The following is a list of characters from the Japanese manga series Gunslinger Girl.
Set in modern-day Italy, the series revolves around the Social Welfare Agency, a government-funded organisation which is supposed to provide advanced medical care to those in need.
This, however, is a cover for a far different agenda: the patients, adolescent girls who have survived traumatic events, are brainwashed into forgetting their past, turned into cyborgs, trained in the use of weapons and used as assassins to battle enemies of the State.
The Five Republics Faction is a covert radical nationalist and right-wing group dedicated to the independence of northern Italy, as well as the opposition of globalization in Italy.
This group is also referred to as Padania, after a valley in northern Italy formed by the Po River.