timepiececlock

Oh wow... Yokko Kanno did the music for Macross Plus too? !!

That's on top of The Vision of Escaflowne, and Cowboy Bebop.

Ok, I guess as long as I find an anime where Yokko Kanno does the score, I am guaranteed to like it.

Other random note of interest: I found the website of Steve Conte, the guy who sings a lot of the vocal songs for Cowboy Bebop. This is what his website says:

FOR PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THE ANIME EPISODES, GUITAR TABLATURE, LYRICS, ETC....

i'll have to tell you all what i have said on this site many times...

i never know anything about this kind of stuff.
i get hired by yoko to sing and then i go home.
hopefully, they send me a copy when it's done.

sorry i can't be of more help.

::giggle:: That amsues me.

And now... Noir.

I think the singer for the ending theme, Akino Arai, was also the singer for the two ending themes of Outlaw Star. ::googles it:: And yep... she was! I'll put up the two Outlaw Star songs later for download; they're pretty.

When it was reccomended to me, I was told that the music in Noir was wonderful. And I do like it-- I like it a lot. It's not Cowboy Bebop or Esca for me, but I am really enjoying it. I especially like the opening theme song.

The opening animation is wonderful as well... very stylish and James Bond-like. It has elements of the classic look that the CB opening achieved so beautifully, as well as a more modern anime color scheme, combined with a sort of spy movie thing with lots of silhouettes and wine glasses and city skylines. The closing animation was more sedate, but in a way that works well. And visually the mise en scene design is good.

As for the plot of Noir... the concept is interesting, but the story seems a little too familiar to me. Like I might have read this storyline in a book somwhere, or watched a couple of action movies about it, or something like that. The tone of it seems like I can already guess where it's going in a general sense, if not a specific sense.

The mood is both the best and worst thing about this series. On the one hand, the mood during the fight scenes is well built up and very exciting, as well as artsy. It's mature and dark and very smooth. On the other hand, the scenes that aren't fight scenes are so slow that I get bored. Usually I like talky character building scenes--- heck, I adored Gundam Wing. But the characters of this show haven't grabbed me like the characters of GW grabbed my attention instantly...or the characters of CB, or Esca, or Trigun. I don't care about either of the Noir girls. They're flat, quiet people who kill other people. I need something interesting in my killers... I need them to be crazy or funny or angsty or rude or happy or angry or reddemable or not redeemable...well... anything besides consistantly unchangingly stoic. I have to know something more about them, or it will be like it is now, where I don't care a wit what happens to the two main characters, because they haven't given me anything to be invested in yet. There's nothing there.

Despite the fact that the main characters bore me at the moment, Noir does have one great thing going for it in my eyes--- I can see that it's going somewhere. Although it's slow and sometimes boring, there's a destination somewhere off in the distance, and I have a feeling it will be worth what looks to be a long long loooooooooong wait to get there.

Weirdly, this show reminds me of Hellsing. Which is odd, because this si not at all about vampires, and it's not nearly as gratuitous and flamboyant as that series. And it lacks the random funny moments. Noir certainly wouldn't have a garish four-poster bed that rises out of a coffin when you flip a light switch the way some people's televisions rise out of a cabinet. And it won't have Cowboy Andy swooping in on a white horse to a whistling tune to nab the prey and piss off the main character with his obliviousness. Nope, somehow I don't anything like that happening any time soon.