Girls with Guns Part One: Noir
The first entry in animation studio Bee-Train's girls with guns trilogy, Noir takes the audience on two assassins' pilgrimage to the past while exploring the complexities of the European criminal underworld. Noir is just like its namesake, noir (French for "black") being a film genre that unravels the hidden side of humanity. And it is fitting that our two assassin leads, a Corsican blonde named Mireille Bouquet, and an amnesiac, Kirika Yuumura, are our guides to that world, working under the name of "Noir". Noir, much more serious in tone than El Cazador de la Bruja, had some pacing issues in terms of how exposition to the audience was shown. I did try to take up an interest in the show the first time. However, I did not get past episode six before I moved on to other shows. It took me a year to get back to Noir, and frankly I'm quite glad I did.
The main problem I had in its early episodes were repetitive flashbacks of the same scene, as well as an introduction to Noir, two maidens burdened with living in sin by killing, also known as "the thousand year darkness". Whether it eludes to the budding partnership between Mireille and Kirika or not is made clearer further into the show. I can definitely say the Noir verses are not a coincidence. Because there are no filler scenes or episodes in the show, the plot unrolls slowly, and every episode has some significance to the plot. That's right, every episode, such a refreshing fact to know. Mireille and Kirika do some seemingly random jobs, and bit by bit they learn that their previous jobs are connected to an ancient and power-hungry organization. With the introduction of another character early on, the plot thickens and leaves the audience enraptured in the drama of it all. Because while it's about assassins, do not expect a lot of gunplay. The show focuses on the people behind the weapons, centered on the leads and their interaction with each other. The dialogue is sparse, but adds the pointed emphasis whenever characters do reveal something important that immediately gets the action ball crashing down. Both Mireille and Kirika have frightening accuracy with their respective guns (Walther P99 and Beretta M1934) that highlights their professionalism, and usually gets the job done with only a couple of shots, maximum. Of course that is discounting any goons that they'll have to shoot through to get to the prize.
