Series / Girl Gun Lady

"Let's Gun Battle!! START!!!!!!!!!!"

The worst youth ever.

— Tagline

Girl Gun Lady is a Tokusatsu drama produced by Bandai Spirits. It aired from April 7 to June 9, 2021 on MBS's Dramaism block.

It follows Koharu Tachibana, a lonely high school girl whose only hobby is making plastic models. One day, Koharu stops by a mysterious antique shop and purchases a plastic model gun and a toy figure named Alice. After spending the entire night assembling the gun, Koharu wakes up and finds herself locked inside a survival battle called "Girl Gun Fight", where she has to use her plastic model gun to fight her schoolmates.

Episodes with English subtitles are currently being uploaded to Bandai Spirits Global Channel on YouTube. The first episode can be seen here.

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Tropes:

• Actual Pacifist: Koharu at first can't bring herself to kill anyone. Then she learns that those who die in the Girl Gun Fight respawn after the game ends. Then she learns that they each only have three lives and losing all three means they're Ret-Gone in the real world, leading her to refuse to kill anyone. She would sooner give her own life to save a team member than actually kill anyone. She drops this after Natsuna is Killed Off for Real as well as the revelation that the Lady Commander whose team wins can become human while the others are broken to pieces.
• Aerith and Bob: The girls all have Japanese names with the Lady Commanders have Western names.
• The Alleged Boss: Bianca, Lady Commander of Team Bravo. Her team members don't respect her for her ineffectual strategies and once Matsuko joins the team, the other two team members opt to follow her strategies instead of Bianca's.
• All There in the Manual: Literally — the instructions for the first four Attack Girl Guns also reveal a bit more about all the members of their respective teams than the show itself has time to.
• Alphabetical Theme Naming: Every Lady Commander follows their team's NATO alphabetical naming — Alice for Alpha Tango, and so on. This even extends to the weapons — the Attack Girl Gun is the starter model, followed by the Blast Girl Gun assault rifle and Change Girl Gun handheld launcher.
• Ambiguously Evil:
  • The Lady Commanders. It's unclear whether they're there by choice or if they're just as much victims of the Girl Gun Fight themselves. Daisy is the only one who's outwardly sadistic and Alice is even shown to care for the lives of her team members.
  • The model shop owner who introduced Koharu to Attack Girl Guns, basically getting her embroiled in an actual death game - and he always seems to send another girl in just as the Girl Gun Fight has lost somebody. Not helping that in Girl Gun world, the back room of the shop contains all the girls who have been lost to Girl Gun Fight.
• A Mother to Her Men: Alice seems to genuinely care about her team members. She was visibly distressed when Akiho lost a life, and apparently cried when one of her previous team members was Killed Off for Real. She also weeps once Natsuna dies for real.
• Awful Truth:
  • Those who lose all of their three lives in Girl Gun World are Ret Goned in the real world with any memory or trace of their existence being erased.
  • At the final ceremony of Girl Gun Fight, every player will be erased — even if you are on the winning team. The only one who will survive is the Lady Commander on the winning team.
• Bittersweet Ending: The Game Master is killed, finally putting an end to the Girl Gun Fight. However, due to the Girl Gun system being destroyed, Alice and Matsuko disappear. All the girls who were lost from the Girl Gun fight return, but have no memory of anything involving the Girl Gun Fight. Thus Koharu, the only one who remembers the Girl Gun Fight, has essentially lost all of her friends.
• Butt-Monkey: Charlie Tango are taken less seriously as the series goes on, to the point where other teams consider them posing a Talking Is a Free Action as they won't shoot until they finish, and their strategy meeting gets cut mid-sentence.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The four teams each have their own special color — blue for Alpha Tango, pink for Bravo Tango, yellow for Charlie Tango and gray for Delta Tango.
• Combat Pragmatist: Matsuko regularly kicks and breaks necks on top of being the Cold Sniper (justified due to their ammo being very limited).
• Cosmic Retcon: The Girl Gun system is not only able to erase someone including any evidence of their existence, but is able to add the existence of another including false memories.
• Crossover: An option part set has Girl Gun Lady and 30 Minute Sisters join together to showcase compatible armor and weapons parts that can be used for any of the figures from both series. Characters from both series can wear the provided Meido dress and they can use three guns that can combine into one bigger gun.
