Sometimes I get a bit concerned that
our culture-- especially us ladies-- like our happy endings a little
too much. When we get invested in characters, it's hard to see them
die or watch horrible thing after horrible thing happen to them, even
though we all know death can happen to anyone at any time and bad
things happen to good people as well as to the baddies. But that
doesn't stop people from reviewing against things because of
depressing endings or the death of a beloved character. In the final
Twilight installment (not a
big fan for the record, my English major side can't forgive her
wackadoodle use of the language), author Stephanie Meyer seemed to go
out of her way to make sure everyone important lived and that what
could have been a gore-ridden battle was cleaned up without any real
fighting having occurred. A lot of people were angry over this, but
just as many people were thrilled that
everything went swimmingly for Mr. and Mrs. Perfect and their
freakishly named daughter.
Anime
series Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~ is
for people who don't mind going in the opposite direction and being
overwhelmed by all the dark and less peachy corners of life. Inspired
by the video game Phantom of Inferno
(which is now on my to-play list), Phantom is
an action-adventure, psychological drama that is steeped in tragedy
from episode one straight to the finale. Which is only natural, given
the subject matter of young adults being raised as emotionless
assassins at the beck and call of a corrupt organization filled with
ambitious double-crossers after their own agendas. Games like
Assassin's Creed and
heroes like Jason Bourne make killing for hire seem intriguing, but
there's nothing glamorous about creating trained killers from the
ashes of destroyed lives seeking desperately for a sense of humanity.
The series follows
central protagonists Reiji (known as “Zwei,” the German word for
two, as an assassin) and Elen (known as “Ein,” the German word
for one) as they navigate the tricky waters of the L.A. criminal
underworld as 'Phantom' assassins trained to kill without question at
the behest of their employer, Inferno. Ein has been Inferno's top
killer from an early age, and was brought into the organization by
the ever creepy 'Scythe Master,' a man who brainwashed her and molded
her into a docile, unquestioning subordinate unable to even consider
betraying or running away from him. Reiji, on the other hand, is
initially a Japanese tourist in the wrong place at the wrong time,
whose big mistake was witnessing one of Ein's assassinations-- a
crime punishable by death. But when Ein attempts to kill him, Reiji
fights for his life so spectacularly that even the expert assassin
herself is hard pressed to subdue him. Impressed by his fighting
instinct and will to live, Inferno kidnaps him, brainwashes him, and
sets him up to follow in Ein's footsteps to become a Phantom
assassin.
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| Ein, Zwei, and the mask they hide behind as Phantoms... in more ways than one! |
While his past and
memories of his time in Japan are forgotten, there is no way for
Inferno to get rid of Reiji's sense of human decency. He is appalled
by the idea of having to kill, and only agrees to the training when
he is told he will be killed if he doesn't. Reiji is very much
defined by his desire to live, making him a foil to the more commonly
seen death seekers in anime and manga series. Even if his humanity is
taken from him, he sees the value of being alive and having the
potential of getting it back again and finding something worthwhile
to live for. When he makes his first kill and starts down the
slippery slope of amorality as Zwei (which Ein, for the most part,
has already succumbed to), he at least retains a connection to his
original self and realizes that the mindless killer he is becoming is
not who he wants to be. This is not to say, however, that he manages
to be a 'good' assassin; among his kills are a innocent young woman
and her elementary aged son, both civilians who were killed to punish
a mob boss.
Making things all
the more fun for him is Claudia McCunnen, one of his bosses at
Inferno.
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| The infuriating and sexy Claudia. |
Claudia is fairly low on the rungs of power, and wants to
step up in authority with the help of Zwei. But unlike Ein's Scythe
Master, Claudia doesn't want Zwei to be docile and unthinking. She
wants him to make the conscious decision to be her pawn, and to
achieve this she informs him of his identity as Reiji and manipulates
him sexually in attempt to have sole possession over who he is. Of
course, learning his identity gives Zwei all the more reason to try
to get out of the assassin lifestyle, but Claudia's web is not so
easy to escape, as he will later learn.
All this time,
Zwei is struggling with his complicated feelings for Ein, who he sees
as the kind of person he is capable of becoming if he abandons his
sense of identity. As he begins to learn more about who he is, he
fights for Ein's liberation as well as his own, trying to get her to
look beyond her duties to Scythe Master and find out who she really
is. Even though Ein is in many ways emotionally devoid at this time,
she also feels a deep connection to Zwei, seeing him as the
representation of all the feelings she has lost in having her history
and identity erased.
