Customer Reviews

Noir: The Complete Collection

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

'Noir' was my introduction into Anime, and I have been hooked on genre it ever since. The artwork is incredible, the music is mesmerizing, and the voice actors (both the original Japanese AND the English dub) are perfectly suited for the characters. This collection transcends anime - it is a presentation that anyone can enjoy.

Which brings me to the story itself. It is spread out over 26 episodes [each approximately 21-23 minutes long), and it plays like one 11+ hour long movie. With that noted, it can feel 'slow' in some areas (especially early on) - stick with it during those 'slow' areas, because every line, every flashback, adds to the overall building of a story-line that crescendos into a magnificent finale. By the closing episode, you'll not only be satisfied with the conclusion - you'll wish it had never ended.

Be advised, however - if you are one of those who lives only for anime that is chock-full of mecha and fan service, you will be disappointed. You will find no giant robots or random panty-shots in this anime, which is one of the things that I find so appealing about it.

If you are a person like myself, someone who enjoys action-adventure presentations that are mature and character-driven, I highly recommend 'Noir' - whether you are an anime fan or not.

Noir is truly a great and "out of the ordinary" type of anime worth watching. It is interesting to mention that the story has a sexy touch and at times slight lesbian moments (oh yeah!!).
The story starts with a young beautiful assassin for hire called Mireille Bouquet, who's mysteriously contacted by another beautiful and even younger girl called Kirika Yumura, who's skills as assassin surpasses by far those of Mireille. Kirika needs Mireille's help to uncover her past because she is amnesic, as they try to work together; a mysterious organization is trying to kill them both. Little they both Kirika and Merielle know that their dark past have a lot in common and that the organization trying to kill them (the Soldats) is also part of their past.
As they try to survive and try to uncover the mystery of the Soldats, both girls start to see how entwined their past is and how their survival and future depends on uncovering the truth. Its beauty relies on the fact that at times is rather slow paced (some hard core anime fans can not stand that). Nothing wrong with the slow pace, this adds to the complexity of the 11+ hours, 7-volume story that develops and builds to a great climax and outcome. The slow parts happen when they are off work, sometimes the seem to be contemplating the beautiful views of the French countryside, visiting cafes and fashion shops, or at times they stare at each other in a conspicuous manner for no other reason that to know what are they thinking.
The story also has its fast paced times with lots of action, as the girls do their assassinations in a cold and calculated manner.
The music is superb; it is very rare to see an anime with such good music. Not only the music is great, but it also fits the slow and the fast story parts to such extent that it brings the overall anime experience to unexpected heights. This 7 DVD volume collection (as well as the 2CD soundtrack) is a keeper and I highly recommend it!!

I watched this anime a year ago and though it was very good I have not touched upon it again. It was a dark series, very well written, always leaving you at the edge and kind of confused state. The characters were both matched correctly there voices so mysterious that you probably could never forget. When an action seen came on this anime does get the coolest, in my vote, for the song. The anime was also drawn beautifully even the battle seens were not corny and left you wondering and kind of wishing that you could be that cool. It was an intense anime which I do recommend though it could be bit graphic.

Watching Noir is an amazing experience. It's a great mixture of character, mystery, action, music and art direction. The anime has so much going for it:

Great characters:

Kirika--the amnesiac Japanese high school girl who knows nothing about herself except that she's an exceptionally-skilled killer who feels no remorse. She's searching for the answers to who she is and desperately hoping there's more to her than cold killing.

Mireille--a young but accomplished professional assassin living in Paris. She's the hard-edged strategist who prefers to work alone and only begrudgingly accepts Kirika as an assassin partner in hopes that unlocking the keys to Kirika's past will help them find the people who executed Mireille's family when she was a child. Mireille is angry, stubborn and bent on vengeance.

Chloe--A strange third young assassin who shows up half-way through the series claiming to be the "True Noir." She knows more than she's telling, pops up unexpectedly and is happy to drive a wedge between Kirika and Mireille.

Altena--The woman pulling strings behind the scenes. Is she good? Evil?

