A favorite show should be one of those things that fits like a good pair of shoes or well broken-in jeans... comfortable.  You should be able to put on any episode and immediately sink into the backstory like you'd watched everything up to that point in a marathon.  Perhaps it's a seminal moment in your fandom, or something that made the whole concept of what a good anime could do click for you.  In short, a favorite show should be part of you as an anime fan.  Coming in at Number Four on my list is an epically grand story involving secret societies, spans multiple continents, and the whole of the history of Western Civilization, yet at its heart is about nothing more than two young women.

Who happen to be assassins.



NOIR is a 2001 anime from the production house BeeTrain.  26 episodes long, it was to be the first of a trilogy of unrelated series studying the "girls with guns" genre (the other two were Madlax, a lousy show, and El Cazador de la Bruja, a very good show). 

It turned out to be one of the best television shows of any sort that I have seen. 

Mirelle Bouquet is a young woman living in Paris, who just happens to be one of the best assassins in the world.  One day, she returns home to an e-mail that contains a picture of a girl and the message "Make a pilgrimage for the Past, with me."  Assuming that its a piece of spam, she ignores it until a piece of music plays.  She stops dead in her tracks, eyes wide with... not fear surely, but shock and perhaps unease.  It's obviously something deeply important to her.

She travels to Japan to meet with the girl in the e-mail.

Kirika woke up one day in a bedroom, knowing nothing about herself except what her student ID told her and the word Noir, no context provided.  She also quickly discovers that she is very very talented in the art of killing people, as she's attacked by a number of men in black suits.  Outnumbered, outgunned, and unprepared, she still makes mincemeat out of them.

But what is the tie that binds the two of them together?  We spend the next 25 episodes figuring that out, just as they do.  At no time during the show does the watcher quite get a handle on what's going on, but not because NOIR is confused or just throwing stuff out there.  This series is probably the best example of how to plot out a show I can find.  You go into the final episodes, when Kirika has to make a decision that'll be fatal for someone, not knowing which way she'll choose.  It was impressive at the time, and its just gotten even more so as time has gone by.

Mirelle and Kirika don't exist in a vacuum, of course.  The series' antagonist is a secret society called Les Soldats, personified by the men in black suits, and Chloe.

Where Mirelle and Kirika primarily use guns, Chloe is the master with a throwing knife.  While the other two are walking death on two feet, Chloe is frightening when she gets going... and the ultimate clash between the three is, by turns, the most thrilling and the most chilling fight sequence I've ever seen.

But that wouldn't be enough to make it one of my favorite shows on its own.  No, where NOIR leaps to the fore is with the entire package.  As mentioned, the series was broadcast in 2001 and as such is almost entirely cel animated, resulting in a graphical warmth often missing from today's computer animated shows, while retaining a high quality throughout.  It's obvious that this was a big-budget production; there's very little in the way of re-used footage (except in Mirelle's flashback to her youth, where it's entirely appropriate).  The musical score for NOIR is also top-notch, composed by Yuki Kajiura.  Indeed, the music plays a major role in the series, nearly becoming a character in its own right.  The styles used in the soundtrack are all over the musicial map, perfectly appropriate for a series that takes place in multiple locations around the world.

Some have taken issue with the decision by director Koichi Mashimo to make the series almost entirely bloodless despite the rather startling bodycount racked up by the cast.  He says, quite correctly in my view, that the amount of blood that would have been involved would have distracted from the story.  Rest assured that there is copious amounts of action, but it's always appropriate, never "just because."  Everything in NOIR is where it is for a reason... a reason that we do eventually discover, hidden behind layers of layers. 

I first saw NOIR probably in 2003 or early 2004, through one fansub group or another... some three years before I had broadband.  It was a time when it would literally take some 16 hours to download a single episode via dialup, yet it got me so hooked that I did it happily.  Over the years, I've come to realize that watching the series at a rate of one or maybe two episodes a day is probably the best way to do it.  Any more than that and you begin to get tired of the music we first heard when Mirelle first opened the e-mail from Kirika, which plays at least once an episode.  When the Duck U Anime Club screened the series, we discovered that four episodes was the most that we could stomach in one meeting, but we preferred fewer.  But prior to that, when I was first watching NOIR via those technically unsophisticated fansubs, I found myself anxiously waiting for the download to end every night so I could watch it immediately.  None of the shows that rank above it on my list of Favorites grabbed me hard enough to do that.

It's a little strange for this series to be one of my all-time favorites; it certainly doesn't mesh with my usual slice-of-life, lighthearted rom-com fare.  It's just that darn good in all facets.  Originally licensed by ADV and now by Funimation, it is technically out of print but you can still find it over at Robert's.  The thinpack set is pricey, but I can attest to it being from a time when ADV still included all bonus material in their thinpacks.  There are at least four easter eggs hidden on one of the DVDs, and full profiles and interviews abound on the others.

It's hard for me to overstate just how good NOIR is and just how much I like it.  If you haven't seen it, watch it.  If you have seen it, watch it again.  It's just that simple.

Coming soon in Wonderduck's Favorite Series Of All Time: "Wow, there's a shocker."

^{note: it only took me five years to get around to doing this review...}

Posted by: Wonderduck at 02:27 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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