(Writers note: If you read this review, RATE this review. Authors thrive on feedback, whether it be a simple happy face, or an in-depth critique.)

Summary/Outline[/i]:Noir is about two assassins. Mireille has been a pro all her life. The other, a young girl, has lost her memory. All she knows is that she can kill, easily. She carries with her a student ID with a fake name, and a watch that plays a sad tune. With no memory, she goes by the name of the Student ID, Kirika. The melody and watch are very familiar to Mireille, though in what way is not made clear at first. Intertwined with their daily acts of assassination come other assassins, hell-bent on killing this duo who refer to themselves as "Noir".

I am so happy. Really, I am. I spent 9 1/2 hellishly boring hours watchingNoir, knowing that I would eventually get to write a review about it. A review like... this one! Oh, the pent up anger and angst are gonna spill out, I guarantee it!

Instead of the traditional listing of events such as Animation, Sound, Story/Plot, and answering each in kind, I'm going to try something new. Well, new to the ANIDB, but not new to my own personal reviews. Quite simply, The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. First, the Good. Don't be surprised if it ends up being very short.

THE GOOD

The animation style inNoir is fresh looking and fluid at times. I rather liked how the characters were drawn, with particular respect to the eyes. The characters inNoir have very expressive eyes, spilling everything they're feeling in just a few short glances. The music is occasionally breathtaking, as these complex operas are played during scenes of panic, sadness, or during assassinations. Through the first half of the series, the music helps to elevate what would have been some very boring moments into an enjoyable watch. The opening music, while being forgettable and easily skipped, was pleasant enough. The sound effects are of particular note, with silenced weapons and automatic gunfire sounding just right, again elevating what might have been a rather boring scene into something more kinetic and energizing.

Some of the characters inNoir are, for the most part, unique and interesting. I found Kirika of particular interest. As a girl with no memories except for how to kill, she is a blank slate. One of the joys of the early episodes is seeing light return to her eyes, as she begins to reconnect with the world. When first we see her, and for a couple of episodes after, Kirika shows almost no emotion at all. As the story progresses, she begins to smile again, which was great to see, I must admit. The twist that occurs around episode 20 was completely unexpected, and left me reeling for a moment. Another twist in episode 25 was also completely unexpected. As with all good mysteries, little pieces and breadcrumbs have been left along the way, so that in most instances, I was able to look back and see where the new revelation had come from.

THE BAD[/i]

Oh, it is oh so bad. So bad that I can't think of where to start. Ah well. My old High School english teacher told me that the best thing to do is start anyway and work on touch ups later. So, here goes! In no particular order:

The animation, while looking quite well, is saddled with an overuse of still frames. Tons of scenes go by, with nothing but camera panning over the same two or three frames. This gets more and more prevelant, as well as more and more annoying, as the series progresses.

The pacing. The pacing ofNoir is extremely slow. No, that's not it. Painfully, extremely slow. No, that doesn't do it enough justice.Noir is extremely, painfully, mindlessly, unendingly slow. No, that's still just not enough.Noir is like watching one of those 10 episodeDragonBall Z fights, but without the fighting. Yes, I think that hits it on the head. Let me tell you,LAIN ain't got nothing onNoir when it comes to a slow moving story. The big difference is that I really likedLAIN, and I really likedShingetsutan Tsuhkhime. Both of those series set their own pace, and were never boring.Noir, on the other hand, has no pace. Entire episodes basically play out at a standstill. About half ofNoir's 26 episodes do not improve on a blank screen watched for the same amount of time.

The best example of this is the final 6 episodes. I mentioned earlier that in episode 20, a surprising twist took place. I've seen my fair share of anime, and a twist like this usually occurs in the last, or second to last episode of a series. The moment it occured, I thought to myself, "Wait, the revelation is now? How many episodes are left? Let me check... six!? You've gotta be kidding me. SIX!!?? What in the hell are they gonna do for another six episodes now that the cat is out of the bag?" I'll tell you what they did. Absolutely nothing. The last six episodes ofNoir are a veritable dead zone.

An example: Kirika sees a book on the table. We see the book in a still frame. 10 seconds go by. View switches back to Kirika in a still frame. 10 more seconds. Camera switches back to the book. 10 more seconds. Camera switches back to Kirika's eyes, looking grim. 15 more seconds. Camera switches back to the book. Another 5 seconds go by. Camera goes back to Kirika. She has a look in her eyes, like "Hmm... I've seen this book before". 10 more seconds go by. Camera back to book cover. It's the book she's been looking for! 3 seconds. Camera back to Kirika. Her eyes look the same... then turn to confused... then elated. 15 more seconds go by. (No I am not making this up). Back to the book, we hear Kirika walking towards the table that was about... 2 feet away. For some reason, it takes about 30 footsteps to get there. Another 20 seconds goes by. Camera back to Kirika. She looks interested. 10 more seconds. Back to book, she opens it. Often times, the camera would be panning from side to side on the book cover, the book, her face, her eyes.

The final 6 episodes are filled with scenes like this. The other time is filled with flashbacks we have, I'm not kidding, seen at least a dozen times already. The most used flashback is a series of shots involving Mierelle as a child, when something traumatic happened. Half the time, they add something to this scene when they flashback. The other half, it's just another minute or two off the twenty-two minute episode timer. I've seen the flashback of Meirelle's childhood up to 3 or 4 times in one episode, with only one of those being different from the others, and only by a small amount. Every episode has at least one flashback to something we've seen before, and it rarely does anything but serve as more filler for a filler filled series.

