Anime: Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom w163j

This started out as a comment but might as well turn it into a review

Its like they started out to make it a 12ep long show dealing with a part of the VN (havent played that one so cant say anything about it) and then suddenly they decided that it should include another part of the VN, and they did that twice.

Story
Ill explain the story with the parts that bugged me.
The story of an evil organization and their assassin program called phantom is somewhat divided in 3 parts.

1. • The rise of Claudia McCunnen
     The fall of Claudia McCunnen
     The aftermath.

While i kinda hated Claudia the story is most about how the first phantom, Ein/Elen, trains and interacts with the 2nd phantom, Zwei/Reiji.
The problem with the story is that it doesnt knows when to end. And instead of ending it adds lots of stuff that didint made much sense to me to continue.
You have to accept/ignore some parts to fully enjoy the storie(s).
The first ending:


The 2nd ending starts when stuff goes wrong, people get betrayed, and Inferno cleanes up the 'phantom project'.


Then the plot came and demanded that the story continued to finish of the loose ends, mainly the mastermind of the phantom project; Scythe Master.
What better way to create a new setting with a timeskip, this time 2 years.



You can either ignore the sound at 21:20 of the last episode or not, to determine the final outcome of this series. I decided to ignore it. (you can also just skip the last 3 min of the last episode, but saying that has the the same effect as saying to look at the last 3 min...)

Sound and visuals (Art & Animation)
Openings/endings.
There are 2 OP and 2 ED.
The first 2 are good sound wise, for visuals ok, but i skipped most of them (I found the first ED somewhat scary, that look in his eyes)
The 2nd Op was also good but when you see it you think; is this the right show? 2nd ED visuals were a reason to skip it.

Found the sound and visuals of the show more then good. The background music adds an extra layer to the setting. Only at the end of the series there is a stupid sound file played 2 or 3 times thats really annoying and shouldnt be there. Also the visuals are a bit random in the later episodes, but overall very good.

Overall
Value and Enjoyment
It has a good atmosphere and some interesting parts but it goes 'weird' to many times to make it great. It helps if you just take some parts for granted.

A beautiful dark and stormy noir story of unintentional assassination acumen set in modern LA and Japan where the hero(in)es face the classic existential crisis; should I really be callous about being an absolute badass? Some say yes, some say no, some get shot then say yes, others get shot and say no and in the end everyone has an epiphany and the only the first remains. The entire thing is well animated, fight scenes well choreographed, and I did look forward to each episode. So overall, entertaining. There was little depth, which is fine, except that it proposed to have depth and, I dunno, had the attitude, the introspection, the desire, just wasn't able to develop anything interesting. So watch it, enjoy it, forget it and move on.

So, I've watched this show three full times now and I finally feel like writing down my critical thoughts.
Fair warning: it's too much of a bother thinking about when it will be a spoiler and when not, so if you don't want any unnecessary spoilers then simply don't read this review.

