If you're in the anime fandom and have been paying attention to the recent season, one of the breakout shows is Birdie Wing, and for good reason. It's a damn solid series that does that special thing anime does where it takes a ludicrous concept 100% seriously, and makes magic happen. In this case, we have the relationship between a female junior championship golfer, and a woman involved with the mafia in the intense world of underground golf gambling. Nothing makes a birdie putt more interesting than the fact that if you don't, you and the family of illegal immigrants you're fighting to protect will be killed as a result.
Anyway, why we're here today is Birdie Wing takes place in the fictional country Nafrece. Nafrece is a construct of writer Yousuke Kuroda, prolific anime writer of over two decades whose career stretches from Tenchi Muyo! scripts to currently being in charge of My Hero Academia's series composition. The thing is he didn't use the stand-in for a generic, wealthy European nation in just one series. No no, it's now officially been in THREE series, making it eligible for those expanded universe dealies everyone's been talking about lately.
The previous show it featured in the Nafreciverse (...We're still workin' on the name) was Valkyrie Drive Mermaid, a show my former editor called a gross and abusive waste of time, while my wife considers it her most guilty of guilty pleasures. It's the FIRST title that uses the country, however, that has gotten a renewed focus, as it's not really on any streaming platform, giving it mystique it never had before. Also, as with Birdie Wing, it is about a blonde in hot pants who has do whatever she has to do to survive while being connected to a more naive girl from an affluent family. They're twinsies, except in the thousands of way they are not. It's 2004's Madlax.
The first question, and the one that once it's answered, I'm sure you'll run straight away from the rest of the article, is what does it have to do with Birdie Wing? Next to nothing, really. The major item is they borrowed some of the visual ideas, mainly jazzing up night scenes with hints of light neon to make them more visually interesting, and the use of colored "bullets" to indicate different golf shots is directly taken from Madlax's opening, where the two main characters dodge literal bullets with colored trails. That's about it. Beyond Nafrece being an intentional almost anagram of France, which gives a specific location of the illegal golf mafia, that's all I could unearth. What's most surprising is the borrowing visually from a show by Bee Train.
The infamous Bee Train is a studio called an "animator hospital" run by Koichi Mashimo. By run, I mean he was the only person holding the foundations while everyone else seemed to be knocking down every support beam they could find. I've written plenty on them. Basically, its mission was to foster artistic development and freedom, and in practice, made very statically animated series that are way too long and often had payoffs that weren't worth the wait. Mashimo has made some good work on $10 budgets like Eat-Man, but it wasn't two-cour, and its story about the apocalypse was character based, and not an epic tale spanning the world about Illuminati-esque organizations. But they did do the cutscenes for Xenogears, so there's that.
Madlax is the middle child of the "Girls with Guns" trilogy, following the surprising success of Noir. I say surprising, because Noir is one of the biggest wastes of time I have ever seen. Anyway, this is the first and last time Bee Train ever had a budget large enough to equal the higher end of their contemporaries, and it was released at the height of the anime boom of the mid 00's. With all of that wind at its sails, it's no surprise that... it was immediately dismissed and had little public discourse.
The people who loved Noir hated Madlax because the story was paced slower than the previous series (In that there is actually a story and not just still frames of a dozen men in black being shot and a wide panorama of Paris suggesting the leads got away). The people who hated Noir hated Madlax because it's BEE TRAIN. Of course it's terrible. From the first episode, it indicates it's more of the same shit with an invincible lead effortlessly shooting a literal army, and everyone missing her like she's an ant two miles away. By the way, most of these people ONLY watched the first episode and made their opinion based on it. Those on this end of the Pacific assigned to watch the series mostly gave it above average marks, put it back on the shelf, and never watched or thought about it again. Even I HATE BEE TRAIN signed off from their one job ten years ago. That is all until the underworld of golfing got everybody genuinely curious.
You want to know about Madlax? I have it right here and I can tell you all about it. The thing is... I actually REALLY like it. You're going to have to hear about Madlax from someone who thinks it's a pretty good show, an offensive crime to the elder statesmen of anime. Come at me. I have fencing medals.
WORD OF WARNING: The dub has a sex pest in one of the 8 main roles. I'd recommend the Japanese language track, if nothing else because Sanae Kobayashi's performance as Madlax is surprisingly versatile. Also, the sex pest is a big part of the extra in every DVD where they make parody dubs of moments from the series that are... uncomfortable in hindsight.
