Stardate 20031102.2111

(On Screen): On Thursday I went up to check out the new Fry's in San Marcos, which may be even bigger than the one by the stadium and is certainly a lot nicer inside. The destination was the anime section, and I came back loaded up.

Noir
It is the name of an ancient fate.
Two maidens who govern death,
   the peace of the newly born
   their black hands protect.

Among other things, I picked up all seven DVDs of the series Noir. It's dark, dark, dark. I watched the first two DVDs Thursday evening, 9 half-hour episodes. Friday evening I started watching again and could not stop. Four DVDs later, with another 14 episodes behind me, I ended up going to bed with one DVD unwatched, the final three episodes remaining. And I had strange dreams.

Saturday I had intended to watch the last one early in the afternoon, but put it off and put it off, wanting to see it but fearing what I would see when I watched. I had a sick feeling of dread; I needed to know but I feared what I would learn. Eventually I worked myself up to watching it. And once it was finished, I watched it again.

It is a dark series; it is no series for children. It is also a masterpiece. It feels almost like an homage to Hitchcock, and I'm very glad I bought it and watched it. As is my normal habit, I watched it the first time in Japanese with subtitles, and now I'm watching it again with the English dub.

Mireille Bouquet is a beautiful young blonde who lives in Paris in a garret. She wears fashionable clothing, has no boyfriend and apparently doesn't want one, gets around on a moped which she keeps in her apartment, and makes her living as a top-bracket assassin. Her clients contact her via the internet, so she gets online a lot. One day she receives a puzzling email from a girl calling herself Yumura Kirika (in the Japanese surname-first order) who sends her own picture and these words: Make a pilgrimage for the Past, with me. Mireille doesn't take the email seriously until a piece of music plays, one which halts her in her tracks. It is a piece of music we will hear many times throughout the series, one which has enormous meaning, one which is connected to important events.

Mireille travels to Japan, where she observes the girl and ultimately confronts her in a deserted location on her way home from school. The conversation is enigmatic, and doesn't get very far before others interfere, upwards of a dozen men who also take advantage of the deserted location to try to kill... who? Who was their actual target? They never speak; they just start shooting. Mireille quick-draws a pistol from her purse and demonstrates that her reputation is deserved, but the girl is also armed, and proves to be even more deadly than Mireille. In fairly short order all the men are dead, but the enigma continues.

It develops that Kirika doesn't have any idea who she is, or where she came from. She lives alone in a house, attends school, and has no memories more than a few months old, extending back to a day when she woke in that house. The name comes from a student body card she found in the clothes which were there. She also found a gun, a box of shells for it, and an antique watch which played music when opened. It was a recording of that watch she'd sent to Mireille, and Mireille knew the music. And she knew the watch; she recognized it when she finally saw it.

We shall call the girl Kirika; we know it is not her name, but we have no other for her. She knows that she is Noir, but doesn't know what that means or what significance it might have.

She had been the target of an attack once before, when three armed men chased her through a woods at night firing at her. In the end, she had killed them all; three shots, three kills, two seconds. But as she stood looking at the bodies, she did not know how she had learned to kill so efficiently. She speaks many languages. She's inhumanly accurate with a pistol or a thrown knife, deadly even when unarmed, and is amazingly athletic. But it is all instinct, and when it happened the first time it surprised her even more than those she killed.

She felt nothing after killing the first attackers, but felt horror at the realization that she felt nothing, and horror at the things she seemed able to do. What was she? Where had she come from? Why did someone want her dead? She had questions but no answers, and only one other memory which might have helped.

So she sent the message to Mireille. She knew of Mireille, "a most trustworthy assassin", but did not know how. It was the only thing she had besides what was in that house – and that was almost all a lie. There was a picture of her with parents she'd never seen, for whom no records existed. There was a student body card with her picture and the name Yumura Kirika, a name which also did not check out. The papers used to get her into the school were forged. Mireille had checked Kirika out before finally confronting her, and learned that "Yumura Kirika" was a fabrication.

But what little Kirika knows about Mireille was correct, and it was more than she should have known, more than anyone other than the few Mireille trusted could know, and more than Mireille can tolerate having her know. Kirika feels there may be a connection between them, and she's probably right. The watch which was left for her beside the gun is one Mireille saw as a child. The music it