Review of Burst Angel: Vol. 3

Introduction

The third volume of Burst Angel arrives packed to the gills with more futuristic Charlie`s Angels style action. Gonzo puts together a series filled with characteristically scantily clad girls, brandishing powerful guns, and battling dark demonic menaces in a hi tech neon lit Tokyo.

It`s one of those futures where society has fallen to pieces. In Tokyo, the ownership of guns has been made legal, and as a result crime rates have skyrocketed. Arrests however are down, as for the new RAPT (Recently Armed Police of Tokyo) it cuts down on paperwork when there isn`t a living prisoner to process. When just stepping outside your front door means taking your life in your hands, someone needs to do something. Fortunately there are four girls willing to do what is necessary to ensure peace for the citizens of Tokyo. Operating from a hi-tech trailer and receiving their instructions from the Bailan, Sei, Amy, Meg and the enigmatic Jo set forth, armed to the teeth and ready to battle the toughest of villains, aided by their trusty chef Kyohei. When it gets too tough, they can fall back on the services of the awesome Cybot Django, but there is more to Jo than meets the eye. She sports a strange tattoo that glows when she fights, and the rumour is that whoever sees it is destined for Hell.

This volume of Burst Angel has four episodes, but in a change from previous volumes, they are presented on this disc with only the Japanese credit sequences and the Japanese episode titles.

Ep 9. Party Of The Dragon
Amy, Meg and Sei pay a visit to her grandfather`s ship for a swanky meal and soiree. Sei isn`t expecting an engagement party though. With the current crime wave, her grandfather Laoban realises that it is time to strengthen the clan, and the best way would be to arrange a wedding between the Bailan and the Kokuren clans after centuries of rivalry. Sei`s reluctant at first, but the prospect doesn`t seem so bad when she meets her intended, Jei. But Jei`s plans extend beyond matrimony, and if Laoban doesn`t consent to his requests, he`ll have to emphasise his intentions with automatic weapons. While all this is happening, Jo is watching horror movies with Kyohei and eating junk food.

Ep 10. Uncharted Cyberspace
Django gets an overhaul from his creator Leo, so everyone else gets some time off from all the crime fighting. It`s time to have some fun, and Amy is in the mood to go shopping for upgrades for her computer. Sei is more concerned about the credit card bill and refuses, and she and Meg go out for some fun of their own, leaving Amy at home. Jo is just bored without some violence to indulge in, so Amy decides to take advantage of Kyohei when he shows up. It`s off to the market to buy some upgrades, and try and track down a nefarious hacker. But Amy`s own hacking is going to cause some serious problems.

Ep 11. Angel Of The East, Hawk Of The West
The action moves to Osaka when a terrorist act causes two trains to collide. A phone call comes in from a mysterious caller claiming responsibility, and in response the Osaka police decide to round up anyone that looks suspicious. That includes Jo, who happens to be in the city on a job for the popular local DDD wrestling franchise. Since one of the police happens to be a wrestling fan, she is quickly released, but finds that her job protecting big star Mega Rider is harder than she first assumed. The big match has barely started when his opponent mutates into a giant bug and starts wreaking havoc in the arena. Jo goes on the hunt, but Osaka already has a protector, a female bike-riding avenger named Katsu Takane.

12. Tsutenkaku Tower, Drenched With Tears
Jo is in police custody again, matching wits with the hotheaded Takane. The monster`s corpse is fished out of the river, and Jo realises that its appearance in Osaka is no coincidence. Sei shows up to spring Jo out of jail, and is all set to leave the city, when a familiar logo on the side of a truck leads them to continue the investigation. They follow the truck to a fairground, where a giant robot makes an appearance and starts terrorising the city. Meanwhile in Tokyo, Leo has just put the finishing touches on Django, and when Amy and Meg get the call, it is a small matter to relocate the whole operation to Osaka in time to battle the strange robot.

Video

Gonzo have created an elaborate future world for Burst Angel, and it comes across clearly on this anamorphic widescreen transfer. There are the usual problems associated with anime, digital banding, and the odd compression artefact, but the woeful transfer of the first volume is a distant memory. It is an elaborately designed future world, and the anime blends traditional 2D animation with 3D CGI quite effectively. It`s a dynamically animated anime, with the action scenes impressively realised. The character designs are excellent, as you would expect from Gonzo. There is plenty of eye-candy to be had with this volume, and plenty of fan service too. In other words, given a cast of four scantily clad girls, performing athletic feats of bravado, there is enough flesh and pneumatic anatomy to satisfy many a teen.

