The penultimate volume of Scrapped Princess does a wonderful job of starting to tie all of the story threads together while also ratcheting up the suspense.  In 200 days Pacifica Cassul will turn 16, and then, according to prophecy, the streets will run with blood.  The interstellar Peacemakers are worried that the girl will live until her birthday, but the King has other plans for her.  Namely to use her as a bargaining chip with the Peacemakers so they'll allow him to take over the world.

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.

Shannon and Raquel have done a good job protecting Pacifica, but they can't protect her from everything.  After an accident, the young girl loses her memory, and meets a nice young man.  Now she just wants to settle down with her beau and live a normal life.  Will those pursing the scrapped princess allow her to live in peace?

This volume:

With Pacifica living with amnesia, she's happy and relaxed for the first time in her life.  That hasn't stopped the powerful Peacemakers and the King's army from searching for her however.   The Peacemakers want her dead so that she doesn't upset the order on the planet, but the King has other ideas.  He wants to invade the country of Giat, but the Peacemakers won't allow it.  If he can obtain the Scrapped Princess however, maybe he can make a deal with the alien force.

Pacifica isn't alone however.  In addition to her brother and sister that are watching out for her from afar, there's Leo, the would-be knight who's enamored with the girl and promises to protect her with his life and her friend Winia.  Pacifica's boyfriend, Furet, is also a good one to have on your side in a fight.  The four of them are spotted however and the King's Guards come after them in full force.  Furet has a plan for escape however, but things don't go exactly as planned.

This volume, like the last one, really takes things in a different direction.  The tone is more serious and some unexpected things happen, and they aren't good.  Some characters die and others grow up and see the world as it really is.

The Peacekeepers are much more malevolent and sly than they've been portrayed in previous volumes too.  Their machinizations come to fruition at the end of this volume, and the stakes are quite high.  Not only is Pacifica's life hanging in the balance, but most of humanities also.  The final volume promises to be an exciting one.

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:

The plot advances and things become much clearer in this next to last volume of the show.  The show has done a nice job of turning serious in the last half without alienating viewers who enjoyed the more light hearted episodes from the first part.  A very entertaining and interesting show, this is turning out much better than I expected it to.  Highly Recommended.