ANYWAY, I just said ALL of that stuff about how I like this show, but I am at first confronted with the hysterically awful title Bee Train CHOSE to put in their opening. This is bad. This is like a title card for a 90's European PC game that was slapped together by two people with no art department, and they NEEDED something to put on the box in an hour. There is NOTHING in this graphic that looks good, aptly captures the feel of the series, or even could conjure up an accurate guess of what GENRE we're in.
Strange, because the OP's pretty good otherwise. It has a nice song by Yuki Kajiura at the height of her "badass new age music" phase. You can absolutely lead off an opening about a show with mystery and bloodshed in an intense civil war with the flute, and be just fine with her at the helm. The rest of the opening flows nicely, and while Bee Train's use of repeating ideas to lessen the workload of OPs shows up, it makes sense here with two leads, and it doesn't feel cheap beyond some poorly-aged 3DCG.
The ED, where we have underaged (At least, in the U.S.) girls swimming naked in a martini glass with their nips edited out placed next to guns while there are abstract depictions of war and suffering shoved in to try to make some sort of weird James Bond thing, is another story. Skip that one.
The story centers on Madlax, a 16-year-old girl who acts as an assassin/war zone escort/McGuffin grabber in Gazth-Sonika, a country that has been in a devastating civil war for 12 years. Neither working for the government or the rebellion, she instead takes orders from the mysterious SSS (Pronounced "three speed") and dives into danger, having an almost mystical ability to shoot everyone who stands in her way and avoids even bullets shot directly at her (She has The Master from Manos: The Hands of Fate skills). Unlike Noir where it was lazy writing, it's a feature this time and not a bug. While that's not super reassuring, it means they are aware of and try to write around this issue. In practice, Madlax is usually paired with someone in an episode who is far more vulnerable, giving her an initial character trait that those who hear her name don't live to spread it.
On seemingly the other end of the world in Nafrece is Margaret Burton. The sole survivor of a wealthy family, she went missing with the rest of the passengers of an airplane, returning mysteriously in the middle of the night only able to say the word, "Madlax." An incomplete shell of a person, she struggles to stay awake in her high school classes, and is seemingly connected to a higher level of reality than her mind can process, coming off as extremely eccentric when she makes predictions that don't come true... except in Gazth-Sonika. Thankfully, she is in the protection of the family's loyal maid Elenore, the de-facto parent even though they are about the same age. Also getting involved with her life is Vanessa, her next-door neighbor and former tutor, who finds her job at the corporation Bookwald has way more to do with the civil war in Gazth-Sonika than she could ever have imagined. She is the connecting tissue who will bring both leads together.
Madlax and Margaret share a few seemingly psychic thoughts, mostly Madlax craves pasta she can't make herself, which makes Margaret ask for it every night. There is a connection between the two that goes beyond coincidence, and the story makes the slow march to reveal what that connection is, solving the mysteries of 12 years ago, and what's really behind the seemingly endless civil war of Gazth-Sonika.
In-between all of this, there are two children, Laetitia and Poupee, who hang in a bombed-out town one of them calls "normal," and they exchange some pretentious dialogue and try to warn people who get too close to where they are. This is probably explained way later than it should be.
What it mostly means is the show in the first half is balanced by having an action episode and then a character episode. While both sides handle chunks of the story, Madlax mostly has to figure out how to carry out her mission, and Margaret gets to do eccentric banter with Elenore and Vanessa. This time around, I found the chemistry between the Nafrece women more enjoyable, especially Elenore's dry wit with everyone else (The dub changes a couple of her jokes because they sometimes don't scan AS jokes). Elenore treats Vanessa like they've been married for years, and Elenore as Margaret's keeper is infinitely patient and sweet. She also has to be the one who helps everyone survive their ridiculous whims. If she wasn't there, everyone would just wander into a country that has an active civil war and immediately get killed, I swear....
The story was first thought up by producer Shigeru Kitayama, rewritten by Mashimo, and when Kuroda was hired, he shuffled EVERYTHING around in a mad blaze to make a show that had dozens of elements from the supernatural to political intrigue. The likely most contentious change involved taking the main character Margaret Burton who was codenamed Madlax, and changed her into two DIFFERENT main characters. Rather than meeting immediately and acting as partners like the other girls with guns trilogy leads do, they are at opposite ends of the story who follow their own paths through the maze.
