Girls With Guns describes a Sub-Genre of action media that focuses on strong female leads being awesome with firearms. May or may not involve Heroic Bloodshed. It was developed somewhere in the Hong Kong film industry and has since made itself a genre that is often used in anime. Usually involves gun fights, stunts and martial arts.
Older works from this genre will always have a cast of hot women, though this has been less stringent in more recent years thanks to the rising of Moe aesthetics.
Small Girl, Big Gun is a Sub-Trope—Girls With Guns aren't necessarily small, and their guns aren't necessarily big. Yeah-heh.
Compare Superhero Packing Heat and Military Moe. See also The Other Wiki's page on the subject.
Note that this page describes a genre, not a character trope. Individual examples of Girls With Guns go on The Gunslinger.
Examples
- Aria the Scarlet Ammo features a concept named Butei ("armed detective") where highschool students are trained as a middle step between cops and mercenaries. Its main heroines, like Aria and Reki, are firearms experts.
- Bee Train and Koichi Mashimo in particular deserve a special recognition for popularizing the genre with their trilogy:note
- Black Lagoon has Revy, Roberta, Balalaika, and the entire church of violence. Practically every fighter that survives for more than a episode is a woman. Possibly a fetish given how curvy the women are drawn and the fact Rei Hiroe is also a known Doujinshi artist.
- Burst Angel starring Jo, the titular Angel who is a Bounty Hunter and gunslinger.
- Canaan features a female assassin living in Shanghai and having to defeat an old friend who turned on her. With triads and terrorists added in the plot, plenty of shootouts follow.
- Desert Rose is a rare military example, with Mariko leading a division of women mercenaries to fight terrorists around the world. Besides the shootouts, plenty of chapters show the intense training they all have to go through to prepare for their work.
- Dirty Pair is the Trope Codifier for anime. The Lovely Angels set the standard for girls being awesome with (laser) pistols.
- Early Reins: Die Hard on a train, in The Wild West, with six girls with guns as the heroes.
- Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) has Lt. Hawkeye, firing a pistol at the viewer in the opening credits.
- Girls und Panzer has girls playing with very big guns... on tanks!
- Grenadier has its main heroine constantly perform spectacular feats with a revolver.
- Gunslinger Girl (though you should have known that from the title)
- The title of the intro theme to the image album is "Ragazza Col Fucile" (the trope name (singular), in Italian).
- More precisely, "girl with a rifle".
- The series could almost count as a Deconstruction of the genre, with the girls becoming badass Child Soldiers though extreme mental conditioning and Cyborgization, drastically shortening their lifespan to the point that none of them will live to see 18.note There's a good amount of good old-fashioned ass-kicking, but the series is mostly about playing the premise for all the tragedy it's worth.
- The title of the intro theme to the image album is "Ragazza Col Fucile" (the trope name (singular), in Italian).
- Gunsmith Cats: Gun Nut Rally Vincent is an expert marksman, has an encyclopedic knowledge of firearms, and owns and operates her own gun store.
- Kite (1998) (and Kite Liberator, too), featuring a pint-sized little girl as an assassin and expert with guns.
- Lycoris Recoil features a secret police force consisting of young badass girls.
- Mezzo Forte and Mezzo DSA, where the protagonist is a bounty hunter and Action Girl who gets on shootouts in a regular basis.
- Masamune Shirow obviously has a fetish for Girls with Guns: though the boys get to play as well, the main characters in his books are usually female, and spend much of their time toting, and being awesome with, guns. (Or in one case, tanks). Some of his works:
- Stella Women’s Academy, High School Division Class C³ and Sabagebu! are about Japanese School Clubs revolving around guns usage (albeit not real guns) and mock battles with those guns. Somehow both these clubs are all-female, but given they're set in an all-girls school...
- Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online is a spinoff of the larger Sword Art Online series focused on the GGO shooting game, with the majority of the characters being girls.
- Upotte!! is about girls who ARE guns.
- Agent327 mixes this with Spy Fiction.
- Lady Blackhawk from Birds of Prey was the team's firearms expert.
- Black Widow is an expert marksman with both pistols and rifles.
- Misty Knight of Daughters of the Dragon possesses near-perfect aim with firearms.
- Silver Sable is usually armed with at least one handgun, and has access to an arsenal of other guns as she needs them.