Now comes the problems with the plot. I've found that this is a double edged sword when reviewing a series like this. I see by the rating totals thatNoir is another series likeRevolutionary Girl Utena. One that otaku take pride in bragging about how much they loved it, how original they are, and how all the people who dislike it are uncultured morons who either don't get it, aren't smart enough for it, or just haven't seen enough anime. Well, I got news for you, if you're one of those people (you know who you are!):

I'm right on this one. I know, because I first startedNoir back around when it came out. I made it through the first DVD, at which point I turned it off, bored to tears. I revisited it again today, almost 3 years later. I have seen a ton of anime since then. Anime that made me cry, made me ponder, made me laugh, made me think in ways I'd never thought before, and that has enriched my life. This time, I made it through the whole series. I must confess, however, that were it not for this review, I would have stopped around episode 21. Yes, that late in the series, I had finally ceased to care what was going to happen to our main characters. I was tempted to do what I did withUtena, which was to fast forward through the end and see how things turned out, just to satisfy my curiousity. I'm one of those people who absolutely hates leaving an anime series unfinished, no matter how poorly it has gotten. The main reason I did not, is because the last time I admitted to doing that, as withUtena, my review got flamed for it. People who really love a series will often ignore all criticisms, and instead tend to skim through negative reviews, try to find at least one fault that they can cling to, and then use that one fault as a justification for rating the review poorly.

Platitudes. Endless and mindlessly boring platitudes. You are Noir, blah blah blah, you will remake the world, blah blah blah, you are the seed of the sapling of the tree of the life of the world of the darkness of man's hearts who will forever plunge the world into darkness and light of the life of the place of the sword of the truth of NOIR! If I hear that bitch toss out one more goddamned platitude like that one, I'm going to hunt down the voice actress and force feed her the script to this goddamned series. Not only does "said bitch" repeat the same boring platitude endlessly, but everyone who hears her say them begins to repeat the lines themselves! So then we have "said bitch" (in case you didn't know, "said bitch" is an important plot character who is unknown to us until later on, so I'm trying to keep her identity a secret from those who have yet to see the series) talking to Kirika, who then begins to chant, "Oh Noir, who will be the world and there are two that will be the light of the sin and they will hold the sin in their hearts but will not falter and be one with the darkness and the light of mankind and save the world from whatever whatever with blah blah blah by being assassins that slaughter nuns and stuff!"

Ah, but it doesn't end there! Kirika says these annoying platitudes in front of Meirelle! So now we have "said bitch", Kirika, and Meirelle randomly spewing out platitudes about Noir. The words Noir, Soldates, and Maiden must have been spoken at least three-hundred thousand times... per episode. No, per half episode. No, per five minutes of each episode. It was likeMatrix: Revolutions on crack, pot, and uppers. You all rememberMatrix: Revolutions, don't you? "To love is just a word, it is just a thing that is part of all of things that make you think." "Uh, but what do you mean think?" "Oh, but think is just a word, like love is just a word, like..." And this is the part where your brain melts, turning you into Terry Schavo. Please, pull the plug on me! Please! Don't make me remember those goddamn platitudes ever again!

I mentioned the pacing, but I didn't mention it enough. So, we have the unending repetition of flashbacks with no purpose, and the constant utterances of boring platitudes, repeated to no end. We have the still framed scenes of endless, repetitious nothingness. Now, what did I leave out? Ah, I remember! The "mystery". At the beginning ofNoir, Meirelle and Kirika meet, and are immediately attacked by some unknown group of gun wielding badguys. The mystery becomes, who are these bad guys? Why are they trying to kill them? Are they after one, or the other, or both of them? What is the significance of the watch, and how does it tie into everything else? Who is Kirika? These questions are answered... but my God, does it take them forever to get around to it! I mean, it's not as bad asUtena, with it's 36 episodes of filler and 3 episodes of "lets explain the plot now!", but it's not much better! Instead of never answering any mysteries,Noir instead answers every mystery, but only a little tiny bit. Thus, we get the constant repetition of flashbacks and platitudes, with said flashbacks and platitudes being updated once every 5 episodes or so.

For instance, the flashback of Meirelle as a child. We see her, wide eyed, seeing something in the distance we never get to see. We see it again, and again, and again, and again, and... oh, now we see what she sees... sort of. We see... a hand. We see it again, and again, and again, and again (mind you, this flashback takes a full minute or so to play out), and ag... oh wait, now we see the hand... and some blood! What could this mean? We won't know till we've seen this same scene played out another 5 times! Again, and again, and again... oh, now we see that it's a woman's hand! But who is the woman? This is a "well... duh" moment for most people, but for the intended audience ofNoir, they actually expect them to wonder whose hand it is. Let me give you a hint: Flashback is of Meirelle as a child. We already know it's something traumatic because of how Meirelle freaks out whenever she thinks of it. We already know her parents are dead. So... gee, whose hand could it be? I'll give you another hint: It's not the next door neighbors. I hope I'm not giving anything away! Fucking Fozzy Bear could have figured this out by now, but the writers ofNoir think they need to hammer it home a little harder, so the same flashback plays again, and again, and...

THE UGLY[/i]

Meirelle. That's right. Meirelle herself, the main character. It's not her looks, mind you. She's drawn rather well, and rather attractively. It's her choices. She constantly makes the wrong choice, basically because the plot doesn't work unless she does. For instance, and this will sound intentionally vague, because it's a plot point: A friend of Meirelles is upset. Upset beyond words. Tears are strolling down, and they can barely function. So bad that they wants to die. Die, or, "Turn to the dark side", plotwise. There are 2 logical options here. My favorite reaction would have been the most humane. Walk up and give them a hug. It's obvious all they need is a shoulder to cry on. Second option, grant the wish. Shoot them and be done with it. The third, and completely illogical option which goes against everything that makes sense. Add to their misery, say something hurtful, and walk away, leaving them nowhere to turn but... to "The Dark Side". Their are quite a few moments like this, where Meirelle chooses the worst possible course of action, just so the writers ofNoir can dig themselves out of another hole.

