The setting for gunslinger girl is located in Italy. Young girls with tragic lives or terminal illnesses are taken under the care of a top Italian government agency, simply because they are more suseptable to the treatment they will recieve. Their sick or damaged bodies are converted to biomechanical ones and they are trained vigorously in the art of combat. The problem is that these girls have a significantly shortened life span, and the shadows of their pasts can creep up on them.
The anime itself is beutiful. Each young girl is partenered with an older male acting as their 'big brother'. The older brother's responsiability is to raise them and to keep them in line, but each brother wants to raise his 'little sister' differently. There's love, rejections, tough-love, resent and pure friendship in the air. Each pair react differently to eachother.
Their task? To fight and sometimes enemies of the government, from criminals, the mafia to corrupted polititions. But sometimes, friendship or morals get in the way.
This anime is suited to the sympathetic kind of person - the last episode made me cry! Ever so sweet, so long as you understand the story line.
I watched the Japanese fansubbed version, so I appologise if anything I've said is inaccurate. ^_^;