• Deflector Shields: One Attack Girl Gun attachment turns the usual beam shots into a defensive barrier instead — Charlie Tango started relying on this one due to their track record of actually hitting anything.
• Design Student's Orgasm: The Plamode Transformation Sequence is a bit overdone, looking like the Google Image Search results for "stock photos of the universe".
• Due to the Dead: Episode 7. Koharu and Akiho volunteer to move Natsuna's desk to the storage corner.
• The End... Or Is It?: Episode 10. The Girl Gun system is destroyed, thus putting an end to the Girl Gun Fight. However, when Koharu goes to sleep, she appears in a classroom as Alice welcomes her to the Girl Gun Fight.
• "Everybody Dies" Ending:
  • By the end of Episode 8, Koharu is the Sole Survivor in the final game. The look on her face is not of a winner. It's of a horrible realization.
  • In Episode 9, those who weren't Killed Off for Real are, including the Lady Commanders. The only ones left alive are Team Alpha Tango and possibly Matsuko.
• Excuse Me While I Multitask: In episode 3, Bravo Tango's new strategy hinges entirely on Matsuko going straight for the prize, the Blast Girl Gun, then building it in the field while fending off two other teams. She pulls it off.
• Forging Scene: This may be the first show that takes the girls building their new Girl Guns, intended to shoot and kill no less, and turn it into an idol music video.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Glasses seem to be an indicator of moral flexibility in this series.
  • The three members of Delta Tango all wear glasses and are shown to be the most enthusiastic about the Girl Gun Fight.
  • On Alpha Tango, Akiho is the only one who wears glasses and is the one most willing to do morally questionable things, like not telling Koharu the true nature of death in the Fight.
  • Averted with Bianca, who despite being a Lady Commander is timid and not really evil.
• Four Is Death: Four teams of four if you count the Commanders, and they're all here to kill each other.
• Gang of Hats: Someone up there has been encouraging this for the Lady Commanders - there's already the themed uniforms, and there's also the Chuunibyou cheerleader schtick for Charlie Tango, while Delta Tango all have glasses and actual hats.
• Girls with Guns: An apparently idol-aligned Fanservicey take on the trope that turns out to be a Deconstruction.
• Gunpoint Banter: Rarely anyone is pragmatic enough to shoot enemies on sight, as they need to have a conversation before or give a Bond One-Liner after the shootout. Many got killed right after holding someone else at a gunpoint for too long.
• I Surrender, Suckers: One of the Bravo Tango members, Mizuno, tries to pull this off twice on Koharu, taking advantage of her hesitance to fight. The second attempt comes back to bite Mizuno very hard.
• Killed Off for Real: Losing all three lives in the Girl Gun Fight means you not only die in the real world, you get Ret Goned and nobody remembers you.
• Lady Not-Appearing-in-This-Game: The OP for the first 2 episodes shows both Matsuko and Mizuno in Bravo Tango even though Mizuno is Killed Off for Real after two episodes, after which Matsuko joins up.
• Large Ham: Charlie Tango may as well be called Chuuni Tango, with their insistence on posing like Pretty Cure and reliance on Attack Pattern Alpha — and their commander has been encouraging it!
• Loophole Abuse: After almost getting served up to the fuzz for breaking and entering the old model store, Koharu realises that you could just wait for Girl Gun Fight to start, then physically find the store in that dimension to get to the secret back room. While they do find it, a second trip in the daytime reveals that it only exists in Girl Gun world.
• The Magic Goes Away: After the Game Master is killed, the Girl Gun system disappears as well as the Lady Commanders including Matsuko. All the girls that were lost return to life, but have no memory of anything involving the Girl Gun Fight. The only one that seems to remember is Koharu.
• Mêlée à Trois: There are four teams in the Girl Gun Fight — Alpha Tango, Bravo Tango, Charlie Tango and Delta Tango — all competing for territory and to eliminate the other teams.
• Merchandise-Driven: As expected of a series with Bandai Spirits' involvement, there are official 1/1 scale model kits of the guns used in the series, as well as of the Lady Commanders.
• Nasty Party: In episode 4, after the four team's plan not to kill anyone seemingly succeeds, the Delta Tango girls opt to throw a party for everyone. Once the other team members are all comfy however, they betray them and start killing them.
• One-Man Army: In episode 3, Matsuko basically manhandles two entire teams by herself.
• Out of the Frying Pan: You managed to escape the Girl Gun Fight? Surprise! The game changes from being a team death match to a contest to see who can kill you first!
