alt title(s): Phantom Requiem Of The Phantom
Where to begin?
Phantom of Inferno is the first release by the visual novel developer
Nitroplus. First to describe Nitroplus: over 80% of their games are dark, scary, and full of murder. Nitroplus can be considered a blender of ideas, but
Phantom in fact has a simple story in comparison to their other games.
The story follows the life of a young man who
sees something he shouldn't have seen, is captured and
brainwashed by a
shadowy organization called Inferno and then is given the choice "join or die". He is trained as an assassin by a
soft-spoken girl called Ein. Ein is Inferno's top assassin, code-named "Phantom" and controlled by the sinister Scythe Master, who also brainwashed the man. The man is given the name Zwei and begins his work at Inferno.
The game was first given a
bad adaptation which tried to sum up the game in 3 episodes. In 2009, a new anime entitled "Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~" was produced by
Bee Train.
Of interesting note, previews for the original game's second released aired around the same time
Noir, which led to viewers connecting the two (as they have
similar themes).
This work provides examples of:
- Accidental Athlete - Drei (game only).
- Adaptation Decay - The anime removes or alters several important plot points such as Zwei's first kill and removes Elen and Reiji's marriage, the church shootout and the school shootout and then kills Reiji off at the last minute. So Yeah...
- Anyone Can Die - Played straight, played with, subverted, averted, inverted, whatever. Drei, Scythe Master, Ein, Zwei, Claudia, Lizzie, a LOT of people. Just take your pick.
- Ax Crazy - Drei, up to her torturing of Mio. Afterwards, she has a Villainous Breakdown that actually makes her more sane, and ends up Dying As Herself.
- Badass Normal - Reiji had implausible fighting capabilities before joining Inferno.
- Bodyguard Crush - Zwei and Cal, Mio and Shiga.
- Brainwashed - Scythe does this to both Ein and Zwei to keep them from going back to their homes. After Claudia's coup d'etat, the process is ceased and reversed on the agents they still have. Scythe himself later decides that not brainwashing his subordinates may actually make them stronger.
- Brainwashed And Crazy
- Break The Cutie - Arguably the entire premise of the series.
- Character Derailment - In episode 5, Zwei cold-bloodedly murders a mother and child, crossing a Moral Event Horizon that he never even approached in the original game.
- Might just be a case of Darker And Edgier. We are talking about the same guy who knocked up some random underage orphan girl he met on the street, or the same guy who took advantage of a crying schoolgirl when she was most vulnerable, right? Sure, he ended up caring for Cal and Mio, but still.
- Cal's event was consensual, and in fact *initiated* by her. Mio was already in love with Zwei - and if you're following that route, he reciprocates.
- Cool Guns - And how!
- Dark Action Girl - Drei.
- Emotionless Girl - Ein.
- Expy - Drei looks exactly like Elise from the Triangle Heart 3 Sweet Songs Forever OVA, and though Elise is much more professional and Drei much more wild, their similarities don't end at using guns, speaking Gratuitous English and wearing purple. Both are introduced after the bulk of the story and are put at odds with the male lead, whom they hate after a traumatic childhood incident involving a bomb planted by the Big Bad, and the female lead, who's just along for the ride.
- Falling Chandelier Of Doom - One of the Zahlen Schwestern gets this treatment.
- Fanservice - Ein, Claudia, Drei, Mio, and the Zahlen Schwestern.
- Genre Shift - Joked around with. The anime's second opening will leave you surprised.
- Girls With Guns
- The Gunslinger - Ein and Drei.
- Hey Its That Voice - Anime. If you listen carefully, you'll hear Feldt and Saji from Ein and Zwei.
- Hot Shonen Mom - Mio's mother
- I Know What We Can Do Cut - Scythe's plan in episode 6.
- Innocent Fanservice Girl - Ein doesn't care about walking around naked in front of Zwei after having a shower.
- Mad Scientist - Scythe Master.
- Mafia Princess - Mio. Even she doesn't know about it.
- Not Brainwashed - Drei is the result of Scythe's "thought experiment" to see if keeping her memories and playing on her old grudges will keep her as loyal and efficient as removing her memories altogether would.
- Not Quite Dead - Over and over and over...
- The Ojou - Mio.
- Recap Episode - Episode 11. Parts of episode 19 as well, but not as bad as episode 11.
- Road Cone - Mio is the official love interest of the second anime, and so any romantic developments with Cal or Eren were changed out to develop more platonic partnerships.
- Sexy Back - Ein's party costume in episode 6 and the dresses of the Zahlen Schwestern, both in the recent anime and in the visual novel.
- Shown Their Work - The original game went into ridiculous levels of detail when it came to the guns. You got lectures.
- Sleep Cute - Cal and Reiji in the second anime, oddly replacing a sex scene.
- Spell My Name With An S - Is it Elen or Eren?
- Squick / Fan Disservice - Scythe Master's interactions with Ein, loli Cal's shower scene, and arguably Drei's scene with Mio.
- The Syndicate - Inferno.
- White Mask Of Doom - Worn by assassins.
- You Are Number Six - Ein, Zwei, Drei as well as the individual members of the Zahlen Schwestern in the anime.
