The Tragedy of the Phantom

 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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!