The Show:
In the fifth volume of Chrono Crusade, the series starts to drag
a little. The three episodes on this volume don't really advance
the plot very much, and not a lot of significant events take place.
With 2/3 of the disc being filler episodes, this isn't the best volume
in the series, but it's still worth watching. Even the filler shows
are pretty fun.
Rosette is a nun who belongs to a unique order, the Order of Magdalen
a group dedicated to hunting demons. She's looking for her brother
Joshua who was stolen by a monster at a young age. Fighting at her
side is Chrono, a devil himself who looks like a young boy, and Azmaria,
a little girl with some interesting powers. Set in America during
the roaring 20's, this series has a wonderful art-decco look to it, and
some references to ancient pop-culture that add a sense of fun to the show.
In this part of the series, Rosette, Chrono, Axmaria, along with the
Satella the jewel summoner find themselves in San Fransisco. The
battle between the demons and the Magdalen Order for the fact of the earth
is growing closer. The Order have aligned themselves, a bit reluctantly,
with a group of renegade devils that don't want Lord Aion to destroy both
heaven and hell. Lead by the enigmatic Baron Duffau, these demons
are formidable, but in the minority.
As the volume opens, there are a large number of people have been disappearing,
most probably being sacrificed to demons. Satella tracks the disappearances
to a nearby mine, and investigating, gets captured. She's trussed
up to be scarified to Lord Aion, but when he arrives, he reveals that he
knows Satella. They met years ago while he was slaughtering her family.
The SF branch of the Order of Magdalen has tracked down some of the
sinners and plan for an attack in the next episode. With reinforcements
from the New York branch as well as Baron Duffau's forces, the Order plans
a surprise attack. Even with the element of surprise, the sinners
aren't easy to destroy.
The volumes ends up on a lighter note. After the strenuous battle,
Satella's driver/butler Stiener decides that Chrono and the girls need
to relax a little. So he tricks him into going to a carnival, where
everyone has a good time and enjoys themselves. This episode ends
on a very interesting note.
After the revelations of the last volume, where we learned about Chrono's
origin and exactly who Aion is, this volume was a bit of a let down.
The plot didn't seem to advance much, and the interaction between Aion
and Satella didn't grab me the way the creators were hoping it would.
The last episode, where everyone goes to the carnival, was just a filler
episode. While I still enjoy the show, it's starting to drag a little.
I wish they would focus on either the main plot or the monster-of-the-week
shows like the earlier episodes.
The DVD:
Like the previous volume, this DVD only contains 3 episodes.
The DVD comes in a clear keepcase with a reversible cover. There
is a double sided insert with the episodes on one side and an image of
the main characters on the other.
Audio:
This DVD has a Japanese stereo sound track with optional English subtitles
and an English dub in 5.1. Both were very good. While I wish that the original
language track was in 5.1 also, I couldn't complain about the sound quality.
The dialog was clean, and there was no distortion or other audio problems.
The English 5.1 track had a bit more punch to it, and used the soundstage
a bit more. The voice actors were very good. I was quite impressed. There
were not any stupid accents or phony sounding voices. While I prefer the
Japanese track, I enjoyed the English dub as well.
Video:
The video quality was also very good also. There is a lot of motion
in this show, something that is hard to transfer to DVD without digital
artifacts, but the authors did a great job. There wasn't any noticeable
aliasing or other common defects that plague animation. The lines were
tight and the bright colors stand out well. This is a good-looking DVD.
Extras:
This DVD had a good selection of bonus material.
One of my favorite extras was Azmaria's Extra Classes, where
the character from the show gives viewers some background details about
the show and its setting. Another extra I enjoyed was the Chrono
Crusade Chronicle, a text based newspaper that explains some more background
about the show.
There are also a clean opening and closing, a gallery of production
sketches, and a selection of previews. Altogether a great set of
bonus material.
Final Thoughts:
The series starts to drag a little with this volume. The first
and third episodes on this DVD seemed like filler, and weren't that interesting.
The second show had a lot of action, but when all was said and done the
plot hadn't been advanced very much. If you've picked up the other
volumes in this series, I'd still Recommend getting this one, but
if you are on the fence about committing to this series, I'd wait to see
how the next volume turns out.
For other anime series of note, be sure to take a look at recommendations
by DVDTalk's twisted cast of reviewers in their Best
Of Anime 2003 and Best
Of Anime 2004 articles as well as DVDTalk's bi-weekly anime column, Anime Talk.
Buy: