Madlax Episode 1 English Dub
Elis Riebow
Madlax (マドラックス, Madorakkusu) is a 26-episode Japanese anime television series produced in 2004 by the Bee Train animation studio. Kōichi Mashimo directed Madlax and the soundtrack was composed by Yuki Kajiura. The DVD version was released by ADV Films in North America and the United Kingdom and by Madman Entertainment in Australia and New Zealand.
Madlax is set against the backdrop of Gazth-Sonikan war and the first episodes contrast the tranquil Nafrece with the war-torn Gazth-Sonika;[7] later, the story moves completely to the combat zone, focusing on the central characters, such as Limelda Jorg, and their suffering.[8] In an interview, the director Mashimo stated that "[t]he story is about portraying inner struggles of people, while showing what life is like in this place of madness and this other place of peace".[9] Accordingly, the series' title is a portmanteau of two English words, "mad" and "relaxed", mirroring the authors' intention to portray the two extremes of human being.[9][10]
According to the director Kōichi Mashimo, he envisioned Noir and Madlax as part of a trilogy exploring the girls-with-guns genre, and soon after the release of the latter, he confirmed having plans to produce the third installment,[9] which would later become El Cazador de la Bruja.[12] In late 2002, Mashimo invited Shigeru Kitayama, the producer of Noir who once came up with its original idea, to discuss a new series entitled Madlax. Kitayama greatly expanded Mashimo's original screenplay plan, but it was not until Yōsuke Kuroda was put in charge of the script that the series took its final appearance. It took Kuroda around one year to finish the screenplays for all 26 episodes, during which he was constantly encouraged by Mashimo to add his own original ideas to their initial plan. Kuroda has admitted that at the time he received Mashimo's invitation, he felt frustrated after his first project has been canceled by the publisher, so he decided to make Madlax "really extravagant", blending as many genres at once as he could. Kōichi Mashimo, furthermore, admitted that the most unusual plot twists, like Margaret and Madlax's connection to each other, were invented by Kuroda and him while drunk.[9]
Kajiura and Yuuka Nanri's duo FictionJunction Yuuka recorded the series' opening and ending themes, "Fragments of an Eye" (瞳の欠片, Hitomi no Kakera) and "Inside Your Heart", respectively, as well as two insert songs: "nowhere" and "I'm here". Aside from the opening sequence, "Fragments of an Eye" is featured in the series itself: at the end of episode 18 and in the episode 24, when Margaret is humming its tune to herself in the flower field.
On 7 February 2006, the first episode of Madlax aired on Anime Network (which was, like ADV Films, a subsidiary of A.D. Vision at the time).[25] On 4 April, shortly after the last DVD volume has been released, the consequent broadcast was put on halt and until 27 June, only the first 8 episodes were repeated. Since then, the series has been relaunched multiple times.[26] Madman Entertainment, who previously licensed Noir in its region, has acquired rights for distribution of Madlax in Australia and New Zealand and released it on seven DVD volumes between 20 July 2005 and 26 July 2006.[27] A complete collection was released on 4 April 2007.[27]
Madlax was often accused of being secondary and reusing Noir's stylistic solutions,[39] such as the story premise, the two heroines' appearance, and the musical style.[1] Nevertheless, some sources praised the story for being more monolithic and consequent than its predecessor's, owing to all its episodes and subplots being tightly intertwined and held together by the primary plot.[23][40]
The majority of reviewers perceived the early episodes of Madlax as boring and too slow-paced,[4] but some of the same critics later remarked that the prolonged exposition is crucial to the unusual finale of the series, which fully establishes the series' own identity and sets it apart from other works.[10][23][24][41] According to them, after the initial volume, the story gets better and better with every new episode,[42][43] though some have been dissatisfied with its "pseudo-existentialistic" ending.[22] Erica Friedman, the president of Yuricon, highly praised Kuroda's script, naming it "the best writing that Bee Train has done".[44] Professional reviewers welcomed the increased number of sympathetic characters,[45] especially the distinguishable male ones (Friday, Carrossea, Colonel Burton), as opposed to stormtrooper-like operatives of Soldats in Noir,[4] but the female character designs were still said to be much more detailed (to the point of fanservice in the case of Madlax) than the more generic male characters.[24]
