Review of Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom
What Future Diary is to psychological anime, Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom is to mafia anime. It’s good, but it’s a little messy, and doesn’t quite reach the levels of the others in it: genre. That is not to say these anime are not good - the masterpieces of their genres are simply too good. (spoiler free) Story - 8 This anime has an amazing premise. Not only that, but it takes a bunch of twists and turns that I didn’t expect. Coming in thinking this was just going to be an anime about the main character as he is forced to live a life of crime,I was pleasantly surprised at the different routes the story took. However, this came with some plot holes. We have three time skips throughout the whole anime, and this is where those plot holes come from... things like how would that character survive that, but that character didn’t survive this? Or how did this character become so different so quick? I think this is where the anime made a mistake. The time skips skipped over information that would have been very valuable - not only that, but I think it would have been enjoyable. I think the anime would have benefited from being 10 episodes longer and cutting out the time skips.
I wish the creators would have realized how good of a premise they had, and kept things a little more simple. At times, it really seems like the anime is trying too hard to be dark and cool. For example, in the first “mission” for our two main characters, Ein gets a teddy bear from the shop they scout out, and later rips out a little black device (maybe a microphone or camera?) from it. This makes me go oooo some spy stuff going on here!! But then it’s just never explained or used. Why was there that black device in the teddy bear? What was it? How did she know it would be in there? How does this help them complete the assassination? It just doesn’t make sense. It seems like the creators just put this scene in to have a cool spy-esque moment and get you hyped up, but it’s annoying when they don’t actually explain it. Moments like these are sprinkled throughout the anime.
I dislike how two of the 26 episodes are recap episodes. It’s just so unnecessary. Not only that, but the recap episodes don’t even recap all that’s happened. I think there was one around episode 11, and while it recapped a little of what happened from episode 1-8, it was mostly just all of episodes 9 and 10 (or some variation of that, I may have gotten the numbers wrong). The point is that this makes the recap loose it’s effect, because it’s mostly scenes that I just watched less than an hour ago.
Now the ending. I also believe the creators fell into a trap here of trying to make the anime seem super edgy and shocking. I won’t give any spoilers as promised. But I don’t like that I had to look online to try to figure out what the heck happened, and that when I go back and rewatch the last scenes, it’s still not clear. The ending was pleasing to watch, but it didn’t leave me feeling totally satisfied.
Art - 7
I thought the art style was pretty good, but not my favorite. I didn’t like how some girls seemed to have a completely different style eye - obviously people have different kinds of eyes, but eyes in Clannad are drawn differently than eyes in Death Note, and it’s kind of weird when that kind of stylistic difference in eyes is present in one anime. The whole anime has a very dark, drab color scheme, which is fitting and looks okay, but isn’t as well executed as in Death Note.
Sound - 7
Opening 1 and 2 are both pretty good, ending 1 is good, ending 2 is bad. The soundtrack in general is hit or miss. There are some really good suspenseful tracks and some good emotional ones too. Cal’s theme is good, but it’s overplayed a little too much. Some sounds aren’t very memorable, and some are just weird. Specifically, the soundtrack that has a woman moaning, which gets progressively louder, is really weird, random, and unnecessary.
Characters - 6
I was surprised when I didn’t see a lot of people criticizing the characters in other reviews. I think the characters are the biggest problem for this show. To be honest, I have never seen a character even close to how bland Zwei is. He seriously has no personality! Even after the time skip, it’s crazy! Also, he looks EXACTLY like Light from Death Note, and has a little moment where he hysterically laughs right as he is about to kill someone, which was definitely like Light. But then we don’t even see Zwei go crazy or something so it seemed kind of random. I think the reason why Zwei seems to have no personality is that there isn’t a ton of inner monologues from him, most of the talking is actual spoken dialogues between all the characters. Zwei doesn’t remember anything from his past, which kinda seems like an excuse to leave his character design bland, but he still doesn’t have traits. Like, he just asks questions (if that, this guy seems to be awfully comfortable responding to orders and not asking questions) and responds when people talk to him, but there is no substance in what he says, nothing that sets him apart and makes him and interesting character. Also it makes no sense that he wouldn’t want to go back to his normal life. This is touched on in the show, and it’s just completely mind boggling to me that someone forced into the mafia wouldn’t want to return to their family... like yes, you killed people, but uh... you were FORCED to. If you go back to your family you can explain that you were forced to and then never kill again, why does that not seem like a better plan than continuing in the mafia??
Ein is definitely better, but she can get a little annoying at times. She’ll have character development, and then an episode later, she looses it all and starts at square one. It’s hard to see what’s making her decide her values.
Cal is a great character at the start, she adds a bit of light hearted-ness to the show and actually has a story. But her character is basically a plot hole in itself - she has a radical change that isn’t shown at all in the anime, but seems to happen over a time skip. It’s just so out of character for her that it doesn’t add the shock value the creators wanted, because it just seems like a new character all together, and not oh my gosh, Cal changed so much!
The side characters are okay. This anime is really comfortable letting them die. Most of them I didn’t really care much when they died.
The anime does kind of a bad job choosing which side characters to give screen time to. They’ll give a lot of screen time to one character, but then they die and a second side character is given more attention, but I don’t care because I don’t really know much about this second side character. It’s awkwardly balanced.
The chemistry between characters isn’t done the best, specifically between the main two. I couldn’t really tell throughout the anime if something was supposed to be romantic, or if they were back to platonic, or what.
Overall, this anime has 0 characters that I really thought were creative or would be my favorite. Sure, the SITUATIONS they are put in are creative and incredibly entertaining to watch, but the characters themselves are pretty lifeless and either stereotypical, or too random and sporadic in their decisions to make any connections. There is a lack of character development shown - yes, characters change. But it’s at a snap of your fingers. None of it is shown of how that character changed.
Enjoyment - 8
Despite the problems I listed... this show is still so fun to watch, the premise is that freaking good. While it does try too hard to be dark at some times, it IS dark. It does have great mafia content and some good psychological themes. It’s fun to see assassinations happen and there is some being on the edge of your seat. The anime is not very predictable, it takes a lot of twists and turns, and I really enjoyed this. Obviously, since there are some plot holes and the characters aren’t the best, this tanks my enjoyment a bit, but gosh. To have such personality-lacking characters in an anime and still make it enjoyable to watch, you gotta have a pretty good idea, and this anime does.
Overall - 7
The characters really took this anime down a notch for me, and the plot holes in the story as well. But overall, it was fun to watch. I think it should be noted though that I don’t see much rewatch value.
Again, it’s like Future Diary, where if you like psychological anime, you have to watch it. If you like mafia anime, you have to watch this anime, even though it’s not the best. It’s a really good edition to the genre, it just couldn’t compete with the great anime other there in every aspect. I would still recommend this anime to any fan of the psychological or mafia genre.