Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne

Maron Kusakabe may seem to be an Ordinary High School Student, but secretly she is the Reincarnation of Joan of Arc, Kaitou Jeanne! Maron is on a Mission from God to seal demons hiding in works of art, which possess and corrupt pure-hearted people that admire their beauty. Unfortunately, sealing the demon also causes the artwork it inhabits to disappear, making Jeanne seem to be nothing more than a petty (if stylish) thief to most, meaning that the police and Maron's best friend Miyako, who dreams of becoming a detective, are dedicated to catching her. Fortunately, Jeanne has God's blessing and a number of divine tools at her disposal, giving her an edge over them.

Because her divorced parents live and work overseas, Maron lives alone in her apartment with tiny angel Finn Fish. Across the hall live Miyako and her family, unaware of Maron's identity. Then, Handsome Lech Chiaki Nagoya moves in next door. He gets on Maron's nerves, but Miyako instantly falls head-over-heels in love with him. Soon after, Kaitou Sinbad, another kaitou wielding the same powers as Jeanne, appears on the scene and starts competing with Jeanne to see who can seal the demons first. Finn and Maron wonder who he could be, as Maron was supposed to be the only kaitou. Finn and Maron both conclude that Sinbad must be Jeanne's opposite - a kaitou working for the devil. All may not be as it seems, however....

Published in the shoujo magazine Ribon from 1998 to 2000, Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne is the first major work by Arina Tanemura. It was adapted into a 44 episode Anime by Toei in 1999. It stands apart from most Magical Girl series by having a Broken Bird heroine, and can be quite a Tear Jerker at times.

Tropes used in Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne include:

