A Open Letter to Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi.
Dear Messrs Tapert and Raimi –
I hear that you’ve gotten the greenlight to create a live-action version of the Noir anime series for Starz. While I admit to trepidation at the idea that an American TV (premium cable, but still,) channel is interested in one of my favorite anime series, nonetheless, as the driving force behind Xena: Warrior Princess, I am willing to trust you both. (Not entirely indirectly, it was because of Xena that I now write here at HU, so I believe I owe you some thanks for the impact you’ve had on my life.)
Before I explain a little bit about Noir and what we, the fans, are and aren’t willing to tolerate, let me start with:
Elements That Made Xena Great.
1 – “Strong Female” leads that actually were.
2 – Female team-up that acknowledged, but did not collapse because of, romantic entanglements with guys.
3 – Unresolved Sexual Tension between the leads – this is a critical point and I’ll get back to it in a moment.
4 – Xena smiling when she gutted people. Maybe it’s only me, but this was a key selling point for the show.
5 – The comedy. The jokes were always horribly corny and usually pretty stupid, but it meant that viewers never forgot the show was not to be taken seriously. This is a *very* important element when dealing with fans.
6 – Fighting – lots of it.
All of these, except the comedy should also be part of Noir. The anime Noir takes itself very seriously, so cornball humor would seem out of place for those of us who know the series but, again, I’m willing to give you some leeway here. Make it dry humor, rather than corny and I promise to behave.
Element That Did Not Make Xena Great
Joxer
I realize that he’s a relation, but if Ted Raimi shows up in Noir I will hate you, probably irrevocably. The one exception is if he shows up as one of the intended victims, is given a moving monologue, then Kirika shoots him. That is acceptable.
***
Having established some of the key concepts that should and shouldn’t be carried over, let’s talk Noir.
Noir is the first of a trilogy of “girls with guns on the run” anime series, all of which have certain elements in common. It would probably be a really terrific idea to translate at least one, hopefully several, of these elements to your new series.
Elements You Should Have in your noveau Noir
I’m going to assume you’ve got the whole older, worldly mature woman / younger, naive woman pairing thing down. You nailed it in Xena and something similar should work just fine for Noir. I won’t beat this one to death. Go with your guts.
Conspiracy
In the Noir anime, the shadow organization that pursues the leads is an occult, Medieval, secret society; in the second series Madlax. it’s a magic-driven gun-running, war-mongering organization and in the third series, El Cazador de la Bruja, it’s a scientific conspiracy to resurrect and co-opt a magical culture. As you can see, the anime director really liked to have his women running from a shadow organization. And so did the fans. I insist you must have a conspiracy. Because the original shadow organization was not only incredibly silly, but random and unevenly developed, fee free to handle it however you like…as long as there is conspiracy of some kind.
Professional Assassins
This is a no-brainer, honestly. Both Mirielle and Kirika are professional assassins. In Madlax. Rimelda was an assassin and in El Cazador de la Bruja, Nadie and Ricardo were assassin/bodyguards. So, please, don’t make them ex-soldiers, or ex-CIA gone rogue. It’s okay to just make them professional killers.
Unresolved Sexual Tension
You did this great in Xena. Just do the same exact thing in Noir. I don’t need them to get together…there just has to be the plausible possibility that they might.
UST, as we called in back in the day in the anime and manga fandom, is a common and popular element in team-up stories. I know it’s cable TV, but don’t give into the temptation of having them fake kissing, or going undercover and having to pretend to be girlfriends or anything else embarrassing and in bad taste. Start with respect that is returned, that maybe becomes something more.
Music
I’m throwing this out, knowing that you probably can’t do anything about this, but if you have actually watched Noir at all, you’ll realize that the music is practically a character in the story. The chances of you actually being able to license Salva Nos or Canta Per Me are slim to none, I realize, but if you can bring *one* thing over whole from the anime, choose the music.
Element from Noir Anime You Can Lose and No One Will Cry
The watch. Lose the watch, the watch’s musical theme, the watch’s 800 appearances as repeated footage. The watch isn’t the deal-breaker Ted Raimi is, but honestly, no one will miss the watch.
Bonus Fan Points
If you want the already-existing Noir fans to love you, (and we are poised and willing to love you!) please don’t pointlessly Americanize the names into Michelle and Karen or some such idiocy…we’re adults, we *know* there are other countries with names that are not in English!
It’s true that there are people who have never watched the anime, and have no reason to know what the character names are but, there are also people who are already fans of the series, who could specifically subscribe to Starz *just* for the pleasure of watching you not fuck up the series we love. Just sayin’.
Here’s looking forward to the new series.
