Noir - Hit List (Vol. 2)
As Noir, paid assassins who have inherited the mystical  designation "two  maidens who govern death," Mireille and Kirika continue to search for  information about the Soldats who are out to killthem. Screenwriter  Ryoe Tsukimura mixes amnesia and executions into a portentious web, but fails  to make these remorseless killers sympathetic. They casually dispatch a  Middle Eastern revolutionary leader and an ex-KGB agent who's tried to atone  for his crimes by feeding the poor. A gangland hit and the quest for an 18th  century document forces Mireille to confront her past. In the two-part  "Intoccabile," she's pitted against Silvana, the Mafia princess who terrified  her as a child on Sicily. Director Kouichi Mashimo uses some scenes as often  as six times in a 25-minute episode, which make the stories feel even more  static and stilted. (Rated 15 and older: violence, grotesque imagery, alcohol  and tobacco use, ethnic stereotypes)--Charles Solomon