If you ever read through the reviews of the show from the time that say the pacing is slow for an action show, this is likely the cause, and on my official third viewing, I have a few reasons why. The other two series survive on the chemistry between the two leads (At least in theory. While the duo in El Cazador de la Bruja are perfectly charming, if you got any emotions off Noir, good for you), and this series subverts the expectation of that partnership, banter, and other such easier ways to get into a show. Kuroda wanted to take a harder route, and Mashimo spurred it on with fake yelling arguments in front of the other staff. At least Kuroda says it was fake.
The other reasons involve some writing theory, so put a pin in that while we address the rest of the series.
I keep thinking every time I revisit this show that I'm grading it on a curve. Bee Train titles are Koichi Mashimo using every parlor trick in the anime handbook to make a low-budget show. Storyboarding complex settings to keep the eye from noticing the characters aren't moving, cutting away to a master shot and sound effects implying something is going on without showing it, or the grand Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle trick of making surrounding characters little digital dots in the distance so you don't even have to make character designs for background extras! Boy, I'm sure glad Clamp doesn't just hand off their titles to any old anime studio who asks anymore....
However, Madlax looks straight-up GOOD, regardless of who's making it. Beyond some of the closeup shots going into the speed line dimension, the surroundings are lush, the action sequences are choreographed reasonably well where we get to see characters move in space with each other, and when setting shots are hung on, the backgrounds utilize the previously-mentioned technique of adding subtle patches of neon light to make it look more pleasing and active. Even in a relatively low-animated encounter like a small gunfight in episode 12 that is mostly about the two characters hiding and avoiding noise, it has nice touches like starting in a restaurant with customers that are clearly there and are animated leaving when guns are pulled to explain why the area is suddenly abandoned, unlike almost every encounter in Noir that take place in the infamous ghost town Paris.
And at the very least, while they still don't really show much blood, they don't MAKE IT A PLOT POINT IN AN EPISODE THAT THE BAD GUYS FOLLOW A BLOOD TRAIL TO CALL ATTENTION TO IT. GOD, NOIR, YOU SUCK.
The character designs, by three different people, are distinct enough that you always know who you're looking at, but united enough to feel like you're watching the same show. You're not going to see anybody that really breaks the mold. Vanessa, Elenore, and Limelda all resemble your idea of 00's anime office gal, maid, and female sniper, respectively. But they are all pleasant and give little bits and bobs of individuality. The only thing that sticks out besides the seemingly Aztec-based tribe in the middle of Asia (WE'LL GET THERE, I PROMISE) is that Margaret's distinct feature of two braids are the items that most go off-model into cylinders half the time.
I'm not going to say it looks as good or as distinct as the best products of 2004. Does it look better than Paranoia Agent or Gankutsuou? Absolutely not. But could I put a Bee Train show in the top ten best looking shows of 2004 and get away with it? Yes. That is a ludicrous statement at any other time.
Moving along to one of Yuki Kajiura's Bee Train scores that are famous or infamous depending on who you ask. The first thing is I need to state is that the music is GREAT, and that by itself is never the problem. Anyone who tells you Yuki Kajiura wasn't a good composer until Garden of Sinners/Modoka is WRONG. The problem is often here how it's used, and in the case of Noir, overused. Kajiura provided 2 CDs+ worth of mystical, mysterious music to the show, but either by Mashimo's decree or Kajiura's Wagner influence where every character must hang out with their theme music being DEADLY when combined with Bee Train's habit of repetition, the one song anybody remembers is its action theme "Salva Nos." It's a banger, sure, but it would play once per episode, twice, maybe even THREE times if you're "lucky." It happened so much I was able to study the song piece-by-piece and find a tedious hi-hat sample loop in the background that immediately hijacks the piece and makes the original version unlistenable.
The music is good, so you notice it, which means you'll also notice when it's being overused, the opposite of Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom's fake Yuki Kajiura music which is compositional vapor of vague atmosphere that goes nowhere. Yet I had to hear half the people who reviewed it say they were relieved that Kajiura was replaced with a "better" composer. This is the one part I'm going to be snippy about, because that's just bullshit. Unless you really like Phantom's ultra silly, out-of-nowhere hip-hop cues. That's stupid fun, and I totally get that.
Back to Madlax. I'm not going to say the approach is much different here. It's dominated by placing certain themes at certain times in the story. What changes here is, again, the story is divided up. Kajiura has THE action song in "Nowhere," and it's even better than "Salva Nos." It kind of spoils the plot a bit if you pay too much attention to the lyrics, but eh, whatever. Does it play at every action sequence? Sure. However, since Margaret episodes don't require it, there are an entirely different sets of songs when the story shifts to Nafrece. More variety of music plays, which means you don't get tired of it as much. There is a theme when things get chaotic that gets a little irksome, and the music that often opens episodes gets tiresome, but overall, it's a far more balanced menu than other Mashimo/Kajiura joints tend to be.