- Wynonna Earp: Wynonna is a present-day descendant of the famous lawman Wyatt Earp, and she is the top agent for a special unit known within the US Marshals as the Monster Squad, and just as much a gunslinger as her famous ancestor.
- Domino of X-Force s highly trained as a weapons expert and marksman.
- Y: The Last Man has 355, the Daughters of The Amazon, etc. Since the entire male human population (except Yorick) died anyone with a gun is this.
- Judge Dredd Spin-Off Shimura had a Spin-Off of its own based around Shimura's protégé, Aiko Inaba that had a one shot story, "Babes With Big Bazookas", that established that gun companies invoked this trope to sell more guns. Unfortunately, the girls decide they aren't being paid well enough and decide to "negotiate" with the companies using the loaded BFGs their employers have so trustingly supplied them with.
- A Certain Droll Hivemind: Misaka-11111 still carries around her standard-issue F2000-R assault rifle. Canon implies a few times that the versions they carry around regularly are airsoft guns, but here it is confirmed that it is absolutely a real gun with real bullets. Mikoto is not amused.
...also, I don't really see why they let the Sisters carry around compact assault rifles in their bags. Like, it just seems like a bad idea to me. A really bad idea that's going to end up with someone being shot who probably didn't deserve it. What kind of stupid psychopath would let traumatised clones who only know violence and death carry guns in this kind of place?
Oh wait, the kind of stupid psychopath who started the Sisters project in the first place. So, letting them carry guns around is perfectly in line with the stupid kind of things they do. I just hope that no one gets hurt because of it.
- The 355, in which Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz, Diane Kruger, Lupita Nyong'o, and Fan Bingbing play an international team of secret agents tracking down a superweapon that's fallen into the hands of terrorists.
- Æon Flux based on the MTV series of the same name, with the titular protagonist being an assassin and killing machine armed with dual guns.
- Angel Enforcers, staring Sharon Yeung as a policewoman who kicks ass and stops crime. Sharon will later team up with fellow action-girl actress Moon Lee a few more times in her career.
- Angel Of Destruction starring Maria Ford as a budding rock star-turned-soldier and killing machine.
- Angel on Fire, an attempt to cash-in on the Iron Angels films, starring Taiwanese action star Cynthia Khan (budget Michelle Yeoh) as the titular angel.
- Angels Revenge is girls with guns...and grenades, and katanas, and brass knuckles, and pepper spray, and weaponized vehicles, and...
- The exploitation film Angels With Golden Guns deals with supermodels abducted by a human trafficking ring and battling their way out in one gunfight after another.
- Angel Terminators, a duology of Hong Kong action films which is a spin-off from the Iron Angels trilogy, with some of the actors returning (although playing different roles).
- Anna: The title character is an assassin, killing machine and expert with a gun.
- Annie Get Your Gun: A biopic about Annie Oakly, a real-life 19th century entertainer and sharpshooter.
- Assault Girls: All three of the girls are capable of kicking plenty of ass with firearms.
- Atomic Blonde was explicitly marketed as a female version of the John Wick films, complete with the involvement of David Leitch, one of the first film's co-directors making his solo directorial debut. Specifically, it starred Charlize Theron and Sofia Boutella as secret agents in Berlin during the Cold War.
- Bad Girls, about four Wild West prostitutes who are wanted by the law.
- Bandidas. One of the girls is afraid, and quite rubbish, with guns, and so uses knives; but still uses one at the climax of the movie. The other is definitely a gun kind of girl.
- Beauty Investigator, one of the last collaborations between Yukari Oshima and Moon Lee, where the actresses respectively plays an assassin and a cop who ends up taking on the triads.
- A Better Tomorrow - The third movie, A Better Tomorrow III: Love and Death In Saigon (Prequel to the first movie) features Anita Mui's character, a gunslinger and lethal killing machine who inspires Chow Yun-Fat's Mark Gor to become a triad hitman.
- Black Butterfly, the protagonist being a hitwoman and professional killer sent to Taiwan in a covert mission.
- Black Cat, starring Jade Leung as the eponymous character, a young woman who ends up having a microchip implanted in her brain as a top-secret government project, turning her into an elite assassin and Professional Killer.
- Bring Me the Head of the Machine Gun Woman: The Machine Gun Woman is called that for a very good reason. She effortlessly outshoots every other character in the film.
- Bury Me High, one of the higher-budget films starring Moon Lee and Sibelle Hu, which ends with a full-scale battle involving tanks, helicopters, and exploding bunkers and munition piles.
