After those two, watched Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom. I honestly liked this series alot, up until like the last 3-4 episodes, at which point things from being believably realistic in nature to just sort of "WHAT?" Putting that aside, I found Ein's and Zwei's interactions to be a joy to watch. Seeing Zwei attempt to free Ein and himself from the underworld that they were forcibly dragged into, despite Ein's own resistance to the notion of being free, was really damn interesting to me. It was an amazing anime to watch, and then near the end there's a battle that just kind of makes you go uggghhhh, and then after that brief stint it goes back to not failing and ends with a bittersweet ending. Really high quality in my opinion, not quite perfect, but pretty close, if only that one stint near the end didn't bring the overall experience down so much.
Mm. I got through... five episodes of Phantom myself? Six? I just couldn't stomach the main character at all, or more specifically how the show sympathetically treated him. The main character's actions were that of a moral coward of the highest order, yet the show treated him with kid gloves, like he was Shinji or some other "vaguely normal guy in a tough situation with high expectations." No, he was a psychotic and willful mass murderer for... no particularly good reason.
Okay. So through technobabble his memory is wiped. Fine. Then he's trained as a killer... okay... and then given the choice right out of philosophy textbooks of "kill this random guy with whom you have no quarrel with or we will kill you." And he's furthermore told that he'll have to keep killing for Inferno in order to live, and that if he ever ceases to be a useful tool for Inferno, he'll be killed. In other words the question is a raw, purified "Do you want many innocent people to die so you can live?" The correct answer to this is
to die. Zwei had no reason to have loyalty to Inferno, and in fact he was outright told that he would have been killed by them if they hadn't wanted to steal his skills, which pretty heavily implies they might have killed his family as well. The only reason to make such a choice is either as a brief tactical move to infiltrate the organization (similar to spies killing for their employers as they betray them), or as pure cowardice - holding onto your own life even at great cost to others. And it was a powerful moment when he decided to follow through, save his own life, and shoot the random guy.
...except that the show then proceeds to again, not realize that this makes him
an evil person. It's not like Inferno keeps a close eye on him later; he's sent out on his own to go hang out near freeways, at malls, etc. And he's some kind of super-assassin. It'd be easy to escape and tell the FBI, or hell, run off to the Yukon and live as a hermit or something. But... he doesn't. What's keeping him with Inferno? It never even occurs to him / the show to discuss the possibility of escape, simply running somewhere else and refusing to work for Inferno anymore. I guess there's implied retribution, but Inferno clearly doesn't own the American underworld *yet* (which is why they have Ein & Zwei shoot everything up), and going on these missions has to be dangerous as well. I mean, for real people, there are 101 reasons why you can work for the evil people - nationalism, some ideology, greed, pride to make your mark, etc. Or, most powerfully, love; how many people have worked for evil causes to feed their children? In fiction, heck, the game "The Getaway" had a London thug going on a massive murder spree around London, betraying his own organization, because the crazy mob boss kidnapped his son and had him over a barrel. But Zwei has, by definition, none of these things! His memory was wiped! So why's he doing this? Again, an answer of "Because he's evil!" would have been A-OK here. Cool, he doesn't value other lives at all and enjoys the challenge or something, fine. Instead, the closest we get for his motivations are Shinji-esque phrases about how the same hands that eat are those that kill innocent kids who happen to be the daughter of rival mob bosses and an implication that he's got no choice. But
why does he have no choice? Again, the series fails to explore why he doesn't just run off nearly immediately!
I dunno. I found this such a powerful problem I couldn't keep watching the show, though I'll admit I enjoyed some of the combat. I like evil characters, I like redemption plots, but I don't like super-evil characters the plot pretends are neutral. All they had to do was change the technobabble at the beginning to say "Oh yeah and we brainwashed him to think we're great and obey our orders." Then you could have done everything with a basically sympathetic, neutral guy wondering why he's trapped in a situation where he's constantly killing everyone, and who slowly makes his way out of it.
...yeah. That was the main complaint. To a lesser degree: Where is Johnny Law? Sure I can buy maybe the mob bosses's mansions are slow to call the cops and invite an investigation, but our cute lil' killers go on one of their murder sprees outside a posh mall. Even in cyberpunk settings, the police *will* investigate such an incident in nice parts of town, and with great gusto. Also, I think it was... ep. 5 again? But I slightly goggled when the Inferno boss randomly starts going all "Maybe you can be my personal bodyguard tonight Zwei" while revealing her breast and dressed in, uh, "evening wear." How old is she again, and isn't he 15? (Then I Wikipediaed the series and saw that it had dating sim elements which answered everything.) Also: Cell phones. The opposition need to use 'em. It's not 1998 anymore when they made Noir. You get to kill about one or two people before the alarm goes out and everyone is off to safe houses.
....heh, that ended up longer than expected. Just... yeah. Severe morality issues with that show. I like evil characters the creators realize are evil, I do not like evil characters whom the creators think are innocent.