As for the quality, it isn't quite the kitchen sink of new age music Noir's soundtrack is. Despite what was used in-show, that score was Kajiura's breakout, so it makes sense that it was more enthusiastic and energetic. There's less variety here, and the stuffy setting of Nafrece leads to slower cues, but it's an effective score mostly driven by strings, piano, and chanting with European and Middle Eastern influences. While Kajiura's electronics-enhanced choir of women plays a vital role, there are also creepy male vocalists who do a track of almost primal screaming in Elies, the made-up language of an ancient civilization that makes up one of the cruxes of the show.
The character themes also "pay off." The back end of the soundtrack is loaded with tracks are used in the latter half that musically describe what happens to the characters. It's nothing revolutionary, but they add texture to the series as it builds to the climax, and give the effective final punctuation on the more touching or dramatic moments. Hey, how about that?
Enough of my music nerdery. For the show as a whole, Mashimo and Kuroda state that it's something of a war on "form." At its base, Madlax is scrambling the elements of Noir into completely separate purposes. There are still the archetypes of characters from the former series, but they do different things and act differently towards each other as the story dictates to create something entirely new. I think that was part of the pitch, anyway. With that and Kuroda's desire to throw everything he has into it from mystical ancient civilizations to worldwide criminal organizations, you might think it's trying to be higher minded, but it's as pulp as pulp can get until the last few episodes.
If I had to say what the show is about, it's how memories or lack thereof can shape a person or reality, or how the first world and the third world are connected to each other in far more intimate ways than the separation would imply.
The main enemy in the series is an international organization called Enfant, and they get people working for them by "awakening" them, which scrambles their memories and breaks them down to their core, as shown in episode 4 where a detective investigating a murder comes out the other end as an agent working for them. That's not to mention the many characters who are fragmented, live a false existence, or dive into far more dangerous waters based on what pieces of their lives were taken away from them.
As for the message that vibes with The Police song "One World," Vanessa's story is all about how the war profiteering eventually becomes irresistible for wealthy counties. Vanessa works for an art investment company called Bookwald, and through various developments, finds out far more of her work involves smuggling arms to Gazth-Sonika than she would like. No matter how far away and no matter how much it doesn't have to do with us, the chaos of endless warfare does eventually leave its mark on us.
It should be noted these are reaches made by me who is writing an essay finding things to talk about. The ending brings some of the ideas to their completion, but it doesn't bring the show together as much as it would like, or even bothers to answer basic loose ends. We'll Thunderdome the ending in the spoiler section.
Most of the series is acting on one end or the other to move Madlax or Margaret on the road to each other, and that is mostly what the series is concerned with and not broader points. The enjoyment (or not) comes with how the viewer follows that journey and gets involved with it than what it means. I personally liked the light stride through the story with the characters, and while there's nothing top-tier, everything sits on "very good" enough that it was a breeze to watch for the first time, and that never happened before or again with Bee Train.
This viewing, I did get why the pacing was trouble for the show. Mainly, it needed A-B plotting. It's usually with TV shows that have five or more main characters and have to give each of the actors something to do where each episode has two stories that occupy the time of one cluster of the cast or another. Episodes of Madlax will often focus on almost entirely one character or the other with only brief appearances by the opposite lead, and the scripts tend to not have enough content to fill out the entire 24 minutes. On top of the pacing feeling snappier, the A-B plotting also tends to cover the thin parts of the scripts or adds more character moments when the other plot is laser focused, which Madlax probably could've used.
The first episode involves Madlax trying to get a data disc from two rebels in the civil war as the army begins to surround them. It's fine enough as an introduction, but it also sets Madlax's story as a person who is surrounded by characters who don't stay in her life. While she has a surprising amount of sweetness and empathy for her assignments, most will wind up dead as the nature of the beast, some by her own hand. The only character who stays in the story is her rival Limelda, a sniper in the Gazth-Sonika military, and they don't talk a lot for obvious reasons. For sustained character interaction, we have to go to Margaret's story, where she and Elenore reconnect with Vanessa, Margaret's old tutor. They have to pull the weight for the series' charm and lesbian undertones until the plot moves into full gear, but that is not where the action is, so it's a slower ride.
