History Anime / TheDaughterOfTwentyFaces

[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/The_Daughter_of_Twenty_Faces_6588.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:''"He has many different faces...'' '''''and I'm one of them!''''' ''"'']]

''The Daughter of Twenty Faces'' (''Nijū Mensō no Musume'') is a action/mystery {{manga}} in the vein of ''Lupin the 3rd'' and ''CowboyBebop'' by Shinji Ohara which began serialized print in 2002 in ''Comic Flapper'' magazine. An anime adaptation began airing in Japan on April 12, 2008, produced by StudioBones and TMSEntertainment's Telecom Animation Film and promoted internationally as ''Chiko, Heiress of the Phantom Thief''. The focus of the story is Chizuko "Chiko" Mikamo, a young girl who desires to get away from her home [[spoiler:because her uncle and aunt have been slowly poisoning her]] and leaps at the chance when international GentlemanThief "Twenty Faces" comes to "steal" her. Abandoning her old life, she learns the way of proper cat burglary from Twenty and his merry band of men, and eventually must come to terms with Twenty's legacy and her position as The Daughter Of Twenty Faces. Similar to LupinIII, it is derivative from a work of classic detective fiction. Twenty Faces first appeared in the late 1920's as the WorthyOpponent of Endogawa Rampo's detective Akechi Kogorō, who is also featured later on.

