The story of "the poison that will destroy the world" takes a dramatic turn in the fourth volume of Scrapped Princess.  This volume really fleshes out the story and fills in a lot of the details, but the plot also changes direction in the last episode taking the program off in a new direction.  This is a good volume that advances the story nicely.

Series Synopsis:

Fifteen years ago the revelation of St. Grendel predicted that a princess had been born who would destroy the world when she reached 16 years of age.  "She will be give rise to mountains of corpses and rivers of blood...she will be the poison that will destroy this world." St. Grendel's predictions had always come true, so her parents, the king and queen, ordered her put to death.  The only problem is that she wasn't.  Like Snow White, the person who was supposed to kill her took pity on the baby and let her live.

Now Pacifica Cassul is 15, and running for her life.  She is the person that everyone thinks is the 'Scrapped Princess' of the prophecy.  Living out of a horse drawn wagon, Pacifica travels from place to place with her adopted brother, Shannon, her sister, Raquel, and Leo a young knight wanna-be, trying to stay one step ahead of those who are trying to kill her.  The only problem is, everyone is trying to kill her.  And even if she lives, what will happen when she has her next birthday?  Will she destroy the world?

This volume:

Just who are the Peacemakers? And what do they have to do with Pacifica?  How come Shannon and Raquel are such talented fighters?  All of these questions, and a lot more, are answered at the beginning of this disc.  As Pacifica and the siblings find themselves on a Giat floating fortress, Princess Senes tells the origin of their world and how the three Cassul siblings happened to have the abilities that they do.  Things take on a new look after these explanations.

The fortress is heading towards Lenwein.  The Peacemakers have said that they'll kill 1000 people a day if Pacifica doesn't arrive within 15 days.  It's a trap of course, and the two Dragoons, Natalie and Zefiris, who are accompanying the group don't want them to proceed.  When they can't talk them out of going, they decide to take over Shannon's mind.

Meanwhile the people of Lenwein, being subtlety used by the Peacemakers, view the approaching battle fortress as an act of war.  They realize that their weapons would have no effect on the ship, so the ready the only thing that can stop it, a horrible spell that has been banned all throughout the world.  It will kill many of their own people, but that's a price they are willing to pay to destroy the Scrapped Princess.

This has been a good series, and this volume kicked it up a notch.  The background story held some surprises and answered many of the questions there were raised in the series.  The way everything fits together was smooth and not contrived or convoluted.

I also like the way the series had a big climax at the end of the third episode on this disc, only to create a whole new set of problems and go off in a different direction.  This didn't come off as padding at all, but rather it's another obstacle that has been thrown up, but different than the previous ones.

The only real complaint that I have is that there's an odd jump-cut in the fourth episode (about 7:45 into the show.)  This could have been intentional, but it was pretty jarring.

Audio:

This disc has the original Japanese track and an English dub both in stereo.  There wasn't a lot of directionality to the mix, but being a dialog based show, I wasn't expecting many stereo effects.  Both tracks sounded adequate, with the background music being clear and clean.

Video:

The full frame video image looked good.  The image had a good amount of definition and detail, and the colors were accurately reproduced.  There was some minor digital defects, some shimmering lines in the background and a little aliasing, mainly.  A few areas had bad color gradients, where the colors didn't transfer smoothly from one shade to the next.  These weren't major problems though.  An adequate looking transfer.

Extras:

Like the other volumes in this series, this disc didn't have any extras aside from some trailers.

Final Thoughts:

This is the volume where things get explained, and the plot gets really interesting.  I was glad that they spelled everything out this early in the series rather than trying to cram everything in the last episodes, as occasionally happens.  Now that viewers know what's going on, the show is even more engrossing.  If you've seen the previous three volumes, you'll definitely want to pick up this volume too.  Highly Recommended.