Ranked #147

Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~

Personally the idea of a secret organization hidden in the underground has always sent a small chill down the spine. One of thrill and a small yearn of wanting to join in on the fun. Grunge, guns, passion, hate, emptiness, lust, power, suits, death, and fancy cars; these are some of things that is offered in this forbidden and hidden world. At first glance it looks like a life worth trying out, but the void that can be created within one’s mind can become the very undoing of their life. Zwei is one of the most detailed characters I have experienced thus far that exhibits this trait.
What happens when you take a person, someone of a certain "innocence", chase them down, try to kill them and then brain wash them into doing the bidding of this underground world, with the reward of just their life? I for one have never experienced anything like that from the external or an internal source of the material world, so my input on a realistic level is incorrect. Although, one thing that I can speculate on is the psychological formula of one's thought process and emotional response, thus understanding the turn that could occur and stir inside the heart of this character.
This one minute characteristic of the show was the selling point that instant. Being a sucker for cute boys is a weakness of mine, but the devoid Zwei captivated the "poor lost soul" gap within me. The artist nature of his hollow eyes, blank expression, and puppet like movements coincide with the response that would be fitting for the overall effect in the story. The choice of when to have Zwei react in an emotional ran state or “phantom” state was right on the mark. There has never been a point in time that the “internal drama” lingered for too long, another winning aspect of Phantom.
The amount of conflict, emotional response and actions taken all fit together perfectly with no leftovers. The feelings of dissatisfaction, confusion, bewilderment, or boredom have not occurred yet while watching this animation. Waiting for the main climax to take shape tickles with excitement as the story unfolds and the characters become enveloped in the mix. Seeing all of this from a non living organism makes me want to experience it even more, maybe not personally, but from a third person perspective. To see this type of behavior develop in a real person would be something that someone faint of heart would not be able to accomplish; the absolute demise of a once innocent and “living” person. Do you want to see what happens when someone lives so close to death?

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In my opinion, Phantom Requiem will may be figure in the top10 anime of the year 2009.
Phantom Requiem is firstly an anime where you need to be attentive, in fact, mafia members in that anime often discuss about plans,strategies which are quite difficult to understand.However, the most fascinating side of that anime resides in the relationship between Reiji/zwei and Elen/Ein.I would say that the main theme of this anime is FREEDOM.

Phantom Requiem is an anime for those who mostly love drama since the story of Elen and Reiji is very touching.Therefore, if you are searching for impressive scenes of actions and suspense, I suggest that you don't expect more from this anime.

Strength of this anime:

1) Drama is very good- following how Reiji becomes more and more close to Ein is the main strength of this anime.In fact,Reiji and Ein share the same suffering and this creates a strong bond between them.
2) Art is extremely good- main characters and even side characters are well drawn.
3) The music is good- Opening(Karma) is damn good and background music(which are mainly gothic type) are perfectly adapted to a given situation
4) Many many many moral values which i'm sure will teach you many things.E.g Once you killed someone, killing again will become easier

Weakness:

1) You will probably hate 85% characters of this series since they are always looking for power.This is a real weakness since those characters will have consequent screen time.
2) Too many discussions among characters which is harsh to understand but hopefully, you can understand what is going on even he you didn't understand what was being said.( It's like politics XD)
3) Probably, this anime in my opinion had a very slow start but things will become more and more interesting around ep12 ( however, it was interesting to follow ep1-11)
4) Lack of suspense at the end of most episodes which I think is quite unfortunate.

Basically,this anime is great and you should definitely gave it a try. read more