Search - Burst Angel: East Meets West v.3 on DVD

I Keep Waiting for It To Step Up

Antonio D. Paolucci | Beaver Falls, PA | 12/27/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"One thing about Burst Angel is that it has a downward flow of story progress. It started out great by presenting strong scenes of action and quickly introducing the cast of characters. In volume two, it slowed a bit but allowed itself to deepen your knowledge of all the main protagonists in the series. And in volume three, it does almost the same thing. I didn't expect that in this volume. I wanted the main conflict to finally present itself in one of the episodes, a kind of hint to the end of the series, but that never happens. And if it did, the hint either wasn't blatant or the end of the series will be a disappointment. Besides that, I still can't give Burst Angel a bad rating. It's a solid series with top-notch animation.

In episodes nine and ten, the series finally moves to single episodes (in previous volumes, all the episodes are two parters). These episodes are based around the story of one of the four women on the team. The first is based on Sei, the second on Amy. Neither of these episode really progress the main plot. In episodes eleven and twelve, the characters enter into a conflict between Osaka's righteous police force and terrorists. A new character is revealed in these episodes in the name Takane, a biker-chick who wields a serrated samurai sword. Whether or not she's a permanent addition cannot be told, as the sub-plot presented in episodes eleven and twelve doesn't end until volume four of the Burst Angel series. These episodes also seem to follow the trend of Americanized Japanese animation by giving characters from Osaka a southern accent (see my review of Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi at my profile).

If you've already committed yourself to this series, I would strongly recommend that you keep up with it. Though this volume is a bit slower than the others, it still has a lot to be seen, and I'd hate for anyone to actually miss out on something that I perhaps missed. Plus, the lack of revelations in this volume promises much more revelations in the next, so don't miss out on the episodes in between."