Noir

A twelve year old girl wakes up to an empty house, family photos, and a student’s ID. She knows all of it is a lie, and that she is a loaded gun merely waiting to go off. Her only ally is a professional assassin who agrees to help find her true identity, and then promises to kill her at that moment.

This is Noir.

RATING: 4 out of 5

When you’re growing up, you tend to try and find yourself. You know what I’m talking about? Rebelling against the parents, searching for who you are, experimenting with personal limits…it’s part of life. Right?

But what if you don’t know who you are?

Such is the story of Kirika Yuumura, a young twelve year old who wakes up one morning for school, her usual routine, or so it appears on the outside. She has her school ID, bagged lunch, and uniform all waiting for her when she wakes up, but as she stares at herself in the gradually-fogging mirror, she knows the people in the picture are not her parents, the name on the identification badge is not hers, and there is something not quite right about this picturesque setting.

In her mundane day at school, an e-mail address pops into her head, a contact that she knows could help her in trying to figure out exactly who she is, and why she is under the identity that she woke up with. When she writes to this mysterious e-mail addy, she feels compelled to sign the note with the moniker “Noir”.

Enter Mireille, a beautiful French bachelorette who enjoys a comfortable living in her spacious Parisian apartment. She is able to afford the refinements of life as she is a high-paid assassin, and one of the best in the business. Mireille is checking the e-mail when she gets the unexpected shock of a note signed by someone called “Noir”. The name triggers suppressed memories of an estate somewhere and a pocket watch playing a clockwork song, The e-mail asks Mireille for a meeting. With these sudden flashbacks in her mind, this working girl slaps a few fresh clips in her .45 auto and heads out to this rendezvous.

When Mireille arrives to the meeting place, an abandoned factory of some sort, she finds the twelve year old waiting for her?along with a gang of suits in shades packing heat. They muscle their way past Kirika and, with guns drawn, intend to take Mireille down for a group known only as Soldats.

That was their plan anyway. What their plan didn’t include was twelve year old Kirika in her school girl outfit, systematically picking them off in the most graceful, if not graphic, fashion. When the last thug falls, Mireille pulls her gun (finally) on Kirika. Kirika admits to writing the e-mail and that she knows only three things: she has no recollection of her true identity, that she is a killing machine, and Mireille is the only person who can help her. Mireille can’t help but be intrigued and while she does not work with a partner, she agrees to take the girl under her wing and help Kirika with only one condition attached. Once Kirika discovers who she really is, Mireille will kill her. One shot. A clean, quick kill. No questions asked.

This is Disc One of Noir, an edgy, dark, and disturbingly beautiful anime series that follows two super-assassins in their various commissions around the world. Between hits, both women search for their pasts as well as the mysterious group called Soldats who are committed to shutting down the two-woman operation as soon as possible.

If Hong Kong-Hollywood action director John Woo ever got into anime, Noir would be the end result. Beyond the elegant shootouts that are expected and anticipated from episode to episode, the story arc of this series plays out like a Woo film. We are appalled and yet sympathetic at the actions of Kirika. Mireille describes her as “enjoying the killing too much” to which Kirika claimed she doesn’t know what else to do. Her talents for dealing death just come naturally. And that is part of the duality of both lead characters. Mireille remains critical of her new partner, admires the adolescent’s talent, but assures her (in an almost Dread Pirate Roberts’ fashion) that once Kirika finds out who she is, Mireille will put a bullet between her eyes. They are friends, but they are also at odds with one another. They are also vulnerable, one haunted with the flashbacks of a lost childhood and another who cannot recall anything before the moment she awakened in a stranger’s house.

Oh yeah, John Woo would love this anime if he doesn’t already own it.

Noir does tend to follow a formula with its assassination sequences. Depending on what soundtrack is playing, you are going to see someone buy the farm, but it looks so cool, you really don’t care. And the intrigue between the characters, various secret societies, and their targets is deep enough and intelligent enough to keep your attention engage from first frame to last. So if you think anime is just chicks in robot suits, freaky demons in Feudal Japan, cyberpunk vampires, and monsters summoned from CCG universes?

?well, it is. But then you’ve got titles like Noir, a series that will keep you thinking and maybe looking over your shoulder, hoping no one is watching you from the shadows.