I can't fault the positioning of the story, because even if there are signs Kuroda is not 100% sure where this is all going, it's clearly organized and all momentum is forward. From a structural standpoint, each episode builds off the information of the last, and even if there are bits of repeated information that plagued Noir to keep spinning its wheels, it's in the service of informing why people are doing what they're doing now. However, putting story from both sides in single episodes I feel would've given more balanced plotting that would keep from underlining the early action scenes have no tension since Madlax is invincible while her targets or escorts reach the same fate regardless, and there's only so much you can do with the implied intrigue on the Nafrece side with almost no inherent danger.
What probably brings this down more is the villains. Making all of this happen is Friday Monday, a poncy dude with a Phantom of the Opera eyepiece. While one guy causing unlimited chaos and fucking up the world is FAR more resonant these days than in 2004, there's still a lack of presence, even if he is surprisingly buff given how much his day is made up of looking at computer screens and calling his man in the field, Carrossea Doon. Doon is a charismatic, friendly fellow who makes sure all of the metaphorical machines for Monday's civil war keep running, and to find the remaining two books in a collection of an ancient, unknown civilization to the one Monday has, forever war can spread to the entire world, theoretically. However, despite how creepily persuasive and polite Doon is-even sleeping with sniper Limelda to get her to be his personal military muscle-when he has to get things done himself, he leaves a lot to be desired.
To describe this properly, we have to get to the bare bones, video game plot version of what we're doing. There are three books of an ancient civilization written in what are called Elies characters. These three books, when brought together, can rewrite reality, and even reading some of the Elies characters can cause madness, such as a person at the archaeological site first discovering cave paintings of the characters shooting the rest of the party. Monday has the first book, Firstari, Margaret has the second book, Secondari, a "picture book" she's had since her return, and Thirstary has yet to show itself. I imagine once Friday Monday gets Thirstary, he will destroy the world with immense horniness. Yes, these are goofy names.
Margaret's book has a missing page and blood soaks some of the others, so she hires a bibliodetective Eric Gillain (Yes, a bibliodetective. They exist) in ignorant hopes of finding another copy. We'll leave the fact that Gillain has a thematically-relevant story about a memory block of brutally killing the trio of men responsible for murdering his sister to the side. ANYWAY, the guy makes photocopies of the cover and book that find their way to Doon. Wanting Secandari for himself to get out from under Friday Monday's control, Doon has to outmatch Margaret and her protector Elenore (Who DOES know martial arts, as she is an anime maid). He absolutely does not do this, and the fact that he keeps getting interrupted to do Monday's bidding and not "stir suspicion" in the act of trying makes it worse.
What we have is villains who, despite having the ultimate ability to totally mess up the lives of our heroes (And at one point, Monday does get to Madlax's mind, but it's kind of a plot cul du sac, all though it's really supposed to be a hint and Sanae Kobayashi's performance is spot-on in giving it), they have no inherent danger about them. Doon does get Limelda on his side to rival Madlax, but there is only one brief point that Madlax would be outmatched despite her calling Limelda a "scary woman," and they do little with it except making Limelda something of a Wile E. Coyote.
The gray characters should bring more to the table. Once Eric finds the ancient village in Gazth-Sonika that houses the origins of the Elies, it stirs the attention of the tribe there, mainly Quanzitta, the final guardian of the Elies texts, and her protege Nakhl. They too want the books united again, except for the purpose keeping them away from rat bastards who like forever wars. So Nakhl hitches a ride on the same plane Doon flies to track Margaret. While completely inconspicuous in her Incan/Aztec attire even though she's from a central Asian country and has an Arabic name, neither she nor Doon can get a simple book from a tiny 16-year-old girl with no combat ability. At least Doon has the excuse of the more he talks to Margaret, the more he would rather be her ally instead. Turns out Nakhl and Quanzitta are "discerners of the era," more watchers than doers, and just want to make sure who has the books has the "Gift" to activate them.
Where we should be is at that cheesy goodness that anime fans enjoy, halfway into the show. All of this is done with a straight face, all of it absolutely ridiculous. But it's not somehow. There are action sequences that are about to break out, but they don't. There are setups to dangerous situations, but they're diffused. The middle of this show goes on to put Madlax herself into an incredibly vulnerable position, but nothing happens except add that second Yuki Kajiura action cue to add to the supposed escalating action. Yet I'm still enjoying this.
