Phantom Thief Jeanne

I wanted to give this series a 9. I think the plot and themes, and some of the characters are worthy of a 9. However, while its highs are full of deeply emotional scenes and interesting commentary, its lows are truly awful and made me incredibly uncomfortable and upset to the point where I couldn't give Phantom Thief Jeanne the score I wanted to in good faith.

This is the story of Maron Kusakabe, a high school girl, who moonlights as the mysterious Phantom Thief Jeanne. Her mission is to exorcise paintings where demons reside to keep them from taking over and corrupting human hearts. She is the reincarnation of Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc), and she was sent by God to keep the Demon Lord from stealing God's power, alongside the minor angel Finn Fish. However, it appears that there's another phantom thief, Phantom Thief Sinbad, and he has his own agenda.

The story is one of the strongest parts of Phantom Thief Jeanne by far. I love this take on magical girls, and I think I want to find other fresh feeling magical girl series like this one. The war between God and the Demon Lord, and the ever-increasing lore surrounding Jeanne, Sinbad, Finn, and the angels is intriguing. I can't go into too much detail about the plot because there are a ton of spoilers involved, but it was interesting. I was constantly kept on the edge of my seat with all the twists and turns that the story took.

Since I can't take as much time to talk about the plot, I'd love to talk about the themes the story presents because they're what makes the story so good. Loss, mental illness, trauma, and purity culture are what Phantom Thief Jeanne is all about. Maron is a lovely girl, but she never really received love while growing up. Her parents' fighting took priority over her needs, and they both essentially left her to fend for herself. The only people in her life who are there for her are really her friend Miyako and her family, and eventually Finn. She's not used to healthy relationships or the love of others. There's so much of the story about her battling her own fears, demons, and mental health issues. I can see my own anxiety reflected in Maron, even if I was diagnosed with a different type of anxiety than she exhibits. Her struggles are the core of this manga, and Maron is such a refreshing character. I love her. The way the manga portrays her battles with her fears and the loss and betrayals of those important to her is beautifully done. The way the emotion is evoked is stunning, and I love it. Maron's interpersonal relationships with her female friends are also spectacularly executed, and I enjoyed watching her work past her own trauma and becoming stronger in her own way, as well as how she aided other characters with their own traumas and difficulties.

The discussion of purity culture is fascinating. There is a lot of duality, and how love and purity are not the same, and yet they are also intertwined. The discussion of how a woman being raped or having premarital sex doesn't make her dirty or impure is also extremely valuable, and an important message for young girls. The message is, it doesn't matter if you're no longer a virgin. What matters is the contents of your heart. If your heart is pure, you will be pure as well. These messages about purity shared between Maron, Jeanne, and Finn are super beautiful. However, while these messages are great, they're undermined by the obnoxious amount of sexual harassment and assault that happens throughout the manga.

I'm going to be honest here. All the men in this manga suck, except for Zen, Kagura, Miyako's dad, and Access Time (to an extent). Chiaki, Maron's love interest is the literal worst. He constantly sexually harasses and assaults her throughout the manga. At no point when she tells him "No" does he listen. He tells her at times that he won't listen to her. There are times where I think "Oh, Chiaki's getting better!" and then he'll do something completely awful again and ruin himself. For example, Maron almost gets raped (we'll get to that in a bit), and it shows how he doesn't know what to do to comfort or help her in a way that he won't mess up, and he walks away out of fear. I had some hope for some character development. And then, the next day, he sees the hickeys from the guy who was trying to rape her, gets jealous, and tries to make new ones over the previous hickeys "because she's his". This is without Jeanne's consent, too. The best parts of their relationship are when their statuses as the enemy phantom thieves, Jeanne and Sinbad put them at odds, despite the romantic tension. Unfortunately, that's undermined by just how much Chiaki does to Maron without her consent. She never really seems comfortable with him touching her in almost every scene, and it's hard for me to see their relationship as romantic in any way. I'm disgusted that we're supposed to see this as romantic. And Maron doesn't really have experience with healthy relationships of any kind, so she probably doesn't even understand that his behavior isn't okay.

I would actually prefer it if there wasn't any romance, since the romance, like Tokyo Mew Mew, is what seems to be dragging the story down. I feel like magical girl love interests are always lack-luster and take over the plot in ways that they don't deserve to. I genuinely think that removing the romance in a few magical girl shows would do them a lot of good. I only want romance if it's interesting and done well, and that's not the case here. I don't mind a slightly toxic relationship, but if it isn't acknowledged as toxic in any way, it's one sided, and there's no improvement from the toxic party, that's when it becomes a problem for me.

