Phantom thief jeanne is a series created by Arina Tanemura.
It focuses on Maron Kusakabe who’s a student by day and phantom thief jeanne by night a reincarnation of Joan of Arc.
The story focuses on her stealing demon possessed valuables that corrupt others especially ones pure of heart to remove said corruption. So its typical heaven vs hell kind of scenario. It has a case of the week scenario earlier on but it eventually forms into a much bigger arc as time goes by.
The art for starters is very pleasing to look at. Even if the animation looks dated with also a tendacies to sadly reuse stuff, the art is still really nice to look at. The character designs especially were really great.
The atmosphere has that shoujo cheesiness to it sure, specially with its comedy that I personally didn’t really found it to be too funny but also moments of dark stuff in it as well like domestic issues at home as one such example so it does get more darker as time goes by.
The funniest moment in the anime for me, was that brief romance visual novel parody in episode 19.
Its a fairly long anime bout 44 episodes however, it does stray from the manga quite a bit since it was still ongoing at the time it was airing specially the ending while decent the manga has more stuff added to show what happens after the story.
Also heists aren’t predictable either thankfully, meaning that even Jeanne has competition like Sinbad another angel phantom thief that steals valubles corrupted by demons as well too.
The plottwists were also handled well in ways you couldn’t even predict that it would have happened.
Chiaki personally I found to be a bit way too much and was more of a creepy pervert than a hero. A lot of his antics especially come across off as clingy and too try hard like sending a letter to Maron who’s expecting one from her parents and it just comes across as mentioned to cheesy and clingy. Not just Chiaki, but sometimes the male characters as well just come across as cringey borderline ready to graduate to rapist types so yeah not exactly everyones cup of tea.
Miyako her best friend or frenemy I should say, often tries to stop Jeanne while not realizing its actually Maron in reality. Miyako, I found as well to be a bit too much and comes across as more mean and nasty than so pleaseant and also pretty fantical to being a police detective.
I would be lying if I didn’t say there was moments I was annoyed by Maron as well too, as sometimes she hesitates in her duties and often mopes around in self pity from time to time.
So yeah it can be one sided in terms of personaltiy at times for the cast.
Yamato Minazuki I found personally to have some of the best character development going from being something of a pushover to more assertive yet still retaining his kindness even after his mishaps with demons. His older brother is also a character in another Arina Tanemura manga series called I.O.N fun fact.
Atmosphere wise, it’s almost the polar opposite of Persona 5 as its lot more upbeat and playful.
The music was another highlight as well I really liked that fits perfectly with the anime.
The voice acting was serviceable enough.
Theres fanservice in it and I personally found it to be more cheesy than enjoyable.
The filler was also unnecessary theres about 7 volumes with 33 chapters yet the anime extended way more than it really should have been 26 could maybe be enough but this was just to excessive honestly 44 episodes. Honestly, you wouldn’t be missing out much if you did skip the filler the filler was really only just there since the manga was pretty fast paced and something to pad out the time but it just came across as lazy and as mentioned if you skip it you won’t really miss anything important much.
The manga also had lot more content and elaboration into story events and the ending in the anime while happier, it takes it a step further and shows even more detail into what happened afterwards and even more happiness included as well for the main cast. The anime, however, kind of just glides through the elaboration part sadly.
Myst is thankfully an anime only character as yeah, she can be pretty bratty and a nuisance.
Overall it was a pretty good show.
It gets 4 out of 5 stars.
Fans of persona 5 certainly are going to enjoy this.