- City Cops starring Cynthia Rothrock as a Los Angeles detective taking on Hong Kong triads.
- Colombiana starring Zoe Saldana as a girl who witnessed her parents' assassination and grows up to become a killer.
- Deadly Target starring Yukari Oshima and Sharon Yeung as female cops taking on Philippine mobsters.
- D.E.B.S.. The four girls in the D.E.B.S. squad carry automatic pistols when on duty and get in occasional gunfights with the opposition.
- The Dragon Fighter starring Sibelle Hu as a hitwoman and triad killer.
- Dreaming the Reality starring Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima from the Angels series, where this time they are a pair of female assassins raised from birth to be shooters and killing machines.
- Enter the Eagles, starring Shannon (daughter of Bruce) Lee, a bounty hunter who gets to team up with her mentor (played by Michael Wong) to take on an entire crime syndicate. Shootouts, fight scenes, exploding vehicles comes a plenty throughout the movie.
- Fire Phoenix starring Sibelle Hu as a soldier finding herself on the battlefields in the big city against mobsters.
- Golden Queens Commando, a Taiwanese Genre Mashup film involving a legion of female commandos battling an army.
- Pink Force Commando is a Spiritual Successor to Golden, with the same cast, crew and setting as well as similar action scenes.
- Gun Crazy tells the story of an Outlaw Couple of sharpshooters — former soldier Bart and circus performer Laurie.
- Gunpowder Milkshake, whose premise can be summed up as "what if Karen Gillan played John Wick?", with Lena Headey, Carla Gugino, Michelle Yeoh, and Angela Bassett also playing assassins for good measure.
- Hanna: Saoirse Ronan plays a teenage girl who was raised as a killing machine.
- Hannie Caulder, starring Raquel Welch. Most girl-with-guns films with a Western setting are likely a homage to this film.
- Iron Angels and its sequels, starring Moon Lee and Elaine Lui. The entire trilogy are now Cult Classic among fans of the genre.
- Referenced in Jackie Brown: we don't see the two female leads packing much heat, but in the scene where Ordell is introduced he's watching a video of a woman in a bikini shooting an automatic weapon.
- The Kick-Ass film series, featuring Chloë Grace Moretz in the role of Hit-girl.
- Killer Angels and its sequel, Devil Hunters, starring Moon Lee again, where she is a tough-as-nails killer angel.
- Devil Hunters is especially infamous for a stunt gone wrong, where Moon Lee and Sibelle Hu jumps off from a tall balcony with an explosion goes off behind them. But the explosion is rather ill-timed, and since Moon and Hu did most of their own stunts, both women ends up getting badly burnt in their backs, especially Hu. Seen here.
- Leopard Hunting, starring Yukari Oshima and Jade Leung, one of the last films of this genre from late 90s Hong Kong. The film notably climaxes with Oshima and Leung leading an entire team of gun-totting Action Girl detectives to shoot up a triad gang.
- Lethal Panther and its sequel, Lethal Panther 2, starring Japan's leading lethal ladies in Hong Kong taking on mobsters. Shootout after shootout ensues.
- Mercenaries is essentially a distaff counterpart to The Expendables and features copious amounts of guns and girls.
- Mission Of Condor, a.k.a Angel Force, Moon Lee stars in this action flick with an Ensemble Cast where everyone (Lee herself included) gets to fire machine guns at everything they see throughout the film.
- Miss Meadows: While Miss Meadows is almost comedically feminine, she's a confident, strong young woman most of the time. She also carries a gun in her purse at all times, which she uses unhesitatingly against the criminals that cross her path.
- Naked Killer, a fanservice-laden Hong Kong movie in this genre.
- Naked Weapon is a Spiritual Successor to Naked Killer above.
- And there's a third movie, Naked Soldier.
- The North Star, a 1943 war movie, plays this utterly straight with peasant girls Marina and Sophia, who end up as snipers trying to stall the Wehrmacht advance in Ukraine.
- Nowhere Girl (2015), a Japanese film starring Nana Seino as a schoolgirl who takes on entire platoons of commandos with machine guns, culminating with Nana wielding a freaking rocket launcher!
- Pistolera is about Angel (nickname: 'Pistolera') who goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge where she blasts her way through the ranks of Raffaello's drug cartel with a variety of high power firearms,including a mini-gun at one point.
