After an unceremonious dispatching of GOTT Director Eclipse, Éclair and Lumiere complete their successful raid on GOTT Headquarters. Éclair now assumes the title of Proxy Director. With her new power, she begins to rewrite many of GOTT policies and builds her own personal vigilante army out of clones of herself and Lumiere!
But just as she begins to exert her new authority, two masked strangers crash the party. Who are the strangers and what does their appearance mean for Proxy Director Éclair?
Kiddy Grade continues with more twists and turns as the series' complexion has changed completely.
Audio:
I listened to the Japanese track for my main reviewing, and continued to enjoy the performances of the Japanese actors. The emotions of Éclair and Lumiere come across really well, and the conflicts within the other characters are also portrayed 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 whole of the disc in English. I am really enjoying this dub a lot, with Colleen Clinkenbeard as Éclair and Monica Rial as Lumiere being particularly good. Also putting in a great showing with their increased roles though are Laura Bailey as Alv and Rebecca Paige as Dvergr. 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-existent.
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 featuring a shot of Sinistra and Dextera 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 (except the Episodes selection). The sub-menus have no music playing, however, and like many recent shows, there's no chapter select menu.
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 (though unfortunately it only contains the Japanese language track), and some more textual character profiles. Not exactly a mouth-watering selection.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
As the series has continued, I've been enjoying the story of Kiddy Grade more and more with each volume. And that only continues here, as things heat up even further following the dramatic events that closed out the last volume. And though I keep saying it, despite how much I am enjoying it, I still can't help but think there's an unnameable something holding it back from greatness. It's definitely been very good consistently with the last few volumes though.
At the end of volume five, we left things with Lumiere and Éclair having taken over GOTT headquarters after a massive fight involving all the ES members and resulting in the death of Chief Eclipse. This volume opens with "Look/Back", an episode that serves as a recap in several senses of the word. For the first half, it follows Lumiere and Éclair following Éclair's first awakening in her current body. She has no memory of anything, and it's left to Lumiere to help nurture her back to health. She goes over some of the things Éclair should remember, and they start to break into a routine as Éclair begins to find herself, but they're always being watched by Armbrust. The second half of the episode then switches focus over to Armbrust giving his boss a report on ES members Lumiere and Éclair, bringing us up to present events.
It's an interesting way of providing a recap of recent events, by introducing some new material showing Lumiere and Éclair in the past, before catching up with current events in Armbrust's report. Indeed, the past glimpse is actually really sweet, as we see how much Lumiere cares for Éclair and why their bond exists in the way it does. Watching Lumiere do things like helping her with her hair, and ensuring she retains her female elegance really helps flesh out the pair as at the same time we see why Éclair struggles so much with her past at times. Armbrust's report then raises some interesting questions, as we learn what is happening with the GOTT without actually seeing it yet. Having Éclair in charge of things certainly makes it interesting, even more so given what we know from the last few moments of the last episode.
"Phantasm/Reborn" follows up the last episode nicely, throwing us back into the thick of things. The GOTT Secretary and Superintendent General take some of their evidence to the Privy Council, who rule their appointment of Éclair as GOTT Chief is final, leaving little room open for any further evidence. As the headquarters continue to be rebuilt, Sinistra and Dextera are summoned to Chief Éclair, who sends them on a mission to "train" the twelve new ES members that have been appointed, since key pairs like Tweedledee and Tweedledum and Cesario and Viola have been put out of action. But the "trainees" put on more of an attack than training, and behind their masks they all bear a striking resemblance to Lumiere and Éclair. Chief Éclair then goes on to give a speech about the new philosophy of GOTT, when two mysterious riders show up and some of the new ES members exhibit strange behaviour.
I really liked this episode a lot, in part for the intrigue it provided in making all the new ES members essentially copies of Lumiere and Éclair, and how Sinistra and Dextera finally got some decent involvement in the plot as Chief Éclair shows that she quite blatantly wants to use them for her own devices, but wouldn't really be too bothered if they were put out of action themselves. The action is really good, but the story heats up further as Chief Éclair gives her speech. One of the new ES members, an Éclair look-alike, starts to remember some of the things that happened in Éclair's past, including her defiance of GOTT orders to save the people of another planet, and Chief Éclair's reaction is somewhat over the top as she clearly doesn't want to lose control of these new ES members that she is ordering around. Of course, we all know that Chief "Éclair" and "Lumiere" are in fact Alv and Dvergr, as they've somehow taken the pairs bodies, since the voices are the same. So it becomes pretty obvious who the masked ladies that appear at the end are, though what makes things more interesting is how they will try to thwart Alv and Dvergr's plans.
The final episode opens with a well-choreographed and entertaining fight between the masked women and the Lumiere and Éclair puppets. Interestingly, as they're in pursuit, Armbrust targets the two that showed signs of defiance earlier by helping the masked women and Chief Éclair orders those two watched, but lets him continue. The masked ladies escape, so Chief Éclair sends a group of mechanical animals out to do her bidding. All the new ES members are called to their location, but when the robots turn on the GOTT forces, the breakaway Lumiere and Éclair puppets decide to take matters into their own hands, leading the masked women to the scene.
Again, the events of this episode turn the plot in more intriguing directions as the show continues to be really entertaining. The brawl at the start reminds us of the kick-ass action that was a staple of the series early on, while the later parts exploring the feelings of the runaway Éclair and Lumiere puppets, thanks to Armbrust's involvement, helps remind us of why Lumiere and Éclair did things the way they did. While Chief Éclair was trying to make an example out of the runaways, it clearly had the opposite effect as it only served to bring out the masked women, the real Lumiere and Éclair albeit in new, sleeker bodies. The power struggle now within the GOTT and its ES members has really stepped up a notch now, and what will be interesting going forward is how it effects the characters and indeed the rest of the planet and galaxy around them, as the ripples may have far-reaching effects.
It's great to see a new look for Lumiere and Éclair, and the build up to their unveiling was played out surprisingly well. While the changes in the characters are easily noticeable because of the changes to voices, it means we never get lost and while we're a step ahead of the other characters, the interactions at this stage work really well. Seeing Chief Éclair with Sinistra and Dextera, treating them like her whipping boys was really great, as was the resurgence of Lumiere and Éclair to sort things out. Another thing that will be interesting going forward though is hopefully finding out exactly what happened at the end of the last disc for the switch in bodies to take place, both with Alv and Dvergr taking over Lumiere and Éclair, which we all but saw, but more importantly how Lumiere and Éclair came to take control of their new bodies.
By the end of this disc, while a lot of new things have come into play and many of the questions asked during the last disc's episodes have been answered, many more have been raised here leaving lots up in the air. In particular how things will go forward now, with all the players in place, and how Lumiere and Éclair will go about taking down Alv and Dvergr. What will also be interesting is seeing how the remaining true ES members figure into the story. With just six episodes to go to wrap things up, I'm really hoping that things continue the way they've been going and don't fall apart at the last hurdle, as that would be a crying shame. The story takes an interesting new direction here, and I'm really looking forward to see where it goes.
In Summary:
The story of Kiddy Grade takes some exciting new turns here as it kicks back into gear, and it's just getting better and better as the discs go by. There's a whole host of plot revelations here, and while it means the pace is a little slower than the series' norm in places, there's still a lot of action to carry it through. By the end of this disc I was left with a feeling of anticipation to see how things will all end, and I am looking forward to the next disc to see where it goes in the final stretch. My biggest complaint about the series continues to be the lack of episodes per disc for a longer series, but that's something beyond MVM's control, and given how good the series is getting, I'd still recommend giving Kiddy Grade a look.
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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