Rbastid

Generally I’ve been lucky when it comes to series I’ve previously watched, but never got around to reviewing. Trigun, X and FLCL are just a few and they’re all worth the time to rewatch a second, third or fourth time (I’ve actually viewed FLCL about fifty times through.) This time things aren’t so bright, as 10 hours of Noir is nothing to look forward to.

Story 5/10

Just from previous films and TV shows before it, you would think "Assassin" based series would be interesting. No nonsense guns for hire, taking out evil doers and spending their free time living the lavish life that comes with big dollar hits. Somehow Noir takes that seemingly cool world and turns it into a mundane day job where it makes the viewer feel like they are the one clocking in nine to five.

The sad part is that somewhere in that A-B-C pattern of every episode is a decent plot that never reached it’s full potential. (A plot that seems as if it may have inspired the current TV show Blindspot.)

Mireille Bouquet is an assassin who one days comes across a young girl, Kirika, who possesses a pocket watch that belonged to her (Mireille’s) father (And me being the petty person I am found it annoying this small pocket watch was able to contain the mechanics for a watch and an for music playing!) Being that Kirika suffers from amnesia she is no help in identifying how she came to have the pocket watch, therefore Mireille decides it’s in her best interest to team up with the young girl, in order for them both to solve their own mystery, but she has one caveat, when their task is complete she will have to kill Kirika, because no one can know the identity of an assassin and live to pass the information on to others.

Unfortunatly that plot encompasses just a few brief seconds over the first few episodes, both of which focus on Mireille and Kirika being the targets of assassins, and their discovery that those assassins may have been hired by a group called the Soldats, a name that has a connection to Mireille’s slain parents. It’s not until episode ten, and the arrival of the third assassin Chloe, that the story of the Soldats and the true backstory of Noir starts to unfold.

From that point on most of the episodes either deal with Mireille’s family and their new rivalry with Chloe, unsure if she’s there to kill them or protect them.  Eventually this leads to the unveiling of what Noir really is, a team of two killers, groomed since childhood, to become an assassination team for the Soldats, though now the three vying for the role have to be whittled down to two.

Where as many anime series seem to get cut short at the thirteen episode mark, Noir appears to have been given an initial twenty six episode run, while really only having enough for those thirteen episodes. They follow that up by ending on somewhat of a cliff hanger and the ability to build a story around a more direct Noir versus the Soldats story line. When they stuck to episodes focusing on the main plot they were excellent, but it’s just too bad that they decided to spend more time on the brainless assassination mission episodes.

Animation 4/10

The animation feels like they got three completed different groups of people to complete the work, one good, one okay and one awful. 

The background plates are all drawn and colored very nicely. While there is nothing really eye catching about them, they are still all created with great detail and shaded by someone who cared to look at the scenes with the lens of a cinematographer.

Somewhere in the middle is the body animation. The characters aren’t the best when it comes to proportions or realism, but when they perform actions you can see where those particular animators shine.

Now here comes the downside of the series’ animation, the heads. While not only completely out of proportion for a majority of the series, they look as if they were pulled from old episodes of Ranma 1/2 or Kimagure Orange Road, where every character had the face of a baby, drawn with the most simplistic look possible. Our few main characters (Mirielle, Kirk, Chloe and Altena) all look like they are from a completely different world than those minor characters in the series.

One interesting choice made in the animation department was the use of blood. Dozens of people are killed, thousands of bullets are shot and violence is in no short supply, but the only blood throughout the whole show comes from Mirielle getting a few grazing wounds from gun shots, and even then it’s barely a drip. 

As a whole, while the animation was for the most part solid, there was never anything that really made me stand up and shout. Even for the time period it was far behind other series in almost every aspect.

Sound 6/10

The music in Noir is so incredibly frustrating, and oddly it’s not because it’s bad but because it’s good. The majority of the music is composed by Yuki Kajiura. Her style, also used to great effect in .Hack//Sign, is so perfect for the tone and nature of this series. Most notable is the song Canta per me, which adds the beautiful singing of Yuriko Kaida to Kajiiura’s orchestration.

The frustration comes from the same two or three songs being used repeatedly throughout the entire series, often at the same time stamp in each episode. The work is so good I don’t hate hearing the songs, but I’d love to hear more of it, both in variety of song and which sections of the songs are played. As the series goes on you may hear another great tune every few episodes, but with a twenty six episode long series it’s just too much repetition. If I were to rate the series music, as if I just listened to it on a CD, I’d have to give it a solid nine, but in a series Sound can’t only be judged for the songs alone.

While I’m not crazy about the opening and closing songs, they are standard anime fare when it comes to those things. The opening track does actually fit perfectly with the series, as it sounds as if it could fit in as a James Bond theme.

The voice acting in the series is on the better side of decent. While both of our main actresses are pros at what they do, I feel the English producers saw Monica Rial’s (Kirkia) work in Excel Saga and thought “Yeah let’s have the feel of this character be more brainless than youthful.” 

On the other hand the minor characters fall short, not in their V.O. artist’s ability, but in the choice of voice style. The series focuses mainly around southern France and Italy, but the accents never work. Most characters, no matter where they reside from, sound either Eastern European or American. They needed to decide to go with accents, or not, instead of having two characters from the same country sound like they’re from opposite ends of the globe.

Characters 4/10

As with many girls with guns and assassins series, the characters are extremely boring, unrefined and often predictable, Noir makes sure to keep that standard alive. 

The character who can most be described as the number one, a film term for most prominent actor, is Mireille Bouquet. Her main goal, like the goal in ten thousand movies before it, is revenge over the murder of her parents. She tries to be tough as nails, but Kirika has broken though and become a small part of her life, almost as if she was her only family.

The number two character, who serves as both her partner and her possible final target, is Kirika Yumura. Kirika suffers from amnesia, waking up to find an outfit, an ID card and the ability to be a top class assassin. Like when used in most series, amnesia here feels like a crutch for not wanting to, or being unable to, write a decent back story. Like Mireille she starts to grow slightly as a character towards the end, worried what she’ll become if she finds out the truth about her purpose in life.

The only other character who plays prominently in the series is Chloe. She’s also pretty terribly written, a cliche mysterious assassin with abilities that far surpass our other two …heroes I guess we’d call them. She claims to be the real second member of Noir, along with Kirika and will make sure they are the pair that performances the ritual.

Pretty much everyone else in the series is a one off character, either their for a specific assassination mission or to drop a clue about the Soldats or Kirika’s past.

Overall 4/10

Noir was a decent five or six episode OVA stuck within a terrible twenty six episode procedural. Every episode played out the same way, with few even touching on the overall plot. Even in the end it feels as if they completely forgot about what they were aiming for and just pieced together some random gun fights to end things. 

A shorter series, focusing on Mireille’s rise as an assassin, finding Kirika’s memory or an uncovering of the Soldats would probably been much better than what essentially was Golgo 13 with ladies.