Episode 5: Whispered: The Ones To Be Whispered
Mithral plans to rescue the hostages but in the meantime, Kaname is being used in lab experiments to determine if she's truly one of the gifted. Sousuke tries to rescue her and the two make a break for it when all heck breaks loose. He manages to steal a mech but the enemy is equipped with a highly advanced prototype, the Coder. Sousuke's stolen mech is no match for the advanced weapon, piloted by an old enemy of his. Kurz fends him off for a few moments, while the other hostages are saved, but he too is no match for the Coder. All three of the good guys are stranded when the rescue mission leaves without them.

Episode 6: Still Alive
Sousuke, badly wounded and bleeding heavily, Kaname, and Kurz, also badly hurt, are left to fend for themselves. The Coder apparently is a barely working prototype and doesn't seem to be able to continue fighting. Kaname finds out Sousuke is a military agent for the first time and barely trusts him but the enemies close in on the threesome. Mithral decides to chance sending their own prototype weapon for Sousuke to pilot which he does, not knowing it's weird weapon systems, powered by a new source, the Lambda drive.

Episode 7: Boy Meets Girl
Sousuke makes the best of his new toy and attempts to save his two charges. After taking out a number of enemy mechs, he is confronted by the Coder, who's pilot is much more experienced with the secret weaponry of the new drive. Kaname displays some mental knowledge of the technology involved, apparently, she's been coded with memory engrams of the advanced tech. She talks Sousuke through the use of it but will she be able to do it in time?

Episode 8: Part Time Steady
The lighter aspects of the series take the forefront again. With the enemy temporarily defeated, and the two leads comfortable with one another for the moment, social obligations force Sousuke to date another student. His over the top style messes everything up in a wacky way.

I liked this one more than the previous volume since the first few episodes were just laying the groundwork to the entire series. As more of the secrets are uncovered, and the characters grow, they become more interesting to me. As such, along with the quality of the show and the extras, I find myself giving this a rating of Highly Recommended. While it treads a lot of familiar territory, it does so in a manner that made me laugh and look forward to future volumes. The bit about Sousuke's "Sim-Date" alone was funny and said loads about his lack of a life. Good fun.

Picture: The picture was presented in 1.33:1 ratio full screen with an action sequence or two in widescreen. It looked clear and crisp with a solid dvd transfer to enjoy. If there were any problems with the picture, I didn't notice them.

Sound: The audio was presented in a few choices: English 5.1 or 2.0 (with optional song subtitles) or the original Japanese stereo track with English subtitles. Like the picture, the sound was exceptionally clear and well planned but I preferred the original language track.

Extras: The extras were pretty solid here. The dvd cover is double sided with the inside containing background data on the episodes. The paper insert had some great attention to detail and provided background on a number of the cast, their weapons, and props. There was the usual clean opening and closing, a bunch of trailers, some cute Japanese copyright warnings (English ones over the FBI warning at the beginning too) and some production sketches. The dvd case was clear plastic and solidly built and the dvd menus were great.

Final Thoughts: There was enough action for action fans, enough decent mech fighting to satisfy that crowd, and the last episode had enough of the Tenchi style high school antics to please those folks-without trying to be too many things to too many people, it seems to work well.