The eighth volume of The Get Backers contains five stand alone stories.  I really prefer the single episode stories, and this volume has some really good ones.  Humor seems to be the keyword for this disc, since many of the shows are of a lighter nature and it includes one of the funniest episodes in the series.  In addition we learn some more about Himiko's background, and her relationship with Ban.  This is a solid volume, with all five stories being very good.

Series recap:

The Get Backers are a pair of young guys, Ban and Ginji, who run a business retrieving stolen or lost objects.  Business isn't very good right now.  They live in their car, and have run up a huge tab at a local restaurant.  Even giving their lowly standing, they are quite good at their job.  Once they take on a job, these goofy guys always recover the object they are sent after.

Part of the reason for this amazing success rate is that both members of the team have superpowers.  Ginji is a human electric eel, who can generate a powerful electric charge with his hands, and Ban has a 'jag-on' the ability to create a powerful illusion for up to a minute.  With these powers, and a stubborn streak that doesn't allow them to give up, the Get Backers are able to recover just about anything.

Volume 8:

The disc starts off with The Get Backers being offered a job to recover a kidnaped child.  It seems that the grandfather, a rich industrialist, has taken the baby to raise as an heir since the child's father had no left the family to marry the woman he loved.  Ban and Ginji originally tell the couple to go to the police, but when Himiko overhears, she accepts the job for them.  It seems that this hits a little close to home for her, since she was stolen from her family as a baby, never to be reunited.  We learn a lot about Himiko's background in this show, including a few things that are sure to be developed in later shows.

Then Natsumi, the waitress in the Honkey Tonky and Ban and Ginji's client in the first episode, decides to take on a case by herself while the Get Backers are out of town.  An old lady has lost a precious memento of her dead husband's.  She doesn't exactly remember what it looks like, but that won't stop Natsumi. This is a humourous episode with some good moments.

Beastmaster Shido Fuyuki gets an episode to himself next.   He's promised to to go to Madoka's concert, but that's a little difficult when his past comes back to haunt him.  An old enemy shows up to even the score.  This man is an insect master though, with the ability to control all manner of insects and spiders.  How can Shido control his animals when he's wrapped in a spider's web?

The third episode is one of the most humorous shows in the series.  Ginji gets put in the hospital when he chases a rice ball he dropped off the top of a building.   While he's recovering, all of his friends come to visit, and every one of them manages to get into trouble.  There are several competing storylines, and every one of them is filled with laughs. I especially liked the running joke where everyone who entered Ginji's room would find he and Himiko in a totally innocent but very suggestive looking position.  Ginji didn't seem to mind at all, but Himiko was irate that anyone would think she'd fall for someone like the Lightning Emperor.

In the final show on this volume, Ban and GInji travel to the country to Madoka's mountain retreat, only to meet up with the thieving monkey that they encountered in volume six.  This time the monkey has his whole tribe with him, and this group of primates are much more than the Get Backer can handle.  So they turn to Shido, and ask him to tame the herd.  He does, but in doing so accidently becomes their leader, a position that he rather enjoys.  It's up the Ban and Ginji to make his see reason.  Another very funny episode.

This was one of the best volumes so far.  It had some good action and fights, some tricky recoveries, and it revealed more background on one of the supporting characters.  In addition to all of that, many of these shows were very funny.  I laughed more at this volume than any other in the series.  Things just seemed to come together to make this an outrageous volume.

This DVD presents episodes 36-40 on a single DVD that comes in an Amaray case with an insert listing the titles of the episodes and the extras.

Audio:

This DVD offers the choice of the original Japanese in stereo, or a 5.1 English dub.  I viewed the show with both soundtracks and they were both good.  There was some problems with the English track though.  At the beginning of the first episode the music is way too loud when compared to the dialog.  This evens out after a few minutes.  Aside from that, the 5.1 dub was more dynamic than the Japanese track, with a little more strength to the bass.  The English voice actors did a good job, putting feeling into the characters without making them sound goofy like some dubs.   The rear speakers are used to good effect.

Video:

The anamorphic widescreen image looked pretty good.  The colors were bright and the image was sharp.  There were some digital defects with aliasing in the background being the most noticeable.  Fine lines tend to shimmer when the camera pans over them, and there was some cross colorization in the few black and white scenes.  These weren't distracting and this is still a good looking DVD.

Extras:

The only extras on this disc are clean opening and closing animations and a few trailers.

Final Thoughts:

The longer story arcs that The Get Backers sometimes engage in tend to drag a bit, that why I was very happy to see that these five episodes were all stand alone stories.  They told some entertaining tales in this volume and set up some sub-plots that I'm sure will be expended upon in the future.  Most of all though, this was a very funny disc.  Three of the five stories were comedies, and they all worked.  My favorite volume of this series so far.  Highly Recommended.