Pascoite gets bored and reviews anime, vol. 38 · 10:02pm Jul 26th, 2022
Once again, I finished watching a number of things in the last couple of weeks, but only one of the things I'm making my way through currently will conclude soon. This week's featured items are Noir and its sequels, plus a short series, Time of Eve, after the break, with the usual tag-alongs of good to not so good stuff.
I've let too many series build up where I paused between seasons and need to go pick them back up at some point. I may just have to bite the bullet and watch 2-3 of those at the same time.
Noir ended up being a rather good spy thriller series. High school student Kirika has been living a lie for years. She woke up one day in a house staged to look like a normal person's, and there was a school uniform in the closet, so she took on the identity she was supposed to. But she doesn't remember anything about her life before.
She only knows a few things. One, that she's extraordinarily good at stealth, acrobatically leaping through cityscapes, and pistol marksmanship. Two, that she has an odd pocketwatch that plays a melody when opened. And three, the word "noir" has some importance.
Upon learning that there's a legendary assassin known as Noir, she abandons her high school life to track this person down. However, the point is to contract with Noir anonymously, via phone or email. The fact that Kirika was able to track her down in person says a lot, to both of them. To Kirika, it may be a clue to her past. To Noir, whose real name is Mareille, it means that she can't allow Kirika to live with knowledge of her identity. She does agree to help Kirika uncover her origins, but with the promise that once they do, Mareille will kill her. Kirika immediately agrees, deciding she'd rather die with her questions answered than live wondering.
In the meantime, Mareille puts Kirika's unusual skill set to good use, as they become even more formidable killers as a team. This ends up delving a lot into a mafia-type organization, and there's a surprising amount of lore introduced about it, lore that I expect was invented for this show, but who knows, there might be some historical fact behind it? I just don't have enough interest in the mafia to research it.
This will of course lead to lots of infighting and backstabbing, and as they close in on Kirika's origins, it sheds light on Mareille's mysterious past as well. It's a bit over the top in these assassins being treated as godlike figures, but I still think the series made a good play at it, what with the complicated web of intrigue and the exotic locations. It may run a bit long, as the middle dragged some through the assignment of the week, but it invariably picks up again.
It does suffer a little from an effect I remember NaiadSagaIotaOar bringing up when I reviewed Black Lagoon, which is that these characters seem immune to bullets. As the plot demands, they can take down dozens of armed opponents while never suffering a wound themselves, except when the plot needs them to in order to generate some urgency.
I think it was a good idea to paint a central part of the assassin culture as so obsessive, particularly a character named Chloe, who gets introduced partway in and alternately helps and hinders Mareille and Kirika's quest. Not only did it add mysticism, but it created the kind of characters who are just scary by their fundamental nature, even when they're helpful.
The art was pretty good, and I'm struggling to decide what I've seen that it most reminds me of. I've barely seen anything else by this studio. It's a little reminiscent of Yoshtoshi Abe's style, but not quite. The composer is noted for being a good one, and while I've seen plenty of series she wrote for, not many stood out to me. Here, though, the music is quite good, especially if you like classical or pop-type versions of it.
Rating: very good.
26 episodes, relevant genres: action, thriller, mystery, drama.
Madlax is referred to as a spiritual successor to Noir, not a sequel, and yeah, that about sums it up. Sub in some new characters: Margaret Burton is the young girl who doesn't remember her past and somehow has knowledge of famed assassin Madlax. There are some changes. Margaret doesn't have any assassin skills herself. She's led a very sheltered life, always served by her devoted caretaker Elenore. It's in a new setting, and the details of the plot have altered, but it's about the same themes, and it does feel like a new interpretation of the same story.
Now this is more my personal taste, but I didn't like this one as much. Swap out Noir's mafia intrigue for Madlax's supernatural happenings, which tend to interest me less, since it's less relatable. Well, even that's not fair. There are plenty of supernatural animes that have made a connection for me, but for the kinds of events that take place here having a supernatural explanation for it is the piece that doesn't fit the rest, so I didn't enjoy it as much. I also felt like Madlax was a poorer fit than Mereille from Noir in her attitude toward the profession, and that they'd miscast her VA, but in the end, it did eventually seem appropriate on both counts.
To the aesthetics, though, Madlax has somewhat better art and significantly better music, even as Noir's music was already good. Seriously, the Madlax soundtrack has some impressive stuff in it, by a composer who's worked on a number of well-known series in recent years. It's also one of those shows where the major characters get their own themes, and I love Elenore's.
Rating: good.
26 episodes, relevant genres: action, thriller, mystery, drama, supernatural.
And El Cazador de la Bruja is the third and final entry in the sequence. Once again, we have a young girl with little memory of her past. All she knows is that she's suspected of killing a scientist who was raising her, and she's traveling with a bounty hunter who's bringing her in. Except the girl, Ellis, doesn't seem concerned about it. Being brought in, that is—she's definitely upset by the prospect she might have killed her father figure. The bounty hunter, Nadie, for the first time in this trilogy doesn't have a hidden past of her own.