Another huge problem is the logic ofNoir. If the plot demands it, Kirika and Meirelle are perfect cold-blooded assassins. When the plot needs a twist, they magically turn into bumbling idiots who couldn't find their way out of a closet without a compass, a roadmap, and a native guide. This brings us to yet another fatal flaw: The curse of the talking killer, as well as the curse of the talking hero. Both are used a half dozen times at least. One of the bad guys has either Meirelle or Kirika down and defenseless, a gun to their head. They're in the middle of a firefight, the bad guy finally having the upperhand. Does he shoot? Of course not! He smiles, tosses out a one liner, or two, or twelve, precedes to smile and glare and smile, and talk some more, and more (as bullets continue to whizz by, since the main character's partner is still gunning down badguys), and waits... until either Meirelle or Kirika, whichever is not on the ground, finally notices, "Hey, my friend is on the ground, defenseless, with three guys with guns standing over her. Maybe I should help?". She then shoots the bad guys, much to their surprise.

The same thing occurs for the heroes, whenever an important character who "knows everything about everything!" is captured by the two girls, or whenever Meirelle and Kirika have one of the "main" villains dead to rights. One horrific instance of this occurs early on. Badguy and his goons come after the two girls. Girls kill all the goons, leaving just the head badguy. Point gun at head... and start talking. And talking, and talking. Why is she talking to him? Anything you say is gonna be lost on him, right? I mean, you're gonna shoot him. For whose sake is she speaking to this guy for? Oh well. Incoming speeding car breaks up the meeting, picks up the badguy, and hauls ass out of there. You'd think the two top assassins in the world would know better than to talk to a soon-to-be-dead person who carries no information you need, but no!

Plot holes. There are quite a few. Unfortunately, being vague won't cut it here, and since I don't want to spoil anything, I will simply say that a few of the things the Head bad guy seems to know, or says they know about current and upcoming events requires that person to be God, which they are not. When the head bad guy finished talking about their "plan", I literally started to crack up. It was just so damned hilarious. A leap of faith isn't what is needed to buy into it. More like a mortar shell to the head, or something similiar that can drop a person's IQ down to that of a fruit bat.

Ok. That's the end of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Now, little things I may have forgotten: The music gets redundant, quickly. The same two or three songs are repeated constantly throughout the series. They were fun up until the halfway mark, when they started to get a tad annoying. It reminded me of..HACK/Sign, where the music started to interfere with my enjoyment of the dialogue.

IfNoir had been character driven, I perhaps could have learned to live with the pacing. Unfortunately,Noir is mostly plot driven. Driven by a plot with holes in it. Big gaping holes, and a pace that would put the most hyper among us into a coma by the end of the third act. I admit, I liked the ending up to a point. There were a couple of really good moments in episode 26. However, they encompassed a mere 5 minutes of a 22 minute episode. Too bad, really. It started off somewhat promising, though a bit slow.Noir runs downhill from the start, with a semi-interesting opening getting less and less interesting as the mind-numbingly slow pace starts to wear the viewer down. Like I said earlier, I don't mind a slow pace as long as it can keep me interested.

For rewatchability, I giveNoir an absolute zero. No one in their right mind would want to see this twice, regardless of how much they enjoyed it the first time. With the mystery solved, plodding through such a poorly paced series is virtually unthinkable.

Final thought:Noir is like the Oscars. As an announcer for the Oscars once said, "Two hours of sparkling entertainment, spread out over a four hour show".Noir is an excellent thirteen episode series, spread out over twenty-six episodes. A real shame, and in the end, a really bad series.

I wanted to like Noir. I really did. I mean, it was an anime series about two female assassins kicking ass and taking names. How could it go wrong? Sadly, it did, and I wound up finding much more enjoyment making fun of it Tsunami-Channel style** than actually watching it.

** Tsunami Channel is an online webcomic whose creator ran a few parody strips making fun of Noir. They're pretty spot-on.

http://www.tsunamichannel.com/archive.php?comic=Parody

ANIMATION

All right, the first episode gave me GREAT hope for the series, particularly the first battle scene. We had Mireille, the hit woman, using good tactics and firing her handgun from cover like she should have, and Kirika pulling off an incredible run ending in a show-stopping use of a necktie as a garotte.

Sadly, that is the high point of the action in the series. After that, most of the action consists of people shooting stuff and other people falling over. Maybe I've been spoiled by Cowboy Bebop and the like, but the action scenes seemed pretty flat and boring: just people walking around shooting guns at each other. A few episodes get spiced up by Kirika performing a few interesting kills using improvised weaponry, but those are few and far between.

Character designs were all right. Mireille is your basic blonde bombshell and Kirika is your basic Japanese girl with short hair. I did appreciate the fact that Kirika usually wears clothing that makes sense for action sequences: Mireille's choice of a leather miniskirt as combat gear threw me off a bit.

The only character design I really enjoyed was Chloe, the third member of Noir. Something about a green cloak over leather. . . anyway, animation was a bit above average, but nothing too special.

HOWEVER! The series lost MAJOR points thanks to the flagrant reuse of animation. PRACTICALLY EVERY EPISODE used at least five minutes of animation that we'd already seen in a previous episode. Not just highlights and flashbacks, either: they would replay FULL SCENES, like Kirika's awakening, or her escape in the bamboo forest, or Mireille discovering the bodies of her dead parents. Padding at it's worst: even long, drawn-out transformation sequences would have been better.

Also, one minor pet peeve: no one bleeds at all. I don't recall a single drop of blood being shown at any time during the series.

SOUND

I loved the music, but when they played the same songs over and over again, it got really old really fast. The battle scene music, "Salva Nos" and "Canta Per Me" are the high points of the anime. The ending theme song was extremely skippable. The opening theme, "Coppellia's Casket," was likable enough, and I sometimes watched it through, mainly for the spiffy James-Bond style artwork.

Oh, yeah, and Tsunami Channel was right: the characters really do pause sometimes to let the music hit its climax before shooting people. ;)

STORY

So Mireille is a female assassin and she gets a message from a girl named Kirika telling her, "Come with me on a pilgrimage to the past." Over the next twenty six episodes, it turns out that Mireille's parents were somehow involved in this secret society called SOLDATS which is somehow involved with an assassin, code-named NOIR who is somehow involved with the creation of the Italian Mafia in a method more convoluted than the justifications for the Iraq war. <End Political Commentary>.