When Scythe Master
seemingly betrays Inferno, Reiji rescues a wounded Ein and trys to
take her away to a place where they can be free and safe. During this
time, he gives her the name Elen and begins to see the first signs of
her actually displaying some sort of genuine emotion when she reacts
with a degree of surprise whenever he calls her by her new name.
Unfortunately, Scythe Master finds Ein and recruits her again, and
Reiji turns to Claudia who encourages him to give in to the cold
blooded killer inside of him and slaughter Scythe for destroying the
progress he was making with Ein. So he does. With naturally tragic
results, of course.
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| Just the idea of a girl this young being a killer is tragic enough |
(This is slightly
spoiler-y, but this is not what I would consider the main, climactic
arc, so you'll have to make a judgment call if you want to read the
following paragraphs) When blood-crazy Zwei tries to shoot Scythe,
Ein steps in to take the bullet for him, then falls into the nearby
stream, presumably dead. Snapping out of his dark persona, Zwei
realizes what he's done and begins crying out in agony. Scythe has no
sympathy and for once Zwei doesn't feel the need to fight for his
life, and he ends up shot three times in the chest, falling into the
stream after Ein. See what I mean about unhappy endings? If Stephanie
Meyer were in charge, Ein and Zwei would have realized their humanity
and said things like “you are my life now” while making out and
having blandly romantic conversations.
A time skip
reveals that Reiji has survived and reverted in to full on Zwei-mode,
which involves screwing Claudia, killing without his former doubt,
and getting an even cooler assassin soundtrack. Wonderful. Luckily,
he gets a strong dose of morality when he meets Cal, a young girl who
is the sole witness to a mob killing where her guardian was caught in
the cross fire. When Zwei defends Cal from Inferno, he is forced to
lie and say that he is training her as an assassin so she will not be
killed for knowing that he is the Phantom, painfully reminding him of
the slippery slope he was sent down after witnessing one of Ein's
assassinations. The more he grows to care for Cal, the more he
doesn't want to see her become the kind of person Inferno has made
him to be. He teaches her how to use a gun, but for the most part
treats her preciously, letting her live with him, buying her clothes
and gifts, and letting her see his more human side so Zwei begins to
fade away and Reiji emerges again.
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| Cal and Reiji try to avoid the dangerous cycle of Zwei and Ein |
And now the major
SPOILERS start. Claudia is currently knee deep in corruption as she
tries to fight her way to the top, and from the shadows there are
several people trying to take her down. Reiji catches sight of one of
the assassins from the other side, one who looks an awful lot like
his former partner Ein, who he still believes is dead. As his life
once again begins to spiral outside of his control, he fights to
protect Cal from the aftermath, doing everything he can to keep her
from the assassin world and promising he will stay by her side to
protect her no matter what happens. But his assignments involving
Claudia's self-serving schemes pulls him away from the apartment he
shares with Cal, and when he returns, he watches in horror as the
room is destroyed in an explosion set by his enemies. Believing Cal
to be dead, he begins to sink back into despair, under the impression
he has lost everything important to him yet again.
As he fights for
his life when the net closes around Claudia, Reiji is brought into a
struggle to the death with Ein (who clearly didn't die, but was
rescued by Scythe Master), who he still retains protective feelings
for. In the middle of their fight, Ein breaks down and admits that
she doesn't want to continue on with her current life and begs him to
kill her so she won't have to endure her painful cycle of unthinking
subservience to Scythe Master anymore. When she says the line “If
this world wasn't a complete hell for me, it was because you were
alive” it absolutely kills me, and Reiji as well. He reminds her
that he swore to take care over and make her smile, so the two plot
an escape, this time successfully... at least for a time.
In the final arc,
the two are living normal lives in Japan as high school students
after a two year time skip. For Elen, the happiness she shows is for
the most part an act as she inwardly suffers and tries to find a way
atone for her sins, but Reiji has found some measure of peace at
being able to have a normal life, complete with having a cute girl
crushing on him and being the source of romantic gossip around
school. Both know that the past will catch up to them, but until it
does, they are determined to try and live out quiet lives in Reiji's
home country.
The past comes
back in the form of a busty, grown up Cal. As we learn, she was
outside of the apartment during the explosion, and remained behind in
the wreckage so Reiji would know she was still alive when he returned
to find the apartment destroyed. But from his vantage of the
explosion, Reiji could not hear her calling out to him, so he had no
reason to believe she survived when he left for Japan with Elen. Cal
is too young and vulnerable to fully understand this, and Scythe
seeks her out and takes advantage of her depression, making her
believe that Reiji willfully abandoned her for Ein.