They do have to contend with other bounty hunters bent on capturing Ellis to claim the bounty for themselves, but there's one, a man named Ricardo who travels with a little girl named Lirio, who seems more like he's looking out for them. It's also soon revealed that not only is there a government-backed corporate institution with a stake in Ellis's well-being, but some sort of cult as well.
It does follow a very similar plot to the other two, though this one with a southwest setting and feel. It also leans even more to the supernatural, so that may affect which version of the story would have the most appeal. To compare and contrast, I'd say Noir had the best story and the most sympathetic characters, though that may well be driven by my preference for it being grounded in mafia intrigue rather than supernatural. Madlax had the best music, and while both Noir and Madlax had a good side character to serve as the tragic figure, Madlax had the more compelling one. Cazador had the best art and did the best job of having a large cast while keeping all of the characters interesting, though it lacked a truly tragic one. While all three have this young girl and female assassin traveling together, only Cazador gets tagged as yuri, and really, I don't see it. It's not any more buddy-buddy than your average series, and while Ellis does tell Nadie that she loves her at one point, there's not any reason to take it as more than platonic (though you can read more into it if you want to, of course).
Rating: good.
The Witch Hunter, 26 episodes, relevant genres: action, adventure, drama, supernatural.
It's a pretty good trilogy to watch through, but if you only want to try one out, then I'd recommend Noir.
Time of Eve is another entry in the crowded genre of "what happens when the line between humans and androids starts to blur?" It's a nice take on it, though, for several reasons. Part of it is because, by its nature, it's clear that it's never going to try being really in-depth or exhaustive about its argument. After all, it's a very short series, and the episodes themselves are only about 16 minutes long, the finale running closer to 28. (It's also available mashed into a single movie, though I don't know whether it's literally the episodes back to back or further edited any. It does have some different credits music, and I believe it contains a little bit of extra footage to establish some additional context for character back stories, based on what Wikipedia says about it.)
Main character Rikuo is a high school student, and his best friend is Masaki. You never see Rikuo's parents—more on this in a bit—but it's implied his father is an important person in the development of android technology. Masaki's father is an influential person on a citizens' committee that regulates the ethics of androids, and he's generally against letting them become remotely human at all. Really, the setup so far sounds a whole lot like a series I watched and reviewed last year called BEATLESS, which I wonder if it's based off this.
Anyway, the series often has some kind of news story playing on a TV in the background, keeping up a nicely understated way of narrating how human-android relations are going. There are people on both sides of the issue, and ridicule usually falls on people who show any affection toward androids or treat them as human, like giving them a name or thanking them for anything they do.
Even in Rikuo's home, his sister seems suspicious of their family android, and they're the only two you ever see there. Rikuo tends to be accepting, but he has noticed something odd: the android, whom he calls Sammy, has had some unexplained absences. It hasn't interfered with her duties at all, and she denies it, but when he downloads her location data, it does show she's gone somewhere, along with a strange line in the middle of all the GPS numbers: "Are you enjoying the Time of Eve?"
This is a mystery he and Masaki can't resist, so they track down this location and find it to be a cafe, with a rule that while there, all beings, artificial or natural, are to be treated as equals. Androids are able to shut off the lighted projections above their heads, required by law, while in there, so nobody can tell right away who might or might not be human. Androids often act quite human in there as well, as opposed to the stoic demeanor they normally effect.
At this point, it's almost slice of life as it looks at the different people encountered there, and it does some nice character development of Sammy, plus shows some evolving attitudes toward artificial life. A little intrigue comes into it as well, and it doesn't get strongly resolved, but again, the show only ever intended to be the beginning of a look at this issue, and I find that it was an engaging way of handling it.
Art used quite a bit of CGI, but not obtrusively so, and is a fairly early example of that. The music was by a composer I've liked in numerous other things, and while it didn't match the style of anything I'd heard by her before, I rather liked it and found it to be quirky but fun.
Rating: very good.
Eve no Jikan, 6 episodes, relevant genres: drama, sci-fi.
Second helping on its way.
Life Lessons with Uramichi Oniisan (13 episodes)—Uramichi is a former high school and college gymnastics star who went pro, but now hosts an educational live-audience children's program, kind of like Sesame Street. However, he can't help letting his jaded worldview seep into the messages he delivers to the kids. There are off-screen staff as well, but the main characters are him and the other actors, one woman and three men. They each have their own issues. It's a setup for a lot of humor, but it only came through sporadically. It did have its moments, and a few running jokes were funny, like the constantly stupid skits and outfits they make Uramichi participate in, and the fact that he's terrible at drawing, yet they insist on trying to merchandize any crappy doodles he makes. They did a great job casting, and the two who are supposed to sing were actually quite good at it. Not really any plot, but if you like this kind of dark-ish humor, it's pretty funny. The finale gets very meta. Art and music were both on the good side. Rating: good, relevant genres: comedy.