Like in the film noir genre, which this series obviously draws from, the lines between good and evil are blurry, the connections between people are mysterious and mistrustful, there's much more at work than meets the eye, and our heroes (or heroines, in this case), are trying to make their way through a dangerous underworld with little more than skill, instinct, guts and guns.

Beautiful designs:

Lush, colorful and well-rendered backgrounds. The European and Asian locations are almost impactful enough to be considered another "character."

The soundtrack is A+:

From the beautiful, haunting church choir sounds of "Canta Per Me" to the driving "fight song" "Salva Nos" to the incidental music...all of it is fully conceived. Not a shred of music is "filler." The music becomes so integral to the series that it takes on almost symbolic proportions.

No "filler" episodes:

There is a deliberate story arc at work here. In early episodes, Mireille and Kirika go into business as a team of assassins-for-hire...only to come to slowly realize that they're being played by a mysterious organization whose roots continue to extend deeper and deeper into their current lives and their pasts. Somewhere along the line they cease being assassins-for-hire and become prey. And then to find that they've been sucked into a much grander and darker scheme.

Space:

This is a show without a lot of dialogue, where every word, gesture and expression counts. The subtleties speak volumes about the characters and leave the viewer with plenty to chew on.

Excellent English dub:

Usually I watch anime in Japanese with subtitles because the English voice cast doesn't match the intensity of the original version, but this is one anime where the English cast is every bit as good as the Japanese. In fact, the English voice actress for Chloe adds a layer of sly humor to her line readings that isn't in the original Japanese. And the English voice actress for Mireille is great.

A high body count but minimal gore:

These girls are the best of the best, and they pile up the dead bodies like nobody's business. There are some very memorable fight scenes in this series, and each character's fighting style is distinctive. But if you're looking for lots of blood and gore, look elsewhere. The scenes are stylishly staged and full of fun little surprises.

I am relativly new to Anime and already a bit tired of robots.. Noir was great for refreshing the senses.

A true mystery drama story.. It could easily have used real actors and still been possible to create, would just need 1000 or so extras for shooting at, seems men in black suits are plentiful for quick dispatch by these two intrepid ladies.
Anyway, yes lots of guys get shot, just a few ladies die, and they are predictable you could say, as the story travels along.
Not a fan service Anime, lots of short skirts etc, no undies in sight!.. bit of a change. There is a nude scene with Kirika and Chloe, this is not explicit.
The story is covered in many reviews here, so best to say the music is very good, several friends visiting at different times actually commented on the music, and it does work very well throughout the story. The music director and composer get 5/5 in my book.
There is a lot of repitition of some scenes of Mireille's parents, these scenes however, are in the long run, intergral to expanding the story, as we are gradually shown more and more of this particular murder. In the end all becomes clear, and by then the story is moving pretty well also.
Some say the ending is ambiguous, well in effect, finding true friendship is the ending, and it is also left open ended, i.e. will the girls return to their trade or not?

The story is left open, I feel, on purpose and there is now scope for additional stories, with or without the Soldats.
I watched it once and was a little hesitant about this story, I gave it a week and watched again, this time I had the Subtitles on and I could then understand what Kirika was saying, her voice part is quite low, and not clear at times, Subtitles filled in some gaps and I must say the story was much better and easier to follow overall. So if you have issues with this story, do try it again, it does come together much better the second time.
I rate this as my favorite anime so far, Chobits coming a close second, I have now watched about 15 Anime stories.
I dont regret buying it and I will watch it again, I guess that in itself is a good recomendation..
PS.. lots of people get shot etc, Some of these are very calus and premeditated killings. That is very cold blooded (NO blood though) and lots of fights, probably not for kids, else it needs adult supervision. If you let your kids watch James Bond movies, then this is probably acceptable also.

Noir is about two female assassins. One is a voluptuous blond searching for those who are responsible for killing her parents. The other it a normal looking brunette who possess perfect killing abilities but absolutely no memories prior to the series and is looking for her past. It fallows them along their various jobs slowly revealing the details of their sordid pasts.


