The second volume of Madlax builds nicely on the first. It continues to have a lot of action and excitement while slowly pulling back the curtain to reveal the underlying story.  One of the better series to start in 2005, this is shaping up to be a top ten show.

Madlax is a mercenary, a gun for hire, who is reputed to be the best there is.  This assassin doesn't look like a hired killer though, she's a delicate looking young lady.  Looks can be deceiving thought as she is quite competent and deadly.  She shoots her victims with her eyes shut, but with pin point accuracy.   Caught up in the middle of the Gazth-Sonika civil war where the Galza resistance is fighting the government, Madlax has more than enough work.

This is also the story of Margaret Burton, an odd young girl.  She lives in Nafrece, alone with her maid, and it's rumored that she's very wealthy.  Margaret marches to the tune of a different drummer.  She will spend a long time staring at shoes in a store's window display, or leave school early because she's afraid that it will rain, even though there isn't a cloud in the sky.  When she looks at the world, it's almost like she's seeing something different from what everybody else sees.

These two people haven't met, and seem to be about as different as two people can be.  Yet their stories are related, though exactly how isn't revealed yet.

This volume starts out with an interesting and difficult case for Madlax.  Enfant, the local organized crime unit, is trying to capture a young boy who has entered Gazth-Sonika from the neighboring country of Nafrece illegally.  Madlax is hired to find him and escort him to where he's going: to his father, Min Dirk, the leader of the Galza resistance.  She gets him out of some tough situations, but can she really protect someone who doesn't really exist?

The next episode starts a three part series that explains at lot but also raises new questions.  It delves into Margaret's background and her mysterious accident 12 years ago.  She was on a plane that crashed.  Some time later, Margaret just showed up at her estate, her memory totally blank.  None of the other passengers on the plane, the crew, or the plane itself was ever discovered.  Margaret had to relearn just about everything.  Now she still doesn't remember anything prior to the accident.

Margaret has discovered an old picture book.  It's a book that she holds very dear, and it has strange properties to those who read it.  Everyone except Margaret that is.  There is a page missing from the book, which distresses the odd girl though, so she hires a biblio-detective, Eric Gillian, to find another copy.  The difficult thing is that there's no title or author, and the book is written in a strange language.

Gillian manages to identify the language, after consulting a linguist, and it turns out that it is written in an ancient Gazth-Sonika script.  Eric, quite contrary to his usual behavior, risks his life by going to the war torn country to search for another copy.  When he arrives and starts asking questions, Enfant becomes very excited that he has photocopies of a page from the book.  They want him dead and the copies in their control.   When he realizes that he's in danger, he hires a bodyguard, Madlax.

This was another excellent set of shows.  Each program was exciting and intriguing.  There is a large mystery, and each show gave small hints to what the big picture is, but also raised some interesting questions.  Why did the civil war start?  What is Enfant really after?  Is any of this real?
This volume makes it obvious that some major event happened 12 years ago.  Something very out of the ordinary that may have upset the nature of reality itself.  Just what the event was, and how Margaret and Madlax fit into it aren't quite clear yet.  But it is slowly becoming less opaque.

The thing that sets Madlax above your average anime is the unique way the story is laid out.  On the surface, it is a regular story about two women, but if you scratch down just a bit, there are mysterious machinations occurring in this series that draw the viewer in.  This seems to be a tightly plotted show, and I'm sure that small events in these opening shows will have a great impact latter on.  I'm very interesting in seeing how this all works out.

Audio:

ADV provides the original stereo Japanese track to this DVD as well as a 5.1 English dub.  I alternated tracks between shows, and both of the audio tracks sounded very good.  The English dub was a little more full and robust, but the Japanese track reproduced the sound well.  The voices seemed to fit the characters a little better in the original language, but that's just my opinion.  There were no audio defects.

Video:

The anamorphically enhanced widescreen image is very good.  The lines were very crisp, and the colors were reproduced well.  The color reproduction is important, since They used a wide palate, with both the jungle scenes and the urban settings having distinct looks created by the colors that were employed.  Digital defects were practically nonexistent.  A great looking DVD.

Extras:

This disc has a good number of bonus features.  In addition to the standard clean opening and closing, there are Japanese promo spots and a two-minute reel of design sketches.  My favorite bonus feature though was Conversations With SSS, a nearly 15-minute reel of outtakes where the English voice actors come up with some pretty humorous lines for the scenes they are dubbing.

Final Thoughts:

This is an excellent show.  Much more than just a girl assassin program, Madlax has layer of intrigue and a mystery that really sucks the viewers in.  Add a healthy dose of action and adventure and you've got a great show.  Highly Recommended.