When measured against the often atrocious failures of other video game adaptations, Xenosaga is actually fairly successful. That is, however, a very low bar to pass. But for a certain over-density of plot and a sense that it condenses a lengthy space opera into far too short a space of time, it is an easy watch; but easy doesn't mean compulsively watchable or even enjoyable, just that there are enough events of interest that watching the next episode always seems like a better option than stopping.

Those events of interest revolve nearly exclusively around Shion. Shion, as with the rest of the cast, is hardly a fleshed-out or compelling character. She is sympathetic though, as well as believably strong-willed and, most importantly, cute in a very grown-up kind of way. Thus Shion's fate is important, whereas it doesn't matter whether the scarred Marine guy or the soft-spoken badass (his name is "chaos," so he's obviously a badass) marry swimsuit models and have fleets of offspring or get tortured to death by Huns. Of course, one sympathetic character isn't enough to make a series watchable, but whatever else it is that makes Xenosaga go down even as smoothly as it does is a complete mystery. The tone, especially once the space-battles die down, is dull and far too serious to complement the utter ridiculousness of certain passages. The humor introduced in this volume to lighten the mood is brutally unfunny, especially the virtual reality parodies of anime "ultimate attacks." The plot barrels from one plot point to the next, far more concerned with cramming everything into the allotted time than with the dramatic or emotional impact of the plot. One particular bombshell, a life-threatening one no less, is dropped one scene, only to be forgotten at the next cut and ignored for the entirety of the volume. Did it just go away? Will it be resolved later? Who knows. And by the time the fourth episode rolls past without even mentioning it, who cares?

The likeliest suspect for the series' ease of viewing, besides perhaps the good sense that made the director reign in the pace enough to prevent complete confusion, is the simple fact that it looks and sounds good. Any four-year-old will tell you that pretty pictures make a story better, and Xenosaga's pictures are pretty indeed. As befits a series in which the lead's abs can crush a fleet of spacefaring monsters, the character designs are the real stars of the show. Character designer Nobuteru Yuuki's renowned style informs the profiles and eyes of every character, giving the cast a distinctive, pleasing appearance. His preferences for pastel color schemes and relatively subdued hair steers the visual aesthetic away from gaudiness, and faces are expressive without being elastic or overbearing. 3D effects are confined to external shots of vehicles and to the monsters, all of which (with the exception of the monsters) are suitably impressive. Animation ranges from solid during the space battles to careless during the animation of characters during their off-time. Standard shortcuts—speedlines, stills, plummeting detail levels, some repeated animation—are used, only becoming truly bad during the virtual reality fights in episodes eight and nine.

The series' other star is its score. It's an expansive, operatic score, one that uses the human voice—high, clear wordless song and ominous low chants—to superb effect and spans comic, energetic and solemn tones without ever breaking character. It benefits from an excellent, appropriately mysterious opening and a sparely beautiful closing. It deserves a better vehicle for its qualities, something with epic scope and range; alas, it has to make do with Xenosaga.

Those willing to brave the awkward dialogue additions typical of faithful dub translations that need to match lip-flaps will find in ADV's dub a work that makes up for its occasional lapse in conversational rhythm with performances that periodically improve on the Japanese. Luci Christain's English KOS-MOS has a mechanical delivery that never resorts to halting computer-talk and avoids the toneless shouting of the Japanese KOS-MOS. Junior has one emotional breakdown during which Greg Ayres goes to town, turning in a performance that crushes the lackluster Japanese rendition.

The mystery of Xenosaga (the real mystery, not all of that obfuscation that the plot tries to pawn off as mysteries) is that one can watch the plot holes swallow up common sense, cringe at the humor and laugh at the sadly ineffective appeals to emotion, and still be carried along as one episode flows into the next until you find yourself at the end of the volume. But when the disc is over, where the desire to see the next volume should be, there's nothing but an empty hole, best filled by a repeat watching of, say, Crest of the Stars.Some time after Meg and Jo left the city where they first met, they return despite having sworn to never again grace (or curse) the city with their presence. It's the birthday of mute little Shirley, Jo's favorite among the orphans she and Meg once hung out with, and the two visitors are determined to bring her a present. Perpetually broke though they are, they manage to scrape together enough dough to make the purchase and head to meet her, and wouldn't you know it, the world being the nasty old place it is, Shirley has been hospitalized. The little lady was in the wrong place at a bad time and ended up victim to an indiscriminate slasher who has been terrorizing the poorer districts of the city. And so the slasher ends up with two very bad girls (okay, one very bad girl and one useless wimp) on his tail, and unfortunately for him, nothing gets Jo's ire up like folks who pick on the weak

