The third volume of My-Zhime - My-Otome keeps the show moving at a good pace while fleshing out some of the details of the world that it takes place in at the same time.  This time around Arika and her roommate have to go on a survival hike and happen to run into a group of high-powered thieves.  Then, when the queen runs off so she won't have to meet a possible mate, Arika is forced into pretending she's the monarch.  This volume has a great quartet of shows that keeps the show lively and exciting.

Series background:

The planet Earl has lost most of the technological knowledge that they once had.  One of the few pieces of advanced tech that they still have access to are nanobots that can enhance a woman's strength and abilities, but only virgin women.  The women who are injected with these devices are Otome, and act as both servants and bodyguards to the royalty of the planet.

14-year-old Arika Yumemiya has traveled through vast deserts to the capital city of the Windbloom Kingdom in search of her mother, who she knew was an Otome.  Arika has a mysterious past, she hardly knew her mother and was raised by her grandmother, and there may be more to the young girl than meets the eye.   Arriving at the capital Arika meets Nina, a top Otome candidate.  Nina is aggravated by the rural Arika but when the new girl spots someone running from guards they both go to her rescue.

It turns out that the girl they saw was none other than Mashiro Blan de Windbloom, the soon to be crowned heir to the throne.  Mashiro isn't grateful that Arika and Nina saved her life.  After all, that's their job.  The princess is a spoiled brat of the first degree, partially because she's been pampered all her life, but also because of the rumors about her, rumors that she's not be the real princess.  Nearly 14 years ago there was an invasion.  The king and queen were killed, and the infant princess was missing.  As soon as the invasion was repelled, a minister produced a baby girl that he said was the princess...but was she really?

Based on her performance saving the queen, Arika is granted admission to Garderobe Academy where Otome are trained, an honor that many aspire to but few achieve.  Getting special treatment doesn't endear her to many of her new classmates however, and the fact that she doesn't have the money to pay the exorbitant tuition sets her apart from the others too.  It seems that passing her classes won't be the only things that Arika has to worry about.

This volume:

After taking a slew of tests, it's time for the Otome in training of Garderobe Academy to go on a field trip!  Arika is the only one who is excited about going to the beach for a few days, though.  That's because she's the only one who doesn't know what a field trip means.  For these students it isn't a fun time, it's a survival test.  The students have to navigate through a forest to their destination 100km away.  Broken up into teams of two, the girls have to live off the land, since they carry no provisions.  Not everyone will finish, and if one girl drops out, her partner fails too.

Arika is teamed up with one of her roommates, Erstin.  Things are going well until Erstin is bitten by a poisonous snake.  The nanomachines in her blood should take care of the venom, but for some reason they don't.  She gets sick and starts running a fever, but she doesn't want to quit since Arika will fail too.  Things go from bad to worse and Erstin passes out.  Arika uses the emergency signal devices that they have, but both of them malfunction.  With Erstin near death, Arika takes off alone to try to find help.

Arika finds someone alright, a recently killed guard.  It turns out that she's stumbled upon a group, Aswad, who is trying to steal some ancient technology which is hidden in an old sealed off lab.  Attacked and left for dead, what is the young Otome going to do?

The next story, a two part adventure like the first tale on this disc, involves Queen Mashiro's.  When the young monarch discovers that she has to meet a visiting prince from a neighboring country on her birthday, she's peeved.  When she finds out that the prince is a potential husband, the 15 year old girl runs off into the city.

Nina and Arika have been assigned to meet the visiting dignitaries, and with the Queen MIA, there're afraid the visitors will be very insulted.  So they come up with a plan:  they have Arika pretend to be the ruler.  Meanwhile, the real queen is having an adventure in the town.  She sees some of the poverty in her country for the first time, and when she meets a young boy who's also on his own; her eyes are really opened for the first time.
 
This was another good volume.  They flesh out the world a bit, looking at the poverty and its causes as well as exploring some of the ruins from the past.  One of the good things about the show is that Arika doesn't save the day at the end of every story.  Yes, the show revolves around her, but she doesn't always come up with the answers to every problem or win every battle.  It's refreshing to see some of the other, more experienced Otome take the lead.  It's more realistic and makes the show more unpredictable.

Audio:

This series offers viewers the option of a listening to the show in the original Japanese with optional subtitles or to an English dub, both in stereo.  I alternated audio tracks and the Japanese one is superior.  I'm not a person who thumbs their nose at all dubs, some recent English dubs have been fantastic, but this one has some characters with phony accents that sound really bad.  They are minor characters, granted, but we shouldn't have to put up with something like that at all.  Aside from that, both tracks sounded fine.  There were no dropouts, distortion or background noise that I could hear.

Video:

The full frame image looked very good.  The colors were bright and solid and the lines were tight.  On the digital side things also looked fine.  There was just a touch of aliasing in the background, but it was much less than your average anime disc.  Cross colorization, blocking, bleeding were all absent.  Overall I was very happy with this disc's visuals.

Extras:

Bandai included a short adventure, Shiho Spirals, with this disc.  This mini-episode lasts 4 minutes and show what happens when Shiho starts casting too many curses on her fellow students.  There's also a textless closing and trailers to three other Bandai anime titles.

Final Thoughts:

This series is evolving very nicely.  The show has a good amount of action, but that takes a back seat to developing Arika's character and her world.  The Otome are both powerful and tragic, and they don't ignore the latter aspect of the group which makes the show very interesting.  This volume is just as good as the earlier ones and gets a very strong recommendation.