This could've been an awesome cool anime, the “assassin in pistol age” genre is not that used and boy + girl combo is always nice. Unfortunately, they screwed up a couple of times:
They didn't have a story / script writer, or the guy suddenly went on drugs, or some other catastrophe happened. Else I can't explain how: they don't follow through with the nice start plot of the two escaping together, they make completely illogical decisions like a total of three (!) fake-deaths where the viewer is lead to believe an important, loved character suddenly died, and in all three cases it seems very unlikely to me that they survive it at all, it doesn't get explained either... so much for self logic. The three cases: Elen (Ein) gets shot by Reiji (Zwei) by mistake, the camera zooms into the spot of her freaking heart!, she falls into the sea... still alive; then Renji gets shot at point blank range by that Doctor Scythe Master freak. I don't know exactly how bad he is, but he must have some understanding of weapons or he couldn't have trained Elen. BUT he still manages to fail at hitting anything vital, maybe we're supposed to believe he doesn't care enough? Reiji falls into the sea, but survives and is swept at land. Even if it didn't hit anything vital, I'm not quite sure if anyone can survive that long with a shot wound, maybe the salt has preservative effects but hey I'm no doctor, just saying it feels very unnatural. And the last case, that little blond girl is in the apartment when the bomb that was meant for Reiji blows, and nothing happened to her. Guess she was taking a bath at the time and the tub protected her? They just showed pictures of her outside of the bath though. But that's not all, they also had the awesome ideas to make a total of two (!) full past episodes reviewing what happened. I'm generally already against those in the first place, if anyone cares about the show enough to find out what happened before, they will likely invest the time/money/effort to find out by watching. And if anyone didn't understand what happened, well, there is the Internet and on it a lot of places to talk about it with "smarter" people who understood. No need to ruin the watching experience for everyone watching. And to have two of those episodes in a 26 ep series is beyond good and evil.
But the most illogical, most horrible flaw in the whole show: the entire mid part from when Renji believes he lost Elen till she finds her again and decides to flee with her. Yep, everything concerning the blond girl. He's suddenly supposed to have become some wanna-be James Bond (at least his clothes and attitude resemble him somewhat), and he wastes time with that stupid girl, but the worst thing is when he sees her again, she's suddenly a woman full grown, with giant breasts. They say it's hard to tell a girl’s/woman’s age, and I agree, but at the very least she was 8-12 years before and 18-22 years at the second meeting, you can't tell me any girl has a body like that under 18. So at the very least 10 years between that. And Renji and Elen didn't age a day, from their looks? Huh? Scythe master invented a growth drug maybe? Or are they vampires in truth? At least nothing was said about it, nothing, not a word, and everyone wonders about it while watching.

Well, I suppose I made my points. I really would've loved to see this series made (or remade) without those flaws, it could've been so awesome... so let’s wrap this up:

Art & Animation: 8
Nothing too special, it's the typical "no-risk" animation style most anime make use of today, somewhat cute and smooth looking characters, clearly more targeted towards a younger audience, with a bit of a realistic factor to it and a few better done and a few worse CGI animations. Of note are the slow eye motions to add feeling, I really liked those, also the blue trails Elen & Reiji draw after each other when they go into "killing mode". But this anime suffers from a lot of cliché, and the animation is no exception (stupid masks for once). So all in all it’s solid, but that's it.

Sound: 7
Weapon sounds are pretty good, music is fine, OPs and first ED are top notch and easily the best thing about this anime, but it already got a well deserved award from anime reactor for that. The voices are well chosen too in most cases, but I think they somewhat screwed up the voice for Reiji: he sounds fine in thinking & analyzing situations, but in everyday stuff his voice can be pretty boring and kind of annoying too. So for that, small reduction.

Story: 5
I already said it, Reiji + Elen surviving for the whole anime would've been best, without the worthless middle part, without the two past eps. On top of the bad things they did with the plot, the setting is very clichéd. I like the idea of copying Bourne Identity ideas somewhat (guys/girls get trained into perfect killing machines using drugs, memory loss), but overall they just have too much that feels like an American gangster movie without any originality or especially good realization, especially the middle part. Also, they just have to let Reiji die from a silenced pistol at the end to ruin the happy ending, stupid idiots.
The Story is clearly the worst part of this show, they screwed up too much. You still find yourself wanting to know how the plot progresses, but more than once you have to shake your head over the bad execution.

Character: 6
Blond one is useless, obviously. Elen, Reiji and Scythe are all kind of interesting, some of Infernos too. Some have some deepness to them (Elen, Reiji, Blond mainly), most others are very thin and don't get enough time, especially high school ones at end. They tried to do too much and achieved too less in the end. Also, some of their behavior can be illogical and annoying (mainly Blond, Scythe, but at times Elen Reiji too, their lines just don't sound convincing enough when they talk about their dramatic feelings). The chaotic mix that started with the bad plot writing can be felt painfully in this section again, and demands reduction.

