History Anime / Madlax

* OffModel: More than ''Noir''. The eyes are often more than just a little off.

* AssKickingPose: Madlax loves doing it.

* SlidingBikeStop: The title character introduces herself to Vanessa by riding a sports bike in-between her and a bunch of goons sent to kill her, then gunning them all down [[FiringOneHanded one-handed]] -- all while side-sliding to a stop.

* RareGuns: Madlax's SIG [=P210s=] are a collector item in real life.

* MindScrew: Explaining the plot of the series to someone who hasn't watched it is gonna get you some strange looks. Wiki/TheOtherWiki tries.

* KnifeNut: Nakhl, Quanzitta's bodyguard, never parts with her trusty dagger and is scarily proficient with it--even able to dominate Madlax in a close quarters fight.

* BladeReflection: [[KnifeNut Nakhl]] uses her blades as mirrors on regular basis.

The story revolves around two young women who, at first, seem completely unrelated and don't even know of each other's existence. The title character is a [[ExtraordinarilyEmpoweredGirl legendary mercenary and assassin]] plying her bloody trade in the fictional [[DuringTheWar civil war-torn]] Asian country of Gazth-Sonika. Almost everything about her, from her real name to her past, is a mystery--even to herself, as she had [[EasyAmnesia lost her memory]] soon after the war started twelve years ago. The other protagonist is Margaret Burton, the sole heir of a wealthy aristocratic family, attending school in the peaceful European country of Nafrece. Twelve years ago, an airliner carrying her mother and her crashed over Gazth-Sonika, and its passengers, as well as Margaret's father who led the rescue party, have been missing ever since. By means unknown, Margaret returned to Nafrece soon after the crash, becoming its only known survivor but losing all memories of the event--all except a single word: "Madlax". Twelve years later, this strange connection and the mystery behind their amnesias come back to haunt them after they cross paths with a powerful crime syndicate, [[NebulousCriminalConspiracy "Enfant"]], whose DiabolicalMastermind leader, the [[MalevolentMaskedMen masked man]] [[BigBad Friday Monday]], seems to have sinister plans for both of them.

* ExtraordinarilyEmpoweredGirl: If [[Anime/{{Noir}} Kirika]] is a witch, that makes Madlax a ''goddess'' of superhuman asskicking.

* {{Meganekko}}: Vanessa seems to be slightly longsighted as she only wears her glasses when working on a computer.

* WarForFunAndProfit: This is what [[TheSyndicate Enfant]] (and Bookwald) ''seems'' to perpetrate the Gazth-Sonikan civil war for, [[spoiler:but this war is actually a minor (albeit beneficial) side effect of Friday Monday's previous failed attempt to plunge the world in chaos twelve years ago. He later uses it mainly as a ruse to conceal his base of operations in the middle of the warzone]].

* ZettaiRyouiki: Part of Margaret's schoolgirl outfit.

* BodyguardCrush: If the implications of [[HomoeroticSubxext Vanessa and Madlax's relationship]] are anything to go by.

* NoisyGuns: All over the place, particularly from Madlax whose pistols sound like the pump of a shotgun just from ''pointing'' it at something!

* {{Fanservice}}: Madlax's more memorable fights include her ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK_gNbJfbL4 taking out a tank]]'' while wearing a [[FormFittingWardrobe skimpy dress]] and [[CombatStilettos heels]], and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_gDyDQgyc4 dispatching a group]] of {{mooks}} after [[WeNeedADistraction distracting]] them by ''[[ShowSomeLeg throwing off her dress]]'' in front of them and subsequently [[FullFrontalAssault wreaking havoc while completely in the buff]]. Also, Madlax runs around in tiny leather hot pants in ''jungle combat''.

Building upon and expanding ''Noir''[='=]s formula, ''Madlax'' stars a much larger main cast and throws {{Mind Screw}}ing mysteries, over-the-top HeroicBloodshed action, and heavy doses of existentialistic symbolism into the blender to produce a complex, yet gripping plot. And if that wasn't enough, Creator/YukiKajiura composed yet another stellar soundtrack for this anime. The show was licensed by Creator/ADVFilms in America and Europe.

* [[FantasyCounterpartCulture Alternate History Counterpart Culture]]: Gazth-Sonika is somewhere in the vague vicinity of Pakistan but is Southeast-Asian in culture; Nafrece shows some English influence but is mostly France; parallels with the Vietnam War are obvious (and clearly intentional).
* AmnesiacDissonance: Carrossea [[spoiler:discovers that he is actually dead]], episode 21. Margaret eventually [[spoiler:finds out that she killed her own father]].

* AntiHero: Madlax is the pragmatic kind: while she is a kind and empathetic individual off-work, she shows absolutely no reservations about killing people. Which may be justified by the fact that [[spoiler:she was created specifically for murder--it is part of her true nature]].

