Anime 438 Phantom The Animation

Phantom The Animation is a short OVA about a young man, meeting an assassin while she was carrying out her job. Thus leading to the story of this OVA.
The story is short and simple; a young man is taken by an organization and being trained by their number one hit man ‘Phantom’. Despite being only three episodes long, the story was well delivered. It was straightforward, sweet, and action packed.

The animation is pretty good. The back grounds are well detailed; the action scenes are swift and smooth. However; the character design could use more work. It is not as detailed as the sceneries, which ... is the only fault I could find in the animation. Aside from that, everything else was well done.
The sound is good, both the OP and the ED are remarkable, in my opinion. The voice acting is good, much better than what you’d expect from English dubs. Even though I don’t like dubs, but I have to admit that it was very well done. The inserted music is quite nice, nothing too awesome and nothing too bad either.

The characters are probably the best part of this OVA. All characters are unique in their own way, and you will probably not forget about them as soon as you are done with the OVA. The two main characters Ein and Zwei stands out on their own, they are well portrayed, they deliver their emotions without exaggeration, and we are even able to know more about their pasts. Other characters, despite their brief appearance, are also memorable. You are not going to forget any of them soon.

Phantom The animation has action, drama, and a bit of romance. It is a dark OVA, there are not much happy moments in it, and it is intense. All good things to be in a story about hit men. There are no happy moments. All there is is what people have to do to survive and go on with their lives. The characters will not change, they will grow and develop, especially the male lead, they will have to deal with their situations, with what they have to do in order to survive.

ADAPTATION: Phantom: The Animation is an OVA series that is supposed to be an adaptation of the Visual Novel called "Phantom of Inferno". However, only chapter 1 of the VN is adapted and more then half of scenes from there were removed and the rest have been changed completely.

STORY: Those who have played the Visual Novel or watched "Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom" anime series will see that the base of the story is the same, but that "Phantom: The Animation" changed almost every scene. In addition, some plot developments are useless (Zwei being offered his memories back didnt't serve the plot at all), we ... know nothing about the organisation whom Ein and Zwei serve, not even its reason for existence or why they are opssesed with killing various mafia bosses and a guy called Scyhte Master is here literally a evil genius with his own base with badass monitors and his own personal army.
Also, Ein and Zwei are for some reason LITERALY superhuman. While they are supposed to be superior to other people, "Phantom: The Animation" crosses the border by leting them ALWAYS fight against armies of enemies and usually kill their opponents with clean headshots while running around.

ART: Art is ugly, characters often look different from scene to scene and camera angles that are used screw up the character designs more often then not.

SOUND: Soundtrack, OP song and ED song are nice to listen to and are probably teh only good thing in this anime

CHARACTERS: Both the Visual Novel and the TV series depend on characters, their developments and their life in their cruel world of crime and killing. "Phantom: The Animation" also tries to make good use of characters, but it fails. Their relationship develops suddenly, them becoming enemies is not dramatic at all and they seem like real souless characters about whom is hard to care.

ENJOJMENT: If you are not picky and like to watch gunfights, you may enjoj this anime. If you are interested in good plot or characters, then don't bother watching this as you will waste 90 minutes of your life.

OVERALL: Bad plot, lack of character development and badly executed story are just some of things that make this anime a bad one. If you like the premise, I suggest picking up either the Visual Novel called "Phantom of Inferno" (which has been translated) or watch the TV series "Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom" which is a much better execution of the same thing.

I seen someone say that this is an adaptation for the VN. I didn't read further but, if this OVA stayed clear of changing things from the VN, Phantom: The Animation is really boring and confusing at first. As the first episode went by, i couldn't understand what was really going on or why they even had a reason to pick the guy to wipe his memories clean and be picked as someone to be an assassin. While the OP sounds really good, it hypes you up to just be disappointed in the underwhelming 3 episodes. Hopefully while watching the full 12 episode series, i ... will enjoy that more than i enjoyed this.