• Ascended Extra: The police.
• Awful Truth: Who Jeanne has really been working for this whole time.
• Badass Longcoat: Sinbad's thieving ensemble.
• Break the Cutie: Maron has been the victim of one of these, planned and executed since her birth, due to being the reincarnation of Jeanne d'Arc.
• Broken Bird
• Canon Immigrant: The police appear on manga splash panels.
• Cheap Costume: Brought about when a demon-possessed human gets their hands on Maron's Transformation Trinket.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Chiaki, despite being opposed to Jeanne in his role as Kaitou Sinbad, tends to act this way towards girls, but Maron in particular. He did originally approach her with an ulterior motive, but developed feelings for her instead. Apparently, it also runs in the family.
• Class Representative: Minazuki Yamato
• Clear Their Name: In the anime, Miyako's secret motivation for catching Kaitou Jeanne is to pre-emptively protect her childhood friend Maron by revealing Jeanne's secret identity, since the two bear an uncanny resemblance. Unfortunately, Maron really is Kaitou Jeanne...
• Costumer: One episode is set in a recreation of an Edo period village.
• Creator Breakdown: The manga sidebars make it look like this.
• Crucified Hero Shot: In the second transformation.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Access Time
• Demonic Possession
• Dueling Shows: It's basically a Darker and Edgier version of Kaitou Saint Tail.
• Everything's Better with Monkeys: The owner of one possessed object gives it to her pet monkey to confuse Jeanne and Sinbad.
• Fallen Angel: Finn and not by choice.
• Fish Out of Temporal Water: Maron and Noin ended up in Fifthteenth Century Europe.
• Filler
• God
• He Is Not My Boyfriend: Male variant from Maron, about Chiaki.
• Hero Antagonist: Miyako and Chiaki/Sinbad.
• Heroic BSOD: Maron, Miyako, and Chiaki all fall into despair at different points in the series.
• Hot Shoujo Dad: Chiaki's father, who can pass for his brother.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Miyako in the second to the last episode of the anime.
• Jeanne D'Archetype
• Kaitou
• Magic Skirt: Jeanne. Maron usually has one, but apparently it turns off when Chiaki's around.
• Meet Cute: Zigzagged in the case of Maron's parents. They met twice in front of the same carousel, years apart and by various coincidences, and fell in love. By the time of the story, they're working in different countries from each other and their daughter, and they unknowingly cause a Heroic BSOD in Maron by telling her they're planning a divorce. As it turns out, the Devil appears to have intervened to destroy their feelings of love for each other as part of an Evil Plan to end Jeanne's cycle of reincarnation by breaking Maron's spirit. Only, that's not really the case: it's revealed that they would have broken up anyways, and no intervention was required. At the end of the series, her parents are shown meeting each other again in a third iteration of the same Meet Cute, implying that it really was the Devil's intervention that caused it.
• Mentor Mascot: Finn Fish serves as Jeanne's. Too bad she's not entirely trustworthy.
• Missing Mom: Chiaki.
• Mission from God: Jeanne. Subverted when Jeanne finds out she's been working for the Devil this whole time without knowing it.
• Modesty Shorts
• Obfuscating Stupidity: In the manga, Miyako always knew that Maron was Kaito Jeanne, and was intentionally failing to catch her.
• Only Six Faces
• Our Angels Are Different: In the manga, angels are amnesiac reincarnations of pure humans on Earth that carry and collect God's power, and are separated into ranks based on how much divine power they have built up over the years. These ranks can be easily distinguished by their size and their wings - Finn, as a low-ranking angel, is small with white wings. Fallen angels contain no power, and literally drain the power from angels they come into contact with, whether they wish to or not.
• Pair the Spares: Yamato and Miyako
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Averted: Maron and Jeanne look completely differently, instead of just wearing different clothes.
• Parental Abandonment: Maron.
• Power Gives You Wings
• Pre-Climax Climax: In the manga before the final battle between Maron and herself, Maron finally breaks down in front of Chiaki, who responds in kind. They definitely do not get near that base in the anime.
• Reincarnation: Not only is Maron the reincarnation of Jean D'arc, But she (and Jean) is also the reincarnation of Eve (Yeah, that Eve) in the Manga and Chiaki is heavily implied to be Adam's reincarnation. Also Fynn Fish is the angel-incarnation of Natsuki, a young Miko, who was murdered by her own, posessed brother for profit (almost twice). Also, she and Access Time are both reborn in the end of the Manga as Maron's and Chiaki's daughter Natsuki (yeah, creative) and Yamato's and Miyako's son Shinji (No, not that Shinji!).
• Sadistic Choice: Noin sets up one of these as part of the process of breaking Maron. Seal the demon, kill the child. Leave the demon, and it will eventually consume the child's soul. The child eventually dies but later becomes a kuro-tenshi.
• Shoot the Dog: Sinbad burning the photographer's house. This generally seems to be Sinbad's raison d'etre.
• Spell My Name with an "S": Finn versus Fin. The latter is less like a normal name, but makes more sense with her name. (It's supposed to be a pun, Fin Fish.)
  • She's called Fynn in Norway and Germany for some reason...
• Sprouting Ears: Maron/Jeanne does this sometimes in the manga.
• Stepford Smiler: Maron.
• Theme Tune Cameo: Maron hums the opening song in one episode.
• Transformation Sequence: The second is really long.
• Transformation Trinket: The rosaries.
  • Subverted at the end. Chiaki no longer needs to transform to use his power (since Maron knows it's him), and Maron no longer needs it period since she is no longer using the power of her trinket, but the power of her self-belief.
• Tsundere : Maron towards Chiaki, Miyako towards Maron and Minazuki, Fin towards Access
• Unwitting Pawn: Jeanne herself and later Finn.
• Villain Protagonist: Jeanne when it's revealed that she unknowingly helped the Devil all along.
• Virgin Power: Maron can only turn into Jeanne if she is "pure" (leading to Noin attempting to rape her so that she can no longer become Jeanne). As it turns out, though, that's not the definition of "pure"; being "pure" means having a pure soul and believing in your own purity, and Maron realizes this about halfway through the series, also inspiring hope in her past reincarnation.
• Wham! Episode: Episode 42.
• Wham! Line: "Maron is... Kaitou Jeanne?" Miyako in episode 42
  • "The fact that you were Jeanne was obvious to me from the very beginning!" Miyako in chapter 27
• White and Black Morality: Somewhat Deconstructed, this in some ways is also White and Grey Morality.
• You Don't Want to Die a Virgin, Do You?: See Pre-Climax Climax above.
• Zettai Ryouiki: The school uniforms are A grade.