Look, I didn't get it at all, and I was watching pretty closely. All I managed to figure out was that some woman wanted to do something and Soldats wanted to stop her and these girls were involved somehow and people ran around shooting guns in the meantime. It was pretty incomprehensible, and I got much more out of the story of Mireille searching for the person who killed her parents. . . and her reaction when she finds out.

CHARACTER

Mireille has so little personality that she's basically a cardboard cutout. Kirika is a little better, but she's basically your average sad eyed emotionless Japanese girl (coughreiayanamicough). Their relationship reminded me too much of Relena and Heero from Gundam Wing: One of them promises to kill the other and the other one is fine with that, then the first one changes their minds and the second one still wants to die, but now they're friends, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum. It's supposed to be a complex relationship, but it was just so darn predictable.

Chloe on the other hand is crazy enough to be enjoyable: I loved the fact that every time she showed up, you got the feeling that she was one dangerous dame who could take your head off faster than you could uncap a can of coke.

As for Altena, the Soldats, and the others. . . their entire purpose is to keep the story going, that's all. No character development, no real sense of self at all, except maybe a few brief scenes hinting at unspeakable tragedies in Altena's past.

VALUE

Look, when you wind up watching episodes of a series just so that you can finish watching the DVDs you borrowed so you can return them, and when you spend most of that time laughing because of a scene that reminds you of a joke in a web comic, it kinda tells you something about the series.

ENJOYMENT

All right, I'll admit it, I kinda liked NOIR. It had girls shooting guns at each other, several decent action sequences, and there were episodes with storylines that kind of touched me (Kirika and the artist comes to mind). But really, the main reason I enjoyed it was because now I understood the jokes from Tsunami Channel.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go see if I can borrow Gunslinger Girl from my friend.

::EDIT:: I have spiked the last paragraph after several comments from people who did not appreciate it, so it's gone now.

Noir lives on the mood it builds up. It's hard to convey this series' theme to people (without making them watch it, of course), because if you just describe it as "The tale of two female assassins" most will picture an action-oriented ecchi fragfest in their minds. The problem is that this couldn't be farther from the truth.

Most of the more technical aspects of this show - animation, sound effects and voice acting - are flawless, but not particularly remarkable. What really stands out is the music. While oft-repeated and sometimes overused, the OST is easily one of the best I've ever heard, and the only anime music I listen to regularly - in fact I'm listening to "Canta per me" this very moment.
Which brings me to another positive aspect of the soundtrack (besides its orchestral quality): The songs' texts aren't all in the usual (and sadly incomprehensible to me) Japanese, or English (which in its simplicity may be useful as a language for international discourse, too blunt however for classical music) but there are also Italian and Latin tracks. Finally my foreign language education (besides English) shows some merit.

The story and character development in this show are deeply intermingled, with the former basically defining the latter. Therefore, and to avoid spoilers, I won't get into the story - it isn't the central point of this anime anyway. Its only remarkable feat in light of most other "slow" series is that of not being overly complex.
The characters are much more interesting: Kirika and Mireille, the protagonists, may be assassins, but the viewer somehow feels a higher morality within them which strangely isn't affected by their killing of hoards of faceless minions.
I can't reveal too much about the other two important characters without giving away major spoilers, so just let me say that Chloe, in spite of her at times lunatic conduct and emotional naivety, is my all time favourite anime character. The way she savours their so-called tea party as the only, at least somehow, "normal" moment in her deranged live remains unforgettable to me.

Because of it being heavily based on emotional impact and tune - both in the musical and atmospheric meaning - Noir is an incredibly rewatchable show. There are no sharp or surprising turns in the story that only work the first time around, and many subtleties in the arrangement and composition of some key scenes can be fairly easy to overlook when seeing an episode for the first time and having to concentrate on the story (and perhaps subtitles as well).

I "only" - in comparison to the glowing ascertainments of greatness in most other areas - gave this series an Enjoyment rating of 8 because, while I relished every second of it, I have been described as annoyingly patient at times. The multitude of backflashes that, to my mind, serve as heralds of the great things to come and build up apprehension and tenseness, may feel tedious to people who prefer a faster pace.

To those few of you who read everything up to here and are by now mindlessly enraged about my convoluted and, more often than not, erroneous vapouring: It could be worse, especially had I written this little tidbit in German. (I am renowned for forming sentences that stretch across pages and utilising words that haven't been uttered in common speech for centuries in that beloved mother tongue of mine.)

To those enlightened individuals that skip the mindless babble of seemingly artificially prolongated debut reviews and start right at the last paragraph, expecting a short and sweet summarization of the reviewers' thoughts, hoping to get the gist of it without a long period of tedious build-up: This anime is not for you.

- Durante

Noir is the type of anime where saying, "the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts," is not simply a convenient turn of phrase, but the God's honest truth. The animation is not only basic, but so reliant on recycling it becomes laughable. The episodes themselves are formulaic. The voice acting is at best average. But there are two things that make this anime something that is really worth watching, and that is character and music.

The two main characters, Mireille and Kiruika, are fascinating. These are characters who exhibit depth and complexity in a basically cookie cutter anime. Their pasts are revealed to us in little pieces, and slowly what they are truly takes shape. They're in love, of course, but it may be unrequited, and then again maybe it's not. It's the kind of thing that will give a fanboy enough reason to watch the scene with a young Mireille, standing still in the oddly colored checkerboard floor over and over again. This is not to say that the characters aren't archetypes -- because they are. Kiruika is your shy, anything-to-please-you Japanese girl, for the most part. Mireille is your vain, self-assured, anything-you-can-do-to-please-me-is-good European woman, for the most part. There are enough rough edges in their character to make them stick in your mind, and on their own make the series viewable.

Plot wise, for the most part, (see a pattern emerging?) Noir is pretty predictable: Receive a target to kill, question reasons for killing target, repeat. It's your basic series of morality plays for two thirds of the total anime. Some of these morality plays are good, others not, and one, "Lost Cat", is really, really interesting. The "Lost Cat" episode is one of the shining gems of the series. Other episodes are forgotten almost as soon as you finish them. So on the whole the episodes for Noir, based on plot, are hit and miss.