Then it hit me: This is how a writer builds a story on the page, and not how an action series/movie or an anime does it. It adds pieces of the mystery like a novel, and each bit gets you closer to the truth, and while there is danger, it's more of a distraction, mostly because action is extremely difficult to write. When international best-seller mystery novels are adapted, you don't really hear about their dynamite action sequences.
After Kuroda took over and completely rewrote the concept that the producer and director had already hammered out, Mashimo just let him go. Spit out whatever you've got, and they'll animate it. You have information on cannabinoids and the helianthus flower you want to throw in? Hell, Mashimo will just write the word "Cannabinoids" on the music menu, and they'll use whatever Yuki Kajiura comes up with.
The contrast is that an anime normally works these bits of truth in AFTER they've earned it. Birdie Wing, for instance. Every step of that show is built on Eva winning life-or-death games of golf, and the truth about herself and her opponents is revealed as she competes. Part of the texture and character of the show is that everything operates on these high stakes consistently without cheating. The thing about Madlax is it FEELS like a show that should do this, and doesn't. In fact, it lays the groundwork to do this, and either the situation peters out, or the action scene is a brief burst, only happening because it needs to.
For once, this isn't Bee train being cheap, but a writer who doesn't really see drawn-out action sequences as necessary, especially given Madlax's abilities that already make most battles pre-determined. It's flavoring, not the meal, but some people are being sold this IS the meal, so in their view, nothing happens. Meanwhile, I'm the writer who sees the writing is taking a bunch of ideas and connecting them to make some sort of harmony, and going, "This makes sense to me."
All of that said, the lead up to the climax IS everything the series should be for awhile. Episode 18 is a slam-bang of an episode constantly moving between different conflicts as everyone is converging. It even has one of those moments where they drop the opening theme at a dramatic time it totally earns. As we are moving to more permanent and lasting events, the character dynamics shift and we get to see everyone in new light. Also, depending on your taste for it, the barrage of chunky, goofy dialogue said with utter conviction even though it has never been said by any real human is either a delight or a deep sigh. "I'll forgive my own existence by killing you," is probably the funniest example.
This leads the cast into the deepest warzone in Gazth-Sonika. Since the civil war is a distortion of reality, the people are becoming distorted as well, and the real conflict comes from everyone reacting to their sudden shifts. This is when things get WILD, but probably not in the way you expect or want. I feel like now is a good time for a CLEAR DIVE INTO THE SPOILER SECTION! GOD, THIS IS GOING TO BE SO LONG, AND MOST OF IT IS JUST EXPLAINING STUFF. I'M SORRY, BUT IT'S ESSENTIAL TO COMING TO AN OPINION ON THE ENDING. IF YOU STOP HERE, MY OPINION IS I THINK THE SHOW IS A MESS OF A PROJECT THAT I ENJOY BECAUSE I LIKE THE CHARACTERS, MUSIC, AND THE LOOK, AND EVEN THE STUFF THAT FRUSTRATES ME HAS AN ENERGY THAT KEEPS ME INVESTED. THE LAST EPISODE IS JUST SHIT, THOUGH.
First, some levity for anime fans of old cinema. I'm 90% sure Margaret's father's name is Richard Burton. His dog tags with a bullet in them only give about one or two other options, though in the series, he is only referred by name as "Madlax." DON'T TALK ABOUT OUR PLOT TWIST, MARTHA.
Anyway, the three books of courage, wisdom, and power (I'm not calling them by their stupid names, and they're green, blue, and red) are brought together by Nakhl and Quinzitta, and the two people who can activate the books are Margaret Burton and Carrossea Doon, who turn out to be only survivors of when their plane crashed 12 years ago accidentally flying into the chaos Friday Monday started (PROTIP: If you are a commercial airliner and fly directly into a giant shadow of a laughing villain, you are flying too low). They are the only ones who can open the Door of Truth to... the truth. It's also a magical layer above reality that can allow people to meet spiritually, can kick you to another location if you choose not to open it, and has a connection to the land of the dead. The last two are more important as we go down plot twist alley, and Doon decides to open it in all its goopy 00's digital effects glory, while Margaret isn't ready for reasons that will soon be clear.
Where do we start? It turns out Doon has been dead this whole time. Not kidding. After the plane crashed, and Margaret and Doon meet up, they cross paths with Friday Monday laughing like a maniac while Margaret's father, a mercenary in act of searching for Margaret, confronts Friday Monday ,and shoots him in the eye, which explains the Phantom of the Opera getup. However, when Margaret tries to go to her father, Doon anticipates the gunfire about to come her way, and he jumps in front of it, getting him killed. By the way, Friday only knows Margaret's dad as codename "Madlax," so this is why Margaret only remembers his name when she returns home.
