Mono no aware

What with Darker than Black: Ryuusei no Gemini, my rewatch of Kuro no Keiyakusha is a primer of sorts for getting back into the the story so I can hopefully breeze effortlessly(!) through. One of DtB’s defining features was the way it held back on explanations for what appeared to be quite significant plot points to make it occasionally frustrating but undeniably compelling. I must admit that even on the second attempt I still can’t say for sure I understand everything but oddly this doesn’t really bother me as much as I expected.

And yes, Shinjuku really does look as awesome as this IRL…

I don’t feel I have to understand the full background to the characters and their situations to understand them because enough of the important things are already made clear, which I hope was the intention of the writers. As is often the case I instead try to immerse myself in the worldview to let the answers reveal themselves in a passive fashion: something I find particularly easy for a show that takes the approach that this one does.

When the storyline plays its cards so close to its chest I can’t help but turn my attention to the atmospherics and aesthetics instead: the use of backgrounds, scene compositions and music to tell the story in absence of dialogue makes it feel a bit more, well, sophisticated than most made-for TV animation. The show-don’t-tell approach can backfire at times (certainly in the case of viewers put off by the fact that they can’t figure out what’s going on) but personally it massages my ego a bit by conveying its ideas in a more mature and cryptic way.

Similarly, the park scene with Hei and Chiaki seems to be based on the Shinjuku National Gardens

One thing I love about the series is the use of colour and lighting, mainly because it pays homage to the moody cinematography of film noir at various points. It reminds me a lot of those gritty crime thrillers set in darkened, rainy city streets that I’ve always enjoyed: in the same way that film noir is associated with ambiguous morality in its storylines and night-for-night rather than the easier route of day-for-night filming, I get the impression that for all its sci-fi trappings DtB goes the extra mile to achieve a sense of realism in the same vein.

Recalling the old documentary that came in the DVD extras for Otomo’s Akira, the studio staff emphasised how difficult it is to clearly animate scenes set in dimly-lit situations; the solution, innovative at the time, was to use red and green tones as well as the usual blues and greys. Similarly in DtB the nighttime streets are bathed in greens and muddy reddish orange hues of the streetlamps and lights from buildings, which must have been a headache for the art department but emphasises that twilight area in which the characters live.

As much as I love the vibrancy of stuff like the Comix Wave Sunset, it feels appropriate that a significant proportion of events in DtB occur in that beautiful nocturnal Tokyo cityscape: it seems to allude to the hidden side that we see in many of the characters involved. The air of uncertainty and lack of clarity is reinforced by the fact that even the stars themselves are fake: they represent a new, mysterious natural order that has replaced our familiar view of the world.

Gotta love the mask symbolism

The enigmatic hero represents this duality as Li the transfer student by day and the notorious BK201 by night: he’s torturing Havoc to extract information from her one moment then showing compassion uncharacteristic for a Contractor the next. At this stage in the game he sits on that half-light boundary between unassuming everyman and cold-blooded assassin – an apparently unique existence who is both Contractor and ordinary human.

I see Kirihara as another honest soul fighting an uphill battle – a neat gender reversal for her role but one that adds more weight to the burden she carries. I really enjoyed the way that the ninth and tenth episodes showed her torn between her old school friend and her duty as a police officer: in a medium that celebrates…girly girls (I’m trying so hard to leave moe out of this) it’s a bit of a rarity for an anime show to have a female character who shows intelligence and inner strength as well as vulnerability, and as a result exhibits a grown-up type of femininity that’s a refreshing change.

Even November 11 wonders how Kirihara wound up with a Porsche as her company car

What isn’t so unusual given the type of storytelling that inspired it is that idea of the femme fatale, of which there are several even in the early portion of the series. Chiaki almost leads Hei to his death, albeit in the Doll state; a beautiful widow’s manipulations make Gai’s life more complicated and dangerous; high schooler Mai fits the definition in a tragically literal sense when her dormant ability unleashes mayhem on those around her.

While I love the hallmarks of film noir they are ultimately cliché to the point at which more recent examples of the genre try to avoid them. Gai’s portrayal is an amusing pastiche but DtB can still be taken seriously because the tired tropes are shaken up with a sci-fi twist, given added relevance and genuine emotion and cast in a new light thanks to the cloudy moral stances of the characters. Cyberpunk is another subset of this film noir/sci-fi crossover but DtB is a more character – rather than technology – defined type of the storytelling sometimes termed ‘neo-noir’.

Gai is, well, gar

Gai is one of those unlucky blokes caught in the wrong place at the wrong time but has a hopelessly romantic outlook born from seeing one Bogart movie too many; his role felt like a tribute to the Chandler-esque hard-boiled detective fiction that is a well-known aspect of the film noir tradition, but little more. If you take his pitifully earnest attempts to be a 21st century Marlowe or Spade, or Mao’s cheeky exploitation of his status as a cat (if your ability as a Contractor allowed it, you’d want to be a cat too, right?) it’s easy to see how this show can lighten up, despite often packing a powerful emotional punch.

Not all directors can pull off dashes of humour that help lighten the mood but you only have to look at Stink Bomb to see how Okamura can take serious issues and sweeten the pill with dry, farcical comedy (he also does the retro homage thing in Project Blue Chikyuu SOS but that didn’t work as well for me). Since the subject matter is dark in both the visual and thematic senses of the word, it’s important that the script and direction find a comfortable balance.

I found Mai’s story to be harrowing but at the same time, if I understand the mechanics of the Contracts correctly, deep down she partly brought it upon herself. I recall this being the first of many moments that hit me out of the blue and stayed with me into my second viewing: her father’s drive to learn the secret of Hell’s Gate and save her only served to push them further apart.

There’s something cruel about the Moratorium state, the faustian pact that sidesteps the bindings of a Contract, with its own shocking cost. When I finally saw the haunting nature of her obeisance – one of the most dramatic and heart-rending of the lot, which broke my composure completely – I felt that she had finally found the control over her life that she was searching for, albeit in a fashion that caused her to lose so much.

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