Value: 6
Like I originally said, there are not so many assassin pistol anime around (and no, this one doesn't count as a Noir clone to me, screw that worthless anime, it's way too bad to stand as an original for anything), so the value of this is basically rather high, but the more often you watch it the stronger you will notice all the mistakes they made and the harder it will be to truly enjoy it. Basically, this anime is like popcorn entertainment: if you watch without thinking too much, you can have some fun, but the more you think and watch the more you will painfully notice. Hence enjoyment > value.

Enjoyment: 7
The first time, I had pretty much fun, at least till ep 10. Then I stopped watching it for some (the anime was still not finished at that time) and even opened a discussion about it because I couldn't agree with the change from cool-killer Reiji to "I'm James Bond now" Reiji, or in other words from taste to cliché. I had some fun towards the end again when they were in school together, but it was just too less time to make up for the middle part, like eating a single potato chip just to get the bag stolen by a friend, despite hungering for more. I would've rated it 8 the first time I watched it if I wouldn't have written a review (review ratings always tend to be lower than "stomach, on-the-spot" ratings, because you're forced to think critically about each section), and obviously there are a lot of people who overate the anime with 8 or the really naive & blind ones perhaps even 9 (and the stupid ones who don't really know what "perfect" means 10), or else you couldn't explain the pretty round rating right now, so I suppose I settle for this: fine popcorn entertainment, but the more often you watch it again and start thinking about all kind of things, the less enjoyment it seems to have.

first of all, I'd like to say that my opinion of this anime might be a little biased. I really liked Gunslinger Girl, I rated the Phantom OVA with 9 and I still consider Noir to be one of the best anime I've ever seen in of music, mood and story. You might say I'm into this kind of stuff. So how does this series live up to its predecessors, especially Noir? Well, I think it does a very good job!

Art & Sound

This anime is about action and succeeds to excel both in art and animation. I really liked the face design of the characters, especially Ein. Many of the backgrounds were nicely done, especially the final stage. While this anime has a dark mood, the art isn't limited to dark places and shows a variety of different sceneries -- both dark and bright.

I'm not much into the typical J-Pop soundtrack that comes in pair with about 90% of all anime. Requiem of the Phantom is a nice exception to this making the soundtrack not only ear-friendly, but also providing some really memorable tracks -- especially the orchestral ones! When compared to Noir, it isn't as good but it gives this anime a nice touch. The only songs I really hated where the first ED and the second OP.

Story & Characters

The story is told from the perspective of the male lead character. Formely a japanese tourist to the States he was unlucky to witness an assasination job of the main female called "Ein". Instead of getting killed, his potential for killing is noticed and he ends up brainwashed and forced to be an assassin under his new name "Zwei". Ein trains Zwei and they do some assassination jobs together for the underground organization "Inferno". Eventually they get caught up in internal quarells, and Zwei decides to run away.

This is where the story starts to be interesting. While lacking originality and really surprising plot twists, it also lacks idiotic plot holes or out-of-place scenes. There are two time shifts after big story arcs making this anime cover up 5 years in the life of Zwei. After the second time shift (2 years) there is a big change in style. This is intentional in order to give the audience an surrealistic, dream-like feeling. While not being content with this change at the beginning, in retrospect it makes sense. It emphasizes the feeling when the characters are caught up by their own past, thus awakening from the "dream".

The main characters were introduced very well. Except Ein maybe, but the same could be said about Kirika from Noir. Since this makes this character more mysterious, I can live with that -- her past will be uncovered a little bit in the epilogue ;). Most of the introduced characters get a development and few stay one-dimensional. Can't really complain about this, there wasn't really a character that felt out of place at all.