Music is the second true strength of Noir, Kajiura Yuki has a talent for creating music to suit the mood of Noir. There is enough variety in style to make it enjoyable to listen to. The main battle theme (with it's numerous variations) gives the battle animation an energy it would otherwise lack. The localization of music is also interesting, for example the accordion music when showing a French landscape, is interesting. But as most of the series is set in France, it gets a bit tiring. But that's the fault of the music director, not Ms. Kajiura herself. If you do not believe that there is a good catalog of music in Noir, give the OST's a listen, they more than justify their existence.

This brings us to animation, and what can I say, the production appeared cheap. Between the numerous flashbacks, and the long still frames, I doubt that ten percent of the total running time of Noir is original animation. On the positive certain things look nice e.g. Mireille, Kiruika, the guns they carry, and most of the backdrops. But none of them breathe, either literally or figuratively, makes the animation appear dull and washed out. Though in it's defense, the quality of animation picks up in the last six episodes. In any case, there was a lot of room for improvement as far as animation goes, but it doesn't cripple the series totally.

And that is about it. Despite the chancy animation and plot, Noir still manages to suck the viewer in and leave them happy. It is considered a classic at the tender age of two, and many, many people are fans of the series. I won't make any presumptions, but if you watch it, I have confidence that you will at the very least enjoy it, if not love it. The choice of course is up to you.

In my experience, Noir is a very hit or miss anime. Some people seem to like it well enough, whilst others are completely bored and don't understand how anyone could enjoy it. Are the people who dislike it lacking in intelligence? No, certainly not - Noir is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an intellectual show. However, the people who enjoy it don't really tend to be stupid, either.

The anime's characters, if nothing else, are interesting. Most of them (especially Kirika) represent fairly stereotypical anime characters, but differ from the norm in a very significant way: they have absolutely no problem murdering for their own personal profit. Add to that the overwhelming lesbian overtones, and you've got yourself a pretty engrossing cast. Character development is done fairly well in both Mireille and Kirika, and Chloe, while lacking a backstory, never ceases to be anything but Really Damn Cool. Admittedly, none of them have very much in the way of emotional depth, but one wouldn't really expect much of that from sociopathic assassins.

Each episode of Noir consists of a fairly uniform makeup. The first 12 minutes or so will be devoted to developing a ridiculously tedious storyline. The anime pads its running time with a generous dose of flashbacks throughout the entirety of the show; amazingly enough, in the first episode there is a flashback to an event that happenedwithin that episode, just in case you might have forgotten what happened 10 minutes ago. The anime also spends far too much of its time doing... well, nothing. Sometimes the anime will merely pan over European countryside, other times it will piss away its time by showing the audience still screens of the characters looking absolutely AMAZED at the recent plot development. After awhile, I came to regard the character's gasps of surprise as a telltale sign that the anime's story would not continue on for another minute or so (bathroom break time).

The other 8 minutes of the show, however, will be devoted to absolutely amazing fighting scenes. During this time, the two girls manage to kill their enemies in some of the coolest ways imaginable. If you've ever seen a good AMV of Noir, you'll know that the action scenes are incredibly stylish. During this time, a pounding, ridiculously catchy battle theme will dominate the audio portion.

Speaking of which, the OST is... incredibly good. Yuki Kajiura has a very unique sound to her music, and pretty much the entire playlist is pure gold. However, Noir's sound is hampered by a noticable overuse of this soundtrack. I wasn't counting at the time, but I'm sure I must have heard the Salva Nos theme at least 20 times over the course of the anime. Furthermore, at times the music would actually distract from the show, drowning out the dialogue and ruining the mood that the creators were trying for.

Animation-wise, Noir looks pretty good all the time, and absolutely shines during the fight scenes. The only noticable weaknesses come from the reused footage, which in my opinion hurts the storyline a lot more than the animation. Character designs are excellent.

In the end, Noir is a rather interesting balancing act between absolute awesome and unconditional suck; with each episode, the two forces are in constant battle. Will the undeniably excellent OST outweigh the hilariously clumsy way that the soundtrack is implemented? Will the initially interesting and likeable characters be irreparably damaged by the cheesy dialogue? Will the incredibly well choreographed fight scenes lose their appeal in the face of the painfully slow storyline?

The answer to these questions, in all honesty, is purely a matter of personal taste. Generally,my answer to all of these questions was fairly positive. I thought the good outweighed the bad on nearly every count, and in the end enjoyed the anime a fair deal. However, at the same time I fully understand the numerous Noir-haters out there. While there's a lot to like in the series, Noir's numerous weaknesses (primarily its bloated, tiresome story) prevent it from becoming an anime for everyone.

Hey AniDB...
Noir, noir... where do we begin? 15 reviews at the time of this writing, how do we say what hasn't been said? Well... we'll need a different approach I guess... so here's my idea. I'm gonna give you my two cents, written out exactly how I would say it if I were sitting next to you right now and we hit "random" on the AniDB main site and this anime popped up and you asked me if I've seen it, and I have, and I don't wanna take more then three minutes of your time, so let's try that...

