Review of Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom

It's been a few years, but it was inevitable that one day I would have to review another Urobutcher anime. I have a complicated history with Gen Urobuchi. I can't even say whether I like or dislike the man at this point. He can create some great scenes and fun characters, but he also plagiarizes blatantly enough to make Tarantino blush and isn't half as smart as he thinks he is. Urobuchi is that kid who got a 78 on his high school physics test and was so excited over his own BRILLIANCE that he immediately tried to apply for Mensa. The strength of anUrobutcher anime kind of depends on what he's adapting...or ripping off. I actually loved Psycho Pass because it borrowed heavily from Minority Report and Philip K Dick was a master of cool premises. In that instance, I felt like Urobutchi's signature style and over the top nature meshed well with the skeleton of a classic dystopian sci-fi and created an entertaining anime. I also love Fate/Zero, which was the butcher's fanfiction prequel to Kinoko Nasu's Fate/Stay Night. Nasu isn't a perfect writer, but he has a lot of heart and created a cool world that Urobuchi was able to expand on. Once again, I feel like Urobuchi's personal style was a comfortable fit with the world of Fate/Stay.

The ridiculously titled "Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom" is Urobuchi's attempt at creating a spiritual sequel/reboot of Kazuo Koike's Crying Freeman. There are many warm and wonderful things that can be said about the late Kazuo Koike. His early work on "Lone Wolf and Cub" along with "Lady Snowblood" is frequently cited alongside Go Nagai's Devilman, Monkey Punch's Lupin and Saito's Golgo 13 in helping to establish the seinen demographic. He pushed boundaries, turned up the blood and sex to 11, and showed that comics don't just have to be for kids. He even founded a school for training future mangaka and taught everyone's beloved Japanese grandma, Rumiko Takahashi. He also wrote some absolute schlock. This is the man who wrote Mad Bull 34 and Wounded Man! If you're going to make a modern reimagining of a Koike work, it would make sense to play to his strengths. Focus on the wild characters, the shocking carnage, and the cool scenes. Kill Bill Volume 1 does this brilliantly. It's basically just an American reboot of Lady Snowblood. It has Koike's spirit to the point that it feels like something he could have co-written. The Butcher decided to steal the plot and premise of one of Koike's weaker works while inserting his own characters and pseudo-philosophical bullshit. So we're mixing Koike's weakness with Urobuchi's weakness. Oh dear God!

A Japanese businessman is captured by the mafia and brainwashed into carrying out assassinations against his will. America's criminal underworld is now completely ruled by an Italian Mafia group called "Inferno" as in Dante's Inferno. They're so powerful that all other gangs in the US bow to their every whim. How? They have a couple of really good assassins. That's the entire reason. A gang like MS-13 who has 50,000 members are afraid of 2 assassins because they're that good. Are these assassins cyborgs? Magic users? Nope. They're just 2 people who trained for a few months with ordinary, basic training but they don't hesitate to kill and have "good instincts". Basically, they're just 2 sociopaths who did Saitama's training. Then it turns out they aren't even sociopaths and are just repressing their guilt. Then Urobutcher realized halfway through writing this how fucking stupid this plot was, so he made a retcon about them unwittingly having space/time bending powers called the "Phantom Slide" that makes bullets miss them.

Despite being the Italian Mafia, the assassins are named "Ein, Zwei, and Drei" either because the butcher thinks German sounds cooler or he just doesn't know how to count to 3 in Italian. Ein is the Kuudere girl who also delivers most of the show's fanservice both sexual fanservice and gunservice. Like most Kuuderes, she has a cold and emotionless exterior but has a heart buried deep within. We eventually learn that she feels guilt for allowing herself to be used as a murder puppet, but when she finally gets development she still seems kind of cliché and I have hard time caring about her.

Next there is Zwei, who is the Japanese businessman and main character of the show. He witnessed a murder and was about to be killed, but a mad scientist named "Scythe Master" read his brainwaves and determined he would be an excellent assassin. He was given a very specific hypnosis that erased all his personal memories while leaving everything else intact. At first he is very vehement about not killing people, but also wishes to survive. He is forced into a death match with a green beret but wins because the soldier monologues like an idiot and somehow allows Zwei to stab him. Then we're told that Zwei's 2 weeks of training defeated the soldier's 10+ years of training because of "good instincts". Zwei refuses to kill anyone else and says he would rather die. So Ein fires a shot in the air and states that the old him is now dead and he can now kill without feeling guilt. Apparently that little speech of hers was REALLY effective because he's gunning down innocent women and children in literally the next episode like it's nothing. Then in 10 more episodes he remembers he has a conscience again and rises up against his evil masters because that's the only direction this story can move.

Urobutcher does his usual thing and kills almost all the characters by the end. That's not even a spoiler considering this is a butcher anime! It's frustrating that he still conflates a tragic and mature ending with killing everyone off. Come on Gen! It's not 400 BC. You're not restricted by the laws of Greek Tragedy! Your characters murder little kids, it's going to be a sad ending no matter what! It would actually be more mature and interesting if Zwei had to try redeem his countless murders and live with the crushing burden of guilt. By killing his characters off, Urobuchi actually gave them an easy and unsatisfying escape from their actions.

This anime actually came to me highly recommended and a lot of people enjoy this one. I really wanted to like it, but just couldn't bring myself to forgive and overlook its issues. I'm willing to forgive a LOT of bullshit, but this anime pissed me off too many times. The plot is just flat out stupid. I didn't feel the characters were very developed or likeable. The direction and music were passable, but there weren't many truly great scenes that stuck out for me. Thematically, I didn't really find a lot of interesting material to chew on here. I managed to find depth in Elfen Lied, but not this shit! Do we have the free will to disobey orders even though it defies the biological imperative of our own survival? Yes! That's not really as deep a question as Urobuchi seems to think it is. People commit suicide every day. That's defying the biological imperative of survival. Soldiers will sometimes refuse to carry out heinous orders. While the famous Milgram experiment showed that most people are very susceptible to following orders, it is also possible to disobey orders even if that person faces consequences for disobeying. A true genetic determinist could still argue that's genetically influenced and so free will is an illusion, but Gen is NOT thinking that deep. Is this anime still worth watching at the end of the day? I'm actually going to say no. Go watch Psycho Pass or Fate/Zero.