Yours Truly,
You know how people often say “what’s the point in remaking good stuff? They should remake bad ones into something good”? Noir is the bad thing–the REALLY CRAPPY THING–they should remake into something good. It wouldn’t actually even be that hard because the premise is perfectly solid, but the make-or-break keystone criteria for this actually have nothing to do with the elements you’ve mentioned whatsoever. It comes down to these two things:
Must-have criteria NUMBER ONE is that people should, you know, actually bleed when shot by a gun, stabbed in the neck with the spoke of a toy truck, and so on. The ultra-sanitized, PG-13 level violence with no visible consequences does not fit with the ostensibly hard-boiled, deadly serious attitude the series attempts to convey. Starz is the channel that made Spartacus. I am virtually 100% certain they can deliver in this regard.
Must-have criteria NUMBER TWO is that while it’s certainly imperative that there be lots of action and that those action scenes be stylized, this should be handled in a way that conveys that our leads are supremely skilled and not in a way that conveys “these people being killed are dying because they’re complete idiots.” There was a scene in the original cartoon where our heroes walk up to a crowd of people all of whom are armed with guns and start shooting at them in plain sight without cover. I think Kirika must have killed about 15 of them–and she didn’t do this particularly QUICKLY–before it dawned on anyone being shot at that maybe they should REACT: move, take cover, draw their own guns, and possibly even fire back. Sure, they never hit their mark, but that’s fine as long as they look like they’re at least TRYING.
Action scenes of this nature were the norm for that cartoon (stuff like scattering the popcorn or hanging someone by their necktie from the early episodes turned out to be the exception), and it wouldn’t surprise me if there were cases in which our leads fired once and then more than one person died from the shot. Note: said people were nowhere near one another. By all means bring back “girls with guns” entertainment, but “skilled badasses” makes for finer entertainment than “euthanasia of the mentally disabled”. (Post-nuclear apocalypse settings excepted.) In other words, make a live-action Noir more akin to a 1980s-era Hong Kong Michelle Yeoh/Cynthia Rothrock type picture, and less like a 90s/00s Milla Jovovich one.
To be pedantic: the singular is ‘criterion’, not ‘criteria’. One might profitably point out, at this juncture, that ‘strata’, ‘media’ and ‘data’ are all plurals, too.
However, all is forgiven in the light of your impressive command of the subjunctive mood, Daryl: “…it’s certainly imperative that there be lots of action and that those action scenes be stylized…”
Norb, I think this came off sounding a lot snottier than you intended. I hope it wasn’t intended, anyway….
As long as I’m commenting, I should say: I don’t know anything about Xena or Noir, but both Erica’s piece and Daryl’s response cracked me up.
They should remake bad ones into something good”?
Aren’t we all anxiously awaiting a $200 million remake of Plan 9 from Outer Space?
Noah…you’re protecting us. That’s so cute of you!!
norb – the first thing I did was check and make sure I wasn’t the one who used criteria incorrectly, because that sort of thing drive me crazy, too. ^^
Daryl – Yes, the entry/exit wounds, yes, yes, yes. And yes the magic teflon barrier around Kirika. I still liked it all though.
In Madlax there was some blood – only exit wounds, but some blood.
In El Cazador, it was relatively bloodless, but the whole series was such a light, snuggly, comedic retrospective of the series as a whole I will hear nothing spoken against is.
Remaking bad things is what fan fic is all about….
“Noah…you’re protecting us. That’s so cute of you!!”
Okay, I will slink away now….
“Remaking bad things is what fan fic is all about….”
That and spending time with beloved characters.
Berlatsky:
“Norb, I think this came off sounding a lot snottier than you intended. I hope it wasn’t intended, anyway….”
Eh, guilty as charged. I got ticked off and lost a good occasion to shut up…
In defense of Daryl, the English language is full of former plurals that are now accepted as singulars in standard usage: ‘agenda’, ‘trivia’, ‘news’. (That’s right– originally one would say ‘The news are bad’)
‘Data’ is an interesting case. In mathematics, it remains a plural of ‘datum’, literally ‘a given’. In maths problems, it’s typically introduced by the idiom: ‘Let the value of X be 4.35’.
However, in information technology, ‘data’ is almost universally treated as a quantitative singular, on the analogy with ‘information’: “The data was entered into the base”… So we’re seeing a classic case of differentiation playing out.
Still, note that I praised Daryl and mocked myself in that post!
In the U.S., we also don’t say “maths”—but actually I’ve always felt like we should.
Just a coda– a big pleasure of this blog is that it is so well-written. This is true for both the articles and the comments: none of that slothful leet “lol that ws da shit rolfl” garbage that infests even the best sites. perhaps the editors filter it out?
