Noir, my favoerite Anime, or up there.

Noir held the title of my favorite Anime for a long time.

It was not exactly but kinda my introduction to Anime.  A 90s kid can be into Pokemon, Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z without being a proper Otaku at all, they were really mainstream.  Noir was the first Anime I watched that the kids I went to school with probably hadn't.  And it's theme song probably the first time I ever heard singing in the Japanese language.

Until like 2 or 3 years ago there were probably less then 10 Animes I was intimately familiar with.  Then I watched Madoka Magica and Utena, and Utena became my favorite Anime, and since then I've watched a lot of Anime, I'm getting to the point where Anime is almost all I want to watch anymore.

Sometimes though, I go a long time without watching the very things I consider my favorites.  And so this last week I watched Noir again for the first time since I discovered Utena and Madoka and for awhile before that really.  And I quickly found myself wondering if it has regained the top spot.

Utena is much more ambitious and intricate as a work of high art.  But Noir is much more re-watchable for me personally.  Back in the day I would restart right after finishing, and now I find myself in that place again even as I have a much wider variety of Anime to choose from.

I still haven't watched Noir in the original Japanese.  Maybe it's time I did view it Subbed rather then Dubbed if I'm going to re-label it my favorite.

Utena however requires my undivided attention far too much for me to ever feel the Sub is worth investing my time into.

First thing I noticed about Madoka when I watched it the first time was how much the Music felt conceptually similar to Noir, and indeed I learned it had the same Music director.  Madoka is also closer to Noir then Utena in how re-watchable it is for me.  I've still gone though all of Utena only once.

Maybe it's simply that I'm just Nostalgic for Noir and Madlax in a way I can't be for any Anime besides the 90s big three.  It wasn't brand new when I first watched it, it was like 2005 or 2006, but that's a decade ago now.

I'm disappointed Bee Train's Girls With Guns trilogy hasn't gotten the kind of Youtube attention many other Anime has.  There was one Abridged series of Noir that covered only the first 4 episodes, and that's it from the abridgers.  And there are some AMVs and a couple reviews.  But no YTPs or Crack videos, or Mash Ups to the trailers of The Dark Knight films or Star Wars films or Mean Girls.  I frankly think Friday-Monday would make a perfect to mash up to Ledger's Joker.

Maybe they're just in a bizarre place where they kind of predate the births of many of those trends and yet for most still don't have the Nostalgia value of 90s Anime.