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Now in Japan
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Written by maehara
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Friday, 07 January 2005 12:16 |
I knew better than to expect a happy ending from Phantom: the Animation,
but there's downbeat & downright depressing. Guess which
category this episode falls into. The last episode's moments of
happiness are flushed right down the drain, apparently along with the
rest of Ein's memories, and replaced with quite the orgy of
destruction, in this final episode...
3 - Flame
With Ein missing, Zwei's been taken captive by a rival faction of the
Syndicate - they want to know where Scythe (the man who 'created' him)
and Ein are. Seems Scythe's been getting a little too friendly with
other Syndicates, and being one of his 'creations' Ein's suspected of
being in league with him. The rest of the Syndicate want her dead
- and want Zwei to do the job. His initial answer is an emphatic
'no' - but when he's offered information about his past, it becomes a
much harder offer to turn down. Zwei has a counter-proposal:
Scythe is simply using Ein - kill him, and Ein should return to the
fold. But with Ein protecting him, it's not going to be an easy
job. Zwei's also relying on the feelings for him she seemed to
display before they were parted - but thanks to Scythe, her memories
seem to have been wiped once again, meaning she's quite happy to kill
him once they meet...
I wanted a happy ending, but I knew there wasn't a hope of it happening - one of Phantom's
themes throughout has been 'what can never be', with an Ein / Zwei
pairing being top of that list. That meant this episode was
always going to be an exercise in just how much the producers could
mess with the audience's expectations - and the answer is, 'a
lot'. The possibility of those things that could never be (a
happy ending the Ein & his memories restored) are dangled in front
of Zwei at several points here, but always they're left just out of
reach.
There's a lot more action & gunplay in this episode than
before, keeping the action fans happy. The quieter moments that
helped create the tone of the series in the beginning are pretty much
gone - there's the occasional meaning-laden look and glance, but that's
about it. The feel of the show doesn't really suffer for it,
though, as the action's how you would expect the story to end
anyway. For the final kick, pay attention to the epilogue...
Overall, then, an impressive short OVA that does it's best to play with
your expectations of where the story is going & how the characters
should react. Phantom doesn't entirely succeed at what it seems to have set out to do, but still manages to be an enjoyable roller-coaster ride.
UPDATE: I'm told that the 'game' on which this OVA series is based is available in an English-language version from Hirameki. Phantom of Inferno
is a DVD-based game - like many Japanese games, you get to make plot
choices at various stages which affect how the story unfolds, but at
heart it's more 'interactive DVD' than 'game'. The OVA covers
around the first third of the story, and apparently it "only gets more
twisted and intense" after that. I'm sold - I have the DVD on
order, and I'll review it once I've watched / played it. Thanks
to reader Takemikazuchi for the heads-up.
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