On that note, I apologise to Daryl. Language Snots are the most subtly pernicious and dangerous comment trolls. A guy who posts ‘f”§@ you, motherf#!@%er’ is spotted and deleted quickly. But the Language Snot politely insinuates himself into the conversation, and before you know it a serious thread about the viability of Darfur or the challenges of charter schools is taken over by flame wars re: split infinitives, dangling modifiers, and the abuse of “you know”.
Shudder! Not me, I swear!
USA: math, UK: maths…but Canada is split.
Still can’t choose between ‘checkbook’ and ‘chequebook’, eh.
Norb – I’m sure some obnoxiousness is moderated out, but my general impression of HU is that the discussions here simply don’t attract the sort of people who make YouTube-style “fuck you!” comments or compose unintelligible sentences (aside from sentences of Theory, of course). A lot of the stuff we discuss is outside of the interest range of the more obvious kind of shit-hurlers, and when we discuss poppier sorts of things, we tend to do it in a way that those people aren’t accustomed to and don’t gravitate towards.
Doesn’t mean that we don’t troll, we just tend to do it by bashing each other with our strongly-held opinions – my feminism/gender radicalism, Mike Hunter’s anti-PC shoulder chip, etc….
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norb says:
… Language Snots are the most subtly pernicious and dangerous comment trolls…before you know it a serious thread about the viability of Darfur or the challenges of charter schools is taken over by flame wars re: split infinitives, dangling modifiers, and the abuse of “you know”…
———————
I certainly appreciate a well-written sentence, and am appalled by the decline in societal literacy (real literacy, not the minimal ability to figure out, say, a “TV Guide” listing). But certainly in a relatively casual (even if indeed pleasantly literate) forum grammatical nitpicking can have a “chilling” effect, and takes away from dealing with the substance of arguments.
And we can note, as well, that a lot of this ‘nit-picking’ conceals ignorance. For example, the “rule” that a proper sentence or clause *never* ends in a preposition.
What’s that ABOUT?
Is that a rule we can rely ON?
I think it’s an idiocy we can throw OUT.
…along with the bans on split infinitives, the ‘Oxford Comma’, “It’s me” and other shibboleths of the half-educated.
I ain’t never put up with no such nonsense, not once!
Overall, Erica, I support most of your recommendations. (I also happen to agree with Daryl’s two criteria, despite strongly disagreeing with his characterization of the series as a whole.) This endorsement notwithstanding, I wish to note a few points on which my own sentiments diverge slightly from those expressed in the open letter.
First, I would contend that the apparent silliness of Les Soldats stems solely from the group’s on-screen depiction (i.e., Bee Train’s idiosyncratic representation of it), not its fundamental traits. Aggregately, the clandestine enterprise comprises the types of financial, political, and ideological interests that would be absolutely crucial to sustaining a global, long-lived secret society. Not surprisingly, the conspiracy therefore broadly merges two apparently incongruous wings: the modern corporate aristocrats scheming to maintain their wealth and influence under the guise of promulgating the society’s ideals, and the religious zealots dedicated to advancing their vision of ideological purification—a baptism by blood. The friction between these two factions forms an undercurrent that flows through much of the series. (If portrayed imaginatively, this internecine clash for the conspiracy’s future could give the live-action Noir its own distinct variety of the type of power struggle that makes Game of Thrones so compelling. One could argue that the anime series misfires slightly by explicitly revealing this conflict without sufficiently exploiting it.) Were the secret society to lose one of its wings or to be reduced in scope or history, the mythos of Les Soldats—as well as that of the Noir maidens—would be concomitantly diminished. Somewhat more controversially, I would even argue for the inclusion of a version of the messianic “refugee from a completely different anime series” (as you once labeled the character Altena), since she is the driving force behind virtually everything that occurs in the show. Alas, I should probably avoid submitting a full exposition of my views on the priestess, as such an endeavor would require several additional paragraphs and risk exposing the fact that I am a charter member of her fan club. ^_^’
Second, yes, the protagonists in Noir are in a certain sense running, but it seems worth noting that they are actually pursuing the conspiracy, not fleeing from it. Mireille and Kirika are both desperately seeking their own answers—ones that they can hope to find only by grasping at the straws extended to them by the factions of Les Soldats. In fact, prior to knowing anything whatsoever about the nature or reach of the individuals ostensibly hunting Kirika (other than that they had apparently come into possession of the Bouquet family’s pocket watch), Mireille tells her, “All right, I’ll team up with you…There’s something I want to ask them. When that’s over, I will kill you.” Hence, the partnership is formed expressly to target those who are targeting Kirika. Once Mireille learns the identity of the secret society behind her family’s murder, Les Soldats immediately becomes her mortal enemy. Her desire to exact revenge falls perfectly in line with Altena’s grand design.