- Princess Madam, starring Hong Kong action queens Moon Lee and Sharon Yeung, a buddy cop film with Heroic Bloodshed elements, which culminates with both actresses killing mooks by the dozens with dual pistols.
- Queens High, starring Cynthia Khan as the daughter of a Hong Kong mob boss who seeks revenge on the rival triad who killed him.
- The Quick and the Dead has the Lady, who is commonly remarked upon as she's the only woman in the gunfighting tournament.
- Razor Blade Smile features a vampire assassin lady battling the Illuminati, lead by her sire.
- Shaw Brothers have a few films in their heyday which is under this genre.
- Angel With The Iron Fists and it's sequel, The Angel Strikes Again, starring Lily Ho as the titular angel, a superspy, assassin and gunslinger
- The Drug Connection and it's sequel Lady Exterminator is a Foreign Remake of Coffy, with plenty more shotgun-totting action and shootouts from its heroine.
- The Lady Professional has Lily Ho from the Angel duology above, as a Professional Killer who takes names with firearms.
- Temptress of a Thousand Faces has a kickass female cop taking on the titular Temptress and her minions, with plenty of shootouts galore.
- She Shoots Straight by Corey Yuen is a more realistic approach on this genre.
- Silk, starriing Cec Verell as a Hawaiian cop taking on the mob. Has a sequel 3 years later.
- So Close: The movie was an attempt to revive the girls this genre that once attracted fans to Hong Kong cinema from all over the world.
- Special Female Force, a series of movies starring Hong Kong's elite police squad battling terrorists and gunrunners. Jade Leung from Black Cat (listed above) stars as the police lieutenant of both movies.
- There is a sequel, Special Female Force: The Fatal Raid (uses same page).
- Sucker Punch, among being many other things. It's worth noting the many shootouts, action sequences and fighting scenes occurs in the minds of its lead characters.
- TEN The Secret Mission, an Indonesian action film about a band of female commandos (ten of them, like what the title says) going on a rescue mission.
- Ultimate Revenge, schlocky B-movie, also starring Cynthia Khan and Kim Maree Penn, where Khan plays a supercop who takes on an entire smuggling ring, One-Woman-Army style.
- Ultraviolet (2006) Violet counts with her twin uzis.
- The Villainess, a Korean film starring Kim Ok-vin as a lethal hitwoman.
- Wonder Seven, starring Michelle Yeoh as a mobster's girlfriend who had a change of heart and ends up joining a vigilante team to take on the entire mob. Yeoh gets to fire pistols while riding on a motorcycle.
- Zero Woman, a series of 10 films made in 1970s/'80s Japan, revolving around the eponymous Femme Fatale assassin.
- A Brother's Price, when it's not being a Romance Novel, is this thanks to a combination of World of Action Girls and the invention of firearms.
- The Sisters numbered 00001 to 20000 in A Certain Magical Index carry submachine guns in their bookbags and sniper rifles (that can fire full-auto) in guitar cases.
- Damsels of Distress: The title comes from the all-female mercenary gang. Of the six members, only two are not familiar with firearms.
- The short story anthology A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters (also features monsters).
- Game of Thrones: Margaery plays upon this trope by feigning interest in Joffrey's crossbow to appeal to his fetish for violence.
- Girl Gun Lady, produced by Bandai Spirits (makers of 30 Minutes Missions), goes for a deconstruction inspired by Battle Royale, where only the girls that pick up and build the Attack Girl Gun model kits are secretly chosen, and then armed, to kill each other.
- Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. She's often shown on the cover and title screens of the DVDs posing with her gold-plated revolver. Miss Fisher carries this in her handbag in her first adventure, much to the consternation of Aunt Prudence. Usually knows where it is, but is still leaving it in unsecured places.
- On NCIS, a therapist pegs this as Tony's type. To which he responds: "Who doesn't like girls with guns?"
- Revolution: Charlotte "Charlie" Matheson started out as an archer with a bow and arrow. By episode 10, she has dropped that weapon in favour of guns.
- Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: The title character is a girl who's harder than nuclear nails. A female cyborg often acts as her partner.
- Wynonna Earp focuses on the adventures of its gun-slinging title character.
- Mirri of X Company is one of these, although she also becomes adept with blades and unarmed combat.
