Well, Noir probably wouldn't even make it into my top thirty but I did enjoy it. Didn't really care for it all too much before Chloe's arrival save two episodes (the first one and Lost Kitten), which is mainly why it got a six instead of a seven for me. If it wasn't for my thoughts of Chloe at the end and for the fact that Mireille ended up as a total spanner in the works lead me to having Mireille be my favorite character (also love Mireille's design and character in general, plus my favorite episode focuses on her [the one with her uncle]). Outside of Chloe & Mireille, can't say I cared for any of the other characters.
The realism was nice, I don't think the following series in Bee-trains girls with guns trilogy follow that but I haven't seen enough of them to tell. You see either of them (Madlax & El Cazador de la Bruja)? Not sure I agree about the no fanservice, at least I don't recall if there was any real reason for Mireille's lesbian kiss. Outside of that, yeah. Yeah, I haven't run across much yuri stuff, Venus Versus Virus I guess would include the second most to Noir but that show is probably my least favorite of all I've seen and it may have been more of a case of relationship writing fumble than intentional.
All of those tracks are quite good but that's true for most. Salva Nos is godly but Canta Per Me has a better instrumentation in my opinion so I prefer that. The OST for Noir would make it into my top ten (not sure where though, I love several animes OST).
Awful might be an overstatement but it's definitely the cheapest show I've seen made. Like, I can totally tell this is on a budget, and all the time (some Gainax and Gonzo productions are bad at managing/prioritizing their budget so some episodes can come off awful while the rest are good [Gainax - Few episodes of His and Her Circumstances were god awful (the last one was literally a manga, an onscreen manga (black and white, no real movement, etc.) and Gonzo any episode of Samurai 7 with the number 7 in it [episode 7 was worse than 17)]).
To explain clearly, they use every single trick in the book in all their fight scenes and it's hard as hell not to notice. Speed lines, changing the background to just colors and loops those to make it appear as the characters moving (probably the least frequent and most money consuming [though I have no proof to the latter] but it's still a trick around actually animating the models), repeating animation (in two ways, I. repeating a going for a strike animation two more times and rarely repeating strike animations [I've really only noticed this in the fight against Bazuso]), animating only one part of the screen (like just the blood spurting out [in a quickly looped fashion] while none of the other body parts move (done during the fight with the snake guy in episode one [several of these are]) and finally, and worst of all, still images instead of actually animating. This is probably my biggest pet peeve in animation, it drove me crazy whenever the original FMA did it but they only did it like for two fights, Berserk does it in almost every fight they do. They did it twice during the fight with the snake guy in episode one and do it once during that fight with Bazuso. When they don't use these budget saving tricks, the animation is okay but they rarely don't use them (I can think of one fight that didn't use one of them). The art on the other hand, is quite good. I heard people say that they sacrificed the animation quality to get the art to resemble as close as the manga as possible. Not sure if true but meh, the art is quite good.
What's more important is that the animation doesn't really hurt my enjoyment. I'm currently on episode seven, and still enjoying it as much as I was previously. I've seen quite a few more anime but I'm going to end this post here for the fact that I've gone on long enough (and I have other plans today and I'm cutting it close).
So if you wanna help out or anything comment on there and let me know and I'll sort it out.
