With the Great Mission accomplished, humanity can relax a little and breath a sigh of relief.  The students on the Stellvia don't get a break though.  They have to start training on a new navigation system and there's still classes to go to.   Life goes on after the second wave in Stellvia Foundation IV.

In the your 2167, the Earth was hit by a very powerful electromagnetic wave created by a supernova 20 light years away.  The wave had catastrophic effects, and life on Earth was almost extinguished.  But the survivors rebuilt civilization, and now, 189 year later, there is another threat; the second wave.  The same supernova produced a wave of particles traveling only 10% as fast as the electromagnetic radiation, but potentially much more dangerous and damaging.

To protect the human race, an unbelievably immense  force field is erected around the Earth, with smaller ships acting as point defenses. The system is successful, and humanity is saved.  But now there are mysterious objects flying by the outermost space stations.

As this volume begins, the celebrations are winding down and classes pick up again.  The students are being instructed on the DLS navigation system which feeds information directly to the brain through the optic nerve.  Many of the students have a hard time with the system, but Shima masters it the first time out, flying circles around some of the more experienced students.

Shima's ability doesn't go unnoticed by either the faculty or the other students.  Miss Machida, one of the top four, takes Shima out for some personal training.  She isn't trying to hone Shima's skills though, she's trying to eliminate her nearest competition, just as she did with Yayoi two years previously.
 
Christmas comes in the next episode, but Shima still feels bad about what happened with Machida.  Can she and Yayoi forgive her and should they even try?

Winter break arrives, and everyone goes back to Earth for their first break since arriving at Stellvia.  When they land, Shima and Kota find out that they are the two most famous people on Earth since they were the ones responsible for making the Great Mission a success.  They don't have much time to relax though.  The farthest outlying space station is attacked by unknown forces, and it looks like the Earth has another problem on its hands.
 
After all of the excitement in the last volume, this one acts as a sort of buffer between major plot lines.  These episodes focus on the students and their relationships with the opposite sex more than great catastrophes.  It was a nice break, and they used the time to set up the plot that is going to take us to the end of the series.  (I assume.)

This is still a fun series that reminds me a lot of Battle Athletes, only not so hyper kinetic.  The characters are developing nicely, and realistically.  I was pleasantly surprised that several of the students started hooking up.  That's something that usually only happens in the last episode.

The animation in this show is still great.  I really like the way they use the high quality CGI images.  They save the eyepopping CGI scenes for the spacecraft, and don't try to merge it with the traditional animation.  Too many series use CGI for backgrounds and details like water, but it usually doesn't work well.  This series handles it properly.

This disc contains a scant three episodes, and comes in a clear case with reversible cover.

Audio:

The DVD includes stereo soundtracks in both English and Japanese.  Both tracks sounded very good, with a good amount of range and crisp sound.  I enjoyed the English dub just as well as the original soundtrack.  The English voice actors did a good job and didn't give the young girls high pitched voices.  Well, not all of them.  The soundstage was used effectively in both tracks, with some nice panning of the sound effects.  A nice solid sounding disc.

Video:

The full frame video looked very nice.  There is a lot of color in the show and they were reproduced very well.  The atmosphere of the Earth as seen from space looked great with no blocking in the clouds or haze, and no significant banding.  A very nice looking show.

Extras:

The only extras on this disc were a few previews for other Geneon series.

Final Thoughts:

With the second wave over, I was wondering what they were going to do with this series, and this volume answers that question.  It looks like there will be plenty for the young space pilots to do.  A fun, light, and entertaining series, Stellvia is worth checking out.  Recommended.