Noir Snow

If something can count as a good quasi Christmas episode just from featuring Snowy weather (Western TV tends to pretend it only Snows at Christmas and New Years even though in my experience Winter is only just starting then) then the Sixth Episode of my personal favorite Anime, Noir, makes a pretty good one.  It’s an episode titled simply Snow.

It’s not quite as cheerful and uplifting as what I’d generally prefer to promote at Christmas time, but it’s not typical Dark and Edgy Anti-Christmas Nihilism either.



Spoilers Ahead!


It’s early in the show when things are still self contained, so you’re not likely to miss out on much choosing to watch this episode first.  The show is about a pair of female professional assassins, and Kiraka’s main angst is feeling bad about the fact that she doesn’t feel bad about killing people.  In any other show I’d probably be mocking that but trust me this one makes it work.

The show also establishes early on that our MCs pretty much only take jobs where the victim is also a criminal or done something horrible, they make no pretense that they’re actually avenging anti-heroines, but it’s a common tactic in shows like this to keep the audience morally comfortable with rooting for professional killers.  Yet the show proceeds to undermine that very tactic by constantly humanizing most of their targets.

So the target for this episode (set vaguely in Eastern Europe) is introduced as some old man living as a hobo, but he must have a lot of money hidden somewhere since he’s actually constantly helping feed all the homeless and poor people in the neighborhood.  But we learn the people who ordered this hit are what remains of some obscure ethnic minority who this man decades ago oversaw the genocide of running something like a concentration camp, but seemingly a Soviet one rather than a Nazi one.  It’s presumed his current good deeds are motivated by some sense of deep guilt over his past sins.

By random chance Kirika meets his pet cat which leads to them bonding, he seems like a pretty swell guy currently.  Mirelle does some digging and learns that his involvement in that past genocide was motivated by his family being killed by members of this that ethnic group when he was a child, because he too is part of some obscure ethnic minority.  It’s apparently some long held mutual hatred between these two peoples that no one even remembers the origin of anymore.  “From ancient grudge break to new mutiny.”

So Mirelle jumps to going on about how they still have to kill him and none of this takes away the atrocities he committed, and Kiraka makes clear she’s not flinching at all and insists on pulling the trigger.  She does, and then laments how she still doesn’t feel remorse for it.

Update November 2019:  I made the comment about "feeling bad about not feeling bad", but the truth I do relate to that kind of situation in both this Anime and others.  I've never killed anyone obviously but I can relate to not feeling my emotions the way I think I'm supposed to and wondering if that means there's something wrong with me.