Afterwards, Friday Monday distorts reality to revive Doon since he has still the Gift, and creates a fake future, leaving his actually identity to "Poupee," the blonde kid in the "normal" world that turns out to be behind the Door of Truth. Because the Door of Truth only has truth, by entering it, both Doon and Poupee die because his physical body has touched reality, leaving Margaret by herself, kicked out with the three books and Friday Monday nearby to take advantage of the situation. Man, the Door of Truth's kind of an asshole.
So who is Laetitia, the other child beyond the door? Why, Margaret's doll who got Margaret's sadness attached to her and given sentience after what happened next in this flashback. Margaret has to face the choice of being killed by her mercenary father who was awakened by Friday Monday to find his "true essence" or kill him instead. Not able to pull the trigger, the magic reality affecting the place along with her Gift created Madlax, a "kind killer" who can take the responsibility of the act. How she got the matching jacket and earring set with the logo of original Richard Burton's mercenary group later in life, we may never know.
So Margaret created Madlax to hide the responsibility of murdering her father, even in self defense, and then created Laetitia based around her doll to hide her sadness for doing so. Really. REALLY really.
Whatever you may have thought this show was going to bloom into, dollars-to-yen you weren't thinking The Land of Existential Crisis. There are action portions where all the main characters have to make it through Enfant's intense military battery, and mostly having their roles either reversed or taken away. Vanessa, who hired Madlax as a bodyguard when she went to Gazth-Sonika and almost stupidly got herself killed ten times, now is the one who has to protect an injured Madlax, and dies doing so. Elenore, who always is THE person who has everything under control, can do nothing but bury her best friend, and immediately gets caught trying to go to Margaret.
The most extreme is Margaret, who Friday Monday has manipulated enough to believe he is her father. Margaret at this point only knows Madlax killed her real father (I don't get the logic here, either, but everyone's off psychologically at this point), and Friday is more than eager to fan those flames, get Margaret to kill Madlax, and then use her Gift to warp the truth of humanity to be free of morals and exist as their "pure essences" he has been awakening in people. The only person who can't be fucked with is Elenore, whose essence is pure love, but unfortunately, she took a back full of machine gun fire, and could only reach Margaret in a magic reality between life and death.
What this ultimately leads up to is Margaret, without anyone to protect her or make decisions, has to decide if she can accept the responsibility and the emotional weight of what she did, even in self defense, and what happens to the parts of herself that have turned into actual people if she does.
I do have to say angry, impulsive, violent Margaret is pretty damn disturbing.
OH BOY, THAT WAS A LOT. Now how the hell am I going to explain what I though of it? The ending is a sample platter of anime fads from the time. The ending's moral/lesson/whatever, is that humanity separated from morals and responsibility for individual actions is a chaotic, destructive mess that can barely maintain a semblance of civilization. This is not so different from the ultimate lesson of Paranoia Agent. The addition here is how we treat the third world as different from us is causing a ripple that may eventually swallow us.
On another end, this is when the writing of Nasu began to get popular in Japanese otaku circles. Nasu is huge for the Fate/Stay series, and other works like The Garden of Sinners, but we as Americans didn't get that wave until we got the anime adaptations of his work that weren't C+ and forgettable. But his writing, especially dialogue, started to seep into projects at this time. It's a weird kind of philosophical shorthand where people put concepts into single words or phrases that get overused, and dump them into conversations no human would ever have while not explaining it until weirdly protracted epilogues that are just two people in a room. "You must use The Gift to touch The Essence beyond The Door in order to change humanity to its Truth." This kind of dialogue, especially used as an ending, sucks shit.
There are things I like in the ending, there are things I LOVE in the ending, but there are also things I HATE in the ending, and unfortunately to the detriment of Madlax's legacy, one of the third is the final episode as a whole, and it's why the show has disappeared in the memory of most people, only slightly revived by the work of another show.
The character moments are wonderful. If the whole venture is warping the people out of their roles to see if they still can exist how they are, then when they do survive intact or least make their death a meaningful expression of the love for the people left is rewarding. The death scenes are especially touching in the way death scenes should be, but what struck this time around is all of Madlax's self-actualizations are fantastic. "I'm fake? Who gives a fuck? That just means you EXTRA can't kill me. Even if a version of myself hates me, Vanessa loves me and made me promise to save the me who hates me, so that's what I'm gonna' do. And hey, Limelda, you can't kill me, I don't want to kill you, and you can't make me. You're going to have to deal with the fact that someone cares about you and accepts you." It's not executed at an extremely satisfying level like that (Everybody, STOP SAYING, "KIND KILLER"), but I was able to pick up on it now that I'm older.
