Madlax

I finally watched all of the 2004 BeeTrain anime Madlax. This is from the same studio that gave us the anime Noir and .hack//SIGN

In short:
• Long and drawn out story, could of been done in 13 episodes rather than 26.
• Action was not as interesting or creative as "Noir" and for being second in a set of three "girls with guns" anime (following "Noir" as the first), there wasn't near as much gunplay - it was very secondary to the plot.
• More characters than "Noir" with more intwined connections. Much more complex plot than "Noir".
• Music was a cross between "Noir" and ".hack//SIGN" and not as good as either though it's by the same composer
• The ending was lackluster and didn't make the journey seem worth it.

The story
We first meet Madlax, the title character. A 17 year old assasin-for-hire in the fictional, civil war-torn country of Gazth-Sonica. She's supernaturally good at what she does but is also a kind, almost light-hearted person. She doesn't remember anything from before 12 years ago and is searching for her father. The first word she ever remembers remembering is "Madlax" which she takes as her code name.

The second episode (and for a few eps onward) we meet the other main character, Margaret Burton. Margaret is a 17 year old school girl, who looks much younger than Madlax, who also cannot recall anything from before 12 years ago - the first word she also recalls is "Madlax" but doesn't know what it means. She's kind, very gentle, and kind of eccentric and has a paranormally accurate "gut feeling" about things. She is an orphan and lives alone with her ever-protective maid, Eleanor. Margaret is also good friends with her next-door-neighbor/tutor, Vanessa. They all live in the fictional Paris-like country of Nafrece.

Margaret has a book written in some bizarre symbols she cannot read. She doesn't know why but this book is very important and she doesn't let anyone see or touch the book. However, her book is missing some pages and she is compelled to find a whole copy. This leads to an underground mafia-like global organization, Enfant, to learn about the existance of her book - and they want it BAD.

Margaret has dreams or visions and gut feelings that often are connected to what Madlax is doing or feeling and we aren't sure why that is - somehow their pasts are connected by Margaret's book. But how? Why? By the time we realise the two women are connected, halfway through the series, do we even CARE?!?

Comparison to Noir and .hack//SIGN
I'm comparing "Madlax" to "Noir" and ".hack//SIGN" because they're all by BeeTrain and because they have similar elements.

Noir and .hack are extremes on a single spectrum. Noir has very little dialogue and lots of action. .hack//SIGN has nothing but dialogue and very little action at all. Both have a mystery plot. Noir's is semi-supernatural but only in the skillz of the main characters. .hack has a more interesting mystery, which is what carries the entire series - plus it has much more character development.

Madlax is somewhere between the two. It has action where Madlax is involved but a lot of dialogue about the plot as far as everyone else is concerned. It's more political stuff, which gets really boring particularly because we have no idea what is going on. There's a supernatural element which is more annoying than anything throughout the whole thing - every episode has scenes of the burned out ruins where the showdown 12 years prior had taken place and we have no idea what its about until the last five episodes. It's annoying and uninteresting to me.

Madlax has way more characters than Noir, of course, which has three, but just about as many as .hack. The characters develop to a degree but not as much as in .hack//SIGN, which concentrates on the characters' friendships and developing bonds which are the ultimate secret to unravelling the mystery in that series. I found myself not really caring about any of the characters in Madlax except for Madlax, Vanessa, and Margaret. The rest could go jump off a cliff.

The music was so-so. It was all done by Yuki Kajiura, who did the music for Noir, .hack//SIGN, and Mai-HiME. The music was way better than that for Mai-HiME and was a cross stylisticaly somewhere between Noir and .hack//SIGN. Not much of it really caught my ear the way either of those two series did and there were no single stand-out tracks as with all three of the other series I mentioned.

The animation itself was pretty good - not too many talking heads and hardly any repetition. In that respect it has Noir beat.

Seeing as how this is the second installment of the "girls with guns" trilogy, there were some interesting paralells. Besides the fact that there are two main characters who are girls, they both resemble their previous incarnations of Kirika and Mireille of "Noir". The seiyu for Margaret is the same as that for Kirika. The personalities are different, though both Margaret and Kirika act and "seem" younger than they are and are both spacy and quiet - AND both Kirika and Margaret are the true centers of either show. The sniper woman in this series acted like the envious Chloe of "Noir", though she wasn't near as psychotic or talkative, they both had a music-box chimey theme. And both series had books in them that were the secret to the whole thing. The book of Les Soldats in "Noir" told of the maidens of death, and the three books of truth here in "Madlax" explain the power behind Margaret and Madlax.


