Noir
| Noir | |
|---|---|
 Les deux vierges régnent sur la mort. | |
| Original Manga | |
| Director/Artist | Koichi Mashimo |
| Format | Anime (TV) |
| Made By | Bee Train |
| Episode Length | 25 minutes |
| # of Eps/Volumes | 26 |
Contents
Genre
Action, Mystery, Girls With Guns
Sum it up in a Sentence
A series about a pair of female assassins who are trying to uncover information about their pasts whilst simultaneously carrying out assassination contracts and surviving attacks from a mysterious organization that seems to wish to destroy them.
Main Descrption
The first installment of Bee Train's girls-with-guns trilogy begins when Mireille Bouquet, a Corsican assassin living in Paris, receives an email from a Japanese girl called Kirika Yuumura inviting her to "make a pilgrimage to the past" with her. Intrigued, Mireille the travels to Japan in order to find her. Their first meeting however is interrupted when a number of men in black attempt to kill both of them, though the pair makes short work of these attackers. Afterwards, Kirika reveals to Mireille that she's suffering from amnesia and requires her assistance to discover information about her past. The fact that Kirika possesses a pocket watch that figures prominently into her own past causes Mireille to reluctantly agree to form an alliance with Kirika under the codename Noir in order to discover more information about both their pasts and the mysterious organization that seems to be trying to destroy them.
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Personal Opinions
Factor VIII
Noir is a show that I found to be quite enjoyable to watch. The art and music quality are both excellent, while the action scenes are very well animated and the story is quite interesting. The only weaknesses of the show are that it sometimes needlessly repeats some flashbacks and that its ending was rather anticlimactic. It is also a bit slow, but that shouldn't be a problem unless someone tries to marathon the whole series. Overall, I consider it to be well worth watching for someone who likes action shows.
Totalizator
While Noir does have an interesting story to tell, the extremely slow pace of the show and overused flashbacks kill most of the fun of discovering Kirika and Mirelle's pasts. The music is very good, however the animation is pretty average most of the time. The last two episodes and the ending are ok, however they arrive too late to save the show. Overall, I consider Noir a show based on a good idea, that was killed by having twice as many episodes then it should have.
Kleptobot
Noir starts out with some pretty cool action scenes and a nice soundtrack. However, the story and the action became so depressingly predictable with only a few exceptions. Even now that I've finished the whole series, I still can't quite say what it was about as they crammed most of the actual story into the last few episodes. You think that for a secret organization that controls the world and commands several identically-suited soldiers, they'd teach them how to aim at a couple of girls. The most egregious offender was in one scene where the bad guys capture Mireille to draw Kirika out of hiding just so they can kill her. When she walks in plain view of ten enemy mooks, what do they do? They stare at her as she walks up the steps and kills them one by one.
In short, good action anime, weak story with slow pacing, not my cup of tea.
Robert Denby
After being led on by the interesting and well-animated first episode (and hearing people rave about the soundtrack), I tracked down this series and watched the entire thing. I know it has it's fans, but I thought it was an absolute mess.
The biggest problem I had was the pacing, which takes what would have been too little character substance for a three-episode OAV and stretches it intolerably over 24 episodes with tons of dead air and plot culdesacs. This is only made worse by the animation, which is incredibly stiff and cheap-looking, especially in the slideshow-tastic action sequences, and endlessly repeated flashbacks. Admittedly the core concept could have made for something decent, and the show does sport good music, but overall this is just a slog.
Snapalope
Noir does start out really strong especially with the first few episodes but towards the middle of the series, the plot feels really dragged on and becomes a slog fest. The main problem I have is that the pacing is really inconsistent. It feels the series could have been shorter because there is just too much filler material sandwiched between the beginning and the ending. Overall I still enjoyed it because of its premise and its amazing soundtrack. It's still worth checking out if you like action oriented shows.