Noir is honestly one of the best series I've come across. It is dark, gritty and philosophical. Starting from the first minutes the show exudes mystery and suspense. The plot moves along at good speed, not to fast not to slow though sometimes you will wish it to go faster simply because of the suspense factor. The art work is rather date but is fluid and clean. The voice acting is perfect in both Japanese and English tracks, though Kirka's voice is sometimes hard to hear and understand. The plot itself is interesting with so many twists and turns that by the time you reach the last episode you'll wonder mildly how you got there. The Music is top notch, I especially liked the opening theme, and fits perfectly. The character development is wonderful even for the bit characters. One thing I perticularly like about the series is that sometimes it goes out of the way to show that these are actually people that are getting killed. The character development is top notch slowly revealing details about the two main characters and the latter third main character. The only two flaws I can nit pick at. Is one that though its pretty clear the two surviving main characters love each other they really don't go into detail, are they lesbians or just close comrades? Never really made clear. Second is the near total lack of blood, with the exception of a few scenes there is none in the entire series. This isn't so much a problem except it make it rather difficult to tell when someone's dead, mean you hear the bang and someone falls over presumably dead. This gets annoying at points but not a major problem.

The NOIR Complete Collection consists of all 7 DVD volumes in thinpak cases packaged within a chipboard collector's box. The DVDs are identical to the original discs, so you get all the on-disc extras at a lower price point.

I got this as a gift from my family and truly appreciate the gift, but unfortunately I had to tell them that this was not a new season or product but one I already owned. ADV films has lost a lot of anime name contracts to Funimation and it looks like that their trying to renew their profits a little with titles that they still hold and re-releasing them in new picture box sets. So for any anime fan be careful with ADV films a lot of these box sets were just 26 episodes or the thirteen episodes box sets they probably have already released previously before, if you're buying a box set for friends or family and or not sure if they already have the product I'd advise talking to them to save yourself the headache and money if they do indeed own the set already. For anyone who hasn't bought this set already here's a little info of the series.

This is an incredible series of course you have two main characters Mireille Bouquet(A Female Assassin for hire who still has somewhat of a soft spot but it's hidden very deeply), and Kirika Yumura(A high school student in Japan who only has a vague recollection of her past memories and has incredible training in hand to hand combat as well as fire arms making her an excellent partner for Mireille.) The first interaction between these two is anything but friendly as after an ambush from some unknown assailants Mireille finds out that it was Kirika who hired her for a job. Mireille is at first dubious about Kirika and is about to leave when Kirika shows her a pocket watch that belonged to her parents and realizes they must have some connection in their past. Mireille agrees to partner up with Kirika but promises to kill her after they find out about the secret past between them and Kirika nonchalantly agrees to the terms. As you watch the series you also see another group called the Soldats who are also part of Mireille's and Kirika's hidden past and the Soldats cause for the tragedy in Mireille's past. The series unlike some reviewers are saying does not have any sexual feelings or undertones between the two main characters but it's more of a mutual understanding and growing friendship between two people who live similar lives technically. So if you like action animes and dangerous women this series is a good one for you.


I don't know if anyone else whose already got this set and has the earlier one but my box set case was really cheap, I mean it was similar to the first box set of Kiba, the new Noir box set case has seven dvds stacked on one another on a five inch spindle inside a single dvd case which I'm sure many would worry about scratches and defects caused to the dvds because of this. So for the price of this I say to anyone who hasn't yet gotten this great series pass over this new box set and just buy the previous one, it maybe a few dollars more but that set is far superior to this re-released one in my opinion...

Noir is a gripping and distinctive drama of assassins at war with deadly and powerful criminals, neither bloody nor brutal as a typical anime vigilante avenger shoot-em-up nor a rollicking over-the-top adventure of babes, cops, robbers, and car chases. In fact, Noir boasts not a single character with a sense of humor and nary a drop of blood, in spite of a fabulous body count. Like the traditional film noir adventures it most resembles, this series gets by on sheer intensity of emotion.

The pair of assassins who make up the hit-team called Noir are young and female, but otherwise nicely opposite in personalities. Mireille Bouquet, French, blond, beautiful, in her mid-twenties, became a professional hit-woman after she and her uncle escaped from a gang war in her native Corsica. She is a loner, but sophisticated, fashionable and charming at need, with a tight circle of friends and associates in the Paris underworld. A dead shot and icy cool under fire, Mireille considers herself at the top of her profession until she encounters her soon-to-be partner, Kirika Namura.

