Noir (anime)

Noir
Cover of the first ADV Films DVD volume
ノワール (Nowāru)
Genre	Action, Girls with guns, Neo-noir
Anime television series
Directed by	Kōichi Mashimo
Produced by	Shigeru Kitayama
Written by	Ryoe Tsukimura
Music by	Yuki Kajiura
Studio	Bee Train
Licensed by	AUS Madman Entertainment NA Funimation UK ADV Films
Original network	TV Tokyo
English network	NA Anime Network
Original run	April 6, 2001 – September 28, 2001
Episodes	26 (List of episodes)

Noir (Japanese: ノワール, Hepburn: Nowāru^?) is a 26-episode Japanese anime television series produced in 2001 by the Bee Train animation studio. Kōichi Mashimo directed Noir; it was written by Ryoe Tsukimura, and the soundtrack was composed by Yuki Kajiura. The DVD version was released by ADV Films in North America and the United Kingdom and by Madman Entertainment in Australia and New Zealand.

The series follows the story of two young female assassins who embark together on a personal journey to seek answers about mysteries from their past. While they seem to be only vaguely related to each other at first, there are clues and hints given throughout the series that there is more than what meets their eyes. During the course of the series, they are lured into more and more traps by a secret organization named Les Soldats ("The Soldiers" in French).

Noir was followed by two spiritual successors, Madlax and El Cazador de la Bruja. Together, these series constitute a trilogy exploring the "girls-with-guns" genre.

The series follows the story of two young female assassins, the Corsican Mireille Bouquet and the Japanese amnesiac Yuumura Kirika, who embark together on a personal journey to seek answers about mysteries concerning their past. At first, they seem to be only vaguely related to each other, but there are clues and hints given throughout the series that there is more going on behind the scenes than at first glance.