Stardate 20031103.2247

This article is full of spoilers about the anime series Noir. If you have not seen the series, you should not read this because it will give away the ending and many plot elements.

I wrote about Noir in non-spoiler terms here. This post is intended to discuss my interpretation of the series and how it ends.

Kirika is the central character of Noir. There are four primary characters in the series, and each of them has a story, but the primary purpose of the others (Mireille, Chloe and Altena) is to create a situation where Kirika has to make two major decisions. One is made in episode #25, and the other in #26, the last two episodes of the series. Everything builds up to them.

Kirika had two parts inside. One part was a killing machine. It was created by Altena through training and indoctrination, and once it seemed ready, Kirika's memory was wiped and she was placed in Japan, so that she could begin to face the Trials which were required of all candidates for Noir to prove their fitness. Events after that point were not planned, because they depended on what Kirika herself did, and how she reacted to the process. Hints were left which might lead Kirika to Mireille, but if they had not, she would have faced her trials alone.

The other side of Kirika was a lonely girl, who wanted nothing more than a normal life, a name, a home, and someone to love and be loved by. The series shows us those two sides of Kirika, gradually building them up to tangible presences, and in episode #25 Kirika is forced to choose one over the other.

The series uses Chloe and Mireille as the living embodiments of those two sides of Kirika, and uses their interaction with one another and each one's relationship with Kirika to dramatize that internal conflict, and ultimately to force Kirika to choose between them. In #25 when the three of them were together, Kirika seemed to desperately want both to coexist. When they ultimately and inevitably ended in open battle, she prevented Chloe's first attempt to kill Mireille without harming Chloe. When Chloe then attacked Kirika she defended herself but did not fight back, while begging Chloe to stop. Kirika hoped that Chloe and Mireille could both continue to live and come to terms with one another, and also hoped that her two sides could do the same.

But Chloe made this impossible when she made a second attempt to kill Mireille, against which Mireille had no hope of defending herself. At that point, Kirika could either stand by and watch Mireille die, or stop Chloe by killing her. Chloe forced Kirika to choose, and Kirika chose Mireille and killed Chloe. In so doing, she also chose the human within her and rejected Altena's indoctrination that tried to make her a weapon without a conscience, not to mention a religious icon. She rejected Noir; rejected the Soldats; rejected the religion; rejected the symbol she was intended to become. She rejected the role planned for her and the mission she was to carry out. All of that was rejected when the human side of Kirika triumphed over the killing machine.

But once she embraced her humanity, that led inevitably to a second decision: should she live or die? If she was to be a human with a conscience, how would she judge herself? The killing machine felt nothing, but the human side of Kirika was overwhelmed by guilt and self-loathing. Could she be human and continue to live with what she was, and what she had done, and what had been revealed about her past? Could she live with the special and particularly poignant guilt of having killed Mireille's parents? That was the decision she made in the final minutes of #26.

Over the course of the series, Mireille also struggled with herself, learning about her past and learning what she was. It made sense in terms of her own character and is valid dramatically on those terms, but it was also symbolic of the second struggle inside Kirika.

Mireille struggled with her feelings about Kirika all through the series. On one level she slowly came to accept Kirika, to get used to having her around, to like her, and ultimately to love her. On the other level she had been deeply wounded and tried to avoid feeling strongly about anyone because of the pain and vulnerability it could bring. So she denied to herself that she was feeling those things about Kirika. But denial eventually faded and she finally reached the point of caring about Kirika and feeling comfortable about doing so.

Then Chloe dropped a bombshell when she told them both that it was Kirika who had killed Mireille's parents.

Mireille had to decide whether to kill Kirika or embrace her and forgive her. In the cemetery, Kirika begged Mireille to shoot but Mireille somehow could not. But she also could not yet forgive, so she walked away, promising to kill Kirika the next time they met. Yet afterwards, she still felt torn.

It was the letter Kirika left for her beneath the flower pot which finally forced Mireille to decide whether honor and revenge would give way to human warmth and love, and she resolved it in favor of love. Sitting on the floor, sobbing, she forgave Kirika in her heart, and the last shadow within her was lifted. When Mireille went to the Manor, she was at peace with herself, and had made peace with Kirika and the knowledge of what had happened.

On the day that Mireille's family was murdered, Kirika may have pulled the trigger, but Kirika was a small child who had been terribly used by terrible people. It was Altena, and indirectly the rest of the Soldats, that Mireille held responsible for her parent's mu