* BadassAdorable: Madlax oh so very sweet and cute for a mass-murderer, and [[spoiler:so is Margeret after she accepts Madlax as part of herself]].
* BadassNormal: Limelda, a mundane, albeit elite soldier goes toe to toe with the clearly supernatural Madlax.
* BadBoss: Don't expect Monday to treat his underlings with any kind of respect or attention.

* BeachEpisode: Sort of. Episode 9 takes place in a holiday resort, complete with swimsuits and gratuitous fanservice. [[MoodWhiplash It also happens]] to be a MythArc-heavy one that bridges the Nafrece and Gazth-Sonikan storylines for the first time.

* BladeReflection: Nakhl, the KnifeNut she is, uses her blades as mirrors on regular basis.

* BodyguardCrush: If the implications of Vanessa and Madlax's relationship are anything to go by (see HomoeroticSubtext below).

* ClimacticBattleResurrection: [[spoiler:Vanessa, Carrossea, and Elenore are implied to have been resurrected at the end but, in a subversion, don't actually assist in the battle with Monday or show up again at all.]]

* ColonelBadass: Col. Richard Burton, Margaret's dad: [[spoiler:not only was he able to enter the Sanctuary without possessing the Gift, but he also confronted the BigBad Monday, mutilating and ''stripping him of most of his powers'', a feat only surpassed by Madlax who actually killed him... did we mention that "Madlax" originally was ''his'' callsign? Too bad he wasn't immune to the Words of Awakening]].
* ConspicuouslyPublicAssassination: Invoked by Guen [=McNichol=]. He hires Madlax to kill him while he delivers a speech in order to show the people who were controlling his entire life that he is going out on his own terms.
* CorruptCorporateExecutive: Vanessa's superiors are actually in cahoots with Enfant and [[spoiler:directly involved in selling arms to both the government and the rebels in Gazth-Sonika]].

* CriminalAmnesiac: Implied about Madlax and Carrossea. [[spoiler:Subverted in both cases, however: Madlax did not even exist before her "amnesia" and Carrossea only turned to crime afterwards. The real criminal amnesiac is Margaret.]]

* CurtainCamouflage: Kinda. When Madlax comes to visit Guen [=McNichol=] before his assassination, she is first seen wrapped in a curtain--probably to conceal the fact that she's wearing a cocktail dress.
* DayOfTheWeekName: Friday Monday.

* EnemyWithout: Subverted with [[spoiler:Margaret and Madlax. Margaret originally created Madlax by casting out her self-preservation instinct (and some other parts of her psyche) and discarded her after she fulfilled her purpose. Although she begins to see Madlax as her enemy under Monday's influence, she eventually understands the need to accept her as part of herself ''and'' Madlax's right to a separate existence]].
* EvilCostumeSwitch: [[spoiler:After Margaret is brainwashed by Monday]], she takes to wearing a darker and more ominous version of her usual clothes.
* EvilLaugh: Carrossea pulls this off when burning down Enfant's base. Monday does this ''all the time'' in the later episodes.

* EyepatchOfPower[=/=]MaskPower: Monday wears a cool red-and-gold half-mask over his right eye, [[spoiler:which was [[EyeScream shot out]] by Colonel Burton during their confrontation twelve years ago--which apparently had a side-effect of robbing Monday of most of his Gift powers]].

* THE {{Flashback}}: The flashback of what really happened 12 years ago is glimpsed in bits and pieces throughout the series before finally coming together in the end: [[spoiler:Monday attempted to use his Gift, the three Holy Books, and the power of the Sanctuary to plunge the world into mindless self-slaughter. This accidentally brought down a plane flying over the site of his ritual and carrying two unwitting Gifted children: a boy, Poupee, and a girl, Margaret. Margaret's military officer father went looking for her but stumbled onto Monday's ritual and managed to stop it by depowering Monday. Monday retaliated by driving Colonel Burton violently insane and turning him onto Poupee and Margaret, who survived the crash thanks to their Gift and were watching them from the sidelines. Poupee died TakingTheBullet for Margaret, who, unable to shoot her own father, created a LiteralSplitPersonality to pull the trigger for her. Poupee, who fell in love with Margaret during their brief time together, used his Gift to cast out the memories of his past life, including his death, and to trap them within the Sanctuary in order to continue to exist for Margaret's sake. Margaret herself similarly trapped the memories of killing her father in the Sanctuary and warped back home to Nafrece, leaving her other, murderous self behind. The self-resurrected Poupee was picked up by Monday to serve as an Enfant agent under his new identity of "Carrossea Doon"; Margaret's split personality, in the meantime, was left to fend for herself and took on the name "Madlax"--Colonel Burton's old codename, which Monday used to address him during their fight. The cast-out memories of Carrossea and Margaret/Madlax sublimated themselves within the Sanctuary as Poupee and Laetitia, respectively.]]

