This review was made possible by the generosity of Daniel P., and I offer many thanks in his general direction. :-)

Today’s lesson is how you can take a moderately entertaining action series and ruin it, part 37. We’ve talked previously about things like doing reset endings so everything that happened up to that point is rendered meaningless, and getting sidetracked in long, drawn-out and irrelevant back or side story. Today’s lesson is “establish a primary couple as the focus of the story then ignore it completely.”

The early volumes of Burst Angel establish Jo and Meg as the primary couple and set Meg up as the *reason* Jo fights with such gusto. In Burst Angel Volume 5, Meg just about drops off the face of the series.

So we start off with the second half of Jo’s battle with a samurai in an alternate dimension against a monster, which is coincidentally similar to Django and piloted by a girl who is clearly the same as whatever Jo is. She says that Jo has to come back with her, but, no, that’s not happening. Jo fights, wins, we leave the alternate dimension and move on.

We move on to…a filler episode about a cyborg who used to be a classmate of Kyouhei’s. Very tragic.

Then Akane from Osaka drops in and police cybots go beserk and – can you guess? Jo has to fight them! Only, Akane seems to be victim du jour.

And where is Meg in all this? Jo’s boon companion, her Boston Marriage, her raison d’etre? Sitting in the trailer eating pizza and not much more than that.

Once again, I found my attention slipping off every episode, because the thing that made Jo interesting was her dedication to Meg and her passion in saving her. The Jo of this volume appears to get fired up over any old thing donuts, ants, and uses any old excuse for a fight. So…what was the point of Meg in the first place? We don’t even get a nice reunion after Jo and Meg are together again after Jo’s been missing for a while.

Lots of extras, as usual, interviews, radio dramas, American voice cast BSing while an episode plays in the background, and a two-sided DVD cover, which made me think how creatively they manage the costumes for maximum perviness.

Ratings;

Art – 7
Story – 5
Characters – There’s more than one? Seems like Jo’s the only one in the story now. 5
Yuri – 0
Service – 6

Overall – 5

Today’s lesson – don’t forget the winning formula.