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Feature Presentation:
Special thanks to Geneon Entertainment for sending a copy for a review for this site. Shima been doing very well now & it's the top of her class. A new student have arrived & assigned to Shima's class. Meet up close & personal, the cute Rinna. She came from Ultima & transfer to Stellvia. She proclaimed herself as Shima's rival & somehow, she is beating everything what Shima's doing. In a sense, it discouraging her, but that doesn't stop her to do her best. One day, while doing some extra training with Lightening Joust, Rinna joined her & something goes terribly wrong & it's up to Shima save the day. Now, things are egtting really serious now & "The Second Wave" have struck Ultima. The Great Mission is now on the way, Shima & Kouta have been chosen to join the flagship to keep the barrier up. The only thing stopping her that she fears she might mess things up & hurt someone, but with encouragement from someone she cares alot put her fear away & she is ready to go. As the wave comes closer & stuck, the mission has started. All goes well, until something big went through the barrier & turning all hope into failure. The only hope now, the secret weapon...
Video:
Geneon Entertainment did a very great job. I found no problem, the image are clear & the color looks perfect. There is some watermarks done for the introduction & ending credits (they are translated in English). Since all the episodes are on one single track on the DVD, there is no loading time or changing tracks when you move on to the next episode. Each episode is split into 4 parts: introduction, part A, part B, ending & a preview for the next episode! There is a prologue before the introduction, but it's not seperated. I do note that you can skip the warnings & logos in the beginning using the "Menu" button on your remote.
Dubbing: English:
I find the dubbing quite good. It's about 85% of the original Japanese.
Audio 01: English 2.0:
No problem found.
Audio 02: Japanese 2.0:
No problem found.
Subtitle:
Geneon Entertainment have selected a great font, easy to read. They use blue for the introduction theme & ending theme, white for Japanese signs & text. The rest is yellow for the dialogue. There are two tracks of subtitling. One track is for the sign subtitling & the other one is for the Japanese dialogue. I might note that every odd numbered episodes, the intro & ending subtitles are in English, while the even numbered episodes are in Japanese on this volume.
Menu Option:
The menu remained the same, the Bianca computer system screen. There is also clips taken from the episodes in this volume. There is the "Play All", a selection of one of the 3 episodes & "Screen Access". The "Set Up" & "Extras" & merged together. Selecting any of the options will get you a little animation like closing windows & opening new one on your computer. The main theme is playing in the background. However, the main menu only have background music, as there is no music playing in the other sections.
DVD Extras:
There is no extra this time!
Packaging:
Here we go, the same glossy look, but in dark blue now. On the cover, you see Arisa & Rinna in his school uniform. In the back, there is some screenshots, along with Stellvia logo in the middle. It's still hard to read the synopsis through that kind of background. The insert is nothing special, with the same image as the cover & a list of all the volumes for this series & date releases for them. The DVD disc itself is the same image as the cover, but in purple-scale. Since the DVD case is a clear one, you get to see another cool image that you see during the commercial breaks during an episode, which I really like them alot.
PC Viewing:
Watching it on the PC is the same as watching it on the TV. Very clean, no problem at all, very little pixel (little squares popping in & out), both normal mode & full screen mode. The sound is just great. The episodes are place on one single track as you play the episodes, so loading time is really small. You can fast forward to the first episode to the last episode with one move on your mouse! Like on your regular DVD player, you can skip the warnings & logos when you load the disc, just use the "menu" option to go to the menu screen.
Overall DVD Rating:
School without rivals is boring & you need to have a little encouragement, right? Now, things are getting really serious now as the Great Mission is on the way. Shima must prove herself & show that she can do it when she put her heart out. However, it's a great thing to see that, finally, we get to see that giant robot in action. I wonder what will be next...
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