The only complaint I have with the kind of story telling is that there were two recap episodes. While they came at the right time and they contain some new stuff at the end, couldn't this be done in a better way? IMO a series should not have any recaps at all -- especially if it consists of 26 eps . Nobody likes them, the studio should have dumped them and made this into a good 24 ep anime.


Overall

Again, this review comes from someone who really likes anime with a dark background and a mature story. Like the other reviewers said, if you liked similar series such as Noir or Gunslinger Girl, you should give this one a try. For me this series was real fun to watch and I finished it after a 3 day run satisfied with both the course of action and the finale.

Noir mark 4, also known as Requiem for the Phantom (henceforth RFTP). Studio Bee Train messes once again with the exact same premise but this time, unlike its earlier attempts it did things right.
1) It made drastic changes to the formula to the point it didn’t feel like another rehash of a Chicks With Guns show. It was also way richer in context and plot.
2) Unlike its predecessor, El Cazador, it came out during a time when the market was starting to grow weaker and less great anime began being made, making it a lot easier to stand out.
3) It is the last of these Bee Train shows and also its best. Banzai, we are finally free!

So you may now be asking why did I give such a series which is regarded as awesome by thousands of people such a mediocre score. Well, I initially scored it based on how much I enjoyed it but when the time came to sit down and write an elaborate analysis of why I didn’t like it as much … I froze. Why did I give it a 5 anyway? And what was the story about again? And why don’t I anything about a series with such a high average score? Hm, might as well give it a second view and find out.

Turns out my memory was whipped just like Zwei’s this anime boasts being a lot more than it really is. And sure, it has many fans and such but then again when was that a proof of anything? Naruto is a piece of tard and has a billions fans while poor old Legend of Galactic Heroes is thrown aside by most because there aren’t half naked chicks with neon swords blowing up huge 3 million polygon mecha in it.

And what did the above rant have to do with the review? Nothing; it’s just nerdrage; moving along to the actual review.

STORY SECTION

The story is somewhat generic. Or it is for someone like me who has already watched live action movies like Nikita or Leon , and anime series like Gunslinger Girls, Gungrave or Darker Than Black. It’s about
I don’t
A criminal organization which plans to rule the world
A criminal organization which plans to unite the underworld
Chicks with guns
Chick with gun, plus a token dude
A pair of angsty assassins
Ein showing bare skin while pondering about the meaning of life while shooting stuff
What was I writing about again?
A pair of teens brainwashed and trained to be assassins for a mafia family which plans to be the top criminal organization with the most diplomatic way possible -> killing anyone who disagrees.

But the whole power struggle fuss is left on a secondary level; primarily it’s about the lead duo, Ein and Zwei, shooting stuff and throwing around existentialism dialogues around the value of life and free choice. So here we are with a rather ok background story and a somewhat promising foreground plot around two slave killers. Sounds ok and in theory it should work … And it didn’t.

The actual story is fine as it is. Mafia families fight to the death, Zwei has morality issues and is eventually hunted by his own masters, there is a lot of shooting going around, a lot of ambitious crime bosses betraying one another, some subtle romance, some subtle erotism, and a final showdown in the end. What could go wrong?

Well … the pacing. I have left behind my days where I could wait 5 episodes for a planet to blow up in just 5 minutes. Most people don’t seem to care if it takes 10 episodes to get a beer from the fridge but I do. The pacing is as slow as a crippled snail; a trademark present in all earlier Bee Train Chicks With Guns shows as well. I have seen worse but it is still on the slow territory. Supposed this is counter-balanced by extreme amounts of atmosphere build-up, character immersion and philosophical dialogues.

But no; it’s still slow in a dull way. I never found any appeal in spaced out expressionless characters looking at the ceiling and questioning the meaning of their existence. Or at least not without something eye-catchy to back it up. I mean, amongst my favorite shows are anime like Tatami Galaxy, Ultimate Survivor Kaiji and Neon Genesis. Sure, those also had a ton of talking about deep stuff. But they also had psychedelic imagery and heart pumping action. RFTP does not.

