This review contains spoilers

Madlax is a largely overlooked action/mystery anime from 2004. It is a part of what people seem to call the “girls with guns trilogy” made by the now-defunct studio Bee Train, the other two being Noir and El Cazador de la Bruja. This is the first one I have seen from these three shows and I will get to other two soon after, and it was a pretty good watch.

The story is set in the fictional countries of Gazth-Sonika, which is in a state of civil war, and Nafrece. It progresses in a somewhat slow manner compared to other action anime I have seen but I never had an issue with it. As it goes, various events occur which are related to the overarching mystery and the show does a pretty decent of connecting them in a way that makes sense. The OST is fantastic. It’s composed by Yuki Kajiura (Madoka Magica, Garden of Sinners, Princess Principal, etc), and you have probably seen me gush about her soundtracks for a quite a while now.

Madlax, the titular protagonist, is an intriguing character. She’s a badass mercenary who’s one of the best people at her job, but she’s also a kind person who hates war and laments all the kills she has to make. What she really wants is to put an end to the war as quickly as possible and thus, fights towards that end. She doesn’t have any memories from before 12 years ago, and she consistently seeks to find out what actually happened with her and how did she come to be this way.

Her journey to unravel what’s going on and how it connects to her is nicely done. Eventually she becomes friends with Vanessa Rene, a woman who seeks to expose the wrongdoings occurring behind the scenes, and forming a rivalry with Limelda Jorg, the bodyguard of one of her victims. Both of them contribute significantly to her growth while being interesting characters on their own, especially Vanessa who was tied with Madlax as my favorite one. Madlax will fight in her normal attire half the time, but switch to dresses other times… for some reason. (She’s just built different like that)

The ending is satisfying and a thematically fitting end to the story. It’s revealed at the end that Madlax was actually a part of Margaret all along, her desire to survive her father’s attack after being influenced by Friday Monday given a physical form by the gate’s power. The fact that Margaret had basically ended up killing her own father wasn’t something she could bear, so she created Madlax to make her bear that burden. But she decides to accept Madlax as a part of herself instead of running away from the truth and erasing her, as she accepts the malice inside her to kill Friday Monday for good. It’s kind of an unconventional story decision for one of the main characters to end their journey with accepting a violent part of themselves, as most stories will emphasize on the positive stuff, so this was cool to see. It especially fits with how Madlax is a kind killer who shows compassion for people despite what she does, while Margaret, who's supposed to be a normal girl, takes on her side that decides killing to be a necessary end for certain people. She uses the gate’s power to let Madlax and Leticia live as their own existences, as they have their own wills and memories, instead of assimilating them into herself. And thus, Margaret lives on with the crimes on her conscience instead of failing to acknowledge them, and Madlax will likely put an end to Gazth-Sonika’s war for good now that Enfant is no longer in control.

The shortcomings:
-The most obvious one is the animation quality. It’s clearly low budget and doesn’t look too good. For an action anime, this isn’t a great thing to have. It’s decent at some points and gets the job done but most of the time, it leaves you wanting for more.
-Margaret is kind of a bland character for 90% of the show. Her conclusion is pretty good but she’s still kinda unremarkable for the rest of show beforehand.
-Friday Monday is a meh antagonist. Least favorite character.
-The supernatural aspects aren’t too great. Personally it felt like they weren’t explained and implemented as well as they should have. How they affect the plot somewhat make sense in terms of the actions taking place, but it needed to be more in-depth to be actually convincing.
-There are too many repeated scenes via flashbacks

Overall, I can recommend it. Pretty good watch if you like action and mystery anime.