* JustFriends: Madlax and Vanessa... yeah, '''right'''. Same could be said about Elenore and Vanessa.
* KarmaHoudini: Limelda, [[spoiler:accepted by Madlax in the end, despite killing her romantic interest, Vanessa]].
* KarmicDeath: [[spoiler:Monday is killed by Madlax, whom he indirectly brought into existence himself.]]
* KilledOffForReal: [[spoiler:Carrossea]] in episode 21, [[spoiler:Vanessa]] in 22, and [[spoiler:Elenore]] in 24.

* [[LastOfHisKind Last of her Kind]]: Lady Quanzitta is the last remaining member of the AncientTradition that guards Thirstari [[spoiler:and, following her apparent death in the ending, presumably the last overall]].

* LoveMakesYouCrazy: Limelda's love-hate obsession with Madlax eventually renders her a borderline raving lunatic ready to stalk her object of affection through the jungle, indiscriminately murdering anyone who stands in her way. [[spoiler:She gets over it, eventually.]]

* MadArtist: Monday is revealed to have been an artist (presumably before his criminal mastermind career) in [[AllThereInTheManual the promotional materials]].
* MeaningfulName: Madlax is supposed to be a portmanteau of "mad" and "relaxed", as in, someone who manages to stay calm in an insane world.

* TheMenInBlack: Enfant employs them, for instance, to catch Vanessa in Gazth-Sonika.

* MindControlEyes: [[spoiler: Margaret sports these while she is brainwashed by Monday.]]
* MindScrew: Explaining the plot of the series to someone who hasn't watched it is gonna get you some strange looks. Wiki/TheOtherWiki tries, however.

* NameAmnesia: The title heroine has retrograde amnesia regarding everything prior to being left in a warzone by her father twelve years ago, including her true name,--"Madlax" is just a codename she picked for her mercenary work because it sounded cool. [[spoiler:It is eventually revealed, however, that her "father" is actually another character's dad, and "Madlax" was actually his old codename.]]
* NietzscheWannabe: Monday can go on for hours rambling about how humanity is worthless vermin hellbent on destroying itself and how the world is better off burning.

* TheReveal: See the FlashBack entry above.

* SuicideByCop: General Guen [=McNichol=] hires Madlax to kill him in public since he's ''that'' sick of the war. This triggers the rivalry between Madlax and Limelda, who was in charge of the general's safety.

* ToCreateAPlaygroundForEvil: [[spoiler:This is essentially the BigBad's goal, since he sees all humans as evil deep inside and actively tries to bring out their "true natures".]]
* TomboyAndGirlyGirl: Madlax is the tomboy to Margaret ([[spoiler:who is actually the same person as herself]]) and Vanessa's girly girls.

* UndyingLoyalty: Elenore, towards Margaret. [[spoiler:Sadly, she isn't as undying herself...]]
* {{Unperson}}: Maclay Marini, the PI investigating Enfant, comes so close to learning the truth about him that they destroy all evidence of his existence, eventually forcing even him to acknowledge that he never existed (and fabricating a new identity for himself).
* UrbanFantasy: All right, it's set partly in a European city, partly in a South Asian city, and partly in the jungle (including most of the last twelve or so episodes). Its contemporary (if AlternateHistory) setting still qualifies.

* WarForFunAndProfit: This is what Enfant (and Bookwald) ''seems'' to perpetrate the Gazth-Sonikan civil war for, [[spoiler:but this war is actually a minor albeit beneficial side effect of Monday's previous failed attempt to plunge the world in chaos twelve years ago. He later uses it mainly as a ruse to conceal his base of operations in the middle of the warzone]].

* WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity: It is implied that Monday went insane after first coming into contact with the Holy Books--which is exactly why Quanzitta's AncientTradition was guarding them from unauthorized access.

The story revolves around two young women who, at first, seem completely unrelated and don't even know of each other's existence. The title character is a [[ExtraordinarilyEmpoweredGirl legendary mercenary and assassin]] plying her bloody trade in the fictional [[DuringTheWar civil war-torn]] Asian country of Gazth-Sonika. Almost everything about her, from her real name to her past, is a mystery--even to herself, as she had [[EasyAmnesia lost her memory]] soon after the war started twelve years ago. The other protagonist is Margaret Burton, the sole heir of a wealthy aristocratic family, attending school in the peaceful European country of Nafrece. Twelve years ago, an airliner carrying her mother and her crashed over Gazth-Sonika, and its passengers, as well as Margaret's father who led the rescue party, have been missing ever since. By means unknown, Margaret returned to Nafrece soon after the crash, becoming its only known survivor but losing all memories of the event--all except a single word: "Madlax". Twelve years later, this strange connection and the mystery behind their amnesias come back to haunt them after they cross paths with a powerful crime syndicate, "Enfant", whose DiabolicalMastermind leader, the [[MalevolentMaskedMen masked man]] [[BigBad Friday Monday]], seems to have sinister plans for both of them.