By far I prefer Noir. Though the first 6 or so episodes of Noir are dreadfully repetitive, once beyond that the series takes off at a good pace and has a satisfying build up and conclusion. It's even good upon a rewatch. "Madlax" dragged til the very end. It did kind of pick up a little beyond halfway through as far as the plot coming together but the action and plot development dragged horribly. The climax took about five or six episodes and the finale took two, and the very end was less than satisfying. Though it was perhaps more realistic and "human" than Noir, I by far prefer the stylistic, artistic, subtle uniqueness of Noir. And I'm not disliking "Madlax" simply because of "Noir" - I'm disliking Madlax on its own merits. And it just does nothing for me.

I mean, I can watch slow anime and be entertained -- "Aria" is a great example of a super slow-paced anime that manages to keep me engrossed. Madlax was slow paced when it felt like it should of been FAST. That's a huge difference and not a good one.

About the only thing going for Madlax was Madlax herself, the few eps of just her and Vanessa, and... uh... that's it. Thumbs down. :\

.hack//SIGN

No spoilers in this post. But do NOT read the Wikipedia article - it is FULL of spoilers. I will tell you what you need to know.

Basic Info
.hack//SIGN is a fantasy/sci-fi/drama/mystery/adventure made by Bee Train (Noir, Madlax, Tsubasa Chronicles) that ran 26 eps in 2002, followed by three episode-sized OVA's that act as tag-along episodes, from what I can tell. The music is by the ever famous Yuki Kajiura (Noir, Mai-HiME, Mai-Otome), considered by many to be some of her greatest soundtrack work to date.

Basic Story
The entire series takes place in a massive online multiplayer role playing game, sometime in the very near future. The World, as it is called, is extremely immersive that people use virtual reality headsets to play in. Tsukasa, around whom the story pivots, is mysteriously stuck in The World, unable to log out. We mostly follow the actions and conversations of a group of random players who come together over their concern/interest in Tsukasa's predicament. As the story unfolds, we slowly find out more about each character, including a little of their Real Live selves. To what extent is it "just a game" and to what extent do they take responsibility for their actions and for eachother as real humans? And how serious is Tsukasa's plight in The World - for him it's not much of a game as it is a Reality.

Other Commentary, Notes & Comparisons
.hack//SIGN could be the polar twin to Noir. While Noir has very little talking and TONS of action, .hack//SIGN has tons of talking and very little action. For being inside a video game, it is amazing at how little action takes place. Despite that, the element of the story taking place INSIDE a game is pretty novel. The game-slang is there, complete with acronyms (BBS - bulletin boards, PC - player character, etc) and the way people refer to the world around them verses the Real World.

That's probably the most interesting thing to me -- the divide between the game and the Real World. It's not so different from the Net world of LJ and email versus the "Real World". The circumstances between people meeting is different in both a game and the Net in general than from Real Life, but it all boils down to words and people, and that's the same no matter what the environment or mode of communication. This is something I think about all the time and it is a common theme in this series.

The story was a little hard to follow. I think this was largely due to the variety of subs I have in my episodes, though I downloaded all of them in one giant torrent. It may also just be due to the way characters say things in highly philosophical terms - characters in Noir were a little like this, kind of hard to follow in some of the brief things that were said or in how the plot was unfolding. Could just be a Bee Train thing. ;) The gist of it was enough to follow, though, so if you watch it, don't get too stressed out over missing a sentence or not knowing exactly what a character meant by such-and-such.

--Ohh, some fun trivia: one of the main-main characters, Mimiru, is voiced by seiyu Megumi Toyoguchi, our very favorite "Satou Sei" (MariMite) -- also "Meg" of Bakuretsu Tenshi, "Alti" of Simoun, and a ton of things most of us haven't seen. ;) I should of noticed as she uses her "normal" range, the same range she uses for Sei (she was unrecognizeable as Meg).