It sounds weird saying that about a series where in each episode a dozen people get shot and stuff blow up. Sure, there is action. And sure, the backgrounds are very well made and occasionally throw around phycho imagery. But it’s not done in a masterpiece level directing-wise. Take the action parts for example; to the most part there is no real excitement in them. 99% of the opponents Ein and Zwei face are stupid, slow and can’t shoot straight, resulting to overkill battles that usually last only 5 to 10 minutes at best. Heck, the duo can do air flips, walk calmly towards its target or smoke a cigar for a few minutes and the enemies still are unable to react in time. Not to mention the usual trope where sworn enemies just talk to each other for half an hour when all it takes is to press the trigger. If you have watched the previous works of the same director (Madlax, Noir, El Cazador de la Bruja) you know what I mean. Never liked it then; still don’t like it now.

Anyways, the pacing is so slow I ended up losing all interest (and memory) of most of the show the first time. And during the second go, it felt equally dull, only this time I had to pay some attention in order to write this review. I don’t need to explain anything further; even most of the fans of the series will it that the first arc is too simple, the second too slow and the third too anti-climactic. It has a beginning, a middle and an ending alright, but it lacks proper pacing and climax. It could easily be done in half the episodes and with a lot more excitement in of action or suspense.

At this point I would like to address how most of the remarks coming from the fans of the show boil down to “OMG THE ENDING WAS SO TRAGIC!” Yes, it was tragic. Do you have anything else to comment about it? Most likely not; you too would probably have erased everything that happened before just because there was nothing much to about besides a weird feeling of cutting your wrists because of the emoness in this show. So I am not going to start spamming 10s all over the place when the only good thing I from it are the last 5 minutes.

CHARACTER SECTION

Enough with the story; now a bit of rage at the cast. First of all they really are an interesting bunch as far as sympathy or interest from the viewer goes. They all have their goals, demeanors, and development. The negative part is that most of the focus is given on the main duo. They are really given a deep immersion, understanding and development. All the rest, with the exception of Scythe Master, are pretty much left with their initial demeanor; making them rather stiff and hard to like. Especially when most of what they do is talking fancy for half an hour, and then sending in the Phantoms to do all the dirty work and pretending all the stuff they were saying so far were dead time. It gets tiresome pretty fast if you combine it with the slow pacing and the fact that all they do is talking. Heck, when it’s their turn to be killed, most of them don’t even put up a decent fight. Well, talk about all words and no balls if despite the ten hours of fancy talking you are still incapable to lift a pistol and shoot straight.

By the end of the show, I only cared for the aforementioned three, and the always needed to be present token loli, Cal. Well, at least she is there to give a human side to Zwei so she was not just unnecessary extra. Still, even those four didn’t feel any special or likable. They were simply given all the damn focus to the point where the show could work with these four alone. The cast isn’t bad; just hard to empathize or in the long-run.

ART & SOUND SECTION

At least the external looks of the anime are marvelous and you will not be disappointed in this department. The amount of details and colors given to the artwork are marvelous, almost completely realistic and fitting to the grim setting of the criminal underworld. Crime bosses live in ridiculously high luxury and have an army of thugs, casinos, yachts, saunas, bitches, etc. And how nice, most mooks are not identical Men-In-Black like in previous similar anime. And that champagne looks so well drawn; I actually got thirsty looking at it. Action scenes … well, they are fine I guess but do lack overall realism; the baddies are dumb arses as usual. But heck, there are basic strategies and field tactics used and not ridiculous “one kills a thousand in open field with a water pistol” or something like in Black Lagoon. And then it’s the overall soundtrack which is just an amazing work overall. I have listened to the first opening (Karma) at least a hundred times. The battle theme used in most action parts is also great but it may get tiresome.