Third, although the grin-while-you-gut approach might work for Chloe, it would not work for Mireille, and definitely not for Kirika. Undeniably, Mireille is an unapologetic professional killer, but one ultimately motivated by rage and pain, not sociopathic titillation. What is natural or appropriate for a lethal protagonist in one (somewhat cheesy) universe might be significantly creepier for a different lethal protagonist in a different (somewhat serious) universe. (If your recommendation is simply that none of the killers in the live-action series—possibly save Kirika—exhibit even a hint of penitence, then we are in complete agreement.)
Fourth, I must confess, I initially assumed that you were joking when I saw your tweet to Zac Bertschy advocating the elimination of the pocket watch. My advice (which I do offer purely facetiously): Exercise extreme caution when tempted to assert that “no one” would object to the removal of a key element of ANY series. ^_^ Based on the discussions I’ve seen on various forums (e.g., shoujoai.com and beetrainfan.org), I can tell you that many of us diehards would definitely miss it. The watch represents a pivotal plot device—one that adds haunting overtones to the event that would be seared into Mireille’s mind, stalking her thoughts and nightmares for nearly a decade, and determining her delightful line of work. (Indeed, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to imagine that the watch amounts to a reification of the event itself in her subconscious.) The instant she again hears its eerie melody, she transforms from a hit woman who has repurposed “worthless” individuals as proxies for her rage into an Ahab who has at long last caught a glimpse of her whale. Furthermore, when Kirika’s message to her first appears on screen, it’s crystal clear that Mireille judges its merit to fall somewhere between “Free Cialis” and “Please help exiled Tulistanian princess.” Beyond any doubt, Mireille wouldn’t give Kirika a second thought without the watch, and most definitely wouldn’t join her on a “pilgrimage”—to the past or otherwise. Mireille doesn’t entertain Kirika’s plea out of the goodness of her heart, but rather because Kirika represents a possible link to the ones who murdered her family, a link established exclusively by the watch. Moreover, by transfixing Mireille’s attention, it provides the glue necessary to bind her to Kirika prior to the emergence of any personal affinity. Ultimately, the watch sacrifices itself (^_^) to bring the two women back together, shattering as its melody frees Kirika from the dark, zombie-like state that has gripped her toward the end of the series. If the writers of the live-action script were to remove the pocket watch entirely, they would either need to find a suitable replacement for its crucial role or to significantly alter several key events. (Granted, it’s reasonably likely that they will change just about everything anyway, so our disagreement on this point is probably moot.) While I concede that the watch’s total screen time freely sports its triple chin, I would advocate a healthy diet rather than ruthless starvation. (Shifting silly metaphors, I believe there’s still a precious baby in that bathwater. ^_^’)
Joking aside, Erica, I want to emphasize my gratitude to you for everything you’ve done and continue to do. When I first realized that several of my favorite anime series (e.g., R.O.D., Marimite, Simoun, Utena, and Noir) share a certain commonality—one of a specific kind of subtext—I began to seek out sources of information that would point me toward other such shows. While I fully expected to locate crudely adequate resources, I never imagined that I would find anything remotely as useful (or wonderful) as Okazu.
CFB – Thank you so much for the kind words.
Hi, sorry, this has absolutely nothing to do with Noir, but did you used to write Sailor Moon fanfiction?
Sarah – Yes, and I’m proud of all my fanfic. Most of what I write -these days is original, but fanfic is the modern-day version of what the traveling Bards used to do – take popular, well-loved characters and write new stories for new audiences.
I encourage derivative works of my own original work.
Hi Erica,
This is so cool. I used to read your fanfiction. I loved it.
I don’t really read/watch a lot of anime/manga, but I’ve seen your name around, and I can’t believe it took this long to remember. When I was first reading this post, I was like “Wait, is the same Erica who used to write Sailor Moon fic?” And so it is.
I really liked your stories. There is this one story that I still remember, where Haruka gave Usagi a driving lesson, even though it’s been years since I read it.
I’m glad you’re still in fandom.
Okay I may have time and brain cells for a longer comment later. And I’m certainly pleased to a) find out there are anime fans on this forum. b) that they have opinions I mostly share about Noir.
but mostly about the idea of a Noir live action sometime I just wanted to say.
SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
thank you.
Norb writes: July 4, 2011 at 12:00 pm
USA: math, UK: maths…but Canada is split.
Still can’t choose between ‘checkbook’ and ‘chequebook’, eh.
My own patriotism feels more challenged by America than desperate to cut ties with Mother Britain so I’ve long defiantly chosen the English option of a ‘split at every turn.
(it’s also Cigaret by the way.)
and staunch defender (despite all spellchecker revisionism) of the ‘u’ in colour, honour, armour, etc.
but that’s just me.