Reiji Azuma, the teenage hero of the dark, game-based adventure
Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom (2009), awakens in a half-ruined building in the California desert, stripped of his memories. A mysterious girl named Ein has been assigned to teach him how to kill, using pistols, machine guns, and knives. Reiji learns fast: in six months he becomes the assassin Zwei, killing people for the criminal cabal Inferno. When the theatrical Scythe Master leads a revolt within Inferno, Zwei becomes The Phantom, the mob's top hit man. Reiji takes up with Cal, a blonde orphan who's eager to become a killer in her own right.
Requiem for the Phantom is comprised of three story arcs, all of which suffer from underdeveloped characters, inconsistencies of time, too much on-the-nose dialogue, and absurd plots. Even after he regains his memories, Reiji's not very interesting; Ein's murderous blandness makes Key the Metal Idol seem downright vivacious. Cal somehow goes from wide-eyed moppet to murderous vixen in the two years that elapse between episodes 19 and 20. Despite the body count, which must run well into three figures,
Phantom moves at a glacial pace. Director Koichi Mashimo tries to disguise the lack of inertia with odd camera angles, but he's defeated by the endless succession of static, talky scenes. Shooting mobsters may be evil, but boring them to death seems needlessly cruel. The set comes with two discs of extras, including 12 "Picture Dramas," weird spoofs involving still artwork and hand puppets of the characters. (Unrated; suitable for ages 17 and older: violence, violence against women, grotesque imagery, profanity, ethnic stereotypes, nudity, drug dealing, alcohol and tobacco use)
--Charles Solomon (1. Awakening, 2. Training, 3. Practice, 4. Assassination, 5. Moment, 6. Conflagration, 7. The Past, 8. Emergency, 9. Name, 10. Finale, 11. Succession, 12. Ghost, 13. Camouflage, 14. Surveillance, 15. Reunion, 16. Confession, 17. The Truth, 18. Confrontation, 19. Promise, 20. Homeland, 21. Rage, 22. Fury, 23. Decision, 24. Faceoff, 25. Showdown, 26. Eren)