Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom - 7/10
I'm bored, so it's two-for-one review night. Time for the backlog, inspired by my linking of one of the songs in the "favorite BGMS" topic.
Phantom is a show about assassins. Again. But this one isn't half bad. It is difficult to summarize without giving away plot points, but the short version is the procession of the brainwashed "Zwei" through the mafia. How he is taken in, trained, his first kills, the machinations of the various members and elements, etc. The other notable character being "Ein," his predecessor who underwent the same process; she is his trainer and emotionally-broken partner reminiscent of Rei Ayanami.
The Good: The show is pretty dark and has some great moments that exemplify this. People die, whether they be mafia thugs or innocent bystanders. As one of the darkest moments, Zwei is assigned to drive a man to despair by killing his wife. But he also runs into the child and is forced to murder him as well. It's done off-camera, but still disturbing and you can see it in Zwei's flat eyes afterward how much it killed his soul.
Also this darkness is put to good effect because you can see how Zwei changes over time. He starts out reluctant, cursing that he doesn't want to die. He then progresses to a sort of machine stage where he just does everything automatically. Then at last, he reaches a sort of complete low where he is no longer repressing like he used to. Instead he's become numb to it and begins to glory in his power and "fame." It's not until he meets Cal that he realizes just how much he's lost.
Ein's behavior is also disturbingly accurate for somebody who is in an abusive relationship. The way she keeps coming back no matter how many times Scythe kicks her. She just can't completely give up on him, and not for some sentimental reason like "there's good hiding in there." A life out there is an unknown, without an obvious source of values, and despite her stolid exterior is remarkably sensitive to this. I thought her behavior throughout the series was saddening but also well-thought-out.
Finally, as I brought up in the music topic, I thought this series had some pretty good tracks. I thought Canzone of Death was a great stand-alone piece. Zwei's Theme also gets put to really good use, although by the end it gets horribly overused.
The Bad: The plot transition holes. Essentially, Phantom breaks apart into three sub-arcs. Self-contained each makes sense and is reasonable, but the connections between them are very weak.
Transition 1: At the end of the first arc Ein is shot and killed. As in a bullet goes through her heart and she falls lifeless into the ocean. But, in a classic turn of events, she just shows up again in the second segment. Lethal gunshot wounds can be slept off, or something. It's just ridiculous because while anime makes it a habit of killing-but-not, this pushed the boundaries beyond even what is tolerable in anime.
Transition 2: Three years pass since Zwei took off with Ein and they went into hiding. But the past catches up in the form of Drei, the cute little girl that nearly made Zwei quit everything he was doing before. But she's grown. And I mean that in three years she's developed from a fuzz-headed eight-year-old into a busty, motorcycle-riding nutso. When I first saw the scene that was introducing her three years later, I actually laughed because it was such an implausible transition.
Reference pictures for above spoilers: Before and After. 3 years...right.
Other than these obvious breaks, the series as a whole goes downhill as it continues. I thought the first segment was the best, the second had some solid stuff that I still thought was interesting, but the third and final bit was pretty lackluster. It's particularly unfortunate when a show ends on a low note, and I think really hurts the series. Drei as a character is just abrasive and unlikable. And Scythe goes off the deep end, wearing his carnival masks and now has a legion of masked psycho-girls to do his bidding.
Speaking of which, the end also deserves some mention. Some people absolutely hate it, as the general interpretation is Zwei is shot and killed, Ein picks a poison flower and eats it, and dies. No happy endings. Whether this is 'bad' is a bit more subjective, but it is a definite feature of the series.