Question: how do you classify a work as being the bottom of the barrel? For most people its quite simple their most hated work is also the one they hold as the worst theyve seen. I in the other hand try to separate what I feel about a work from any critical judgment of it. That is not for buying any illusion of objectivity its simply because I feel like it would be dishonest from my part to do it. That is why Im at the same time put off and fascinated by a work like NOiSE one of the few that I got to classify as an absolute failure. For those who are usually annoyed by the length of my reviews you can rest assured that this one is not going to be as long as the previous ones. I dont think Ill have anything positive to say about the work anyway. Story and Characters When elaborating a story youd think that Where to start? would be among the first questions that go through the authors mind both in regards to the setting as well as the timeframe in which the story decides to kickoff. Whether its an anime or manga the job of the first episode or chapter is to properly establish characters and setting and offer a decent hook to grab the audiences interest. The issue that is immediately apparent in NOiSE is that the series starts directly with a hook that has no setting or characters to stand on. Were introduced to two characters the protagonist Susono Musubi and Clawsa investigating a place where missing children were found dead. The chapter jumps straight into the plot with the most basic and confusing characterization possible: theres no establishment of what kind of people these characters are outside the fact that theyre police officers no comprehensive explanation about the setting and no proper notion of how these two elements relate to each other. You might see here and there someone criticize a work by saying that the characters for example have no personality but believe me Im not exaggerating by claiming that the characters here have little to no dimension whatsoever. Musubi has her job as a police officer as her only trait and behaves in the predictable manner for that role Clawsa is nothing more than cannon fodder and the antagonists two organizations called The Order and the Safeguards have objectives and actions that are vague to the point of being nonsensical. From the bad works Ive read or seen over the years that gave me enough of an impression to award it with a score one characteristic the majority seemed to have at the very least is that they were followable something that only occasionally NOiSE barely manages to be. That is one of the traits the can lead me to call a work an absolute failure when even following the narrative is a struggle not for an specific writing style but due to sheer incompetence. The details laid out by the plot dont properly connect with each other the information given by the characters has no ground to stand on within the line of events or the setting and I still have no idea of what the title means for Christ sake Now Im someone who appreciates subtlety and the ability some works exhibit to convey meaningful information or emotion in a concise manner reason why my favorites include series like Toradora Shiki and Ergo Proxy. However there is a difference between being subtle and having no distinguishable worthwhile substance and this is a work that crosses the line going from subtlety to emptiness. I do understand that NOiSE is a prequel to BLAME another work of Nihei Tsutomo but theres no excuse to why it couldnt work as a standalone story. A prequel is supposed to flesh out the world and events prior to another story and for that its necessary to be well crafted and capable of being appreciated on its own rights. The Star Wars prequels for once receive particular hatred for being a bad chapter of a beloved franchise but they didnt work not for being part of a larger series it was for being bad movies in the first place. Presentation Good Lord it seems that nothing here is salvageable The first thing to notice about NOiSEs presentation is that it has particularly bad use of framing. Complementing the fact that the narrative is a clusterfuck the transition between panels is confusing to the point I had to read some pages three times to understand how characters went from one place to another. This is off course not helped by the art. For once it has very schizophrenic use of gradiance with it being entirely absent from some chapters while others are all in varying shades of gray. Most of the panels have stark distinction of black and white which could be a way of conveying a gritty hopeless cyberpunk setting but loses its effect due to the many problems of the work and the poor quality of the drawings. If there are recurrent set pieces they are barely recognizable and weirdly the art style seems remarkably afraid of straight lines for some reason. Could be simply result of the overall poor quality or a form of conveying the crapsack nature of the world but it generally contributes to the damage that is already being done to the presentation. Personal Ramblings I have not seen much of Nihei Tsutomus works. Aside from NOiSE Ive read the first two chapters of Biomega which were bad enough to make me drop it right there and watched an ONA based on BLAME. All of them displayed the same issues and gave me overall very little faith in anything else coming from that same author. I cant say Im not curious though As I sad at the beginning a work like NOiSE fascinates me to a degree. Sometimes a movie or manga or anime can be bad but also very intriguing on its own rights compelling us into trying to grasp what was the thought process that leads to such embarrassing result. Recently another work from Nihei Tsutomu to garner some attention was Knights of Sidonia a 15 volume manga that was adapted into a twoseason anime series and Im very skeptical of its quality but still very curious about how it fares. Whether this author has evolved and learned to do characterization and setting right or if he still has no idea on how to differentiate between subtlety and vacuity Ill have to find out for myself.