Officially The Social Welfare Agency is an Italian government sponsored corporation that is in the business of saving lives. However, in reality it is an agency on the fringe of technology that gives terminal children another shot at life using cybernetic implants, shaping the patient into an efficiently deadly machine, and then using them to handle all the governments dirty work. Each child assassin is assigned a handler known as a fratello, meaning 'brother' in Italian. Each Fratello is set with the task of overseeing the cyborg's basic welfare and training. The anime focuses on the conflicts arising from the needs to create an efficient weapon along with the needs of a growing adolecent girl, the relationship between each girl and her Fratello, and the conflicts that arise.

Not much humor at all. A lot of sympathy is demanded and it is always enjoyable unless you've already seen it a hundred times and are just watching it to pick up grammatical patterns. I heard about the game version of this but haven't tried unfortunately. The story sounds a bit like Inspector Gadget (believe it or not), as the little girls were next to death and are miraculously repaired with synthetic pieces (tansu ito (carbon fiber) pieces), and are then prepared for anti-criminal work that ironically goes against the very evils that have damaged them (at least for Henrietta and Triela). The Japanese really do make everything their own after all I guess. Carbon fiber by the way wouldn't have applicability to the circumstances of the girls.