* BigBad: Friday Monday, the insane, [[MalevolentMaskedMen masked]] DiabolicalMastermind leader of [[NebulousCriminalConspiracy Enfante]] who sends his henchmen after the four heroines, instigates [[spoiler:the civil war in Gazth-Sonika]], wants to [[spoiler:[[ToCreateAPlaygroundForEvil unleash humanity’s darker nature]]]], and is behind [[spoiler:everything bad that has ever happened in Margaret/Madlax's life]].

The story revolves around two young women who, at first, seem completely unrelated and don't even know of each other's existence. The title character is a [[ExtraordinarilyEmpoweredGirl legendary mercenary and assassin]] plying her bloody trade in the fictional [[DuringTheWar civil war-torn]] Asian country of Gazth-Sonika. Almost everything about her, from her real name to her past, is a mystery--even to herself, as she had [[EasyAmnesia lost her memory]] soon after the war started twelve years ago. The other protagonist is Margaret Burton, the sole heir of a wealthy aristocratic family, attending school in the peaceful European country of Nafrece. Twelve years ago, an airliner carrying her mother and her crashed over Gazth-Sonika, and its passengers, as well as Margaret's father who led the rescue party, have been missing ever since. By means unknown, Margaret returned to Nafrece soon after the crash, becoming its only known survivor but losing all memories of the event--all except a single word: "Madlax". Twelve years later, this strange connection and the mystery behind their amnesias come back to haunt them after they cross paths with a powerful crime syndicate, "Enfant", whose DiabolicalMastermind seems to have sinister plans for both of them.

* BigBad: Friday Monday, the insane, [[MalevolentMaskedMen masked]] DiabolicalMastermind leader of [[NebulousCriminalConspiracy Enfante]] who sends his henchmen after the four heroines, [[spoiler:manipulates the civil war in Gazth-Sonika and wants to [[ToCreateAPlaygroundForEvil unleash humanity’s darker nature]], and is behind everything bad that has ever happened in Margaret/Madlax's life]].

* BigBad: Friday Monday, the insane DiabolicalMastermind behind the war in Gazth-Sonika and [[spoiler:pretty much everything bad that has ever happened in Margaret/Madlax's life]].

* MuggedForDisguise: In Episode 3, Madlax poses as a maid to infiltrate a hotel. The real maid is briefly shown BoundAndGagged in her underclothes inside a storage room.

* GainaxEnding: [[spoiler:It's hard to distinguish a DownerEnding from EarnYourHappyEnding when there are [[SchrodingersCat vague implications both ways about the eventual fate]] of three supporting characters.]]

''Madlax'' is the second installment of BeeTrain's GirlsWithGuns trilogy, following ''Anime/{{Noir}}'' and followed by ''Anime/ElCazadorDeLaBruja''. In stark contrast to gritty and down-to-earth ''Noir'', ''Madlax'' incorporates many supernatural aspects and concepts associated with psychological thrillers and surrealism, [[ViewersAreGeniuses which the audience must often interpret without further explanation]]. The title is a [[{{Portmantitle}} portmanteau]] of the English words "mad" and "relaxed", playing on the prominent theme of [[OrderVersusChaos active insanity vs. near-catatonic sensibility]] in the story.

* MindScrew: Explaining the plot of the series to someone who hasn't watched it is gonna get you some strange looks. TheOtherWiki tries, however.

** Finally, there's Limelda and Madlax, which, again, seemingly moves beyond subtext as far as the former is concerned. Limelda develops a strange love-hate obsession with Madlax after learning that [[spoiler:Gazth-Sonika's civil war was orchestrated, and is being prolonged, by [[TheSyndicate Enfant]]]], and at one point says that she loves her while preparing to snipe her. On Madlax's side, she tells Limelda to keep watching her and to remember her if she dies before the final confrontation with [[BigBad Friday]], which Limelda [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] as sounding quite like a LoveConfession. [[spoiler:And then, after Friday is defeated, Madlax and Limelda essetinally ride off into the sunset together, despite Limelda having killed her other ImpliedLoveInterest]].

* BodyguardCrush: Vanessa and Madlax (protected and protector, respectively) fall for each big time.

* ColdSniper: Limelda is a professional sniper who demonstrates stoic adherence to her duties, [[spoiler:before going completely off the rails after she learns the truth about how the war that defined her life got started]].

* CoolBigSis: Elenore and Vanessa to Margaret.