Review - Fafner Volume 02 - Ultimate Sacrifice
Reviewed by Richard Brownell on 7.16.2006.
Score: 8/10
Fafner volume 2 opens with negotiations with the New UN. Relations with the rest of the world are kept to a minimum. Nobody knows who can be trusted. But this particular negotiation can not be avoided. To make matters worse, a Festum attacks the New UN convoy. Kazuki brings the Mark-ELF Fafner out to attack the Festum head on. It’s a Sphinx type, so we know the ELF is capable to dealing with it.
But if only that were the only Festum attack. Unfortunately, the floating island itself gets attacked by a second Festum, and it is a new type of Festum they haven’t seen before. They don’t know what it is capable of, how to attack it, and Kazuki is occupied dealing with the Festum that attacked the New UN convoy. The Mark-ZEX Fafner is available, but only Shoko is ready to pilot it and she is far too sick.
As with the first volume, it can be a daunting task to keep up with every character, even just every potential pilot child, in the show. And when characters risk their lives, you feel the twinge of sadness at the thought of their death, but are also happy you might have one less character to keep track of. On the other hand, some of the characters are now fleshed out more as well, giving us a reason to care about them beyond the minute each might show up each episode.
Volume 2 is all about pulling on your heartstrings. When one of the kids finds a puppy he wants to take care of, his parents forbid it. They live on a floating island and everything is rationed, so families can’t afford to care for animals (or even runaway children). But this dog needs an owner and the boy looks everywhere for somebody to adopt it before having to make the decision of whether to even go back home or not. Typical teen angst it may be, but it adds a lot to a show where we could potentially just see these kids in a mech cockpit every episode.
When the mechs are shown, Fafner’s visuals go to the highest levels. The fights are actually somewhat minimalistic at this point. A Festum shows up, blows up lots of little attack drones, maybe kills some people, and typically puts a dent or two in the island. But the Fafners are a force to be reckoned with and don’t take all that long to destroy the unusual golden enemies.
The most heated part of this disc involves a second floating island just like Tatsumiya. It seems others were built in the same manner, but this one is deserted. Of course, us viewers are a bit smarter than the characters in the show and know it’s got to be swarming with Festum. But they explore it for potential supplies anyway. And we get the pleasure of seeing a slew of different types of Festum, as well as learn a bit more about the secrets of these floating islands.
There’s still a lot to be learned about the Festum, the Fafners, and even just the characters of the show. Each episodes serves up a small dose of new information with just the right amount of action. Fafner didn’t initially strike me as a show I would rank with my favorite mech shows, but I do see potential there. If it can stay away from sticking to a formula and give us a few surprises, it might just get a more distinguished place on my shelf (of course, that’s a lie since I do alphabetical, but bear with me here).
One thing that changed between the first and second disc, at least with me, is that I know love the theme songs. The singer in Angela has a unique style of singing which I didn't initially care for. But it’s grown on me and I’ve now listened to a few of her other songs as well. Check out the music video for the opening theme, Shangri-La, to see the full version and also see that "Angela" is actually a female singer and a male guitarist who looks like he was ripped straight out of a role in Final Fantasy.
Fafner is slowly winning me over. The second disc was not simple filler episodes, which is a big bonus right there since many shows start strong and follow with less interesting material. The production values are very high and the story is just starting to approach that level. Hopefully, this upward trend will continue into the third disc.
Dub Quality
The English dub of Fafner volume 2 continues the good dub of the first volume. There are so many characters at play that it must be difficult to find enough quality voice actors. But for the most part, the dub is enjoyable. Shoko, the girl who is sick, sometimes doesn’t sound sick so much as a forced whisper. Other than that, I didn’t notice anything in the dub that would hurt the experience of the show.
Special Features
DVD Features
· 4 Uncut Episodes (Approx. 100 min.)
· Bilingual Audio (2.0 English / 2.0 Japanese)
· English Subtitles
DVD Extra
· Japanese Cover Art Gallery
· Geneon Previews
Fafner volume 2 is not loaded with special features. But the Japanese cover art includes nine front covers and nine of the reverse side covers. The front covers are cool, but the reversible covers are the really cool images, especially considering the reversible covers for the North American release are just unattractive smatterings of screen captures. Depending on limited supplies, you may also receive some neat Fafner trading cards in your DVD case.
