Kei's Anime Reviews

Phantom Episode 1

"Assassin"

There are some extremely slow stretches to this show where it seems like the show can barely be called "animation" since we're just seeing a series of still, static images. Apparently, what was going on was that most of the animation budget was put into the action sequences, so everything else had to bite the bullet.

Those parts are definitely the high part of the show. You get a lot of Hong Kong gun-fu and a lot of stylized violence (think Noir) which is done pretty well. Unfortunately, the other parts of the show tend to really suck.

Basic idea is that this kid has some sort of innate assassin ability, his memory is erased by these bad guys, and he's being reprogrammed as an assassin. Now you can watch the episode fast forwarding to the good parts!

The music isn't terrible, but it seems out of place most of the time. If you could graft Noir's music onto this show, it'd probably make the good parts even better. Who needs story, anyways? Just give me more violence.

Rating: B

Posted by Kei at April 6, 2004 11:43 PM