Animation
"Hey Chozo, how's this one look?"
For a 2001 release it's sub-par my friend. Suffers from an inexcusable amount of reusing the same animation... I'm talking flashbacks galore. And not with new revelations or camera angles or anything in them... it's the same scenes... unedited, over and over again. Every episode. I mean, if you don't mind fast forwarding through it, yeh... the rest is alright, but very stiff.... lots of still frames, I'd say the average frame rate of this sucka is like 3 frames per second. It's a bit painful.
• Looks/Visuals : 5/10

Sound
"Says it won Best Soundtrack"
Yeh, that must've been a slow year for anime haha. No, actually the OST is very good, but in the show for whatever reasons they play the same few songs a dozen times over and a few others only once in the entire series. I dunno, definitely check out the soundtrack if you can. It's great, and you don't need to see the anime to enjoy it. The voice acting by the way, woah, don't watch the English dub, it's freakin' dry.
• Score/Voice Acting : 7/10

Story
"Girls with guns, underworld, action... how's the story?"
Story? Dude, no. This one tries and fails miserably to have a serious story. It's about two girls who come off dumb as bricks, somehow kill swarms of hundreds of faceless men, take random assassination jobs that do like nothing for the plot, get pursued by a mysterious organization and just I dunno, waste time. No lie. You'd think it'd be sexy and dark and gritty, but no, no blood, no boobs, plot loop holes outta control, and no sense of satisfaction or big pay off at the end. First 12 episodes you can completely skip, starts developing a bit afterwards, really only one cool moment all the way in episode 20... had it had any meaning behind that cool scene I'd say it was "epic" but they kinda undo it... maybe one more cool part in the last episode.
• Story : 4/10

Character
"Well, what about the strong female lead"?
You're smoking some powerful stuff... hey, to call the characters in this series cardboard thin would be to insult a useful packaging material. Terrible terrible development, terrible choices, terrible dialog. One character (Chloe) introduced towards the middle and not seen near often enough has some potential... she's hard not to like, but just not in it enough. Maybe that's why she's the only good one though.
• Characters : 6/10

Value
"So I mean, is it worth watching?"
Well, depends I guess... if you've absolutely nothing better to do and seen everything else, or if you're fine with fast forwarding through an anime yeh, it's alright I guess. Every episode has a gun fight, but they're pretty run of the mill... a few have cool moments in them though and maybe throughout it all six or so interesting kills. They're good for a smile. I guess if this anime was re-written into a more fast paced 12 episode OVA and made better use of that awesome soundtrack it'd be a real winner... but there's just not enough meat here to spread out over 26 episodes ya know?
• Value : 5/10

Enjoyment
"So you did you enjoy it?"
Nah, not really. I saw AniDB said it was "underrated" so I forced myself though those horrible repetitive moments to see what it's all about, but "over-rated" is what is should've said... there's much better stuff out there... if they redo it like I said, I'd be interested, but hold off on this one. What else do we got?
• Enjoyment : 5/10

Overall : 5

If you read it, please rate it
Thanks!

Noir... Two maidens blah-blah-blah... Forgive me for not retelling the plot but it's been done before.
The animation was...nice. Unobtrusive (on second thought this is an anime so "unbtrusive animation" doesn't sound like a compliment). It didn't make you cringe but neither stole your breath away.
However the beautiful tastful backgrounds really save the anime. I also found it fascinating how Kirika's eyes changed in the series.
Actually that and the music are two things that stayed with me afterwords.

And so I come to the next point: the sound. To my shame I didn't pay any attention to the voice actors so I'm only going to concentrate on the music.
The score is written by Yuki Kajiura and seems to have a life of its own. I came to enjoy it long after I finished watching the anime. Only afterwords did I hear the whole of "Canta per me" (one of the most memorable songs in the series)... Whatever shotrcommings the anime has, the music is beautiful.
Despite that I didn't like neither opening nor ending song. "Kirei na Kanjo" (end) was rather boring and "Copperia's Casket" irritated me throughout the series. That's why it's 9/10 for the sound.

The story. One of the most important parts of any anime. In this case it sucked. Really.
It started as a good "girl power" action. It should have stayed that way.
Of course, it didn't. They had to make it all mystical and weird... I liked the story of two female assasins beating up bad guys and looking cool in the process. Even an idea of a secret powerful organisation (aka Soldats) was fine, after all you have to have a villain.
But was everything else really necessary?.. Althea, Colliseum etc?..
This strange mixture of genre and overall slow pace of the series made it both boring and incomprehensible.

There are two main characters: Mireille and Kirika, the actuall Noir.
While watching you learn more about Mireille's past and get bored by her neverending angst. Or at least I was...Needless to say I don't like her much.
For me Mireille takes to much place while Kirika becomes a kind of mostly silent sidekick...
It irked me that almost nothing of Kirika's past was explained.
Putting that aside, they did make a good pair...

One of the most interesting characters, in my opinion, is Chloe. She is a god's gift to psychologists. Absolutly not normal but very fascinating... However she suffers the same fate as Kirika, you never really get to know anything about her besides her obsession with Althea and general psycopathic tendencies.

Value?.. Hmm... what lesson did I learn from watching 26 episodes of Noir?..
Probably that all that glitters is not necesserily gold.

Weeell... I did enjoy watching Noir. At least some of it. Most of the time. I think.
Yes, the plot was lacking, the characters stereotypical, the series drawn out and ending predictable, but the music was beautiful and the part of episode 16 when Kirika runs up the stairs made it almost worthwhile.
Almost.

Note: This review is based on zx fansubs.



Originally composed byTsukimura Ryoue (El Hazard) and directed byMashimo Kouichi (Madlax)Noir[/b] is a show about gunfights and assassins and martial arts; and, you know the deal. It is centered on a female assassin for hire, Mireille, who due to some circumstances happens to team up with an amnesiac killing machine teenage girl, Kirika. It appears the two girls share a common link as both of them have a recollection of a bizarre melody which is bound to play whenever bad things happen and something named Noir, whatever it is, is involved. The show follows its story in a very gushy washy way which is prone to leave its viewers wondering if something is really happening or not, but it does indeed, albeit slowly, move into one direction and even offers a full fledged ending.

My opinion about Noir ismixed to say the least. There is some nice potential in the plot, yet it's marred down by lame direction and unnecessary gunfight fillers. The permanent cast of characters consists of only four women, and though they are relatively well fleshed out, neither of them is particularly likable, nor particularly memorable (I did like Chloe though). Musical score, though slightly repetitive, is awesome, unfortunately gunfights it usually follows are awkwardly animated (particularly when you consider the fact that there is not a speck of blood in the whole show which IS centered onassassins). Frankly, I tried my best to enjoy this show, but after the twentieth plot hole instigated facepalm I had no choice but to write it down as average. I also had trouble taking the last episodes seriously, which actually turned out to be quite good; ending up discarding many serious moments inyeah, yeah, right fashion. Nonetheless I did have fun with Noir and though the middle of the show could have been much better I was never particularly bored with it (kudos to the great OST there). You will most likely like it if you are into 'girl assassins in deus ex machina driven dance-like gunfights' type of shows...