Kirika is an enigma even to herself. Her memories go back only a year, when someone established an identity for her at a Japanese high school and left her on her own, normal in appearance but so cold and alien inside she terrifies even herself. Self-conscious and self-enclosed to an extraordinary degree, Kirika seems in constant pain. She owns an ornate European watch that plays a haunting melody, one she associates with the name Mireille Bouquet. She also knows that, at need, she can kill any human being she chooses with any weapon.

When Kirika and Mireille arrange a meeting in Japan, a squad of hit men ambushes them. The two women annihilate their attackers with graceful, ruthless efficiency. Their common enemy, the Soldats, are immensely powerful, somehow connected to both women, and will likely come after them again. Mireille sees Kirika as a key to the secrets of her past and the deaths of her murdered family, as well as a threat to the well-kept secrets of her career as an assassin for hire. She agrees to take the younger woman in. Kirika, desperate for any chance to learn about her past and for any tenuous connection to a living human being, quietly agrees even when Mireille says she will have to kill her as soon as she learns what she needs to know. Thus, the elite and mysterious team of assassins known as Noir is born.

Noir tells its tale in a way so stylized and laconic you can sometimes scarcely believe you are buying into its story. The character's dialog and expressions often have to studied together to be understood. Every bit of furniture and scenery is a symbol. Yuki Kajiura's beautiful semi-classical soundtrack, much of it inspired by Catholic liturgical music, sets off each scene like the score of a ballet.

Mireille is a professional killer-for-hire who, in the course of the 26 episode series, only manages to take out contracts on bad guys, never the innocent. This framing conceit worked perfectly well in many John Wayne and Clint Eastwood movies and makes no less sense in this story. We are witnessing what Mireille will become, not what she was. Kirika as a haunted amnesic super-warrior is in territory worked by Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne novels and many other fictional characters dating back to Oedipus. Her waif appearance and stark, tightly wound personality are wonderfully conveyed by the minimalist animation style. When the camera is on Kirika, you find yourself watching the narrowing of her eyes, the tight curling of her mouth or tilting of her head that signals a crack in her armor, a slight hint of surprise, pain, or tears.

Kirika's pain and Mireille's shifting reaction to that pain are the emotional heart of the series. They engage a number of despicable and dangerous criminals in the opening episodes, including Chinese triads, East German drug lords, American corporate mercenaries, and corrupt French judges, settling scores for some clients and just earning fees for others. However, the threat of the Soldats re-surfaces again and again. Why is this all-powerful organization trying to both kill them and recruit them to its cause? Is the reclusive and beautiful Lady Altena an angel or murderous religious zealot? Chloe, a vivid, smiling, cold-blooded teen-age knife-fighter who intervenes in several of Noir's battles, is cryptic about everything but her passionate schoolgirl crush on Kirika and equally passionate devotion to her patron, Lady Altena. Mireille and Kirika know, however, she could easily kill the both of them if the urge took her.

Dozens of thugs, revolutionaries, crooked cops, and fanatical cultists are gunned down as Mireille and Kirika fight to avoid the secret fate of Noir. If murder is a sin, as the Soldats insist, the assassin is damned by knowing that this is so and by bearing the burden and memory of all her crimes. Kirika must overcome the darkness crushing her soul and Mireille, despite her bloody past, may be only one living who can help Kirika. That is the paradox underlying the ancient fate of Noir. Their struggle to defeat that terrible destiny makes for a intense and entertaining story.

Like others it is hard to build on the other excellent reviews. The music is just amazing and I have all three albums (the two sound tracks and blanc dans NOIR). The animation is also excellent and the series is a great (almost perfect) example of taking a premise that seems cliche (girls with guns) and turning it into so much more. Beyond the music and animation, the one other thing that really stands out is the level of character development. There are so many Anime out there where new aspects to a character just get written in. But for the main two characters in Noir (and even some of the supporting cast) the character development is woven in right before our eyes (though it can be very subtle). What is so great about this is the choices the characters make at the end actually feel "right". And it's this attention to detail and care that really sets this series apart.