Number Of Disc(s): 1

Review Done By: Guardian Inferno

The underground city of Lukuss is ruled by gangs & religious fanatics who have all carved their own piece out of the city. Peace is held together by a very fragile balance. But now the city appears to be on the verge of chaos as that balance begins to fall apart. Four individual lives hold the city's fate in their hands: Onishi: the leader of the most powerful Gang in Lukuss, Yoshii a mysterious man from the surface world, Ran: a young girl who can see into the future & Ichise: a loner who has had his arm & leg replaced with the incredible science known as Texhnolyze. One of these four will try to destroy Lukuss while the others will either try to save the city or themselves from a terrible fate. But who will win?

From the creators & producers of "serial experiments lain", "Haibane Renmei" & "Hellsing" comes a new hard-boiled style of science fiction animation. An adventure in a dark dystopian world that reveals the depths of human nature & heights of technological achievement.

Special thanks to Geneon Entertainment for sending a copy for a review for this site. Now, it's getting really disturbing, but it's kinda of expected from the creators of "serial experiments lain", "Haibane Renmei" & "Hellsing". As Ichise ran away with his new arm & leg, he isn't fully gotten used to them, as he hate them, reminding him the peoples that did this to him. He is full of anger & rage, which makes him lose control. In the back, Ran keep fellowing him, as something interesting is about to happen. He finally got his revange, but Onishi is seeking him. Meanwhile, Yoshii is going around getting information about Lukuss. We finally get to see his true colors. He wasn't what I expected when we first emt him at the beginning of the series. He got his own plans in mind that might be total disater. Let's the battle begin.

Geneon Entertainment did a very great job. I found no problem, the image are clear & the color looks perfect. To top things off, the series is feature on Widescreen format. If you got a Widescreen TV, you're going to enjoy this even more. There is some watermarks done for the introduction & ending credits (they are translated in English). Each episodes are separated into 5 parts: the introduction, part A, part B, ending & the preview for the next episode! 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. I do note that you can skip all those warnings & logos when you first load the DVD by just pressing the "Menu" button on your remote control.

The English dubbing is well done. As I mention before, there isn't much dialogue going on, as most of the storyline are representated visually. Oh, they even kept the original Japanese motto for "The Union" cheering. You need the subtitle for the Japanese dialogue to have the meaning in English. It's about 90% of the original Japanese.

No problem found.

No problem found.

Geneon Entertainment have selected a great font, very easy to read. They use green ending theme (don't need any for the introduction, no vocal) & the rest is yellow for the dialogue. There is only one subtitling track, which is for the Japanese dialogue. I guess there is no need for Japanese translations for signs & text. However, you won't get any subtitle for the ending theme, except if you turn it on. I might note that every odd numbered episodes, the intro & ending subtitles are in English, while the even numbered episodes are in Japanese original text on this volume.

The menu is also in widescreen format, but if got just a regular full screen TV, it will display in that format with no problem. The menu remain the same, the texholyze menu screen to check if their cybernetics limbs are funcitioning correctly. If you see closely, you get to see some scenes from the episodes in this volume. There is the "Play All", "Screen Access", "Set Up" & "Extras". Selecting any of the options, you will have a little animation, like changing channels on your TV set. The background music is a background music from the series, though the other section doesn't have one.

This time, you will only get the non-credit opening, along with another set of funny outtakes. However, I do suggest to watch the series first for the full effect of laughter.

It remains the same design as before. On the cover, you see a nice artwork of Ran selling flowers in the middle of the city. In the back, a few small screenshots. Finally, there is a decription about this episodes on this volume with a little information about Lukuss & Texholyze technology. You can see the another symbol, too, but I'm clueless what it means. The fun part about this is the episode list is on the side. The insert is just the same image as the cover, along with the chapter listing. On the DVD disc itself, just black with the symbol once again.

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.

Wow, now things are getting tense up with exploding consequences. We finally get to see Yoshii true intention & it's not pretty. After this, you got to see what happen next, right?

27" Citizen JCTV2704 Stereo TV, LG-530 DVD Player, S-Video connection for video with regular stereo cable connection for audio.

Model LG 16x DVD-ROM, on a P3-933Mhz, 512 MB RAM, ATI Redeon 8500 128MB Video Card, ASUS CUSL2-C Motherboard & Sound Blaster Live v5.1, Dell 19' LCD E193FP monitor, Windows XP Professional SP2 & CyberLink PowerDVD v6.0 Deluxe using CyberLink PowerRemote.