Not related to the Creator/{{CLAMP}} manga, ''Manga/ManOfManyFaces'' (the title character is called "The Man of 20 Faces").
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'''This show provides examples of:''' (warning, spoilers follow)
* ActionGirl: Chiko
* BeachEpisode: Though fairly short and containing less {{Fanservice}} than normal.
* BewareTheNiceOnes: [[spoiler: Angie, who doesn't snap so much as she was always out to get Chiko, and seems oddly jealous of her even when playing nice. Angie also provides nice examples of TheDragon (playing a Chiko to Tiger's Twenty in the first narrative arc) and AxCrazy.]]
* BigBrotherInstinct: Ken and Chiko. It's so blatant that multiple characters [[LampshadeHanging hang a lampshade]] on it.
* BrickJoke: [[spoiler:The Anastasia Ruby]]
* CluelessDetective: Akine, chosen to locate Chiko by her aunt specifically because he's not very bright. Though he ''is'' brighter than most people around him think; he's probably fully capable of handling getting evidence for a divorce case, for example.
* ComingOfAgeStory: Absolutely, but Chiko doesn't have a "typical" childhood.
* CoolOldGuy: Kanchou/Skipper
* CoolShip: Twenty and his gang use a double-balloon airship as their main mode of transportation.
* DangerousSixteenthBirthday and/or GrowingUpSucks: Shunka has to cram all the excitement and wacky adventures she can get into her life before she turns sixteen and [[spoiler:gets stuck in an arranged marriage, which she figures will require her to become respectable and dull.]]
** Later subverted. [[spoiler: She seems to like her new fiance a lot.]]
* DeadLittleSister: At least two, belonging to [[spoiler: Shunka and Akine]]
* EverybodysDeadDave: [[spoiler: Episode 6, oh god. The only ones left after Tiger and his gang kill everyone are Chiko and Ken. Twenty's fate is left ambiguous, however.]]
* EvilEye
* ExactEavesDropping: Played straight ''twice'', first when Chiko finds out that Twenty wants a successor and hints that he wants it to be Chiko (d'aww) and again when she overhears a significant amount of plot exposition from Kayama in episode 8.
* {{Expy}}: The "white-haired demon" is a dead-ringer for Suigintou from RozenMaiden and seems to share her cruelly jealous personality. [[spoiler: She's even got the doll-joints down.]]
* FoeYay: [[spoiler: Kohei Kakihara]] is obsessed with Twenty Faces to the point, where he changes his appearance to look exactly like him and later tries to take Chiko under his wing. His main goal is to obtain Twenty's legacy, as he feels it was stolen from him a long time ago by Twenty himself.
* EyepatchOfPower: [[spoiler: Ken, after episode 6. The character also takes a turn for the DarkerAndEdgier at this point.]]
* GentlemanThief: Twenty, of course; he's practically the embodiment of every Gentleman Thief ever. Not really a PhantomThief because Twenty is a showman above all.
* GreatDetective: Chiko, good thing for her health too. Also, she doesn't really use her powers of deduction for ''legal'' purposes...
* [[HeirToTheDojo Heir To The "Dojo"]]: Chiko, although it isn't really a dojo she inherits [[spoiler: and thanks to episode 6 there isn't that much to inherit.]]
* HeroicBSOD: Predictably, [[spoiler: the first half of episode 7]].
* HeyItsThatVoice: Chiko is played by the famous Aya Hirano, although Chiko sounds nothing like [[SuzumiyaHaruhi Haruhi Suzumiya.]] Shunka, who does not appear until fairly later in the series but is a major character, is voiced by Rina Satou, who is Negi in all adaptations of {{Negima}}.
* HollywoodDensity: Skipper effortlessly brings back ''two'' big cases filled with gold. By himself. Even underwater, just one case would already have been too heavy for ''several'' strong men to lift.
* HugeGuyTinyGirl: Well, Kayama is "tiny" only compared to Tsuya in episode 8.
* IfYouKillHimYouWillBeJustLikeHim: Subverted first in that Twenty applies this philosophy to '''everyone''', not just "big villains", who oppose himself and his gang, as his objective is "taking treasures from pigs" and he has no reason to want to cause actual harm (plus [[spoiler: he has some kind of war-related past that has made him hate killing and suffering]]); he even dissuades KnifeNut Ken from killing people. Later on, [[spoiler: the whole thing is subverted ''again'' in episode 6 when everyone, even Twenty, must kill or they absolutely will be killed themselves.]]
* IllGirl: Subverted somewhat in that Chiko ''gets better'' once [[spoiler: Twenty takes her away from her relatives who are poisoning her to death with Aconite]] and goes on to be the main character.
* InformedAbility: Twenty Faces is supposed to be very clever, but his plans are actually pretty transparent, so it's weird that most anyone falls for them.
* ItWorksBetterWithBullets: Twenty Faces pulls this off in the very first scene of the show. Chiko doesn't take too long to follow in his footsteps.
* ImprobableAge: While tweens-to-young-teens are very flexible and the best gymnasts are often young teens, and Chiko's age is often used to realistic effect, she's still a little young to be ''quite'' as good as she is. Some of the members of Twenty's merry band do [[LampshadeHanging hang a lampshade]] on this, however.
* JumpedAtTheCall: Chiko is so eager to go with Twenty that the only thing preventing her from getting out the door before '''he''' does is her episode 1 illness.
* KnifeNut: Ken, although he's more an enthusiast, really.
* LesYay: Dear God, Chiko and Shunka.
* MadScientist: Most of the outrageous technology in the series [[spoiler: was invented by Twenty]].
** And there's an even madder scientist later in the series.
* MagicSkirt: Granted, Chiko's is longer than most, but still, considering all the acrobatics she does...
** There are several scenes in which Chiko's panties would have shown, had the camera not focused away. The director seems to work VERY hard to not make Chiko a {{Moe}}/{{Fanservice}} character.
* {{Meido}}: Tome
* [[Main/MandysLawofAnimeGenderBending MandysLaw]]: Hans dressing up as a girl in Twenty Faces' circus.
