Noir Vol. #1 Limited Edition

    February 22, 2002
Release Date: July 25, 2001



What They Say
The original video anime that started airing in April 2001 is now on DVD! That stylish anime that you might wanna call the anime version of 'La Femme Nikita.' Contains 2 episodes.

The Review!
Action, political intrigue, beautiful settings, and, of course, girls with guns. Noir is a 26 episode television series that aired on TV-Tokyo from April to September of last year.

Technical:

This show has an abundance of beautiful animation and scenery, and the transfer to DVD has kept that flawlessly intact. I picked over this DVD with a fine-tooth comb, and I didn't notice a single video problem. The colors are lush and vibrant, the animation is very smooth... in short, everything looks spectacular. In addition, this is one of the first shows to be originally broadcast in a widescreen format, and that is preserved on this DVD.

The audio is presented in Dolby Surround, and this transfer is well done too. It would have been nice to see a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix, but things sound great anyway. The music in this series is excellent, and plays a very important part in setting up the tone of every scene.

Loading up the menu system, it is very fast and functional. The three menus accessible on this disc are all static images with the links as easy to select text. Surprisingly, while one may choose which episode to begin with, there is no means of jumping to a specific chapter within an episode from the menus.

This particular version of the Noir Volume 1 release was a limited edition, and for the same price as the regular version, it also came with a sturdy box to store the first 7 DVD volumes (a similar box is available as an LE with Volume 8 for the remainder of the DVDs). This box is identical to the open-ended types that Central Park Media uses, except that it is quite a bit more substantial feeling. The art on both the box and the DVD cover itself are very detailed, and both excellent choices. Inside the DVD, there is a tri-folding insert with a copy of the DVD cover picture on it, as well as two small stickers of the Noir logo.

Content:

Noir is a bit of an oddity as far as anime shows go these days, in that it takes place almost completely outside of Japan. The majority of the show is set in Paris, France, with the action sometimes moving to other European locations, such as Italy. Having never been to France myself, I can at least say that the creators of this show did a very good job in recreating Paris according to what little I've seen of it.

Moving on to the show itself, we meet one of Noir's main characters, Mireille Bouquet, fairly early in the first episode. After returning home from a shopping trip, she checks her email and finds a strange message with only a picture of a young Japanese girl and the words "Make a pilgrimage for the past, with me." As she is ready to shrug it off, the email also plays a short music box tune that appears to strike a chord with Mireille; she is frozen in shock at hearing it.

Mireille travels to Japan to investigate, and tracks down the girl, Kirika Yumura, at her school, following her as she leaves. Tailing her to an abandoned construction site, Mireille confronts this mysterious girl, only to have her reveal the source of the music in the email: a pocketwatch, which Mireille also recognizes with some shock. As Mireille attempts to question her further on this, Kirira suddenly dashes off into the construction site. After finally catching up with her on the upper floors of the unfinished building, they are both attacked by a number of unidentified men in suits. As Kirika dashes off, Mireille fires back, and kills a number of them. However, she is eventually subdued. As she is about to be executed on the spot, Kirika reappears and disposes of the remainder of the suits, displaying combat abilities rather uncommon to most average Japanese schoolgirls.

Later on, after Kirika has helped Mireille bandage her wounds, she explains that she has no recollection of who she is or how she came to possess these combat abilities. She also cannot explain her connection to Mireille, but they both know it centers around the pocketwatch Kirika has. Mireille then reveals that she is a professional assassin, and has been working under the name Noir. Furthermore, she resolves to partner with Kirika, so they may both determine what this connection is between them. She makes it clear, however, that once she has found the information she needs, she will kill Kirika.

The second episode is more of a standalone. Mireille and Kirika team up for the first time on an assassination job; they are hired to kill the leader of a French terrorist group, as well as the head of France's National Security Bureau, who betrayed a number of his own in exchange for money from the terrorists. This episode serves to showcase the abilities of both Mireille and Kirika, although they aren't quite working as a team yet.

One thing that stands out for me about this series is the music. While repetitive at times, it is nevertheless captivating and entirely appropriate for nearly every scene. In addition, the attention to detail with weapons and vehicles is something not normally seen in your average TV series. The makers of this show spent a lot of time making sure everything was very authentic.

Overall, this first volume does a very good job of drawing the viewer in with the as-of-yet unexplained connection between Mireille and Kirika and the combat prowess of both girls. One complaint I've often heard about this show is that there is nearly no blood, despite quite a few fatalities. Personally, I don't feel that this detracts from the show at all. The point of Noir is not to investigate all the different trajectories blood might take when gushing out of a bullet wound. It is to tell a story, and so far, it does an excellent job of that.

Features
Japanse Language,Production Sketches Gallery - 40 images,30 and 15 second TV spots


Review Equipment
Pentium 3 800MHz computer, Creative 1242E DVD-ROM, 17-inch Sony Trinitron monitor, Creative Sound Blaster Live!, Creative Annihilator 2 MX graphics