The high quality of the animation in Madlax was generally acknowledged.[23][1] On the negative side, the episodes that involve computer use and hacking received criticism for their lack of realism.[46] In terms of soundtrack, Madlax has not become as innovative as Noir,[47] with critics suggesting its OST to be a blend of Noir and .hack//Sign styles.[48] Nevertheless, the reviewers acknowledged its superiority over the majority of contemporary works.[4][1] The English translation released by ADV Films was praised for preserving most of the series' original stylistic aspects and inviting veteran voice actors for the dub.[42] Reviewers went as far as to suggest that several English voices (especially Mike Kleinhenz's) match the characters better than the Japanese ones.[24] Others, however, criticized the dub, e.g. Carl Kimlinger of Anime News Network in his 2009 review of the series rated the performance as "wildly uneven, ranging from good ... to plain amateurish", citing "delivery issues" as main problem of the dub.[2]
The initial slow pacing, especially compared to the first episodes of Noir,[1] became a main reason why the audience often dropped watching Madlax before it could present its later story turns which eventually resulted in the moderate success of the series.[1] Among other suggested reasons behind the mediocre popularity of the show were: the market saturation, which resulted from other anime series attempting to repeat the success of Noir since 2001; the expectable disinterest against a "Noir remake", found among the fans of the first series;[4] the over-the-top action scenes that some felt to be ridiculous;[49] and its unconventional genre, which straddled Madlax uncomfortably between fans of mystical science fiction and those who prefer Noir's strict realism.[45]
Madlax (マドラックス, madorakkusu) is a Japanese animated series consisting of 26 episodes. It was first aired on TV Tokyo on April 5, 2004 and concluded on September 27, 2004.
An entire nine minutes pass before anything resembling new plot development appears in the episode, in the form of Carrossea telling Margaret about how her book is being sought after. Nothing more becomes of this plot point.
銃韻 -moment-Episode16Air dateJuly 19, 2004 (JP)WriterUnknownDirectorUnknownEpisode guidePreviousNext偽争 -camouflage-刹那 -reunion-"The Timbre of Gunshots -moment-" Transcription: "Jūin -moment-" (Japanese: 銃韻 -moment-) is the sixteenth episode of Madlax. It debuted on July 19, 2004 in Japan.
I'm not very familiar with the output of Bee Train, which is, for better or worse, the brainchild of a single man, Kouichi Mashimo, but my general impression is that its star has fallen somewhat over the past decade. Aside from the positive commentary I've heard regarding the studio's adaptation of Hyouge Mono, I've seen a fair number of reviews that have described its output as ranging from seminal material that hasn't aged well in retrospect (e.g. .hack//Sign) to ill-conceived interpretations of manga that deserved far better (e.g. Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle). Their 2004 series Madlax is something of an odd series, a spiritual successor to the "girls-with-guns" prototype set in place by Noir and a thriller at heart, one that makes for some good entertainment but never quite makes the leap to something great. I liked the cast and found the story buildup to be effective, and yet Madlax, via the fault of technical and thematic weaknesses, is ultimately merely an adequate rather than brilliant series. In his original, partial review of this series, Carlos criticized Madlax for retreading the patterns established by Noir, to the effect of making a diluted and halfhearted-seeming series, and while I ultimately enjoyed it more than he did, I agree with several of his criticisms. For one thing, while I wouldn't call Madlax a technical failure, I might call it an exercise in mediocrity, even when I consider that at the time of writing this series is now over ten years old. The artists render the character design attractively, without making an exercise of making fanservice objects out of the characters, but the animation is only barely adequate throughout, with Madlax's movements being stiffer than they should be given her expertise in combat. I wasn't especially impressed by the art direction beyond the character design, either, for both Nafrece and Garzth-Sonika feel like caricatures of countries, France and (perhaps) Burma respectively, without the detail and effort being given to make either look like a real place with a distinctive culture and character. I was, like Carlos, somewhat let down by the musical score, considering that the composer, Yuki Kajiura, has been behind a large number of good anime soundtracks and composes for Kalafina, whose theme songs (such as Madoka's "Magia") I generally enjoy. I liked the theme songs for this series, but the soundtrack itself struck me as repetitive and a bit overdone, with one particular piece, consisting of choral gasps, clearly being intended to be spooky but instead being unintentionally funny. There