Animation: 6/10

Animation produced byBee Train is... in many ways awkward, but not particularly bad when you look at technicals. Well, backgrounds are pretty boring. There are barely any notable sights (you can still notice some nice pan outs at European cityscapes sometimes) with most of the screen usually being taken by blandly colored walls when characters are on screen. On the other hand, you are also treated to some nice ancient ruins and church-like backgrounds to liven the show's mood up near the end. It would also be pretty nice if somebody could tell Mr.Mashimo Kouichi that people bleed when they are shot because apparently he doesn't know it. While overall character designs are pretty average on detail and are attractive to an extent, their shapes as well as the complete absence of blood makes them look as if they are made out of gum or something. This gummy feeling seems to plague all Bee Train works which might be the reason why I have trouble taking them seriously I guess. It's not like people are badly drawn (Chloe is cute and facial reactions always do their job), it's just... it's sometimes hard to believe the people on screen are really supposed to be humans. Oh yeah, and don't even bother trying to distinguish generic guys in black suits, all those damn bastards look the same.

Years have taken their toll and fluidity of animation doesn't feel as good as it did a couple of years ago. You can notice people going choppy here and there, still frames at awkward moments, and most importantly, the lack of focus on action (sometimes all you see is Kirika's face getting illuminated by gunfire and then the battle's over). Still, though plagued by the lack of blood and a number of still frames I still found some gunfights engrossing... to an extent. Personally, I quite liked the fact that the shoot-outs are animated like dances. At the same time, however, it also makes them very unrealistic. I mean, the girls don't even look at what they are shooting at and theynever miss. Generic guys on the other hand miss all the time even if they are shooting from one meter range (they don't dance though). Apart from dances though there is little evidence of distinguishable direction.

Sound: 9/10

By nowKajiura Yuki (.hack//Sign,Cossette no Shouzou) is one my favourite anime composers, and you bet, she doesn't hold back in Noir, which also happens to be her debut show. Her trademark of relatively loud music with vocals (in Noir sounding like an upbeat church chore) is very well implemented and, frankly, I can't count how many times music alone was enough to keep my interest in the show. I have Noir's OST in my winamp playlist, and even though its playback number doesn't compare to .hack//Sign's, it still is quite a sight to behold. Either way, my point is, music is great, so good actually it alone make this show worthwhile to be checked out. OPCoppelia no Hitsugi byAli Project is also a very good song (one of my personal favourite OPs actually) and is followed by a really nice artful animation. Heh, it sure raised my expectations for Noir way too high for it to reach. ED, on the other hand, is nowhere near as involving as its OP counterpart, so I tended to skip it a lot.

Voice-acting is up-par for the most part, Mireille having herself fleshed by the veteranMitsuishi Kotono and other two female leads having the voices of the experiencedKuwashima Houko andHisakawa Aya. Personally I found Hisakawa Aya's performance of Chloe the most memorable, maybe because her soft voice managed to sound at the same time both awkward and very fitting coming out from a cloaked assassin.

Story: 6/10

It seems it's a trademark of Mashimo Kouichi to take up a plot with potential, screw it up as much as possible in the middle with some irrelevant crap and then wrap it up in a, while not particularly epic, good ending. In other words, his shows are 100% facepalm material; I literally bit my lip when Noir was wrapped in such a nice and to an extent dramatic fashion only to fail to touch me because I was overfed with crap and didn't have the guts to trust it anymore. If you've ever seen Madlax you are sure to know what I'm talking about.

Either way, the first half of Noir is filled with many gunfights and killin' (without blood) and it takes the appearance of Chloe somewhere in the middle of the show to finally put the plot to some sensible direction. Chloe disappears soon after and from then it goes, well, three minutes of something regarding the plot and fifteen minutes of action or irrelevant dialogues or flashbacks to fill the space. Then somewhere near the end the show finally dedicates itself wholly to the big picture with Chloe's long-awaited addition to permanent cast. Then it goes okay for the few last episodes and is wrapped up in a nice fashion. Some details of the story (like Kirika's life before meeting Mireille) are left hanging in the air, but their significance to the plot is not particularly critical. Anyway, the bigger half of the show with random assassinations can easily be enjoyed due to great music work and the last few episodes are quite enjoyable story-wise... if you have any will left to take them seriously that is. Mystery behind what exactly Noir is also gives this show quite enough suspense to keep you from dropping it.

Characters: 6/10

As I have mentioned before there are only four characters in this show, and, Mireille, who supposedly is the main heroine is also the least interesting of the bunch. Well, neither is Altena a particularly engrossing character appearing near the very end of the show and having nearly no screen-time. Anyway, while Mireille acts as a mediator, narrator and a voice of common sense to, usually, make you yawn; lightly schizophrenic Kirika is more interesting, particularly due to the fact that she can't quite recall why she can easily kill ten people in a blink of an eye. Personally, I found Chloe my favourite character in the show, probably because unlike the other two leads she didn't have 20 episodes of irrelevant dialogues to make herself boring followed by the fact that she is the only girl who comes off as a genuine killer out of the three. Nonetheless characters are neither particularly multi-dimensionally deep, nor particularly attractive; more like... average deep and slightly attractive, heh. There is some development going and it seems it achieves what it sets out to do, but observing it is not particularly interesting either. There is also a problem with individuality of characters as, if you have/will see Madlax, everyone, save for Chloe, are bound to overlap with someone in your memories. Seems Mashimo Kouichi is not particularly creative in the ways to deal with his characters. To sum it up, Noir's cast is your average gathering of slightly attractive characters which though not memorable will make you interested in the show for, at least, most of its running length.

