Manga
Gunslinger Girl, written and illustrated by Yu Aida, premiered in Japan on May 21, 2002, in the monthly Dengeki Daioh magazine, and was completed with the September 27, 2012 issue.[4] The chapters are also being published in collected volumes by ASCII Media Works, with the first volume released on November 27, 2002.[5] The series was collected and published in fifteen volumes in Japan.[6]
When ADV Manga was formed in 2003, the Gunslinger Girl manga series was one of the first titles the new branch of ADV Films licensed for an English language release in North America.[7]
The first volume was released on November 18, 2003,[8] with the next two volumes not released until 2005. At the 2005 AnimeNEXT convention, ADV representative David L. Williams said the slow schedule was due to ADV Manga feeling that they had rushed into the manga market in a period when it was too saturated with new manga titles.[9] After the third volume was released that year, the series went on a two-year hiatus.
Release of the series resumed in July 2007 with the publication of the fourth volume,[10] and six volumes were released as of April 2008.[11] On April 8, 2010, manga publisher Seven Seas Entertainment announced that it had licensed Gunslinger Girl and would be re-released, with a new translation and in omnibus format.[12][13]
Anime
Gunslinger Girl was adapted into a thirteen-episode anime series based on the first two volumes of the manga. It was directed by Morio Asaka and produced by Madhouse, Bandai Visual, Marvelous Entertainment and Fuji Television, with music by Toshihiko Sahashi. The song "The Light Before We Land" by Scottish indie rock band The Delgados was used as the opening theme. The series premiered in Japan on Fuji Television from October 8, 2003, to February 19, 2004. The series also aired in Japan on the satellite television network Animax, which later aired the series on its networks worldwide, including its English language networks in Southeast Asia and South Asia (where the series received its English language television premiere).[14]
Gunslinger Girl was later aired in the United States on the Independent Film Channel in January 2007. In late 2004, Funimation Entertainment licensed the rights to release the first season of Gunslinger Girl across North America via a three-volume DVD
Video games
A set of video games have also been produced for the PlayStation 2, released only in Japan.[22] These take the form of rail shooters in which the player controls one of the girls on her missions. The series is composed of three volumes. There is an additional rogue fratello in these games, who go by the names Earnest (handler) and Pia (cyborg). Earnest and Pia do not appear in the manga or anime, nor are they ever mentioned. Pia's preferred weapons were the Desert Eagle .50AE and M16A1 with M203 grenade launcher.
On January 9, 2020, it was announced a collaboration between the mobile game Girls' Frontline and Gunslinger Girl, in which the characters of Angelica, Claes, Rico, Triela and Henrietta would become units available in the game.[23] alongside a new story event merging the world of Gunslinger Girl -Il Teatrino- into the world of Girls' Frontline, a future in which humanity suffered a third world war and environmental collapse, leading to technologically advanced tactical doll or "T-Dolls" are used in combat.
Other
On December 21, 2005, an image album for Gunslinger Girl called Poca Felicità was released by Marvelous Entertainment. It contains various songs for each of the girls (sung by their respective voice actresses), as well as an instrumental for Pinocchio, extra songs by Josefa, and two other instrumentals. Revo of Sound Horizon wrote all the music and lyrics for the album. The cover art was drawn by Yu Aida.
