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Noir vs. Madlax vs. Cazador.

You all forget one important fact; Noir is boring. Great music, kind of interesting characters and plot.

If it was a two hour movie, it would have been fantastic. At 26 episodes, it's too much.

Cazador is funny but it wasn't as interesting or exciting; Also, I didn't care that much for Elllis's character development. Nadie is my favorite of the Bee Girls {technically speaking, I think she's straight. It's not that her sexuality matters but all the almost yuri of most Bee Train girls is annoying} so that puts Cazador in spot two.

And then there's Madlax; It's the one I own on DVD. There's no ambigious yuri girls here; They're either straight or spoiler[not Margaret. Or her her dolly]. The music is better than Noir {If you need a refresher, check out: Nowhere, I'm Here, Lost Command, Margaret, She's Gotta Go and Madlax. The insert songs, Lost Command and She's Gotta Go got to me on the first viewing}, the story as well {by Yosuke Kuroda, and he's the reason I watched Madlax first and in the first place. If you don't know his anime work then I pity you} and the characters {Noir and Cazador weren't good at creating side characters, villains, supporting characters, one shot characters and arguably the mains. Hell, it's why the director brought in a ringer for creating the show}. The whole show is just fantastic.

There is no argument or at least no competent argument to the contrary; Madlax is the best. It's the only one of the three that can justify 26 episodes. Well, 20, at least.

Boomer, you do realize that you're replying to four-month-old posts that are themselves responses to four-year-old posts, right?

That being said, I never participated in this discussion before because I never watched more than the first couple of episodes of El Cazador de la Bruja. However, I have seen all of Madlax (though not in several years) and Noir (relatively recently). The music in both is by my favorite anime musical scorer, so I'd rate their soundtracks about equal. Both series depend on them heavily to power their content, and while Madlax's score doesn't have any individual numbers quite on the level of "Cante Par Me" or "Solta Nos," its consistency of quality may be a little higher.

Story-wise, I'd rate them about equal overall, too. In this case Madlax is better at its peaks but is also more widely uneven, and what little advantage that Margaret and Madlax might have in character development is more than offset by the fact that the Mireille-Kirika-Chloe relationship developments in Noir are better. The one place that Madlax has a clear edge is in its artistry, but even there it's not a huge one. It did also have better Extras in its original American release, but that's something specific to the releases, not the series.

I am of the opinion that Madlax's soundtrack fits the story better and more appropriately reflects the mood of the characters and the various plot points than that of Noir, whose music comes across as pretentious.

Boomer wrote:

I am of the opinion that Madlax's soundtrack fits the story better and more appropriately reflects the mood of the characters and the various plot points than that of Noir, whose music comes across as pretentious.

Do you mind humoring me in describing why you feel that Noir's music comes across as pretentious to you? You see, I have a hard enough of a time with people saying that anime comes across as pretentious, but to hear that a musical score, one of my favorites in particular, is considered pretentious just flabbergasts me.