Review of Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom

Requiem for a Phantom is a show that follows two highly trained assassins and their struggle to escape the lives they were forced into. With natural killing talent Raiji, becomes the world’s best and well-known assassin. Contributed by the fact that the assassin’s memories were erased, the fight with morality isn’t hard and killing becomes easy. At first, when I read the synopsis and looked at the shows main photo, I thought the show would be too gruesome for my taste, but actually it wasn’t so bad. The show is actually centered on a romantic story with a lot of killing and explosions to go around.Since the two assassins are hardened killers with severely repressed emotions, it is like watching a romance story being played out by two zombies.

Story 9/10
The story has already been explained pretty well. It follows Raiji a new assassin in training throughout his 5 year life as a hardened murderer. Throughout, he will struggle to remember his past and get in touch with his emotions, but the longer he stays as an assassin, the harder it will be for him to become a normal person later.

Will he succeed and will he fulfill his promises? You’ll have to watch the show.

Sound 9/10
The English dub is actually really good. The voices didn’t seem out of place, however, you will find long strings of dialogue that is mono-tone. When the assassins talk to each other, they truly are like zombies.

And when they have to act out of character to hide their true identity, if feels unsettling and out of place. The sounds for the guns are great, and the voice actors didn’t seem to be reused and that is a big plus for me since other shows tend to reuse the same voice-actors for many characters. This show was not low-budget like that.

Art 9/10
The art is great and it sits perfectly with the show. It has a very serious tone to it and sometimes I forgot I was watching an anime show. The directing is top-notch. The use of darkness to show the loss of morality and the dying flowers are great visual metaphors of what’s happening throughout this well-thought-out story.

Character 9/10
The characters are not intricate beings, but they are still human. I think this show really romanticized what it is like to be an assassin, but the extremely repressed emotions are truly realistic as you may see from soldiers returning from war even today. The characters backgrounds did not go very far, but as I figured out, the memories that these assassins need are not of their forgotten past, but rather the memories they are making together.

In the end, I didn’t get to know much about Raiji or Erin’s past, but I did get very attached to them throughout the show. I felt as if they were monsters, but I also had conflicted feelings that they were also humans that were in pain. You’ll have to decide whether they are too immoral and unforgivable or not.

Enjoyment 9/10
The ending is absolutely driving me nuts and I think you might see why if you watch the show. The blood and gore was not over-the-top and actually you didn’t see the deaths happening half the time. With great directing, it was still very powerful stuff to not even need to see the deaths.

I really did enjoy this show and I hope others will too. This is something I had been avoiding to watch, but now I see it was a mistake to do so. With great directing, great voice casting, art, story and characters, this has to be one of the best directed shows to exist.

Sub Group Used: [Arigatou]