Audio

You get a choice of DD 5.1 soundtracks in English and Japanese, but for this volume you only get the choice of the signs translated or the translated English subtitles. The dubtitles of the previous volume aren`t here this time around. The Burst Angel audio experience is quite explosive, with plenty of action and some toe tapping tunes, along with some incidental music that owes a fair bit to Ennio Moriccone. The dialogue is clear throughout, and it`s an enjoyable experience on the whole. There is one minor sound dropout in the second Bakuten radio segment, but the episodes are presented flawlessly.

Features

One again, a Burst Angel volume comes with a goodly amount of extra features, making a pleasant change from the usual anime release. You can see the Textless songs, complete with optional translated subtitles, and there are trailers for Samurai Champloo and Gunslinger Girl, as well as the usual attractive menus and jacket picture.

There are more radio dramas to enjoy also, with Akeno Watanabe (Jo) and Megumi Toyoguchi (Meg) once again doing the honours.

The regular Bakuten Radio On Air Selection gets three instalments here, lasting 12, 15 and 12 minutes respectively. They follow the usual formats of tongue twister showdowns, as well as the actors creating skits featuring the shows characters sent in by fans. There are also two further 5-minute bonus segments, which continue the pandemonium with a couple of helium voiced characters. These are all audio tracks presented against a static caption card and with subtitles throughout. These are fast paced segments and the subtitles are hard pressed to keep up, but they are entertaining and frivolous pieces that make a nice accompaniment to the show.

The commentary this time around comes with Uncharted Cyberspace, the second episode on the disc. Voice director Chris Bevins, and actors Alyson Retslov (Amy) and Greg Ayres (Kyohei) supply the comments. It`s a light-hearted track that is entertaining to listen to. They talk about the story and the characters, mostly with tongue in cheek.

Conclusion

Burst Angel is a light and enjoyable series that is heavy on the eye-candy and action and none too taxing on the intellect. The stories are fun too, with plenty of action, strange unexplained monsters, and girls with guns in skimpy costumes. The episode format changes somewhat for this third volume however, and the disc is a tad uneven as a result. Whereas the first two volumes consisted of two-part stories, bridged by a cliffhanger, this volume begins with two standalone stories, followed by a multi-part story. This wouldn`t necessarily be a problem, but the first two tales actually feel set outside the Burst Angel universe as established in the first two discs, and the stories don`t quite seem to follow the same rules.

Party Of The Dragon is a useful episode as we finally get to see the Bailan that directs the girls in their endeavours, and a decent bit of back-story is filled in. It`s a pretty good episode in terms of story and characters, and on the whole is very enjoyable. The thing is that the Burst Angel universe thus far has established Jo as somewhat enigmatic when it comes to her abilities and the mysterious glowing tattoo she sports, and the demonic villains are born as a result of genetic meddling in a lab somewhere, and there is a story reason for the foes that the girls face. In this episode, it is perpetual abductee Meg who gets to save the day for a change, but her fighting abilities are awakened by the laying on of hands by a passing retired Martial Arts movie star, with a magical light show. It makes no sense given the characters and story thus far, and while seeing Meg kick buttock is entertaining, it seems like a story idea just thrown at random onto the screen.

Similarly Uncharted Cyberspace takes Amy into random directions not indicated by the earlier episodes, when she tries to track down a hacker who has been interfering with her net presence. This leads to a sequence where she is translated from the physical into the digital realm, without any aid of device or technology. It`s pushing the boundaries of credibility that she manages this, but what is just ridiculous is that she manages to drag Kyohei along for the ride as well. The episode itself is very clichéd and while it has plenty of eye candy, the story just didn`t hold my attention.

Fortunately the final two episodes on this disc put the show firmly back on track, with a return to the main storyline of Jo going up against giant genetic mutants and large destructive robots. RAPT are spreading their greedy influence through the country, and their latest plans take Jo to Osaka, where the police are on the back foot because of terrorist threats. An interesting character dynamic is set up when Jo meet Takane, the biker chick turned city defender. Actually, taking a break from the main storyline before returning makes for a good breather, it`s only that the intervening episodes could have been better. When these final two episodes do begin, thematically it is more of the same, but the pause in between makes the return of the storyline more welcome, and the way these episodes pan out is very enjoyable, filled with the eye candy, frenetic action, and giant CG mecha combat that has come to exemplify Burst Angel. Unfortunately, these two episodes stray from the format too, in that they aren`t a complete two-part story, rather the disc ends on a pesky cliffhanger. And shock of shocks, Meg only gets kidnapped once in the whole disc.

Burst Angel is a blast that doesn`t tax the brain, and is fun from beginning to end. I`m quite fond of its frivolous nature, and the clichéd characters are done with such verve and energy that they feel quite refreshing. This disc is good for extra features, with the radio dramas making a nice humorous addition to the relatively serious stories. Burst Angel simply is fun, and there is something to be said for that.