Figure: Henrietta

• Character: Henrietta
• Series: Gunslinger Girl
• Sculpted by yr? in 1/8 Scale
• Manufactured by Good Smile Company
• Slideshow (10 images)

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A lot of movies, shows, and books make me sad. The music in my CD collection often makes me depressed, but I like that in music, which means I’m a gloom junkie. Being a gloom junkie, I love the Gunslinger Girl manga and the anime. Gunslinger Girl is one of the few stories that makes me feel a different kind of sadness than what most sad stories give me.

What makes Gunslinger Girl such a treat for the gloom junkie is that the hope and salvation the world offers to the characters is tainted. To these adolescent cyborg assassins, their current circumstance is the greatest thing that has ever happened to them, they’d been rescued. Given the circumstances of their new lives, the brainwashing, the conditioning, the programmed devotion the girls are subject to, the show leads to a question. Were they really rescued? The girls don’t even seem aware the question exists, which is what makes it heartbreaking at times. It provides no clear-cut answer, nor does it really attempt to, rather it just provides a slice of life for you to see. If you enjoy depressing material, go watch or read Gunslinger Girl. The show definitely offers more than what it appears on the surface, and those afraid of loli fanservice can breathe easy. It’s not that kind of anime, even if some of the cover art, particularly for the manga, would lead you to believe it was.

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One of things about being a fan of Gunslinger Girl is there is little in the way of product to choose from, especially if like me you have to rely on English language sites for stuff like figures, key chain charms, and artbooks. At Otakon 2005 and 2006, only one dealer had any Gunslinger Girl merchandise, and I suspect only because he’s a fan (we chatted for a minute or two about the show).

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The Goodsmile Company release of Henrietta was sculpted by yr? (that’s not a typo) in 1/8 scale. She stands on a cobblestone styled base, seemingly in mid stride while holding a violin case and a gun hidden behind her back. Overall, the build quality on this figure is pretty good. The paint on her hair has a nice gradiation and is pretty much free of paint boogers.

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One of the reasons I waited to see the figure in person before buying it was due to the proportion of her legs. Her legs look a little stubby and chubby like an infant’s legs in how they are proportioned. While Henrietta is a small girl in both the anime and manga, she is an adolescent girl. Here her legs are a little bit too infantile in appearance to properly convey her age and it makes the figure somewhat odd looking. However, upon seeing it in person, I didn’t feel it was too bad and from some angles not bad at all.

The likeness is very good and I think the facial expression carries a lot of emotion with it, easily the highlight of the figure. To me Henrietta’s expression here has a lot of weight. I can sense her looking at Giusseppi and watching over him while at the same time being afraid that his opinion will change. I’m not sure that’s exactly the right way to describe the expression, but it certainly feels more layered than the typical facial expression you see on a lot of figures.

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If I knew there would be another Gunslinger Girl figure down the road, I probably would have passed on this figure. This is likely all there will be, so as an expression of fandom, I chose to buy it and really, it’s a good figure if you can overlook the stubbiness of her legs.

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