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| Puberty is kind to some of us... too kind |
When she reappears
in Japan, she not only has grown up an unreasonable amount
considering only two years have passed, but she is also filled with a
crazy amount of anger towards Reiji due to his perceived abandonment.
To spite him, she has become the third Phantom, Drei-- though she
hasn't mastered the emotionally-devoid part yet--and has made it her
life mission to kill Reiji and everyone who stands in her way. Yikes!
One
convoluted scheme involving the high school girl in love with Reiji
later, Cal finally confronts Elen and Reiji with the intention of
killing both. Elen doesn't want Reiji to be put in a position where
he'll have to kill Cal, but Reiji realizes that Cal will never be
appeased unless the issue is sorted out between the two of them. And
by sorted out, I don't mean a heart-to-heart chat. Cal is so far gone
at this point that she doesn't want to
have things go back the way they were. She just wants closure on her
feelings of hurt and betrayal in one form or another, and Reiji,
still operating on the fact that he doesn't want to die just yet,
gives it to her with a bullet and looks on as she at last finds peace
when she dies in his arms, regretting that she was not strong enough
to seek him out and have faith in him when they were separated.
Alas, Scythe
Master is still hanging around even after his final human subordinate
has died, and similar to Reiji's defeat of Cal, Elen at last finds
the strength and courage to put their twisted connection to rest and
finally kill him. Knowing that they can't exactly stick around and
put their classmates in further danger, the two assassins flee Japan
together with the hopes of finding Elen's hometown and giving her
some final sense of identity before the inevitable happens. The
inevitable being that one member of Inferno is still alive, and he's
not going to rest until Reiji is dead. (But he doesn't seem to care
that Ein is still alive. If anyone knows why that is, please let me
know!)
Reiji
and Elen finally end up in Mongolia, which has been foreshadowed as
Elen's birthplace by the brochure she carried around with her in the
first arc. She recognizes the particular sight of the sky (which is
apparently extraordinarily lovely in Mongolia), and tells Reiji he
doesn't need to do anything more for her than he has already done in
bringing her here. Reiji looks at her and thinks to himself that he
still has to fulfill his promise of having her smile truly before he
is killed by Inferno, though he knows at this point that they have
been followed by Inferno's assassin, and has to content himself that
Elen finally has memories of her homeland as well as happy memories
of the two of them together. The assassin passes by and shoots him,
which Reiji quietly allows to happen, and Elen grants him the parting
gift of her true smile before killing herself by consuming a
poisonous flower nearby. All of the Phantoms have passed, which
explains the title of Requiem for the Phantom;
each one is freed from their earthly pains through a death each has
in some way consented to. SPOILER END.
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| Elen's return to her homeland represents the realization of the wish Reiji had been staying alive for |
It's
a heavy series, but a beautiful one. I read a lot of complaints about
the less-than-happy conclusion, but to those people, I have to ask:
What did you expect? The three central characters spent most of the
series fighting a losing battle in retaining their sense of self and
humanity, and it would have been a joke if Phantom had
concluded with them becoming fully normal and adjusted as if nothing
had ever happened. Phantom isn't
about twisted characters becoming perfect and having everything
handed to them. It is about suffering and brutalized individuals
fighting for what little they can have in life and trying to find
some small measure of peace in each other and themselves, even if
that peace is only caused by more pain.
That
being said, Phantom is
not for the faint of heart (and the nudity, sex, and violence means
Mature Audiences Only!). Be prepared for quite a bit of being put
through the emotional ringer, watching senseless crime, and having
the efforts the characters take end in violence. As I mentioned, this
series is a psychological drama, and what is most important is being
able to understand Reiji, Elen, and Cal's motivations and what fuels
their views on life and death. If you don't take the time to consider
the characters, the show will just end up a tangled mess of violence
and corruption without any redeeming qualities. But that isn't what
it is. Phantom is
first and foremost a deep character study and lesson in what happens
when we are left without humanity, identity, and a strong sense of
self.
So, all of ya'lls
who like happy endings: don't worry, I do as well. But I hope that
you can see the value in stories that don't end happily. Not everyone
gets everything they want in life, but sometimes they just might get
what they need, and even if that in itself is painful and laced with
just as much tragedy as joy, it can be as beautiful and much more
poignant than having the ideal life wrapped up with pretty ribbon and
opened up neatly at the end.
On a happier note,
next will be Sekaiichi Hatsukoi!
