Review of Burst Angel: Vol. 4

Introduction

Another 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, and just like Volume 3, they are presented on this disc with only the Japanese credit sequences and the Japanese episode titles. It seems the English title sequences, as well as the dubtitles were restricted to the first two volumes alone.

Ep 13. Bloody Battle! Naniwa Hoodlums
Picking up from the last volume`s cliffhanger, Osaka was in dire straits. Detective Iriki had been revealed as the villain behind the giant robot rampaging through the city, and has kidnapped Meg to prevent Jo or Takane acting precipitously. But neither defender is prepared to take it lying down, and while Takane gathers her fellow Osaka biker gang members to track down the cybot, Jo sees about getting some upgrades for Django.

Ep 14. Wild Kids
A bunch of street kids happen upon a silver-haired girl washed up by the river. Little Shirley is convinced it is an angel, and insists on rescuing her. The silver-haired girl has amnesia, but someone or something demonic is after her, and when they find her all hell breaks loose. The orphans get caught up in the middle of the mayhem, but it`s here that an unconventional friendship is formed.

Ep 15. An Ocean, Swimsuits, and a Sea Monster
It`s a chance for the girls to take a well-earned rest, and with Kyohei and Leo, Django`s engineer, they head to Tokyo Treasure Island, a newly opened resort built on an artificial island. But while all is sun, sea, sand and skimpy swimsuits up above, beneath the island`s surface lurks an ominous menace.

Ep 16. War Demon of the Haunted Realm
The hunt for a hardened criminal takes Meg and Jo to a rundown part of the city. It seems like a simple mission even though Meg gets kidnapped, but in the middle of the fight, Jo is assailed by a vision of her past. Things get desperate as Jo pursues a strange cybot into a mysterious forest, where the line between reality and fantasy blurs.

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 these are minor concerns with a transfer that presents the animation to good effect. It is an elaborately designed future world, and the anime blends traditional 2D animation with 3D CGI quite effectively. It`s a dynamically animated show, 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, and the choice of the signs translated or the translated English subtitles. 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.

Features

The fourth volume of Burst Angel continues the trend of packing in some decent extra features, making a pleasant change from the usual anime release. You can see the Textless songs, and there are trailers for some new MVM horror anime to look forward to. This autumn, there is the OVA release of Le Portrait de Petite Cossette, as well as the 13 episode series Requiem From the Darkness, and both are trailed here. As usual there are the customary attractive menus and jacket picture.

There are more radio dramas to enjoy, 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 7 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 three further bonus segments coming in a 6, 7 and 4 minutes, 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 Showdown In Osaka, which is evidently the English language title for the first episode on the disc. Voice director Chris Bevins, and actors Monica Rial (Jo) and Caitlin West (Takane) 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. An interesting point is regional dialects, and giving the residents of Osaka a voice that corresponds to the Texan accent in the US.

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. After a couple of relatively disappointing episodes in the previous volume, Burst Angel returns to normal service with two stand alone episodes book-ended by multi-parters that supply a decent quotient of guns, girls and kick-ass robots. In addition to that, the show is beginning to fill in some of Jo`s back-story, and in true anime fashion, it`s in the form of the involuntary flashbacks of an amnesia victim.

The first episode resolves the cliffhanger from volume 3, as RAPT tries to extend its malevolent influence to Osaka. Osaka`s defender Takane joins forces with Jo to defeat the latest gargantuan cybot in a burst of eye-candy and mecha action. Given the build up to this episode, it`s more than a satisfactory conclusion, if a little run of the mill. Wild Kids on the other hand is a more interesting prospect, with a journey back in time to Jo`s first appearance. A group of orphans fish her out of a river in an American city, only to get into the middle of a sinister battle. There are plenty of hints about who Jo actually is, but nothing too conclusive. It does explain why Jo is especially protective of a certain repeat abductee.

Then for all you drooling teenagers, there is the swimsuit edition of Burst Angel, as the girls go on a holiday to top up their tans. There are plenty of bikinis held on by a thread and a prayer, revealing far too much and tantalisingly not nearly enough at the same time. Then there are the camera angles, which if they were any more intimate could be used as medical exams. Fan service I salute you! Ladies aren`t left uncatered for, as Leo reveals a pair of Speedos that were probably sprayed on, and precision sculpting of body hair that goes beyond simple vanity. Oddly, Jo wears more when sunbathing than she does when she`s battling mutants. Finally we end with another multi-part episode, and the inevitable cliffhanger. Jo`s past comes into play once more, as her pursuit of a villain awakens memories in the form of unwanted visions. This is conveniently timed with the appearance of a mysterious cybot that attacks her. As the story progresses, the lines between reality and fantasy blur, and it appears that her battle with the cybot is tied into a similar event that occurred in the distant past. It`s unclear how much is actually happening, or whether it is all a hallucination, and the episode ends on an intriguing note.

We`ve reached that point in a series where the bigger picture takes over. All the way through the earlier episodes, we have seen the girls battling a mutant menace in various forms, and have seen that RAPT are involved in someway. We`ve seen that Jo is a mysterious character with a hidden past, but most of the episodes have concentrated on having fun within that context, and have played very much as individual stories. Now, what few hints that we have had so far are beginning to come together, and with the last episode on this disc, and the fact that there are only a couple of volumes left to go, the focus turns directly to Jo`s back story, and just how it is tied in with the conspiracy that keeps popping up. I get the feeling that subsequent episodes will be less about the fun, and more about the story. Fortunately Burst Angel has fun to spare, as the episodes on this disc bear out. Even if the story gets darker, and begins to take precedence, I doubt it will change the skimpy costumes, or Meg`s tendency to get kidnapped so regularly that you can set your watch by her.

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 ever so slightly more serious stories. Burst Angel simply is fun, and there is something to be said for that.