Noir - Eps 1-8
Noir is one of those anime with a fervent but limited fandom - I’d first heard of it several years ago when it started getting picked up in the fanfic circles by writers who’d concentrate on the two main characters… and that’s when you know there’s a special something in the series that transcends simple popularity.
I’ve been meaning to watch Noir for a long time - it was the only anime that sounded even vaguely interesting to me since I quit the stuff way back when - but I simply didn’t get around to finding it until now. After Madlax, Bee Train’s flagship production for 2004, it is only appropriate that I go back into time and see the show that really gave them a name for the studio’s particular brand of heavily (perhaps over?) stylised, character-focused and mystery-driven concoctions.
Noir is named for the team of Yuumura Kirika and Mireille Bouquet, two deadly assassins who have been drawn together in their desire to uncover their pasts - in Kirika’s case, to recover her memory and understand who she is, and in Mireille’s case to delve deeper into the murders of her family in her childhood. They call themselves Noir, the codename for the blackest and most feared killer in the underworld, for this is the only thing Kirika remembers when she woke up in a room empty save for a school uniform, an identity card, a musical watch, and a gun - “Who am I? I am Noir.”
Kirika contacts Mireille, “the best and most trustworthy assassin”, who only agrees to help Kirika because the watch Kirika holds is Mireille’s only link to the murder of her family. Still, it is not long before the two of them become a strange partnership in the killing business, and the mystery of Noir and their pasts unfurls…
Although the setting is brutal and violent, Noir, as a series, relies not on action and gore but on the pull of the back story and the revelations of the characters to hold the viewer’s interest. There is still gun shots galore and many dead bodies in each episode, but it is all understated. No fanservice, for which I am always grateful, and as you might expect no humour either. This is definitely not your typical shounen series, but neither is it even close to shoujo. It’s quite a unique directorial style, one which I enjoy despite the flaws.
And flaws there are aplenty, too. Right off, you can tell that it’s much rougher than Madlax - lower in budget, clumsier in execution. The art isn’t as consistent, and to be honest I don’t really like the character designs as done here compared to Madlax; even though it’s the same designer, they are not as aesthetically pleasing, to my eye at least. The animation isn’t that great, although there was this one 3 second sequence where the frame rate suddenly jumped and you went “WHOA!!” and the guns are, in usual Bee Train style, rendered in loving care.
Pacing-wise, the show could use a lot of tightening up. Flashback abuse is rampant and shameless, to the point where you know they are doing it because of budget constraints and so that they can drag the series out to its prerequisite 26 episodes. Madlax was a far superior work here, because at least the flashbacks were well integrated into the actually storytelling. There are some situations that strain plausibility, like why on earth Mireille would adopt Kirika into her life so readily and completely, that could have been addressed with just a bit more early stage development. Oh, and then we are treated to several episodes of filler that do little but rack up the body count whilst moving the story at slightly under a snail’s crawl.
Thank god, then, that things look like they are really starting to pick up at ep 8. Seems that some shadowy people called Les Soldats are manipulating Kirika and Mireille, and we get to see more back story on Mireille too! Well, time to get back to watching, and hope this turns out a bit more comprehensible than Madlax.
Oh, and before I forget, the music is also done by Kujiura Yuki, who did the soundtracks for Mai-HiME and Madlax. I love Kujiura’s music and there’s no denying it makes a huge difference to the enjoyment of the Bee Train shows. It’s possible that I would not like these series half as much if not for Kujiura and a sound director with an excellent sense of atmosphere.