VALUE & ENJOYMENT SECTION

Replay value is so-so because of the pacing issues. Historical value is high; it’s by far the best of all the series the director made. In fact, it probably comes only second to Black Lagoon in of shoot outs and it’s still far more than just brainless slug fest. Memorability … well … I did forgot it almost immediately the first time, lol. This has to do with only me of course. I have watched a heck of a lot and this series has indeed overall very little to it for. It had many tropes I don’t like, such as amnesia, time skips, and too many recaps. The story is not that special, it is slow as heck, the characters are undermined because of that, the action is not great, and the talking is overdone.

As one described it, such Bee Train shows are basically long moody music videos and not good action/mystery series. I do recommend it for the atmosphere and the soundtrack but I otherwise don’t consider it that great as a series.

Phantom of Inferno is quite possibly my favourite visual novel, so the prospect of a second adaptation filled me with a mix of anticipation and fear. Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom is for the most part faithful and successful; while a few changes have been made, it's only the very end that clashes badly with the original material.

The animation approach deserve particular praise. The original character designs have been scaled up and adapted to the HD format. This makes them simple by modern standards, but rather than embellishing and undermining the faces, Phantom takes advantage of this to allow more interesting - there is no other word for it - camerawork. Focus is shifted and played with, reflections and glass abound, and the makers certainly convinced me they've put enough effort in to create hyper-realistic faces if they wanted to. The backgrounds are of course drawn in full detail, and the visuals are rounded off by some very pretty opening and ending sequences.

The first two in particular are backed by very good themes - the opening a haunting, very vocal-oriented song, the ending provided by Ali Project on good form. (The mid-season replacements for both are less good, although by no means bad) The background music uses an astonishingly small number of tunes - in fact I can only recall three - but with variations on each, particularly Cal's music box tune, which is used extensively towards the end. As with the original material, Phantom is divided into three roughly equal sections (without giving too much away: male lead Reiji's birth as an assassin, his rediscovery of humanity while at the top of his game, and finally being on the run from his organization), and it's the music for the middle part that really impresses - intended to evoke downtown (and perhaps nineties) L.A., we have a genuine, believable hip-hop theme that is also faithfully Japanese, and it's a beauty to hear. Voice acting is also top-drawer, with the leads, particularly Ein, evoking their characters perfectly, and all voices clear and distinct.

However, some of the character seems to have been lost elsewhere. Particularly with Ein (and most notably the ridiculous swimsuit she appears in in one episode), fanservice and the need for a likeable character seems to have taken away some of the near-robotic coldness that was her most important facet. Reiji too seems to have lost something, though that may be simply the difficulty of portraying his emotions as a character on the screen (rather than just telling you them as the protagonist in the original visual novel). Nothing becomes outright objectionable until the ending, which criminally wastes the excellent conclusion of the original for one far less emotionally satisfying, and deprives us of the most interesting gunfight to boot. It's hard to be fair to the show taken in isolation, but I think even a viewer with no knowledge of the original would be disappointed with Phantom's climax, which seems a small, uninteresting battle compared to what we've already been through.

The rest of the story is the brilliant original, though - and while I wasn't as excited seeing it for a third time, if the viewer feels a tenth of what I did on my first playthrough of the original the show will have done very well. That said, I can't know how well the unfamiliar viewer could follow Phantom's intricate storyline; you'll have to look to other reviews for that. The plot also loses some of its impact (though not, thankfully, much of the storyline) from being unable to branch like a visual novel; the original's frequent "lesser of two evils" choices really drove home the tragedy of the piece.

The disappointing ending has rather overshadowed Phantom for me; I'm conscious my ratings are probably overly harsh for a series I looked forward to the next episode of this much. If one lays the last two episodes aside this is as close to perfect as an adaptation ever gets, with beautiful presentation that improves on the original (but remains faithful to it), and one of the best stories around as its source material. I hope viewers will feel something of what I felt, and would encourage those who enjoy Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom to track down a copy of the visual novel.