More than a year and a half after the sixth volume, the final episode of Burst Angel finally hits stores. Avid fans of this wild, often silly, mash-up of futuristic mecha clichés, gory horror and spaghetti westerns will be glad to have the complete series at last, but it's hard to see anyone else (tentative fans and non-fans alike) getting excited about one more episode of the same-old.

And that's the tragedy of this OVA. When given the budget for a video episode, instead of continuing the story past the abrupt yet rather promising end of the TV series, the series' creators decided to provide a side-story detailing more of Jo and Meg's frankly uninteresting back-story. It fulfills exactly the expectations raised by the television series: Jo runs around shooting crap and raising hell, a bunch of stuff explodes, there's a nifty mecha brought to life with the "Gonzo Special" brand of 3D CGI, a lot of people die in unpleasant ways, and there's a faint whiff of shoujo-ai in Meg and Jo's partnership. It also fulfills some expectations better left unfulfilled. Given that this story takes place somewhere midway between the previous back-story episodes and the beginning of the TV series, it would be breaking character for Meg to grow a spine, but that doesn't stop one from wishing that she'd do something other than snivel and cry whenever she's in a pinch. Plus, there's only one episode in the story and she still manages to get abducted.

Burst Angel's strongest appeal has always been that it bathed in the pulpy excesses of the dregs of pop culture much the way that Countess Báthory bathed in the blood of virgins, making the series lurid fun for those who prefer their entertainment violent and more than a little lowbrow. The OVA wears its influences on its sleeve; it may not have any more references to the awful Django movies, but it does contain the occasional nod to westerns and a glimpse of a fictional movie starring Freddy, Jason, Leatherface, Pinhead and an ominous pile of junk food (Ronald McDonald's Nightmare on Friday of the 13th Hellraising Chainsaw Massacre?). The soundtrack's spaghetti-western acoustic guitar is as amusing as ever, with a little electronic jazz thrown in for good measure. And yet, for all the pulp in its veins, it never achieves the delirious outrageousness of the series' best episodes; you know, the ones that end with Jo sailing out of skyscrapers on decapitated monsters and have titles like "Wash This Flower Garden With Blood!" In comparison, the OVA's modest climax is positively bland.

Clocking in at nearly two hours, the disc's wealth of extras is hardly unique to the OVA: the series proper was at times more appealing for its extra material than for the show itself. Heck, some people probably bought it for character designer Ugetsu Hakua's gorgeous cover and booklet illustrations alone (Guilty!). But unlike the radio shows and audio dramas of the previous discs, the extras for the OVA aren't original works. They're recaps. A series of recaps fully four times the length of the solitary feature episode. The only extra really worthy of the name is a three-minute faux-preview for a second season that never was. Those three minutes afford one a glimpse of the strong, confident Meg promised by the ending freeze-frame of the TV series and also serve as proof that Hakua's art, with its bold, beautiful color contrasts and stunning smooth-limbed beauties, can be animated without losing its unique charm the way the sometimes poor compositions of the OVA do.

Their tediousness aside, the recaps do serve a purpose. The "Battle Record of All 24 Episodes," a nearly 90-minute series of short recaps of every single episode, serves well as a time-lapse record of the series' declining production values. With it one can actually see detail levels drop, characters flatten out, and movements grow truncated and shortcut-laden. It also serves as a convenient way to chart the ballooning size of Meg's breasts. The OVA itself finds a comfortable middle ground between the insane excellence of the opening episode and the sadly worn-out episodes towards the end—with the exception of Meg's breasts, which are subdued to match her tender age.

