would have to kill a student to become a human and rushed from that secret chamber.

 After her battle Matsuko left the gym and was trying to leave the school grounds with no success. Suddenly appearing in front of her was Alice and before Matsuko knew what happened Alice shot her to death which you can see above. That ended this show and didn't expect to see Matsuko killed but that doesn't mean we won't see her in the final episode. Not as much action but the intensity level was quite high in this show, hope it keeps up for the final episode. Hope I'm wrong but just have a mild feeling this series could end on somewhat of a happy and fluffy note. Not that there's anything wrong with those kinds of endings but after so many battles and killings it wouldn't seem appropriate. Now on to view the final show which is the next post.