Noir Complete Collection - Ain't It Cool News
- Ain't It Cool News
- Scott Green
- 08/14/05
- click here
"Noir offers slick violence, where a combination of strategy and athleticism allows a grace in the combat."
Noir is high quality sensory anime set to a girls with guns assassins story that's less salacious than the norm to a point where even physical intimacy doesn't involve an edge of sexuality. Instead, it dances a bullet ballet across a Europe who's present is an impressionist lit scene with a van Gogh color palette, and who's secret past is illuminated in neon. Dressing like, at the time trendy Japanese urbanites (micro-skirt, heeled boots and sleeveless blouse on one, classy school girl on the other) two girls go Counter Strike to the music of Yuki Kajiura (second to Yoko Yanno, a composer fans have some to look for) a tone is all that needed to carry the story.
Mireille Bouquet, and Kirika Yumura are a girl with no past, and a girl haunted by her past who take up the mantle of NOIR, a pair of assassins who are 'fated' to be 'two maidens who govern death'. They become knights in a chess game played by powerful and would-be powerful organizations. The characters' occupation and position put them in a field where they never know who to trust, and are required to always think and act quickly trailing a conspiracy not too different from comic's 100 Bullets or TV's Alias. Ironically, they're often killing people with information they need.
There's a non-typical degree of emotional resonance in the series that focuses more on the act of killing than the characters. On one hand it is a particularly hard series to to watch if real world terrorism in on your mind. On the other, Mireille and Kirika don't invoke much of an attachment as individuals. Despite their motivations and character evolution, they're ultimately cold to the viewer, with not much to them beyond killing. It's hard to envision what these characters do when they stop killing, or reconcile a decision to stop with the fate of all the faceless people they've killed.
Noir offers slick violence, where a combination of strategy and athleticism allows a grace in the combat. It doesn't make killing look pretty, but in that its set in beautiful locals and that it is executed like thai-chi: smoothly moving, hitting points of resistances, and moving around them, there's an aesthetic glow.
Posted on Sunday, August 14, 2005 (Archive on Wednesday, September 14, 2005)