Night is Short, Walk on Girl (Yoru wa Mijikashi Aruke yo Otome, movie)—I'd seen a few other things by this production company and director before. Stylistically, it resembles Lu Over the Wall most to me, which I reviewed a few months ago and only rated as decent. The art style is almost the same, but this movie has a better story. It's not without its drawbacks. The two main characters are unnamed, but they're college students, and the guy has repeatedly set up encounters with the girl, but can't ever bring himself to ask her out. The movie opens with both of them at some kind of social event, seated at different tables. She doesn't seem to be enjoying herself much, and he's planning how to get over to her. But the party disbands, and things get random. The rest follows them through all the strange situations they get into over the course of the night, her because she keeps encountering odd new people and places, him because he's still trying to follow her around. All of these various people and places end up interconnecting in some complex ways, and it's easy to lose sight of the story just for watching the spectacle of the randomness, to the point I did get bored a little in the middle. I think it would have helped me keep focus on it if I'd stayed in the frame of mind of it being a romance story. And in the end, it does turn out to be a fairly sweet one with a good message, the night's random encounters serving as allegory for people turning out the way they do because of life's twists and turns, and that being a good thing. Art was an odd, simplistic style, but I liked it, and the music was good, by a composer whose work I'd enjoyed in several other things. Rating: good, and more consistently so if you can keep your mindset on the overall theme, relevant genres: romance, comedy, random.
Yu-Gi-Oh! (way too many episodes)—no need to summarize, as surely everyone knows what this is. Like any game-based show, it has its moments in strategizing, but the encounters are often artificial, and it's rarely in doubt who will win. I never watched more than a handful of episodes, so I couldn't say what the overall plot does. The art seemed fine, and I don't remember the music at all. Rating: meh, relevant genres: action, games, drama.
Yukikaze (Sento Yosei Yukikaze, 5 OVAs)—the first and last episodes are double length. An alien race called JAM (no indication is given of whether that's what they call themselves or just what humans have designated them) create a dimensional portal in Antarctica and invade Earth. Humans manage to fight them off and take the battle back through the portal to the other side, a planet humans refer to as Fairy. A sort of multinational separate military evolves there to fight the JAM, but at best, it's a stalemate, and every time we introduce a new technological advantage, JAM somehow manages to copy it quickly. There's yet another level of the military with especially high tech that spends most of its time just observing battles and gathering data, and are resented as a result, but one particular pilot and his experimental aircraft that employs an AI take a more hands-on approach. The pilot is Lt. Fukai, and the AI and aircraft are both called Yukikaze. Fukai had been a troublemaker, but once paired with this aircraft, he's suddenly a great asset, and he learns to trust the AI over anything else. He can even sense it when he's not in the aircraft and always takes its word about situational analysis. The end effect is kind of like Macross Plus with a little 2001 thrown in, and the first couple of eps seemed to present an interesting story about this unusual relationship, what dangers are in it, what other people do about it, and some enemy tactics that have him questioning reality. But near the midway point, it devolves more to a story about alien infiltration and how to tell who's human. Still not bad. I'm always amused by the kinds of ship or aircraft designs that shows come up with that would be nonsensical IRL, though I am impressed by the number of things they did get right (they consulted with the Japanese military on a lot of it). I'm sure all of you have some expertise that makes you roll your eyes when you see it badly depicted. Pretty good overall, and how much you like it will depend on which of those plot threads appeals to you more. Art was rather good, and music was... average. Rating: good, relevant genres: sci-fi, action, drama, psychological.
I still have a lot of older series on my watch list, plus have added even more of them based on friends' recommendations, though I do work in new series as I watch them. If you have an interest in what's currently coming out, then check out totallynotabrony's blog, where he keeps up with a half-dozen or so new series each quarter and comments each Monday on how those shows are going. He also includes what new manga he's reading and bonus memes, so head on over and have a look. There's not a big backlog to it, as he tends to delete old posts when he feels they're outdated.
Seen any of these? Did I convince you to try any of them? I'd like to hear about it in the comments.
Last 10:
vol. 28 here
vol. 29 here
vol. 30 here
vol. 31 here
vol. 32 here
vol. 33 here
vol. 34 here
vol. 35 here
vol. 36 here
vol. 37 here
now you should watch Yugioh Abridged :V
Oh, Noir! I remember seeing that one ages ago. I recall really liking the protagonists and being very satisfied by the ending. Alas, it's been too long; I can't remember much about the story beyond the most basic elements. I do recall enjoying the art style.
Damn, that brings back memories!
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Might be worth watching those follow-on series then, unless you're turned off by it being supernatural instead of mafia. Noir was my favorite of the bunch, though as I said, Madlax had even better music, and the character of Elenore was a better tragic foil than Noir's Chloe. Oddly enough, even though it's the newest one, I had the most trouble finding the OST for El Cazador de la Bruja on YT. The other two had the entire thing posted, but the last series, just a few of the songs as separate videos. Shame, as I wanted to save one of the songs, and it wasn't one anyone on YT had.