is, meanwhile, one other reason why I say I agree with many of Carlos' criticisms, and that is that the first few episodes of Madlax are simply not very interesting at all. The intention was clearly to introduce the two lead characters as a study in contrasts, but the execution of this is awkward, with Madlax's debut episode going a bit too far to make her seem badass and slick, and Margaret's episode actually being boring in its slowness and normalcy. I actually sniggered a bit at how hard the first episode was trying to make Madlax into some sort of neutral, amoral femme fatale figure, having her come into the middle of some inconsequential drama between opposing sides of the Gazth-Sonika conflict, take out a whole army while wearing an elegant formal dress (for no apparent reason), and even be propositioned by the dying soldier she'd been assigned to protect. It's clichéd and clunky in execution, and it didn't give me a strong first impression of the show. Luckily, Madlax does pick up somewhat after that, in part because, it starts to pay better attention as to what it should focus on. While it's perhaps a shame that even the outward motivations behind the civil war aren't very well explored, subsequent episodes focusing on Madlax and her line of work benefit from centering more on her and the roots of her seemingly apathetic attitude towards all of this killing and shooting, and less on the drama surrounding one-shot characters. I liked Madlax herself, even though she falls a bit too neatly into the character of an overly-competent fighter running away from her past (an idea explored more effectively in Cowboy Bebop and played with to great effect with Gunslinger Girl). Rather than being emotionless, she goes about her work with a wan smile and a dry sense of humor, which did give me a few good chuckles and added some color to a show that seemed bound to become humorless at the start. Madlax also does a good job of contrasting Margaret's spaciness with the personalities of two secondary characters she is almost always seen with: Vanessa, a professional woman who was once Margaret's tutor, and Eleanor, a maid whose militant care more-or-less keeps Margaret's disorientation and odd habits in line. It was a smart move; Margaret would be a bit of a dry character on her own, but the interplay between her spaciness and the Type-A competence of the other two is effective, and sometimes gave me a decent chuckle as well.Once Madlax does start to establish something of a consistent story, meanwhile, it does get more interesting, even if it remains ridden with plot holes. I might say that Madlax is more of a success in tension-building than writing, for it is very true that the story very gradually and effectively climaxes, and simultaneously true that there are many problems with the supernatural thriller that emerges. There is, for example, some effective foreshadowing of the fact that the secrets surrounding the identities of Margaret, Madlax, and other characters hinge on the occult, particularly via the presence of two strange children who are seen in cutaways of sorts; their initially vague and irritating commentary is much more satisfying later, when their role is established. On the other hand, my aforementioned frustration with the technical aspects of this show extends to the lack of its more subtly being able to hint that something is severely out of order with the characters, their identities, and the world they live in. I described Nefrece and Garzth-Sonika as feeling like caricatures earlier, and that also applies to the weaknesses in world-building this show manifests. Unlike, say, the ever-stark and blinding light of the city of Lux in Texhnolyze, we have a few obvious clues (the kids, and a red moon) set against an otherwise mundane backdrop, which doesn't do the job of creating unease very effectively. It also doesn't help that when the time comes, we find that the motivations of the leader of Enfant, the awkwardly-named "Friday Monday", don't amount to much besides cackling delusions of world domination. I'm still waiting for any villain besides Hamdo from Now and Then, Here and There to fit that profile and genuinely make me care. That being said, there was a lot that I did like about Madlax. After a slow start, it did turn into an entertaining series with a solid cast, with even the limited animation not totally taking the fun of the gun battles away. Ultimately, while I doubt I'd ever want to watch this series again, the success in building tension and wrapping disparate elements together somewhat outweighed the weaknesses in the core story and atmosphere. But while those weaknesses didn't ruin the show, they kept it from getting remotely close to being great or transcendent, and while Madlax is enjoyable to watch, it is nonetheless stuck somewhere in the middle of "mediocre" and "good".
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