Series background:

Kousuke Ueki is your typical middle school student until he encounters an odd man named Mr. K one evening. This unusual person, out of the blue, offers Ueki his choice of super-powers. Out of all the myriad of abilities that are offered, the young man chooses (drum roll please....) the power to turn garbage into trees. Not what I would have picked, but okay. With this power Ueki has to battle the 99 other middle school kids who have also been given super-human abilities. (And just about all of them are as odd as Ueki's. One person has the ability to turn cloth into steel, but only while he's holding his breath. Another can turn water into fire, but only if the water is in his mouth.) The winner of this tournament will gain the talent of blank, and the 'sponsor' who granted the child the power he used to win will become the Celestial King.

Each battle between 'power users' will go on until one of them is knocked unconscious. When that happens the fight is over and the person who was defeated loses their power. That sounds fine, but there's a down side to this power to: if anyone uses it to harm someone who isn't in the tournament, they loose a 'talent'. These talents can be anything. Ueki loses the talent "to be liked by girls" at the beginning. He only starts with 11 talents all together and when they all disappear, so does poor Ueki.

Helping Ueki in this trial is a fellow middle school student, Ai Mori. Her favorite pastime is to 'meddle', so following Ueki around warning him to be on the lookout for other people with powers is just up her alley. Even with Ai on his side, will a slacker like Ueki be able to beat all of the other power users?

This volume:

This disc started off pretty badly, but got better as it went along. The first disc ended with nice cliff-hanger with Ueki really getting his butt kicked by a much stronger opponent. Unfortunately they wrapped that up in about the lamest way possible. Basically the guy that was winning decided to stop fighting and left. What?!!? You've got to be kidding me.

After that, Ueki and Ai are riding home on the train when they meet a kid who is really into Hip-hop music: BJ. BJ (a poor name for American audiences, but what 'cha gonna do?) and Ueki hit it off and spend some time dancing through the streets, much to Ai's embarrassment, until the new friend has to go. It turns out that BJ is a power user too, and has a match against another user. He quickly takes out his foe, but then another power user shows up to challenge BJ: Robert Haydn. The next day Ueki learns that this Haydn is the odds on favorite to win the whole contest and that he's put BJ in the hospital, nearly killing him. Mr. K knows that there's no way Ueki can defeat Haydn and orders the young man to stay away from him at all costs.

Of course Ueki isn't going to let someone trash one of his friends without getting revenge. When a challenge arrives from Robert, Ueki is more than happy to show up. Unfortunately Mr. K is right and Haydn doesn't even break a sweat while trashing Ueki. This powerful foe is a maniacal psychopath and decides to kill Ueki just for fun until the unexpected happens.

In the other episodes on this disc Ueki runs into another power user, Monjiro Oniyama. This kid has the ability to kick dirt and turn it into steel balls. He also has a very strict code of ethics and fair play and is hoping to win the tournament in order to save his village. Even though Ueki likes the boy, he has to take him out.

This volume was a bit better than I was expecting. They developed Ueki's character a little more, something I didn't think would happen, and they threw in a twist or two that caught me off guard as well. The odd abilities are still entertaining and it looks like they've come up with an interesting antagonist in the form of Robert Haydn. The show is pretty similar to other battle programs and has more than a passing resemblance to the hit show Shaman King. (In Shaman King a group of people, mainly high school students, who can control spirits are battling and the winner will get god-like powers. Sound familiar??) Viewers who enjoy that show will also like this one.

Audio:

Viewers have the choice of either the original Japanese audio track or an English dub, both in stereo. The English dub was a little heavy handed in the effects department. In the very first episode they added some heavy echos to the voices in one scene which made it hard to understand what was being said. It also sounded pretty stupid. Because of that, I enjoyed the original language track a lot more. Both audio options sounded good though, with nice range and clear dialog. There wasn't any hiss of background noise.

Video:

The full frame picture looked very good. The image is clean and clear, and the lines are tight. This is a colorful show with a wide range of shades present. The colors are strong and bright and add a lot to the show's look. Digital defects are nearly absent, with only some very minor aliasing in the background. Overall this is a very nice looking disc.

Extras:

The only extra included with this disc is a clean closing and some trailers. Specially marked cases come with a 12-page preview of the Ueki manga which is nice.

Final Thoughts:

I was surprised that this volume actually developed the characters of Mr. K and Ueki a bit more, that's something that children's shows in general and battle programs in particular rarely do. While that was a nice touch, the show is still a battle-of-the-week show where a new power user is encountered and bested in nearly every episode. Hopefully the show will continue to evolve and mature, but I'd be rather surprised if it did. Definitely worth a rental.