The story starts off with Kirika who wakes up one morning somewhere in Japan without any memories, she can only remember the name Noir and has with her, a pocket watch that plays a melody when opened. She gets into contact with Mireille who operates as an assassin under the name Noir. They arrange a meeting where they are attacked by an unknown organisation but manage to escape because Kirika discovers that she is also a skilled assassin. Kirika explains her situation to Mireille who is at firs reluctant to help but when she hears the melody coming out of Kirika’s pocket watch that brings back the memories of the night when her parents were shot dead by an unknown assassin, she agrees to help her. And so they start working together as hitmen for hire under the name Noir and slowly start to unravel the truth about their pasts.
That is interesting if not particularly original premise and I have to say that the story evolves to become one of the best I have had the pleasure to see. The problem comes with the shows pacing which is truly glacial at the beginning of the anime, as nothing majorly relevant happens during the first ten or so episodes. Each one includes a contract they have to kill and each episode they uncover a new piece of the puzzle regarding their past. This would not be a problem if these episodes were not of extremely varying in quality, one regarding a retired KGB agent is in my opinion one of the best anime episodes I have ever seen, but some of the others are excruciatingly boring, and would be unwatchable if not for the exceptional soundtrack. Later on the pace picks up and moves away from the episodic format to focus more on the story. I also have to say here that the ending is perfectly satisfying and leaves few open threads which is quite rare nowadays.
The main characters are exceptionally well developed and show constant growth throughout the anime. The pasts of the main characters are slowly unraveled before our eyes as the story progresses through the use of flashbacks that reveal more every time you see them. We also have a great view into the world of professional assassins as we follow them on their path and see what kind of dilemmas they have to face. Besides Mireille and Kirika there are only two more characters that have any serious significance in the story and they only show up in the second half of the show, so as to not spoil anything, I will only say that they are also well fleshed out. There still is a thing I cannot understand an that is why do they chose names for the characters that the voice actors are unable to pronounce correctly, but that is not a problem exclusively in this series but for every anime that features foreigners.
The soundtrack has to be the best I have heard in a anime up until now. It manages to capture the happening on screen and helps us get through the slower portions of the anime. Even if you do not watch the show I would strongly recommend that you look it up and give it a listen. The opening is in my opinion the worse music in the whole anime and even then it is not particularly bad, it is just that I am not a fan of ALI Project and their style of music.The ending I found much better, it is a calm, quiet song by Arai Akino and while not fitting the anime itself is nice for calming you down after a turbulent episode. Also if you like the ending Arai Akino has several albums that are surely worth a listen. I am a bit divided on the visuals as I really disliked the character art at first, but later I got used to them and they did not bother me at all. You can clearly see they had a relatively small budget as the animation is really static at times with little to no movement, but such points are again salvaged by the sountrack. The backgrounds and scenery are done masterfully and there are more then a few moments where I was really taken aback by the vistas. Also the art manages to convey the location which is very important in a series that is happening all over the world. One thing I have to say is that the anime features no blood at all and on a few occasions that is quite distracting and confusing.
All in all Noir is a fabulous anime, but it has it’s fair share of shortcomings so it deserves an 8 in my opinion, but it could get an even higher score had the pacing been a bit better and there would have not be so many filler episodes. So if you are looking for an anime with a good story and soundtrack but the slow pace is not a problem then Noir is the anime for you.