* MindControlEyes
* MistakenForGay: In the early part of episode 15, [[spoiler:when Tome walked in on Chiko and Shunka... talking with each other, then remarked that she used to do the same]]. So this may not be the case for [[spoiler:Tome]].
** It's a bit weird of to think of that every time two girls start frolicking around, so it may indeed say quite a bit about Tome's mindset.
* NeverFoundTheBody: [[spoiler: Twenty Faces]]
* NoExportForYou
* TheOjou: Chiko again, and it's a bit of a subversion in that she throws it all out the window to go with Twenty. She may still be an Ojou [[spoiler: depending on what she inherits from Twenty.]]
* OutOfTheInferno
* ParentalAbandonment: Both of Chiko's actual parents are quite dead, and she lives with relatives. [[spoiler: Well, both parents ''appear'' dead, but a couple scenes with Twenty... well...]]
** Ken was rather brutally abandoned by his family. [[spoiler: When he realizes that Twenty Faces seems to care more about Chiko than him, his abandonment issues fuels his DarkerAndEdgier turn.]]
* PerfectPoison: [[spoiler: Deliberately averted in order to set the plot in motion; Chiko's relatives are attempting to poison her slowly over time in order to kill her and take her inheritance. Chiko is too sharp to fall for this, however, and attempts on her own to avoid poisoned food until Twenty "kidnaps" (read: rescues) her. Chiko's (non-blood) aunt then goes and uses the same poison '''on Chiko's uncle''' in a surprising double cross so that she may take all the inheritance for herself, and the uncle cannot call her out for fear of exposing what was done to Chiko.]]
* PillarOfLight
* ProperlyParanoid: Chiko.
* SaveTheVillain: Episode 6: [[spoiler:Angie overexerts a swing, loses her footing, and is about to be swept off the train by the wind. Chiko reaches out to save her, but like every other brutal thing in this episode, she fails and Angie (apparently) dies]].
** This of course involves some classic TakeMyHand imagery as well.
* SchizoTech: The series is set in TheFifties, but there are a number of things in it that could never be built with real world fifties technology, like [[spoiler: The giant tank Twenty's gang uses as a hideout up to episode 2, which appears to have battleship cannons]].
* SchoolgirlLesbians: Tome insinuates this about Chiko and Shunka; it's not [[LesYay completely inaccurate]], but she was taking something she saw out of context.
* SequelHook
* SpoiledBrat: Chiko appears to be this in the first episode, refusing to drink expensive tea or eat veritable feasts that her aunt and uncle provide; [[spoiler: we later find out that her behavior is in fact due to her using her GreatDetective skills to figure out that her guardians are attempting to assassinate her via poisoning to steal her inheritance and she is desperately trying to avoid eating anything they provide.]]
** Shunka, on the other hand. Hoo boy.
* SpoilerOpening: And spoiler ending credits too, for that matter. It's so bad that the latter looks like it belongs to a completely different show for at least the first six episodes, ''[[http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/detectivegirls.jpg straight down to a different logo than the series logo being used at the end of the end credits]]''.
* TheStoic: Muta
** Muta does also engage in a low-key, Stoic version of DrillSergeantNasty in episodes 3 and 4 especially in order to drive home the skills that Chiko will need if she's serious about surviving on the edge of the law.
* SuperSoldier: Several, the Human Tank formula being the most prominent, with wooden psudo-cyborg replacement being the other. [[spoiler:Both are the result of Twenty Faces' war research]].
* TheTokyoFireball: Or more accurately [[PillarOfLight Tokyo Pillar of Light]]
* TimeSkip: [[spoiler:Three years]].
* TokenMinority: Poor Hans, you'd think Twenty's gang would be more diverse given that he's an international thief. He drops GratuitousGerman to boot.
* TranslationConvention: Except in specific instances to highlight foreign speech or media, everyone speaks and all the signs are in Japanese. Even Hans as shown above. Contrast episode 5, the Middle Easterners speaking to each other, and the town in the U.K.
* TrueCompanions: Twenty's gang is this in the early portion of the show.
* WaifFu: Chiko's fighting becomes more and more like this as the series progresses. It's usually kept within fairly realistic limits though.
* WhamEpisode: Episode Six, Jesus Christ. Whether or not the show [[JumpTheShark jumped the shark]] at this stage remains to be seen.
** It didn't, but it did take a major change in direction.
* WorthyOpponent: Twenty Faces and Akechi Kogorō.
* VillainTakesAnInterest: [[spoiler: Kohei Kakihara]] is genuinly impressed by Chiko's fighting spirit and asks her if she wants to become a daughter of [[spoiler:real Twenty Faces.]]
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''The Daughter of Twenty Faces'' (''Nijū Mensō no Musume'') is a action/mystery {{manga}} in the vein of ''Lupin the 3rd'' and ''CowboyBebop'' by Shinji Ohara which began serialized print in 2002 in ''Comic Flapper'' magazine. An anime adaptation began airing in Japan on April 12, 2008, produced by StudioBones and TMSEntertainment's Telecom Animation Film and promoted internationally as ''Chiko, Heiress of the Phantom Thief''.
The focus of the story is Chizuko "Chiko" Mikamo, a young girl who desires to get away from her home [[spoiler:because her uncle and aunt have been slowly poisoning her]] and leaps at the chance when international GentlemanThief "Twenty Faces" comes to "steal" her. Abandoning her old life, she learns the way of proper cat burglary from Twenty and his merry band of men, and eventually must come to terms with Twenty's legacy and her position as The Daughter Of Twenty Faces. Similar to LupinIII, it is derivative from a work of classic detective fiction. Twenty Faces first appeared in the late 1920's as the WorthyOpponent of Endogawa Rampo's detective Akechi Kogorō, who is also featured later on.

