Last time I said I would get to Noir soon, and now I come through!
Noir is an action/thriller set (mainly) in France (the title is French for “black”). It focuses mainly on Mireille, a Corsican-born assassin, and Kirika, a Japanese girl with amnesia. When Mireille meets Kirika, she discovers that the girl has also been trained as an assassin (despite the amnesia, the training shows through), and they team up to form Noir. Kirika is looking to discover her past; Mireille is seeking the people who murdered her family.
Although Mireille names their team on a whim—“Noir” is the only thing that Kirika remembers, beyond her assassin skills—the decision quickly plunges her and Kirika into the world of a secret society called the Soldats and the power struggles going on within it. They also soon find themselves being tailed by Chloe, another young assassin who was raised and trained by Altena, a high-ranking Soldat who believes the group has lost its way and is orchestrating a takeover to return it to its mythological roots—a takeover that hinges on the return of Kirika to the fold, and a series of increasingly deadly tasks to test whether Mireille is worthy to carry the mantle of “Noir.”
Noir is an older title; it ran in 2001, and was published by Bee Train before being licensed by Madmen and Funimation. Like El Cazador de la Bruja, Noir is an example of high quality dubbing; the action ranges over a sizeable chunk of Europe, and characters’ accents reflect where they are from or located. There is no manga or light novel version of Noir; it is an anime only.
August 24, 2011
August 05, 2011
El Cazador de la Bruja
El Cazador de la Bruja is Japan’s take on the Western, but with witches. Because that’s how Japan rolls! If you know Spanish you may not be surprised by this revelation—Google Translate tells me the title means “Witch Hunter.”
It’s a comedy/drama (I just can’t type the word “dramedy”) set in a semi-contemporary Mexico. Nadie is a bounty hunter who runs into Ellis, an amnesiac fugitive who is suspected of a murder. She initially begins traveling with Ellis in order to bring her in and get the bounty on her head, but as more clues to the suspicious murder—as well as Ellis’s own genetically engineered ‘witch powers’—arise, Nadie starts to suspect that the real bad guy in this story is the agency that’s striving to reacquire Ellis, even going so far as to hire another bounty hunter to track the two of them and unleashing another witch, L.A., who pretty much has a straight up stalkerish obsession with Ellis, he and her being the only survivors of the DNA experimentation that gave them their powers. L.A. has much better control over his powers than Ellis, who mainly only activates them subconsciously in times of dire need; that, combined with his hatred of human beings, makes him pretty much the biggest threat to Nadie of the lot sent after her and Ellis.
If this sounds a little familiar, you should know that Bee Train, the company that produced El Cazador de la Bruja, also created Noir. Much is explained! (If it’s still not explained for you, just wait, I’ll get to Noir soon.)
The anime series ran in 2007, and was licensed and dubbed by Funimation. It’s one of their better dub works; like Noir, serious effort was put into hiring voice actors who could give various characters location- and background-appropriate accents. There is also a manga series which ostensibly is still ongoing, but since only one volume’s been published since 2007, you probably shouldn’t get your hopes up. The manga has not been translated into English.
It’s a comedy/drama (I just can’t type the word “dramedy”) set in a semi-contemporary Mexico. Nadie is a bounty hunter who runs into Ellis, an amnesiac fugitive who is suspected of a murder. She initially begins traveling with Ellis in order to bring her in and get the bounty on her head, but as more clues to the suspicious murder—as well as Ellis’s own genetically engineered ‘witch powers’—arise, Nadie starts to suspect that the real bad guy in this story is the agency that’s striving to reacquire Ellis, even going so far as to hire another bounty hunter to track the two of them and unleashing another witch, L.A., who pretty much has a straight up stalkerish obsession with Ellis, he and her being the only survivors of the DNA experimentation that gave them their powers. L.A. has much better control over his powers than Ellis, who mainly only activates them subconsciously in times of dire need; that, combined with his hatred of human beings, makes him pretty much the biggest threat to Nadie of the lot sent after her and Ellis.
If this sounds a little familiar, you should know that Bee Train, the company that produced El Cazador de la Bruja, also created Noir. Much is explained! (If it’s still not explained for you, just wait, I’ll get to Noir soon.)
The anime series ran in 2007, and was licensed and dubbed by Funimation. It’s one of their better dub works; like Noir, serious effort was put into hiring voice actors who could give various characters location- and background-appropriate accents. There is also a manga series which ostensibly is still ongoing, but since only one volume’s been published since 2007, you probably shouldn’t get your hopes up. The manga has not been translated into English.
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