Burst Angel is hardly rocket science, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that the English dub gets it right on. The actors turn in thoroughly suitable performances and even manage to wring a drop or two of pathos from the pulpy mess. The rewrites have some fun punching up and rearranging less important lines, producing a script that wanders further than it has to without moving the series in either a positive or negative direction, though the fact that the cadence and tone of the dialogue are just right is probably attributable to the liberties it takes. As an additional bonus, all of the extras are dubbed.

Don't let the sheer quantity of extras fool you. This is a single episode with an MSRP of thirty bucks. And a mediocre episode at that, even by the admittedly low standards of the Burst Angel franchise. But hey, that cover artwork is really gorgeous.

Why must the characters feel the need to sing? It's not natural. If my friends started singing random, creepy songs every time we hung out, I'd report them to the authorities for substance abuse. It also greatly breaks up the flow of the series. Every bit of scariness that's built up during the episode is thrown out the window when people start singing in unison.

Aside from that, though, Red Garden is still a pretty enjoyable show. With the second volume, it tantalizes viewers a bit more with information on what's going on—namely, what happened to the girls' real bodies, and what the organization in charge really has at stake. It doesn't reveal all its cards, but it shows just enough to keep you wanting to know more.

One of the best things about the series is definitely the cast of main girls, whose relationships with each other grow stronger in these episodes. What makes them so great is that they're all very different from each other and have their own very individual personalities and aspirations; at the same time, they don't resemble any of the stock stereotypes that you so often see in other shows. Yeah, one of them's more popular, one of them's more independent, and so on, but the experiences that they share are so unique that they're less archetypes than they are real people. Watching them worry about the burden that's been placed on them, or watching them as they start questioning their lives lends them an aspect of reality that's unlike your typical anime hero, that just jumps right into being a superhero or action star. If you're in the mood for something dark and stylish, Red Garden is a great catch. I really, really wish they'd stop singing, but aside from that, it's a fantastic show well worth watching.[TOP]

Speaking of heroes that just dive into their newfound roles, there's another robot show out on the market. This time it's Zegapain, Bandai's latest offering. And, while the action sequences prove to be a good time for all mecha enthusiasts, the story is more confusing and muddled than anything else. The story starts out with a high school student whose only passion in life is swimming. It's revealed later on that a scandal in a previous swim meet made him an outcast and doomed him to be the only member left in the swim club, but although they make a huge deal out of this throughout the entire disc, it's really kind of a trivial issue.

The main story is why he is the pilot of a mecha called the Zegapain. Actually, this isn't really revealed in the first volume at all, although the dialogue does hint that somehow he's done this all before. Here's what we know. Fact: bad guys in mecha are trying to destroy the earth. Fact: The only people who can fight these bad guys are pilots of these Zega-machines, who can fly, shoot things, punch things, and stab things, provided they have enough battery life. Fact: The bad guys are totally wiping out the world. Here's what we don't know: it's possible that the world as we know it doesn't actually exist, and that in a Harsh Realm twist of fate (minus the cool government conspiracy), it's just an illusion—the “real” world is the world that's already in ruin, and being destroyed by all the bad guys.

At least, that's what I was able to milk from it. From the looks of it, the main character doesn't really know what's going on, either. Until almost the fifth episode, he was convinced that every time he fought, he was just getting mysteriously pulled into a virtual reality game. But, to be fair, the strength and weakness of the series is that for the most part, viewers don't really know what's going on for the first volume. New hints are dropped every episode, which is enough to have you cursing at every cliffhanger, but at the same time, everything is a blurry mess right now. You don't really know what's going on, you don't even know who half the characters are, because they either haven't been fully introduced, or they look the same as someone else, and you don't even really know why you should care about the good guys. What are they fighting for? Why are they fighting?

Zegapain is something that I'm cautious to really support right now. The first five episodes are really scant in terms of details and exposition, but every time it does reveal something, it has me interested again. It's kind of a dirty trick to play, but I do want to know what happens next. I do want to know what's going on. If you're a mecha enthusiast, and you also happen to have Netflix or RentAnime or one of those services, it might be worth putting this on your queue. This is one of those series that I could see having the infamous caveat, “well, it does get better,” but unfortunately, with my measly income and rising gas prices, I don't have the money to gamble on that empty hope. I haven't seen the rest of the series yet, but the first disc isn't really worth my money.[TOP]

Then there are series that don't really get better or worse—they just stay the same throughout the entire show and instead, just get more irritating over time. Shows like Suzuka.