HOWEVER............... WHO THE FUCK IS FRIDAY MONDAY?! THE JAPANESE VOICE ACTOR DOESN'T KNOW, KOICHI MASHIMO JUST LAUGHS AT ANYONE WHO ASKS, AND I'M SURE AS HELL THIS SERIES DOESN'T TELL ME! How did he get his version of the Gift? How was he able to just take the three books? Why does shooting him in the eye take away his gift? How does he survive getting shot in the head 10 times because that's what everyone fucking does to him after knowing him long enough?! Why does he spend the last episode just shitting philosophic garbage out of his mouth for half the running time when Margaret has taken the responsibility for killing her father, her guilt, and her ball, and is about to go home?!
I'm sure most of his character is built to be interpretation fodder. He has a belief that the reality of humanity is chaos, and that these rules and peace and morals are the real path to destruction. In my mind, he's the patron saint of those libertarian asshats who thinks shit like war is essential to trim down the human population, especially war in countries with a bunch of non-white people even though he's TOTALLY not racist or anything. Even though he gets owned all the time, he still has a long list of brainwashed helpers so he never has to do anything. The part where he gets creepy and groomy to an unassuming 16-year-old girl where he makes her call him "daddy" pretty much seals it for me.
But none of this makes a GOOD villain, or even a decent one. He's like a Nasu villain without any of the cool abilities or elaborate plans. Just the talking talking talking complete nonsense. I suppose he has the awakening, which brings people to their "true essence," which is usually bad shit we keep in check, but it doesn't get used in overly devious ways. With all the characters unknowingly given to Friday Monday by Madlax or that detective Margaret gives flowers to, they never come back and make a meaningful turn of the knife to show how many of their good deeds were for nothing. He doesn't even KNOW Margaret exists until the last minute before he has to put some plan in play.
So there he is in the last two episodes, just yacking away about the true nature of humanity, while everyone else completely takes active roles, some sacrificing their lives, and Margaret gets back on their side, unites herself, and then because she's been perceived by Vanessa and has her own will, Madlax becomes a real girl. Margaret also makes Laetitia real and takes her out of the realm of truth just because it seems like staying in a bombed-out village by herself, no matter how truthy, would be shitty. Finally, Friday Monday goes into the final episode still talking until Madlax's first act as a real human is to shoot him until he's actually dead. That guy sucked, and left us with five minutes of screentime to do the barest minimum of epilogue.
Do we get to flash forward to see how Margaret's new mom Limelda and other new mom Madlax are doing, even though Madlax is same age and was technically part of her at one point? Nah, 2004's too early for that. Do we get to know who SSS is, who he works for, and what their relationship to the civil war was? Of course not. What was the end result of that riot that for sure killed a bunch of people when Friday Monday almost made the chaos permanent? Can't say. They just drive off and that's the end, which would be fine if it wasn't a pulp anime series where finding out these loose ends and how they're tied together is supposed to be part of the pleasure instead of philosophical arguments. Well, bye, and thanks for giving the haters unlimited ammo!
Look, I don't need EVERYTHING tied together. We don't need to know who the ancient civilization who made the Elies texts were, or other such minor details. However, this isn't a series that thrives on leaving everything open for interpretation or discussion. That any talk about it disappeared after the ending is a pretty good sign of that.
I need to get out of here. I've written too much trying to find "the essence." Do I renounce the series after all of this? No. I've watched way too much bad Bee Train, which is, you know, 90% of what they did. This isn't it. It has energy, it has a vibe, it has characters I like, and a plot I want to follow. The ending leaves a LOT to be desired, even though it technically completes the one story it's supposed to. It still works for me as a whole, more than almost okay attempts like El Cazador de la Bruja, which has an even more letdown of an ending if you can believe it. It's just the way it goes out is a goddamn mess, and how it's a mess keeps it from being something special, even when being a good Bee Train show should be special enough. Am I caught in Bee Train's own distortion of reality, and having something that has ambition and actual animation counts as good enough? Maybe, but I've made my decision, and I'm the guy with the DVDs.
There. Anything else you want to know about Madlax?
