Ask John: What’s So Good About Noir?

Question:
After finishing Noir I feel as if I missed something that would have made the entire experience a lot more enjoyable. It just seemed like the series was all about flashy action but nothing of any real substance. I honestly hate feeling as if I missed something, so was there some real big story facet that I missed that would make getting this series worthwhile, or are my arguments founded and getting this would be a waste of my time and money?

Answer:
Noir is a series, much like director Koichi Mashimo’s following directorial effort .hack//SIGN, that has created great division among fans. Those who have watched Noir generally either love it or hate it. I think the determining factor that sways viewers one way or the other has to do with the expectations one has before watching the show. Noir (like .hack//SIGN) does have a conspiracy plot and a developing story that’s explained as its climax approaches, but Noir especially is a show that’s more concerned with creating style and atmosphere and mood than unfolding a compelling story. In fact, when Noir’s full story is finally revealed, some viewers may find its relative simplicity disappointing. But for viewers willing to let Noir weave its spell, the effect of the show is simply mesmerizing.

Ultimately anime is escapist fantasy. With the massive American success and popularity of shows like Evangelion and Cowboy Bebop, there are thousands of anime fans in America that unconsciously assume that popular and heavily hyped anime titles are theoretical, philosophical and cinematic masterpieces. There should be little doubt that anime is carefully and painstakingly hand crafted art, but not every show is a deeply philosophical treatise on the nature of life and meaning of existence. the purpose of anime is to entertain. There are some shows that engage a great deal of intelligence and demand a degree of intellectual involvement, but these shows are the exception rather than the rule. An anime doesn’t have to be serious or dramatic or intellectual to be good; it only has to be entertaining.

As it’s name implies, Noir is patterned after the neo-realistic French new wave cinematic movement of the 1960s. Films of this era including Jean Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai have been an acknowledged influence on directors including John Woo and Quentin Tarintino. Traces of French new wave can be see in Mamoru Oshii’s European set live action film Avalon. Yet, for viewers unaccustomed to these vintage French existential films, they may seem tedious and dull. The point of Noir is not to craft a complex story but to instead use calm and cool characters, ambient music, and film noir characteristics including dense urban settings, feelings of claustrophobia and powerlessness, frequent betrayals and double-crosses, and an existential feeling of unsteadiness and uncertainty to create a mood. Viewers that appreciate Noir for what it is allow themselves to sink into the animation and be overwhelmed by it, expecting nothing to be explained or revealed. Noir isn’t something that you watch or analyze; its something that you simply experience. But anime like this isn’t appealing to everyone. Some people, after hearing so much praise of the series, watch it with expectations which the show can’t fulfill and actually isn’t intended to address. Some viewers simply expect more conventional story depth and dramatic narration than Noir’s languid pace provides. The action within the episodes themselves moves rapidly, but the story is revealed in tantalizing little bits at a very methodical (read: slow) pace.

If you don’t like Noir, then you simply don’t like Noir. The beauty of anime is that it’s diverse enough to allow individual viewers to pick and choose the shows they like and don’t like. Noir captivated a great number of fans specifically because it didn’t have the conventional regularly developed plot common in most anime. It was an absolute style over substance show that appealed to fans that appreciated the beauty of its execution (no pun intended). In simple, direct terms: if you’re looking for “real substance” or “some real big story facet” in Noir, you’re looking in the wrong series. Some fans prefer anime that’s a bit “meatier” than Noir, and there’s nothing at all with wrong with that preference.