'Chiko: Heiress to the Phantom Thief' is also known as: 'The Daughter of 20 Faces' and 'Niju Menso no Musume'. It is a rather obscure anime, but I absolutely adored it. It also has a manga. To be honest, I equally reccomend the manga and anime.
"Chizuko Mikamo is a young girl living with her aunt and uncle after her parents died. She behaves coldly toward them, despite their efforts to make her happy, because she knows that they are trying to slowly poison her so that they can take her inheritance for themselves. Because of her intelligence and knowledge gained from reading detective novels, she works to avoid eating the food her aunt prepares, but it is impossible to avoid all together and she still takes in enough to cause her to collapse. Her butler is revealed to actually be the world-famous thief Twenty Faces, who was there to steal Chizuko's rightful inheritance, a family heirloom gem known as the Anastasia Ruby. When he realizes just what Chizuko's been going through, however, he asks her if she wants to come with him and his band on their travels around the world. She agrees and Twenty Faces takes her back with him to join his gang, who affectionately shorten her name to Chiko. Two years pass and Chiko is now a strong thief, having learned the tricks of the trade from Twenty Faces and the members of his band." (
x) After that, the story follows through with the band of thieves' misadventures, slowly revealing Chiko and Twenty Faces's pasts.
This anime is just.... nghh. It's like a mix of Last Exile, Big O, Baccano, and Blood+. I don't even know how, but it is. That's just the feel you get from it. It's definitely one of my favorites, although I just started rewatching it, and it's been a while. I haven't met anyone else who has watched it, unfortunately, so I'm hoping to find some people here or perhaps turn some people on to it here.
I highly reccomend it. The art is pretty good, in my opinion, although the animation is average. The story is adorable, sad, hilarious, and (sometimes) suspenseful. A lot of the plot twists are easy to expect, but the fight scenes that go along with them are great.
