Phantom Requiem For The Phantom Part 2   Starring (voice): Ayahi Takagaki, Miyu Irino, Akeno Watanabe and Aya Hisakawa Manga Entertainment RRP: £24.99 MANG3114 Certificate: 15 Available 12 March 2012

Having found himself taken in by an underground organisation to be trained as an assassin, an young man, now code-named Zwei, finds himself once again on the run. This time he is trying to protect a young girl, Cal. Though Cal has the ability to become a professional assassin, Zwei finds that he wants to protect her from a life he had no choice in joining. With Inferno closing in, Zwei finds himself in a fight for both of their lives...

Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom - Part 2 (2009) is an anime show based on the visual novel by Nitroplus. The twenty-six episode anime was directed by Kōichi Mashimo.

The first half of Phantom was good enough to pique my interest, certainly the artwork wasn’t the best which has been produced, but the overall effect with reasonable animation and a good story pulled the whole thing above the average.

Zwei’s attempts to train Cal, as a way of protecting her, appear to come to a tragic and unpredictable end when Cal is killed by Inferno. Once again, Kwei finds himself on the run with Eren, an unfortunate repeat of the first half of the season. The show concludes with Zwei and Eren being found by Inferno, and a meeting which finally explains Cal’s fate.

It is a shame that after such a strong first half, that the story virtually repeats itself, giving a feeling of seen that, been there. This is resolved in the flash forward for the last couple of episodes which wraps up the story.

The second half of the season, episodes fourteen to twenty-six are presented in a two DVD set. Audio options are the usual English DD5.1 dub or Japanese DD 2.0 with English subtitles. Extras for an anime DVD are pretty good with the inclusion of a Picture Drama (41 min, 05 sec), which is essentially a set of static picture cells with English subtitles, the camera is moved around to give the impression that they are more then just static. The overall effect is an efficient way of adding a new dimension to the story, even if the last section is told with the use of hand puppets.

You also get the original commercials (3 min, 52 sec), the textless opening songs, 'Karma' (1 min, 29 sec), 'Senritsu No Kodomotachi' (1 min, 29 sec) and textless closing sequences, 'Jigoku no mon' (1 min, 29 sec) and 'Transparent' (1 min, 29 sec).

In the end the show ended up as something worth checking out, even if the story felt like the second half was a virtual repeat of the first.

6

Charles Packer