February 04, 2004
Noir Episode 1
"Maidens with Black Hands"
Excellent. The first non-narration line is some lovely, lovely Engrish. And we're off!
Like in .hack, at times in Noir, Yuki Kajiura's superb score takes over the anime. It's so present at times, that when it isn't there, you're sort of wondering what sort of plot or dialogue is going to go by until it comes back (signaling story movement).
Noir has many strong suits. Along with Kajiura's music, the animation is very good, art top notch, and action extremely stylistic. The first half of this episode shows all four of these things going together perfectly, with a great gunfight sequence. Unfortunately, after the eyecatch, we lose action, and the show seems to almost slow to a crawl. The music is still there, but the spacing between dialogue seems to expand, and we get those lovely anime dramatic pauses (i.e. pause and pan the camera around an unimportant part of the scene).
When all the good parts of the show came together in the first half, it was great. It remains to be seen if the non-action segments can keep my attention.
Rating: B+
Posted by Kei at February 4, 2004 11:39 PMHmm, just out of curiosity, where did you find this episode? It doesn't seem to be available on animesuki.com . . .
Posted by: David at February 5, 2004 05:40 AMThe reason why you can't find Noir on animesuki.com is because this anime is licensed in the U.S by Adv Films. You can get it online, or usually at any store selling anime products.
Posted by: furi_kuri at February 6, 2004 02:23 PMAlso, if your cable has On-Demand, the Anime Network is showing dubbed episodes of the series. A nice way to get introduced to the show without having to pay for it..