Review - Daphne in the Brilliant Blue Vol. 3 - Getaway
Reviewed by Richard Brownell on 9.18.2007.
Score: 8/10
After the first two volumes of Daphne and the Brilliant Blue, I was beginning to think that this series would fizzle out and go nowhere. I was wrong. Though it took a while to get there, this DVD is the best one yet. It's got comedy, sadness, plot twists, and the storyline is really starting to come together.
The first episode opens with the team having to get their yearly medical examination. They don't particularly want to, but it is required for them to go on the upcoming company trip. These girls all do a lot of physical work for a living, so there's no way any of them could be given a bad exam. Well, not exactly. It turns out one of them has only a week left to live! So the rest of the episode is spent trying to make her as happy as possible and fulfill her dying wish...to fall in love. It's a really funny episode and works the whole cast into it well.
The next episode is, of course, a fantastic trip, to the city of Siberia. Don't let the name fool you, as the world of Daphne is different from our own. It's only a dozen or so floating cities and Siberia is actually a tropical paradise. The team goes there to relax, but unfortunately for Maia they all split off to do their own thing. In the end, she only gets to hang out with Shizuka, easily the most boring member of the team. After eating everywhere they can, which is pretty much all Shizuka does, Shizuka gets kidnapped. In attempting her rescue, Maia finds that some kind of memory has returned to her.
This is where the show really picks up. Not only do we learn more about the world for the remainder of the DVD, but we get a fantastic plot surrounding Maia's past. When she was young, she and her parents got into a bad car crash, killing her parents and leaving her with amnesia. The touching story told here about her struggle and about her grandfather makes watching the earlier DVDs more worthwhile. But we don't get every bit of info; it's clear there is more to learn about Maia and her past in the shows to come.
The depression does take a step back in the end of this volume when the team is hired by the government to overlook a festival celebrating the return of humans to the surface of the planet. Much of the way the world used to be is revealed here and it makes the show much more interesting to know what's going on.
This volume is clearly a step up from the last two, where we get a heartfelt story about Maia, some good comedy, and actual explanations of what happened to the world they are in. And we even got more action and racing to cap things off. It could even be said that we saw less of the more ridiculous outfits the girls wear. All in all, things are looking up for this series.
Special Features
DVD Special Features
· Bilingual Audio (English 2.0/Japanese 2.0)
· English Subtitles (Dialogue & Screen Text)
DVD Extra
· Japanese Cover Art Gallery
