Bandai has decided to release the entire Avenger series in one fell swoop. All 13 episodes come on three DVDs in a pretty cool metal box.  This story of a mysterious girl and her companion "doll" who fight their way across the surface of a post-apocalyptic Mars has some good animation and a nice soundtrack, but the show never really engages the viewer.  It's hard to really care about the characters and the unbeatable main character makes the action scenes predictable.  A good effort that just falls short.

In the future, Mars was colonized and a thriving planet, then some catastrophe occurred that nearly destroyed life on the planet.  People can no longer give birth, though they have long lives, and so "dolls" are created to take the place of children.  These small robots have emotions but are mainly used for household chores.

Into this wasteland Layla pops up.  She's a quite fighter who travels from town to town fighting the local heros in gladiator-like battles.  These battles are important for the people of Mars, vitally important.  Periodically, each city sends it best fighter to a tournament, and the results of these battles determine how much of the planets meager resources each town gets.  Provide a good fighter and your city will survive, but having a bad champion can mean a slow death from lack of food.

Layla travels with a broken doll she found somewhere, Nei, who seems to be more special than anyone realizes, and is followed by Speedy, a "doll breeder" who seems to think that Layla is destined for great things.  Layla has her own agenda though.  One which involves Lord Volk, the ageless ruler of the planet and his consort the eternal Goddess Westa.

This is one of those shows that could have been entertaining, but they aimed too high.  They try to add a philosophical aspect to the program, but instead of giving the viewer food for thought, it just made the show pretentious and stupid sounding.  Some of the dialog was laughably bad.  For example, here's a conversation between Volk and Westa"

Volk:  Time....is so cruel.

Westa: The stream of time will push and wash away everything.  How people feel....and eventually their lives.

Un, yeah.  That's really deep.

The main problem I have with this show is that it's hard to get into the characters.  Layla is silent through most of the show, hardly speaking or showing emotion.  Nei is similarly unreadable, and Speedy just comes across as a goof most of the time.  Because of this, you don't care about the people, and the mysteries that abound in this series come across and meaningless.  If you don't really care if Layla lives or dies, it's hard to really care about her mysterious past or what happened to the planet.

Another problem I have is that Layla is an uber-woman who never loses a battle, or even comes close to losing.  The fights aren't really exciting because there is no contest, they aren't even close.  Layla skillfully doges her opponents for a while and then finishes them off in an instant. *yawn*

The thing I enjoyed about this show the most is the soundtrack.  The background music was really unusual but very good.  The strange sounds and unique rhythms really worked well with the show and added a lot of atmosphere.  Too bad it wasn't enough to overcome the lifeless plot.

This set comes in a really nifty package.  The thirteen episodes are spread over three discs that are housed in a metal tin.  When you take off the lid, the first disc is held onto the cover, and the other two discs are held by hubs in the bottom portion.  In addition to the DVDs, there are four "mini cells", images from the show on small clear strips of plastic.  I'm a sucker for unique packaging, and though some people might like the fact that this is tin is taller than a regular DVD case and therefore won't fit on a standard shelf, I really liked it.

Audio:

This disc comes with both the original Japanese audio track, and an English dub, both in surround stereo.  I alternated tracks with every episode, as I usually do, and found them both to be fine.  The battle scenes didn't have the aural impact that I would have liked, but the sounded okay.  Besides that, both tracks were clear with the dialog and background music sounding good.  There wasn't any distortion or other audio defects.

Video:

The anamorphic widescreen presentation looks very good.  The colors are solid and the lines are tight.  There is a little banding especially in the shots of the sky, and there is also some aliasing and jittery fine lines, but these were both minor.  Overall a nice looking show.

Extras:

The only extras included on these discs are the original Japanese opening and closings.

Final Thoughts:

This show wasn't that great.  While it wasn't a horrible series, the nonsensical plot and inscrutable characters made it really hard to get into the program.  If I ever cared about what happened to Layla or Nei I might have been more interested in the mysteries that permeate the show, but as it was they just bored me.  Bandai does deserve kudos for coming up with a nice package for the show, and releasing it at a very nice price.  If you're looking for a way to kill some time, there are worse ways than watching this show.  It would make a good rental.