Noir

[odin]

Oooh!  Do I get to be first?

Noir is the story of two women.  One's past haunts her so that she finds the future hard to face.  The other can't remember any of her past.  In order to understand themselves, they have to first learn to understand each other.  The women are assassins of legendary skill, and both kill for very different reasons.  I'll let you discover why.

The atmosphere is nothing short of stellar.  Someone did their homework bigtime here.  When they're in Italy, you feel like you're walking through Corsica or Florence yourself.  Likewise in France, or anywhere the women travel.

The music is by far my favorite of Kajiura Yuki's work.  From the haunting Melodie to the tense Salva Nos, it stands on its own, yet it is used astonishingly well in the series.  I acutally listened to the music before watching the anime, and that is what convinced me to watch it.

This series is focuses entirely on character development with short intermissions for massive killing.  Even in the battle interludes, we rarely see any blood, or anything gruesome.  It's almost stylized, but diametrically opposed to the stylizations Woo, or Tarantino use.  It's more Hitchcock type violence:  used to set the atmosphere.

The animation and voice acting are top-notch.  They couldn't pull this sort of thing off otherwise.

This is a classic.  Watch it!  You will not forget it!

[Merc]

I have three things to say about Noir:

http://tsunamichan.keenspace.com/d/20011028.html

http://tsunamichan.keenspace.com/d/20011219.html

and

http://tsunamichan.keenspace.com/d/20011220.html

^_^

[DB]

There is one main gripe I have with it, though: Horrible shooting on the part of the forces of evil. It's like a bad Schwarsengger movie with an army of bad guys unable to shoot straight, no matter how out in the open the girls are or what trap has been laid for them. They really could have cut back on those types of situations. Aside from that, the 1st 13 eps were good, and the music was nice. Worth watching, if you can handle the poor marksmanship on the part of the bad guys.

DB

[Brian]

In my opinion, the music was awesome.

Unfortunately, I was pretty sure I knew how the anime would end by the op.  I watched two episodes before I was bored senseless, and moved on, but I still have the OSTs.  Awesome music.

I was right about how it ended, but I'd rate this a solid: Less offensive than .hack.  Ugh.