Teenagers controlling powerful dragons and even more destructive angels under no one's command turns the lives of two young high school students upside down in the second volume of Shadow Star Narutaru.  This volume introduces new characters and plots, but when all is said and done the three episodes on this disc don't really explain much.

Shiina and Akira are two teenage girls who share something in common: they both are psychically linked to a pair of "dragon childs."  They can communicate with their dragons which are able to fly, but they aren't sure why they have them.

Meanwhile there are other teenagers who have dragons and dominate their familiars to advance their own agendas.  One wants to kill all of the intellectuals and weak people, and another wants to destroy the army.  Added into this mix are the enigmatic angels, small but powerful beings who are seemingly indestructible.  They love to fight, especially with the military, but their relationship to the dragon's in unknown.

In this volume, Shiina's father, a jet pilot for a private company, encounters an angel who wants to "play" while flying a mission.  Being unarmed, he knows that he has little chance against an angel.  Though his partner dies, Shiina's father manages to survive, though his plane is destroyed.

Shiina and her friend Akira want to find out more about their dragons, and due to an odd comment that Shiina hears in a hallway, she thinks that she's found someone who also has a dragon.  The two friends trail this mysterious person, but they aren't rewarded the way they were hoping they would be.

The volume starts to pick up speed near the end, when Akira gets kidnaped.  Sudo, another teen presumably with a dragon, has some of his friends take her.  They use her as bait to lure her dragon out of hiding.  The army shows up when they spot the dragon hovering in the air and holding an unresponsive Arika, and just in the nick of time too.

I was at a big disadvantage when watching this disc, as I haven't seen the first volume.  (Our review copy never showed up.)  Usually this isn't too much of a problem.  Anime is serialized on TV in Japan, and there's usually someone in the show who gives a brief recap for any viewers who might have missed a show or two.  While there are some recaps in this show, not a lot was explained.  I assume that this was the creator's intention, to make a show where everything wasn't spelled out from the beginning, but I wasn't drawn in by the mystery.

I had a really hard time relating to any of the characters.  Akira is so nervous and timid that it's irritating, and though Shiina is better, she didn't have any personality.  She wasn't plucky or smart or brave, just a befuddled kid.  A lot of the time I couldn't understand what the girl's motivation was.  In one episode Akira takes a train to leave flowers at the door of a missing child whom she is afraid of.  Why?  A good part of one episode was spent tracking down a mysterious boy who seems to know something about the dragons.  When Shiina and Akira finally find him, they leave without even asking him questions about the dragons.

Another strike against the show was the animation.  It was done on the cheap.  There were a lot of shots that hade very little movement.  The flying scenes were especially disappointing, with most of these scenes involving the dragons or planes shrinking over a static background.  The rest of the time the limited animation wasn't too distracting, but the action scenes near the end of the disc were really affected by it.

Audio:

This disc comes with the original Japanese soundtrack, as well as an English dub, both in stereo.  I alternated tracks while I was viewing the disc, and enjoyed the Japanese track more, as usual, but the English dub didn't have anything wrong with it.  Both tracks sounded nice, with no distortion or dropouts.  The dialog was easy to hear and the musical accompaniment was clear.  A solid sounding disc.

Video:

The full frame video was only average.  The image was fairly soft, and there was a lot of aliasing on diagonal lines.  The aliasing wasn't overt, but on larger screens you'll be able to see it in a lot of scenes.  The colors were bright and solid, and the detail was fine.

Extras:

This disc comes with several galleries.  There is an art gallery devoted to images from the show, a collection of storyboards and a gallery of character design sheets.  There are also trailers to the first three volumes of the series (US release version) and biographies of the Japanese voice talent.  In addition to all of this, there are also previews to other CPM DVDs and manga.

Final Thoughts:

Granted, I didn't get the opportunity to screen the first disc, but this show didn't do much for me.  The main characters have no personality, and their motivations are often not explained.  New characters are introduced but they don't help to explain what the main plot is.  Since I missed volume one, I'll give the show the benefit of the doubt and say that it's worth a rental, but only if you've seen the first set of shows.