• Power Trio: Aside from the Lady Commander, each team has three schoolgirls who actually do the fighting.
• Product Placement: With the show being produced by Bandai Spirits, there's bound to be Bandai Spirits licensed products in the show. In fact, episode 1 features the Alto and Portanova mecha figures from Bandai Spirits' 30 Minutes Missions series and the Lady Commanders' plamo forms are the actual figures of them in the Girl Gun Lady series.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Daisy has red and black as the main colors on her color palette, and is the most sadistic and outwardly sinister of the four Lady Commanders.
• Sacrificial Lamb: Mizuno dies in the second episode to demonstrate the consequences of losing all your lives in the Girl Gun Fight.
• Sensei-chan: In two different flavors — Hoshimiya is the typical one, an attractive lady and a Reasonable Authority Figure, and Moriyama is the school doctor who's a plastic model enthusiast and a No-Respect Guy.
• Shout-Out: At the beginning of episode 4, when Koharu proposes that all four teams should not kill anyone, Natsuna paraphrases a line from the song "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)".
• Shown Their Work: There's an Attack Girl Gun muzzle attachment that's just a ring of spikes, intended to prevent it slipping aside upon impact for No Range Like Pointblank Range. In the CQC subculture this is referred to as a "DNA catcher", not just for inflicting damage but retrieval of evidence as well.
• Sleep-Mode Size: Lady Commanders get reduced to their plamo forms (basically the actual merchandise) if they suffer a Total Party Kill.
• Some Kind Of Forcefield: One of these springs up around the whole school when Girl Gun Fight starts. Koharu finds a way to blast right through it with the combined Attack and Blast Guns with Commander addon. There's also someone up there who can drop the shields to change the rules...
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The Lady Commanders, arguably much more experienced, are able to take out the girls with little to no difficulty. The only reason why they are taken down is because one of the girls is a former Lady Commander herself.
• Taking the Bullet: In episode 3, Koharu uses her own body to shield Natsuna and keep her from losing her last life.
• Teens Are Monsters: Deconstructed in that not every girl takes to the killing part so easily. Bravo Tango is more of an Alpha Bitch team before Matsuko is there to keep them in line. There's something to be said for all the kill-happy sickos ending up on the same team though.
• Theme Naming: Each combatant in each team has a particular naming pattern in the kanji found in their names.
  • Seasons for Alpha Tango (Koharu [spring], Natsuna [summer], Akiho [autumn], Fuyumi [winter] ).
  • Three Friends of Winter for Bravo Tango (Matsuko [pine], Ohtake [bamboo], Umebayashi [plum]).
  • Numerical Theme Naming for Charlie Tango (Ichika [1], Futaba [2], Mitsue [3]).
  • Cardinal directions for Delta Tango (Kitamoto [north], Higashino [east], Minami [south]).
  • Flowers for the unnamed orange team (Sakura [cherry blossom], Sumire [violet], Ran [orchid]).
• Token Evil Teammate: Delta Tango is a token evil team.
• Tragic Keepsake:
  • Every time a girl is Ret-Gone, the only thing left is her empty desk in class, which is usually moved out to a storage corner. They've been piling up.
  • A more traditional example in episode 7. Matsuko recovers Natsuna's Attack Girl Gun and hands it to her team. The "Invincible Girl" decals left behind by Natsuna also count.
• Trailers Always Spoil: As Episode 9 ends with the Cliffhanger of Alice killing Matsuko, the preview for the next and final episode not only shows Alice to be Good All Along but Matsuko alive and fighting against the Game Master.
• We Used to Be Friends: Koharu used to be good friends with Matsuko and built models with her, until Matsuko lost interest in model building and the two grew apart.
• Wham Line:
  • Episode 7:
    Koharu: I'm all-in with the Girl Gun Fight.
  • Episode 8: After Matsuko tells Koharu the Awful Truth about the Girl Gun Lady fight.
    Koharu: You were... the Girl Gun Lady?
  • Episode 9:At the final cerimony:
    Announcer/Game Master: We will now begin a rabbit hunt. The commander who kills the most players will be spared from getting broken into pieces.
• Wham Shot:
  • Episode 6 ends with Koharu finally getting into the secret back room of the old model store, where all the girls who have been lost to Girl Gun Fight are.
  • Episode 7 starts out by topping that with The Reveal that there used to be an orange team at some point. Used to.
  • Episode 9 ends with Alice killing Matsuko from behind with a cold expression on her face.

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