The former lives of most ES Force members are erased for their own good. However, after a recent scare on the planet Dardanos, Eclair's suppressed memories of her past invade her present with enough agonizing force to drive her over the edge. Making matters worse is the ever more apparent truth that the power behind the G.O.T.T. is not what it seems. Fleeing for their lives. Eclair and Lumiere take refuge on an obscure colony. Little do they know that the Purging Unit has already arrived...
The three episodes on this volume comprise:
10. Rebirth/Slave
11. Set/Free
12. Frozen/Life
The story continues to build and unravel in the latest instalment of Kiddy Grade.
Audio:
I listened to the Japanese track for my main reviewing, and continued to enjoy the performances of the Japanese actors. The nuances, in particular with Éclair given the amount of material for her in this volume, come across really well. The stereo mix is nice, with the music sounding particularly good. I noticed no dropouts or distortions during regular playback.
I also listened to the parts of the disc in English. I am really enjoying this dub a lot, with Colleen Clinkenbeard getting plenty to do as Éclair, and she continues to do a fine job. My only gripe with the track is that it does sometimes stray a bit too far from the literal translation for my liking (which is often the case with FUNimation dubs). The 5.1 mix is pretty nice, adding a bit of directionality, though it didn't seem that great a difference over the stereo track to me. I noticed no dropouts or distortions on this track during regular playback.
As this is a FUNimation production, we also get dubbed openings and endings, and in the case of Kiddy Grade, they're very good. It's quite a feat with the opening song, too, since the original is quite nonsensical in its use of English. Dub songs really do add big brownie points in my book, especially since they're not cringe-worthy like some older dubbed themes.
Video:
With only three episodes on this disc, and coming from GONZO, you would expect Kiddy Grade to look great, and this transfer doesn't disappoint. The video continues to look crisp and clean, and colours are extremely vibrant. This is one of GONZO's typical digital looking "shiny" shows, and it looks great. There was also no artifacting that I noticed, and aliasing is pretty non-existant.
We also get alternate angles for the openings and endings. This means that you can either watch the translated, English credits in the opening, or the original Japanese opening with kanji, and the same for the ending, depending on which language you select from the menu.
Subtitles are in a nice yellow font, as opposed to the white font used on the US discs, and I didn't notice any major grammatical or spelling errors.
Packaging:
No packaging was included as this was a check disc.
Menu:
The menus are simple but functional, with a brief introduction sequence continuing to the static opening menu (I don't consider a rotating logo to be much motion!) featuring a shot of the Eclipse, Mercredi and Armbrust from the front cover, this time to the right of the screen with the logo above them. There are the four choices as static buttons, with some background music looping over the top, and the volume number and title at the top of the screen. Sub-menus are similarly static with much the same use of text and buttons, and the same image on the right of the screen. Amusingly though, the Episodes selection sub-menu has the episode numbers and titles from volume 3, which really confused me when I put in the disc to write up this review.
Extras:
Again we don't get many extras on the disc. There's a brief image gallery, essentially a series of screenshots set to some of the show's music. I do find screenshot galleries pointless, because I'd much rather there was some production art instead, so this one wins no points for me. We get the textless opening again, and some more textual character profiles. Not exactly a mouth-watering selection.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
In the last volume, Kiddy Grade really started to pick up the pace as the over-arching story began to build and really come together, as mysteries formed and the past started to unravel. In this fourth volume, the show continues in that stride with some really good episodes that are less episodic than any before, as the threads from each continue into the next. It's certainly a shift into higher quality stories, but despite how much fun it is proving to be, there's just something holding me back from calling it great, and it's not something I can really put into words.
I think part of the problem stems from only getting three episodes a disc. It's not something I like to complain about too much, especially since from a UK perspective it's not something MVM had a choice in doing (they had to follow the US release), but I find that just as things are really hitting their stride in the show, the disc is over and I have to wait for more. It doesn't help that the wait after this volume will be more significant than the past few. Even four episodes would probably do better as we'd be at this point after three discs, and by the time this disc rolled around we'd be seeing what happened next.
