This line of text in an email accompanied by a short sound file are all it takes to change the life of Mireille Bouquet, a most trustworthy assassin for hire.
Noir is a story about an assassin operating out of Paris by the name of Mireille. She's good at what she does and lives a pretty relaxed lifestyle. Until one day, she receives an email from a Japanese student named Kirika. Kirika posesses a link to Mireille's past and though she cannot remember her real name, she is quite adept at killing people. The two strike a deal that Mireille will help Kirika recover her past and, because her past appears to overlap Mireille's, kill her when all is said and done. The two begin operating as an assination team under the codename "Noir".
The story itself is quite interesting in that it dives into the histories and mythologies of various organized crime groups (mafia, yakuza, triads, etc.) as well as a variety of secret societies and tries to create a new underworld where one massive organization is controlling them all. All of these connections are laid out as Mireille and Kirika take on more and more jobs in their hunt for Kirika's past. My only complaint is that the story is often bogged down in filler and because of the numerous side-jobs that Mireille and Kirika take up, the story occasionally loses its momentum and degrades to an episodic "girls with guns" show before eventually slapping itself back on track.
The artwork is rather plain and can be inconsistent at times. The first few episodes were fairly well done and the artwork was hit or miss beyond that. The style also seemed to not fit the story in that it was often very bright and colourful when the story itself was taking a darker turn. This sometimes gave the events happening on screen a more cartoonish feel. Another item of note is the lack of blood and gore. It was quite literally "pop-pop" and bad guy falls over dead. Mireille is frequently commenting on how messy Kirika's kills are, but the viewer never sees it.
The sound is actually quite good. Gunshots are accompanied by the sound of shell casings ringing to the ground and small-arms don't sound like cannons. Death grunts are reused a lot, but it doesn't distract too much. The soundtrack was composed by Yuki Kajiura and has some truly excellent pieces in it, from choir, to orchestral, to electronic, to some really interesting tunes that I swear must incorporate every instrument she could find (and it turned out great!). The majority of the score incorporates a music box tune which was the attachment to the email that started the whole story.
Noir essentially only has one main character and that is Mireille. Though the story is about the two women as they wade through Europe's underground societies in search of Kirika's past, the viewer really doesn't learn a whole lot about Kirika. Mireille is the one who grows and learns more about herself through her involvement with Kirika and Kirika seems to only be there as some sort of emotionless plot device. Other characters pop in and out of the story, though their personalities are thin and their roles are small. They typically only serve as either filler or to teach the viewer something new about Mireille.
Did I enjoy the show? Yes. Enough that I've watched it through a couple of times. It's one of those light mystery thriller series that you hang onto for a rainy day. The music and the story make up for some of the inconsistencies in the artwork however, the abundance of filler is the suffering point of this series. Noir could have easily been a 12-episode show.
