The first season of Gravion wraps up with this third volume of the series.  If you've read my reviews of the previous volumes, you may recall that I thought the first volume of the show was filled with clichés and predictable.  I was pleasantly surprised by the second DVD though, where the show was more original and more attention was paid to characterization.  How does the last volume fare?  Unfortunately, with these shows the creators decided to fall back onto the clichéd formulas of every other giant robot mecha show.

In the first episode of this volume, some of the knights go out with the maids on their periodic shopping trip.  While in town, a Zeravire attacks and starts absorbing the nearby buildings to use their mass as a defense.  Unfortunately this alien has a nuclear weapon inside it, that is primed to explode.  One of the maids, Cecile, accidently gets snagged by the alien invader and Eiji runs off to rescue her while the other knights form Gravion and attack the Zeravire.  But with time running out, Touga launches an attack that will destroy the threat, and Cecile along with it.

The fact that Touga was willing to attack (and save countless thousands while sacrificing a comrade) turns Eiji red.  He confronts the leader of the knights and accuses him of being an inhuman monster before leaving the castle vowing never to return again, "no mater what."  This causes Touga to question whether he's really human at all.

Eiji goes back to his old life and returns to school.  When two Zeravire attack, Eiji runs into a shelter along with his other classmates and sees how much they need the giant robot to protect them.  Unfortunately, the Gravion can't handle the dual menace when it is short a pilot.  If you've ever seen just about any giant robot series, you can predict what happens from here on out.

There were times when I laughed out loud at how predictable these episodes were.  (Especially Eiji's speech in the last episode.  It sounded like it was edited together from other shows.  "The first time we have a real fight on our hands and you wanna just lay down and give up."  And "This isn't about surviving, it's about fighting back, not giving up!)  It seems like they are trying to recycle every trite plot element from all of the mecha shows that have come before it.  I was very disappointed that the show slipped back into such clichés after such a promising second volume.

There are a lot of plot lines that didn't get resolved in this last episode, so there's still a good number of stories for a second season.  Hopefully future episodes will be more creative like those in the second volume.

This DVD contains episodes 10-13 and comes in a black Amaray case with an insert and some other goodies inside.  (See the section on extras.)  The spine of the case displayed the volume number.  (Something that should be standard on multi-volume anime releases, but unfortunately isn't.)

Audio:

Like most anime that is put out nowadays, this disc offers the choice of a stereo Japanese track with optional English subtitles or an English dub in 5.1. I alternated between tracks as I watched the show, and I had a slight preference for the original language track, but thought the English dub was fine. The English track was a little more full, but it wasn't as powerful as I was hoping. They didn't make full use of the subwoofer channel during the fight scenes. The English track did have more punch than the Japanese track did, just not as much as I was expecting. Both tracks sounded fine, with no distortion or other defects.

Video:

Like the other volumes in this series, the video was presented with a 1.33:1 aspect ration and looked pretty good. The image was still fairly soft, but the colors were bright and accurate. There were only a few instances of aliasing, a digital artifact that usually plagues animation, but no other major defects. A nice looking DVD.

Extras:

This disc includes a clean opening and closing, a series of design sketches and a music video based the series. There are also trailers for Megazone 23, Robotech Remastered, Aquarian Age, Saiyuki, Azumanga Daioh, and Nurse Witch Komugi.

In addition to these disc based extras there are some cool items packaged in with the disc itself. ADV includes a pair of window stickers with a character on each (Ena and Leele this time) and a nice foldout insert with character sketches on one side, and the final part of a prose Gravion story on the other. I like these little collectibles that some companies throw in with their DVDs.

Final Thoughts:

If you have the other two volumes in this series, you might as well get the final disc to finish the set off, but there really isn't anything surprising or new in these shows.  The show ends up in a very predictable manner, with all of the major plot points being seen far in advance.  Overall the show wasn't horrible, but it wasn't very good either.  Rent it.