Phantom -Requiem for the Phantom- #01 — Who Am I?

April 2nd, 2009

 

Starring Jackie Chan.

New Season Disclaimer:

I prefer to give every show a chance. You never know when your dream-eating insect Mai HiME knockoff will turn out to be a psychological romantic thriller, or the strange moeblob show will be full of wit and urine jokes. However, my preferences are still my preferences, and while I’ll endeavor to at least convey what I do or do not like, there are genres of shows that I just plain don’t particularly enjoy. My opinions are based on nothing more than a gut reaction to what I watched literally 10-15 minutes prior and should be construed as nothing more and nothing less than that.

Impressions: 

I’m sort of having trouble getting my thoughts together on this one, so bear with me if I seem a little discombobulated. Aside from the constant and horrible horrible CG vehicles, buildings, and structures, this was surprisingly decent for Bee Train. The music veers heavily towards the overly dramatic, they absolutely love panning over people’s feet, and they reuse shots like it’s going out of style, but overall, I don’t really have too many major complaints about the production. The action was solid, the pacing good, the art sufficient, and podophilists will be in seventh heaven. I did get an unintentional chuckle from Zwei sliding off camera when punched by Ein and coming up shirtless literally a second later. Undressing yourself quickly is an important assassin skill.

The plot and characters seem a bit unwieldy so far. Multiple assassins with scientifically induced amnesia and a tendency to pose dramatically being bossed by people with silly codenames like Scythemaster all mix up to form a dish that’s a bit hard to swallow all at once, especially with opera playing in the background and the occasional Max Payne bullet time super powers. Zwei screaming "WHO AM I!?" multiple times through the episode probably only hurt matters as well, but angst, amnesia, and amnesia angst have a tendency to do that. Ein was decent enough, but she’s a little too much of a clingy Gunslinger Girl knockoff for my tastes… and yes, I’m aware that Phantom predates GSG.

Like I said, I’m not entirely certain where I fall on this so far. I can’t say that it did a great job of drawing me in, nor did it leave me caring about what happens next week, but it still seemed like a decent enough show that might turn out to be a pretty good action thriller. Or Bee Train might turn it into a Formula-1 racer. You never can tell with Bee Train. I’m not overly familiar with the source, so I’m sure that others will have something more to say on that front than I.

Man… if my brain is fried this early in the premier week, I’m in trouble.

Phantom OP

Phantom ED

Preview:

Assassin training.

Posted in Anime | 18 Comments »

18 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Ravage says:
    April 2, 2009 at 7:44 pm

    Hmm, switching over to Veoh now, Aroduc?

    The show doesn’t really seem like anything I’d really enjoy, and Bee Train involvement gives me a clear “Move along, nothing to see here” feeling.

    Interesting choice for an OP btw, and as for the ED: You again?! Get the fuck away, Ali Project!

  • Aroduc says:
    April 2, 2009 at 8:17 pm

    Only when youTube has a preemptive media block on something.

  • Kresnik says:
    April 2, 2009 at 9:03 pm

    Why did they scramble the scenes..? For those already know the plot line, it will be confusing. Or was it only for the first episode? Well, we’ll know it soon.

  • Yue says:
    April 3, 2009 at 12:19 am

    Pretty solid art lines… ohh, i get the feeling they will have LOTS of conventional firearms in this series. O_o

  • Asfad says:
    April 3, 2009 at 12:19 am

    They took a few liberties compared to how things progressed in the visual novel (besides the house raid scene at the beginning and end), but the adaption wasn’t bad overall. All of the basic plot points and progression were there and the action scenes and backgrounds were well done. Cautiously optimistic about how this turns out.

  • Anonymous says:
    April 3, 2009 at 2:41 am

    I am hoping Bee Train does this justice. I’m not holding my breath but it would be nice if they did things well.

    Too early to tell right now.

  • Mentar says:
    April 3, 2009 at 3:00 am

    One day someone will successfully explain to me where this CG hatered comes from. The hilarious part: They weren’t even CG this time. They were clearly DRAWN – the backgrounds, the Chevvy, the Ferrari, everything. And they weren’t “horrible”, they were _awesome_.

    Sorry Aroduc, where did you have your eyes this time?