Yuri
There is VERY much an underlying yuri theme but it isn't a main focus or a fanservice element at all (there is NO fanservice whatsoever). It just happens to be there. I can't say more as it's toward the middle-to-end and I don't want to spoil. Just know it'll get there eventually. You don't see anything, nothing physically happens - nothing like that. But it is very human and that makes it that much more special. Brought tears to my eyes twice. :')

Music
In case I didn't mention, the soundtrack RAWKS. Miss Kajiura was allowed free rein on .hack//SIGN (and probably for Noir, as well). The director of Bee Train trusts her completely and just lets her compose whatever she wants - even with vocals, which is a rarity among in-episode soundtracks and she's one of the first to really do it, too. The result is that many of the tracks stand alone very well as just beautiful music.

Conclusion
Definetly a memorable anime. A second watch will probably reveal a lot more layers, particularly with the characters themselves moreso than the story. Has a ton of heart; isn't superficial at all or silly and though it can be dramatic it is never heavy handed. Kind of inspiring and uplifting. It's super heavy on the dialogue and light on the action and ALL about the mystery, which kept me hanging til the last second -- finding a place to pause between episodes was killin' me! Most certainly goes into my pile of favorite anime. :D

Noir OST

I love this set of soundtracks, really just one split into two volumes on two discs. Yuki Kaijura is brilliant - she's done the soundtracks for .hack//SIGN and Mai-HiME as well as many others.

Several of the tracks stand out as songs that don't SOUND like they came from a soundtrack - always a mark of a good composer if the music can stand alone without having to rely on the imagery remembered from the series/film it was scored for. :) These songs exist because the director at BeeTrain asked her to simply write what she wanted - entire compositions, no holds barred, and that he and the animation team would then later work them in as needed. This is opposed to an artist writing a piece that is exactly a minute and some-odd seconds long to fit a certain scene. The result is that her soundtrack work sounds great as stand-alone music - it also shines through as one of the best element in any anime her work appers in.

Kaijura's work often sounds kind of new-age ish though for Noir there is a French tinge in many of the tracks. A mix of sounds smoothed over with the same flavor makes for a dynamic set - and I'm proud to say I own the actual CD's. :D (got them for $10 at a Sam Goody's that was going out of business.)

Years after watching "Noir" I still find myself listening to the soundtracks as stand-alone music. This is significant for two reasons: 1) I rarely like soundtracks and 2) I'm usually into a soundtrack simply as an extension of the movie/series it was from, not for the merits of the music itself.

Noir

Assuming you are all good at looking things up in Wikipedia, I will skip to my review of the series:

I've read it all over the 'net and I agree - I am amazed anyone continues to watch Noir after the first five episodes. They repeat so many scenes over and over, like a blacksmith pounding an anville, I just want to shout, "Enough already!" I suppose it might not of been so bad if I were watching it weekly as it aired on TV but that is not the case with watching it on DVD. Luckily I was prepared with the knowlege that the first eps were like this and so persevered, much to my delight.

The first few episodes are pretty standard as far as story goes. There is some mystery but it's mostly confusing - repetitious flashbacks and the usual Japanese storytelling element of just throwing the audience into the story and making the viewer figure stuff out over time. The story is kind of slow, developmentally, until the third main character, Chloe, shows up. Then the series really takes off: the action sequences are more interesting, the plot becomes more direct, and the characters are now a part of a giant story arc that takes them to the last episode, rather than living more episodically.

As of the first half of the series, I was thinking Noir was okay but not my favorite. After that last half Noir became one of my favorite anime. The limited animation is eased over with good music by Yuki Kajiura (some of the music, like that damn watch song and the opening theme I really don't like), and like Wikipedia says, the lack of blood kind of adds to the stylistic air of it all. I think if there HAD been blood, it might of felt too much like a gore-fest with plot and characters being secondary. Although it pissed me off when OUR characters got hurt and unrealistically nothing came of it except maybe some bandages or a hole in the shirt.

Noir seems pretty unique to me in the world of anime. It's definetly done in a film noir style - in framing, in dialogue, in story, and in action. It's amazing how much can be conveyed in the flinch of an eye rather than giant stretches of dialogue. Noir made me appreciate the subleties that can be achieved on a small budget with anime. Noir even holds up in re-watching and I find that when compared to other gunfighting anime, I like Noir the best - even beyond higher budgeted series like Ghost in the Shell. Noir excells in its simplicity.

I've seen a lot of anime since I originally watched Noir and this is still one of my favorites.