The focus of the story is Chizuko "Chiko" Mikamo, a young girl who desires to get away from her home [[spoiler:because her uncle and aunt have been slowly poisoning her]] and leaps at the chance when international GentlemanThief "Twenty Faces" comes to "steal" her. Abandoning her old life, she learns the way of proper cat burglary from Twenty and his merry band of men, and eventually must come to terms with Twenty's legacy and her position as The Daughter Of Twenty Faces. Similar to LupinIII, it is derivative from a work of classic detective fiction. Twenty Faces first appeared in the late 1920's as the WorthyOpponent of Endogawa Rampo's detective Akechi Kogorō, who is also featured later on.

''The Daughter of Twenty Faces'' (''Nijū Mensō no Musume'') is a action/mystery {{manga}} in the vein of ''Lupin the 3rd'' and ''CowboyBebop'' by Shinji Ohara which began serialized print in 2002 in ''Comic Flapper'' magazine. An anime adaptation began airing in Japan on April 12, 2008, produced by StudioBones and TMSEntertainment's Telecom Animation Film and promoted internationally as ''Chiko, Heiress of the Phantom Thief''. The focus of the story is Chizuko "Chiko" Mikamo, a young girl who desires to get away from her home [[spoiler:because her uncle and aunt have been slowly poisoning her]] and leaps at the chance when international GentlemanThief "Twenty Faces" comes to "steal" her. Abandoning her old life, she learns the way of proper cat burglary from Twenty and his merry band of men, and eventually must come to terms with Twenty's legacy and her position as The Daughter Of Twenty Faces. Similar to LupinIII, it is derivative from a work of classic detective fiction. Twenty Faces first appeared in the late 1920's as the WorthyOpponent of Endogawa Rampo's detective Akechi Kogorō, who is also featured later on.

Not related to the {{CLAMP}} manga, ''Manga/ManOfManyFaces'' (the title character is called "The Man of 20 Faces").

* {{Nakama}}: Twenty's gang is this in the early portion of the show; Ken also calls it a "nakama" when he's [[spoiler:grilling Twenty in episode 13 about why Twenty went to ground after the massacre and abandoned both Ken and Chiko]].

''The Daughter of Twenty Faces'' (Nijū Mensō no Musume, referenced in some sources as ''Chiko, Heiress of the Phantom Thief'') is a action/mystery {{anime}} show in the vein of ''Lupin the 3rd'' and ''CowboyBebop'' that began airing in Japan on April 12, 2008. Produced by StudioBones and TMSEntertainment's Telecom Animation Film, and based on the manga of the same name by Shinji Ohara which began serialized print in 2002 in ''Comic Flapper'' magazine. The focus of the story is Chizuko "Chiko" Mikamo, a young girl who desires to get away from her home [[spoiler:because her uncle and aunt have been slowly poisoning her]] and leaps at the chance when international GentlemanThief "Twenty Faces" comes to "steal" her. Abandoning her old life, she learns the way of proper cat burglary from Twenty and his merry band of men, and eventually must come to terms with Twenty's legacy and her position as The Daughter Of Twenty Faces. Similar to LupinIII, it is derivative from a work of classic detective fiction. Twenty Faces first appeared in the late 1920's as the WorthyOpponent of Endogawa Rampo's detective Akechi Kogorō, who is also featured later on.

Not related to the {{CLAMP}} manga, ''ManOfManyFaces'' (the title character is called "The Man of 20 Faces").

''TheDaughterOfTwentyFaces'' (Nijū Mensō no Musume, referenced in some sources as ''Chiko, Heiress of the Phantom Thief'') is a action/mystery {{anime}} show in the vein of ''Lupin the 3rd'' and ''CowboyBebop'' that began airing in Japan on April 12, 2008. Produced by StudioBones and TMSEntertainment's Telecom Animation Film, and based on the manga of the same name by Shinji Ohara which began serialized print in 2002 in ''Comic Flapper'' magazine. The focus of the story is Chizuko "Chiko" Mikamo, a young girl who desires to get away from her home [[spoiler:because her uncle and aunt have been slowly poisoning her]] and leaps at the chance when international GentlemanThief "Twenty Faces" comes to "steal" her. Abandoning her old life, she learns the way of proper cat burglary from Twenty and his merry band of men, and eventually must come to terms with Twenty's legacy and her position as The Daughter Of Twenty Faces. Similar to LupinIII, it is derivative from a work of classic detective fiction. Twenty Faces first appeared in the late 1920's as the WorthyOpponent of Endogawa Rampo's detective Akechi Kogorō, who is also featured later on.

* NoExportForYou: An absolutely ''maddening'' example. It's been years now and the show hasn't been picked up for distribution (or even discussed publicly) ''and nobody can figure out why''. It's easily tame enough to air on Cartoon Network or another cable channel, at least, and both Twenty and Akechi are public domain characters at this point (oh yeah, and the show is great to boot), so nobody can figure out ''why'' this show isn't getting anything more than fansubs.

* FoeYay: Kohei Kakihara is obsessed with Twenty Faces to the point [[spoiler: where he changes his appearance to look exactly like him and later tries to take Chiko under his wing.]] His main goal is to [[spoiler: obtain Twenty's ligancy,]] as he feels it was stolen from him a long time ago by Twenty himself.