  • Aroduc says:
    April 3, 2009 at 4:50 am

    My eyes were on the CG swing set, Ferrari, landscape, helicopter, landing pad, highway, bullet casings, etc.

    The particularly funny part is that they couldn’t even keep the helicopter (or the building for that matter) in the same place between cuts.
    http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/8950/wheresthecg.gif

    And the dislike is because CG almost always looks bad since they’re essentially taking something of a completely different artistic style and throwing it in, creating an unpleasant visual clash. CG is also animated extremely differently and more fluidly since it doesn’t cost anything to go at the full FPS. It’s also much cheaper than bothering to draw things, so it doesn’t speak particularly highly of the overall production investment when the cheapest path is taken.

    Some studios can use it very well. Bee Train is not one of them.

  • Mentar says:
    April 3, 2009 at 6:57 am

    Aroduc? Let’s define terms first. CG = Computer generated Graphics. Right?

    The ferrari has clearly been drawn in every frame I’ve bothered to check. DRAWN, not rendered. How do you know? Because they are not 100% fluid in motion, and not 100% line-stable. Instead, we get a selection of angles. Just watch the scene when Claudia powerslides out of the driveway. This is _no_ CG.

    Or check the backgrounds, for example with Lizzie in your third screenshot. You obviously have used a shitty raw, but I’ve been having a look at the transport stream. This stuff is DRAWN. The normal technique nowadays is to make photographic pictures of the scenery you want to display, and then to “paint it over”. This is _no_ CG either. But if you insist that since it originates from photos, it’s still supposed to be called CG, then I can only say “great! We need more CG in our shows”.

    And what does the fact prove or indicate that the helicopter isn’t exactly in the same place in two scenes? Err… nothing at all? I mean, I couldn’t care less? :)

    If you want to talk about CG, talk about Basquash. Or Blassreiter. THIS is where CG-models are used for animation, resulting in extremely fluid and complex motion and zooming. Nothing of that is used in Phantom.

    Sorry, but if anything, the animation was amazing in this ep in my most humble opinion.

  • rev says:
    April 3, 2009 at 8:49 am

    Erm…, yea, it’s 100% no CG. All rendered, and surprisingly uncharacteristic of Bee Train (I got the feel of watching FMP The Second Raid)

  • Aroduc says:
    April 3, 2009 at 12:34 pm

    *shrug* If you want to choose to believe that they drew random things in a completely different (and curiously uniform) style, animated their movement at a faster FPS, and prioritized props over character art, then more power to you.

  • Rawr says:
    April 3, 2009 at 1:23 pm

    http://blog.seiha.org/images2/phantom1/phantom1_60.jpg <– Notice something about Zwei’s legs? Now look at his head? So tell me how come the bottom half of his torso is in a completely different direction than the top half while he’s lying down? I sure as hell hope that’s fixed if dvds ever come, since that goes into the fail gallery for numerous of reasons.

  • DmonHiro says:
    April 3, 2009 at 5:24 pm

    Don’t fucking use veoh. It banned half the world

  • Aroduc says:
    April 3, 2009 at 6:15 pm

    Well, in this case, youTube banned 100% of the world from seeing that video, so I’m already up 3,500,000,000 people. ^^

  • Irie says:
    April 3, 2009 at 11:00 pm

    So far, a pretty dark story. Animation looks pretty good as does the pace of the story. I think what seems to hurt the series is a lack of empathy for the lead characters. I suspect we’ll get a stronger connection as the two protagonist seek freedom from their current situation.

  • Dr_Tenma says:
    April 8, 2009 at 9:59 pm

    Am I the only one who got thought “GUNDOH MUSASHI” at 00:20 of the ED when he pulls up a gun and has a dumb smirk on his face? Am I, really?!

  • Dm says:
    April 9, 2009 at 8:32 pm

    Great OP, looks like it will be a good story.

  • Anonymous says:
    April 10, 2009 at 6:05 am

    It followed the source loosely, though I didn’t expect a 1:1 copy of a VN adaptation anyway, especially since the start of the VN is boring.

    Still, I’m apprehensively optimistic about this one. Mainly because I loved the source so much. Even if Bee Train does totally destroy it, I’ll at least have a good chuckle at how bad it is compared to the source.