Myers-Briggs personality type indicator:

Chloe - INFP (C)
Altena - INTJ (E)
Yuumura Kirika - ISFP (D)
Mireille Bouquet - ESFJ (D)

Show Spoiler

Value: 6/10

The episodic nature of the bigger half of the show certainly scares me away from a re-watch. And while I wouldn't mind seeing some nice massacres carried out by the dancing-like girls, particularly due to the awesome BGM, I still doubt I will ever gather the courage to watch this show as a whole again. Nonetheless, I will certainly keep Noir in my collection; never know when I will get an impulse to listen to some Canta Per Me musical killing, hehe.

1. Conclusion:[/b] Noir is your average action flick with some awkward shortcomings (lack of blood, laid back direction, boring lead) and some unexpected strengths (mystery, engrossing OST, Chloe); which in the end cancel each other out and still make it an average show. If you are into the 'girls with guns' shows, or are a person to enjoy vocal BGMs, you might as well give this show a shot with low expectations. It's not particularly good, it's right here on the middle, but while its shortcomings are glaring, you might as well notice some stuff you like (and I did). If you've liked Noir you might be also interested inMadlax andEl Cazador, which are very similar.Black Lagoon is slightly different, but also offers some nice 'chicks with guns' action.

[/ol]

Noir is the first of a long line of chicks with guns series, most of which are made by Studio Bee Train. It made some sensation when it first came out (like most new anime do) but it was pretty much shoved to the side more and more with each new similar anime before eventually being almost forgotten after Requiem for the Phantom came out (which is the best of this sort of shows). Most anime that are regarded to be the first in a field are usually labeled as all time classics and remain known to most (examples of which are Astro Boy, Hokuto no Ken, and Urusei Yatsura) but this is not the case with this show. Why? Simple; its context was so simple, it got rehashed right away in later shows with gradually better directing. That didn’t happen with the shows I mention above; they still feel unique even decades after they were made. So to give you a simple comparison, it’s like watching five seasons of Pokemon. The visuals may be improving but they are otherwise THE EXACT SAME THING!

Let’s now focus a bit on the technicals of the show. The artwork is ok for its time, not too detailed but not too shabby either. The character figures are generic, especially when it comes to the mass produced Men In Black baddies. The animation is rather standard, with people mostly standing still and talking, while action sequences are basically the girls doing some really impossible acrobatics while their enemies are standing frozen for several seconds. Meaning, although the battles seem impressive on a superficial level, it all boils down to a few girls killing a dozen men with a six pistol, while miraculously evading a hundred bullets with fancy aerobics and hitting their opponents easily because they are standing still. Hey, I can only suspend my disbelief for a few episodes before it gets repetitive and the stupidity of the whole thing surfaces. THE MOOKS DON’T EVEN BLEED!

The music is very good if you are fans of lyric music full of ambience. I personally have nothing against it and it holds out as a fine soundtrack to bye. The dialogues also have some maturity in them for going for some deep psychological or mysterious issues from time to time. Other than that, the overall simple context of the whole series will most likely make them feel like they are repeating pointlessly. Thus it is the music and not the talking that keeps you interested. Sound effects, meh, nothing special to comment.

The story and characters are A MESS! Trying to stretch a simplistic premise to last a full season can only be accomplished by slow pace, repeating flashbacks, going in circles, and throwing in lots of battles with easily defeated baddies. It tries to be mature and mysterious but eventually the ending is one big WTF and you are left wondering the point of the whole show. Ancient secrets and emo chicks that shoot anything that moves; it’s just not working. The main characters DO develop though. And by main, I mean only the girls since the male genre in this series is just an army of clones, identical weaklings without a face or personality. It’s all about the girls and their emo pasts. There is some interesting chemistry amongst them (hem, yuri, hem) but the whole thing happens so slow and repeats a lot before eventually going for some magical nonsense in the finale. Yeah ok, lol and move along.

There is no value in this anime, since as I said Requiem for the Phantom is its nth remake and the best of its kind (although I am no fan of emo chicks with guns and by no means fan of that series). As one described it, such Bee Train shows are basically long moody music videos and not good action/mystery series. So no, I don’t recommend it. Hear the soundtrack and skip the rest.

And now for some excused scorings.
[/spoiler]

Ok, this is my first review, and probably my only one; this is in response to the low, totally undeserved ratings for Noir.

Animation - The animation, while overall decent, could've been better. The numerous still frames within the show, do tend to get annoying after a while. However, considering this was seven years ago, my guess is the production values for the animation. had to be, for Bee Train's first independent project, rather reasonable, and not so much of high quality, so, it was just ok.

Sound - The Music of Noir is sublime, to say the least; the musical tones range from the suspenseful, to the melancholic, and Yuki Kajiura does a fantastic job, setting the mood(s) throughout the series.

Story - By far, Noir's strongest area. While the story starts out rather delicately paced, by the middle of the series, it really tends to slow down, rather annoyingly. However, the characters and and the plot develop so artfully, that by the latter half of the series, the time spent watching the earlier episodes becomes well worth the effort. The show is slow, but the story/characters are intriguing enough, to disregard the slow pacing of the series.

Value - I'd definitely watch the series again and again, b/c the story and philosophical undertones are so complex. Now, I won't spoil anything, but any viewer, young and old, will have a good grasp of the underlying story of the series. However, the spiritual/metaphysical aspects of the series, will intrigue you enough to make several attempts to wholly understand Noir's themes.

Enjoyment - I truly believe Noir exemplifies what anime should be. Bee Train produced a fine series, unsullied by scenes of fanservice, and an incoherent plot and characters. Noir is the first series of a "spiritual trilogy", produced by Bee Train, the others being Madlax and El Cazador de la Bruja. I've viewed the other series, and, while Noir is as close to perfection being a girls-with-guns anime, Bee Train, in my opinion, screwed the formula with the other two shows. Watch Noir, it's superb. 'nuff said.