Aside from that constraint, the episodes themselves are really starting to get good as the meat and potatoes come out. "Rebirth/Slave" focuses mainly around Éclair for the day. This time though, she's being plagued by nightmares of what appears to be past events catching up to her. She goes to her usual daily café, but doesn't fly through as normal. Instead she's subdued and ends up experiencing some strange flashbacks. She's still remembering a comment made on her last mission by a man about her "predecessor". It's then that she begins to see this person, who actually turns out to be a mirror image of herself. What I really liked about this episode was how it played out differently to most. The focus is heavily on Éclair, and music and dialogue are used quite sparsely throughout, especially in the early stages of the episode, building up a really good atmosphere that just boosts the intrigue of the story, which is thrust forward by the revelations here.
The second episode on the disc sees Lumiere and Éclair sent, with Armbrust, to a planet called Aure, the home of the Nouvlesse. They have no government, but its administration have asked for GOTT's help to suppress a backlash from their workers, who are humans that have few rights and perform all the labour for the Nouvlesse (who are themselves human). Éclair and Lumiere are sent to intervene, but when they're forced to hold back innocent civilians, Éclair decides it's time to rethink her actions. This episode is really interesting, mainly for the struggle it portrays in Éclair. It's always clear that she doesn't want to kill any innocent people, and is actually opposed to the view of GOTT in this case, as it means helping the Nouvlesse, which is something she is not comfortable doing given how they've essentially enslaved humans. It's also nice to see Lumiere take her side and help in the fight, because of her friendship with Éclair and the fact they are partners. It's a nice display of camaraderie in one of the series' most chilling scenes yet, as many innocents at the front of the protest are slaughtered.
Given those events, and Éclair and Lumiere's disobeying orders, it's only natural there would be repercussions, but to be honest, it's not even something I was expecting. The Chief orders them to be expelled as ES members, and even worse, sends the Purge Squad after them. They escape as fugitives, along with Armbrust, to a colony, but the Squad soon catches up to them, leading to a showdown that could change the two forever... again.
This is the episode where the heat is really turned up for the main characters, as they've passed the point of no return and will be fugitives forever. They're now fighting to survive, in tact, without having their memories erased. There's some really interesting involvement from Armbrust that shows both the shady and caring side of his character, while the Chief comes across as a conniving, evil woman throughout this episode given that she is orchestrating so much from behind the scenes. It's interesting that we also get to see the reactions of all the other ES members we've met to the news that Éclair and Lumiere have been kicked out, and may be purged. It ends up leaving a lot of interesting threads open.
As the series moves forward, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing where it's going. With Éclair and Lumiere now on the run, and the best from GOTT being sent after them, it'll be interesting to see how the other ES members get involved, and when they inevitably do, whose side they'll be on.
There's a lot of good character development for Éclair here, as we really get inside her head through the flashbacks and her actions, and see how certain things have affected her both from the past and present. It's slightly to the detriment of Lumiere in parts, though, as she definitely comes off second best to Éclair in terms of screen time, so often I found it a bit more difficult to know her motivations and how she was feeling based on her reactions to certain situations. But there's plenty of time left to expand on both these characters and the supporting cast (with Armbrust and the Chief represented quite well here), in particular the other ES members.
The animation for this show continues to be of a pretty high quality for a TV series, with lots of movement and some really good action sequences. CG is well integrated for the most part, being something that GONZO have pretty much got nailed over the years, and the colours and tones all fit well in the scenes, especially with the more sinister scenes taking place in dark or shadowy areas. The character designs are excellent, and I've found the music for this series really fitting so far.
In Summary: Kiddy Grade gets even more interesting in this latest outing, though there's something about it that I can't put my finger on that keeps me from thrusting it into the highest tiers. The characters continue to grow, and the story is getting far more interesting as the past is intersecting with the future, and the pace is picking up. The revelations come crashing down and the situation the characters are in is turned on its head. If you're after a slick looking new series, with great action and a story that keeps getting better as it progresses, definitely give Kiddy Grade a try.
Philips 28" Pure Flat Widescreen TV, Pioneer DV-464 code free DVD player, JVC gold-plated RGB SCART cable, standard stereo sound.
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