Phantom – 02



Short Synopsis: Eins trains Zwei for his upcoming missions.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
Next up: Phantom, the show that turned me into a huge hypocrite (not that I wasn’t already one before, but okay). It was of course obvious that I was going to end up blogging this one, since I really like Bee-Train’s style of storytelling, but yeah: in the end it’s not exactly the most original series out there. Just like Kyoani, Bee-Train sucks because they hardly try to do any series outside of their comfort zone. On the other hand, however, I really like them because of their great sense of characterization and their very slow storytelling, in the same way as how Kyoani rocks because of their huge attention to detail.

This episode like expected was mostly building up. The biggest focus was making Zwei realize in what kind of situation he is: doomed as an assassin who serves to kill people, and a lot of the episode sees him training to make him catch up his skills with Eins (Ein?). I liked how this made the use of a gun difficult, and more than just a point-and-shoot game.

I’m not sure what’s up with all of the different people behind the scenes right now. At the moment they just feel too much like one and the same person, but with a bit of luck they’ll develop through the course of the series, and end up as individuals. But yeah, that’s most likely going to take a long while, considering that this is Bee-Train and all.

In terms of music, this time an interesting composer was chosen: Hikaru Nanase. She has produced a lot of soundtracks, but most of them didn’t really stand out, with two exceptions: she composed Shigofumi and Noein’s OST. The result is quite interesting: for a Bee-Train soundtrack it’s down to earth, and yet still awesome and varied. The ED by the ALI project is a bit disappointing, though. Bee-Train has already shown that they can even get some original music out of a band that just keeps producing the same tune over and over (the soundtrack they produced for .Hack//Roots still remains one of my favourite soundtracks out there, even though the series itself was a disaster), but the ED yet again felt incredibly out of place in this episode. The entire episode built up this somewhat slow and haunting atmosphere, and there the ED blasts out of the screen and nearly ruins this atmosphere.

5 thoughts on “Phantom – 02

  1. just wait, the visual novel of the game turns into an intense love story, it may start slow but quickly becomes exciting and emotional

  2. I actually liked this episode a lot more than the first. Seems to hit all the right character notes and looks like it’s trying to be fairly close the source material where it matters, at least so far.

  3. I have to give them credit on the style points at the end of the episode. The two shells side by side –> a literal representation of our main characters. It definitely has a different feel then most shows, but that’s obviously due to the story. Who’s doing the music at the end? Sounds very similar to an older anime but I can’t put my finger on it.

  4. Found it, ali project who also did code geass. Although the romance was obviously foreshadowed, they also showed something else, hope. It was faint and it flickered but still presented beautifully. That as well as the free will vs. determinism argument 🙂

  5. The current anime season doesn’t impress me much. But at least this show is a good on. It reminds me somehow of Crystal Blaze, don’t know why^^

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