- South African singers Appel and Bok van Blerk parodies this theme in the video comedy song Limoene. note .note In the video, van Blerk plays one of two zef delivery drivers, who make a nuisance of themselves while driving by leaning out of the windows and leering at passing women. They deliver to a greengrocers' run by a lady called Sally, who loses patience with their loutish attitude and reaches for a very big rifle. Sally (played by singer Franja duPlessis) then demonstrates she knows exactly what to do with the weapon, and the last shot of the video is of her sitting at her ease with the rifle on her lap as she grins at the camera.
- Tommy Shaw's song, "Girls With Guns".
- Macho Women with Guns
- Including the expansion Renegade Nuns on Wheels featuring the Carmalite, sorry, Armalite, order of nuns.
- Warhammer 40,000 has got an entire army of them, in the form of the Adeptas Sororitas.
- Create a female Gunslinger character in Pathfinder, and this is what you get.
- Annie Get Your Gun obviously.
- Brand by Henrik Ibsen has Gerd, the beggar girl, famously carrying a rifle and effectively ending the whole play with a single shot.
- Bayonetta has the witch protagonist of the same name who dual wields pistols on her hands and even her feet!
- BlazBlue gives us Noel Vermillion, who fights with Guns Akimbo and Gun Kata.
- Bullet Witch has Alicia with her big, transforming long gun.
- Devil May Cry has Trish and Lady, Dante's female partners in Demon Slaying. The Devil May Cry 2 prequel novel featured a demon hunter named Beryl who fought with an anti-tank rifle.
- Fear Effect has Hana, a gun-toting assassin.
- Girls' Frontline is about you commanding an army of girls who ARE guns.
- Goddess of Victory: NIKKE is a game where all the playable characters are armed with unique and often highly customized firearms. Gun Porn is almost as much of a priority as the actual Fanservice, with an incredible range of weaponry ranging from realistic to futuristic.
- Gungage: Steyr, the sole lady of the team, uses a gun larger than her to slaughter monsters left and right.
- Honkai Impact 3rd has Kiana Kaslana, who fights with Gun Kata. Ditto her ancestor Kallen.
- Jurassic Park: Trespasser has Anne who fights dinosaurs with various firearms.
- The Metal Slug series have female commandos from the second game onwards, who slaughters enemy mooks en masse with assorted firearms.
- Metroid has Samus Aran with her Power Suit and Arm Cannon.
- Mirror's Edge has Faith, a runner who knows how to use guns when she comes across them.
- Mortal Kombat X introduces Cassie Cage and Jacqui Briggs. Cassie uses regular handguns while Jacqui prefers to go with arm-mounted guns.
- Neptunia has Uni the CPU Candidate of Lastation, who utilizes guns in combat.
- Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 adds a machine gun to Rachel's arsenal.
- No One Lives Forever has Cate Archer a sexy female British Spy.
- Oni has Konoko who is a cyberpunk cop.
- Parasite Eve has Aya Brea an NYPD officer who is good with her guns.
- Perfect Dark is a first-person shooter starring a female agent named Joanna Dark who fights aliens.
- Resident Evil has numerous examples with Jill Valentine and Ada Wong being the most notable ones.
- Snowbreak: Containment Zone is a Third-Person Shooter where all the playable characters currently are women who are part of a paramilitary organization, and effectively wield various firearms to fight the various enemies within Containment Zone.
- Steel Harbinger have you playing as Miranda Bowen, a scientist assimilated by alien pods converting humans into half-mechanical hybrids. But surviving the assimilation and remaining on the side of mankind thanks to Heroic Willpower, you then grab a gun and begin blasting away at hostile alien forces.
- Tabula Rasa has Sarah Morrison in this short-lived RPG shooter.
- Tomb Raider with Lara Croft often carrying her dual pistols.
- Uncharted: The Lost Legacy has tough, foul mouthed and snarky Chloe finally getting her own game! Step aside, Nathan Drake, it's Chloe's time to shine for once!
- WET counts with its hot female mercenary Rubi Malone.
- RWBY features this strongly, focusing on four young girls who use hybrid weapons to hunt monsters.
- Æon Flux is based around the titular hot female assassin.
- Revisioned: Tomb Raider Animated Series is Tomb Raider in cartoon form basically.
- Kirsten Joy Weiss is a professional competition shooter and popular youtuber.
- Annie Oakley, the real life sharpshooter and entertainer the film Annie Get Your Gun is based on.