And the other guys are various shades of bad. Noin, who was in love with Jeanne d'Arc in the past, is a whole other level of creepy. He's in love with Jeanne still, and he equates her and Maron as the same person, due to Maron being her reincarnation. And to add to the creepy factor, he's a student teacher at her school and he seems to have been observing Maron since she was a baby. And he's the guy who tries to rape her. The scene wasn't graphic, but it was horrible to watch. He even gets redeemed in the end, despite him doing nothing that should earn his redemption. Maron even brushes it off since it was a one-time thing, and he could have done it when she was unconscious, so he must not have really wanted to rape her. It's just awful that the author is including something like this and then brushing it aside like it's nothing despite all the trauma that he inflicted on Maron. I just hate him with every fiber of my being.

Other, minor male characters aren't much better. Chiaki's father is really creepy. He's a doctor with his own personal torture dungeon, which he uses while possessed by demons. He's also constantly getting married and divorced because he wants to find Chiaki a replacement mother, and there's even a joke that he'd marry Maron, which is... yikes. And then there's Minazuki, who started out a bit rough due to being possessed by a demon, and then he became normal. Then he started hanging out with Chiaki, and he started to get more aggressive with Miyako and Maron, which was awful. He obsessed over Maron, which was weird and married Miyako at the end, out of the blue, due to plot convenience despite the two of them never showing romantic interest in each other. I did like the rejection scene with him and Maron, but then he ruined himself for me, as the men in this series tend to do.

Enough about the trash men. Let's talk about the beautiful, stunning female characters that Phantom Thief Jeanne has blessed us with. I've talked a bit about Maron earlier on in the review, so I won't talk as much about her down here. I love her. She is a go-getter. She knows what she wants, and she'll do what she needs to do to make the things she wants to happen, happen. Even in moments where she's more of reluctant hero, like Usagi from Sailor Moon, she's easier to put on the right track. Despite her anxiety, fears, and trauma, she's a strong and dependable person.

Finn and Miyako are both complex characters in their own right. Miyako is a very pushy and abrasive character, but unlike the men in this series, she never pushes Maron's boundaries in ways that make her feel uncomfortable. She's pushy in positive ways. She's a career focused character, who does have an interest in the police-force even outside of Jeanne (which makes her character being a housewife at the end feel a bit odd). She's a bit of a tsundere, and she constantly finds herself saying the opposite of what she really thinks and feels (though everyone else in the cast can tell what her true feelings are). She is devoted to Maron since Maron was the one person who stood up for her and believed she had good intentions when they were children, since Miyako is very easily misunderstood, and she puts Maron's happiness above her own. She's such a great character and I love her. Finn also has a motherly role towards Maron, and alongside Miyako make up her entire support system. Finn is the one who takes up the mantle of Maron's family, and even when her actions become a bit twisted, she never forgets who she is. I can't talk as much about her without giving spoilers, so I'll live it at that.

The art is really beautiful. Arina Tanemura seems to have a tough time writing romance, but she does a spectacular job with her art. The flowing hair, the huge, detailed eyes, and her stunning costumes make the series much more enjoyable. I have a friend who read Full Moon and had a challenging time telling the characters apart, but I didn't have that problem with Jeanne. I honestly really enjoy the art, even though huge eyes aren't really my style. I'd want to look into her art pieces more.

I love Phantom Thief Jeanne, I really do, and I appreciate its highest points like the Zen arc and the Finn Fish arc. However, I don't think I can give it a higher score than a 7.5 in good conscience. This is especially when I take the target audience into consideration. Phantom Thief Jeanne ran in Ribon magazine, which targets 8–14-year-olds. I genuinely can't see girls of this age reading this story and taking in the good parts without taking in the bad, such as the romanticized sexual assault. I love the story and themes, but there was too much of this to not affect my score. While the female characters are lovely and strong, the male characters are some of the worst I've found in shoujo.

I'd say it's up to the reader and what they can handle and feel comfortable reading when it comes to this series, since there's a lot to love, but there's also a lot to hate and some trigger warnings attached to this series. I've heard that the anime is very different from the manga, which is criticized, but from what I've heard about the differences, they are more positive such as making Chiaki less horrible, removing Noin's attempted rape of Maron, and emphasizing Finn Fish and Maron's relationship. I'm actually looking forward to watching the anime, and I hope I can give it the score that story deserves.