Suzuka and I have an abusive relationship. It makes me feel bad about myself for watching it, and it makes me angry and upset, but every time I get a new volume, it's the first thing I reach for. I watch Suzuka for the same reason that I always walk down the Bratz toy aisle at Target—to get angry, so I can rant about society.

After three volumes, I thought that maybe the series would get better after the whiny lead male abandoned his moping and got a girlfriend. Alas. The series should have ended after that. It should have been his minor victory, and also the death knoll that would deliver viewers from his emo rage. Instead, it continued to barrel ahead into teen-dramatics territory, where everyone is even more unhappy. Now that Yamato and Honoka are dating, Suzuka is intensely jealous. However, she's still a bitch. Only now, she's trying to win Yamato back, which makes Honoka unhappy, because it's clear that her new boyfriend still has feelings for the other girl. This leads to catfights, tears, and basically a story that can't possibly end well.

Now, I can't speak for anyone else, but personally, it's very hard for me to care about the characters' well being. I equally hate all of the characters. They're all awful in some way or other, and the way that the series has progressed has made it such that I will be unhappy with any possible outcome. No matter which couple forms in the end, I will be an unhappy viewer.

Quality-wise, the series hasn't changed at all. The animation is the same as it's always been (mediocre, but nothing to complain about), the soundtrack is as boring as it's always been, and the dubbing is just as professional as it's always been. In fact, nothing's changed. Even though the characters now have new problems to deal with, they're still responding to things the same way they would have responded in the first episode. Yamato hasn't matured, Suzuka hasn't learned to not be a raging bitch, and had it not been for the fact that I had to check the DVD spine to make sure it was the fourth disc, I wouldn't have known that any progress had been made.

Up until now, I've kept my spirits high about this show, but it's finally gotten to the point where enough is enough. If you want good (albeit slightly melodramatic) teen drama, check out some of Funimation's other releases like Peach Girl or Rumbling Hearts. Suzuka is just running in circles at this point.[TOP]

Now I'd like to drop things a few notches, sit back, and revisit something a lot more old school, that's finally been re-mastered and bestowed again to society. It is the infamous Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins – Ultimate Edition, and it is simultaneously the best and worst movie that I've ever seen.

For anyone who's had the misfortunate of missing this gem, you're in luck. In October, it was re-released by Tai Seng, this time with better special effects (a claim that is akin to cleaning up a pile of feces by spritzing it with Febreze), sharper picture, and new sound. You can even choose to listen to it in the original Cantonese, which only proves that the movie sucked just as bad in the original format.

This movie is a must-see. It is the kind of movie that potlucks should be thrown in honor of. It was meant to be seen by a large group of friends, preferably in English. And, if one of your friends doesn't laugh, you can de-friend that person on every social networking site you frequent, because it's obvious they don't have a sense of humor.

Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins was an unlicensed live-action Chinese movie based on the first Dragonball film. As such, all of the character names had to be replaced. Goku is Monkey Boy, Bulma (still a slut!) is Seto, Yamcha is Westwood, and so on, so forth. The world is torn asunder when the evil Master Horn starts invading South Asia with his hordes of dark-skinned villains and an 80s dance instructor, in search of the seven “Dragon Pearls.” It now falls upon our rag-tag team of heroes to protect the Dragon Pearls, as well as rescue Monkey Boy's grandfather, who's been kidnapped by the “baddies.” The special effects include flying harnesses, magic staffs that only grow about 6 inches, and planes that seem to have drawn in post-production by an underpaid intern. The characters also dance a lot.

If you need me to go any further than this, you probably aren't the right fit for the movie. Especially in light of the plans for the new Dragonball Z movie, this is a chance to experience something that should rightfully be a legend. In this column, I've often praised movies like Linda, Linda, Linda and The Train Man… well, now, I'm praising this crappy C-movie like it's the next Big Thing. I'd seen it years ago, but completely forgotten about it—now that Tai Seng has resurrected it from the dead, I'm glad it's back in my life. And yes, I totally bought a copy.[TOP]

And that's that. See you next time, and enjoy your turkey.