They were saved by a noble sacrifice of the adults on their station, but now the kids, ranging in age from around 10 to 15, are on their own. They are led by a group of elite cadets called the Zwei, who are trying to lead the often rebellious teens. Things are not getting any easier.
The Series
In the first DVD, the kids were led to the Ryvius, a previously unknown ship hidden within the Liebe Delta station. Now they are trying to get home while avoiding unknown attackers who have tried to destroy their ship.
Juli Bahana, one of the Zwei cadets, has taken charge of the situation in an attempt to get everyone home alive. As if that's not enough, she has to deal with a gang of thugs led by Airs Blue, a silent punk with blue hair who leads with a nod and a look and few words.
The two main characters from the first DVD set, Koji and Yuki Aiba, are still at each other's throats but also trying to teach themselves how to survive, since their instructors are all dead and they only have partial training.
In this second volume, the kids discover a giant mechanized robot, the Vital Guarder. The Vital Guarder requires four people to pilot, one being Yuki. So he begins self-training but his bad attitude causes him to butt heads with the other boys as well.
Juli attempts to keep things calm and under control while the Ryvius navigates the Geduld Field, a remnant from a massive solar eruption that now allows for rapid travel between planets in the solar system. However, they are attacked by their unknown attackers again, this time with depth charges (in space?) and torpedoes.
Word gets out just how serious the problems are, and Airs Blue and his gang take control of the ship. The Zwei don't put up a fight and Airs takes command without saying more than a single sentence at a time.
The kids get to Mars and immediately call for help, only to be attacked again. So the Vital Guarder is called into action to defend the ship and its inhabitants, which it does in an impressive manner.
All I can say is when this series is over, there better be a really good reason why these adults are so hell bent to take that ship they would kill nearly 500 kids to do it. We are owed a big payoff.
They do a pretty good job in making the cast come off as teens, with all of the problems, angst, issues and quirks. The girls are just funny as hell, especially with their pet ferret. The series shows a bunch of kids with more bravura than experience trying to act like they are in charge and often failing, and that makes it more genuine.
The down side is that this is a 26-episode series and it seems they are making this whole lost-in-space element the dominant plot all the way to the end. When you stretch what could be a two hour movie into 26 episodes, each running 22 minutes, the end result is a taffy pull. Far too many segments come off as buying time.
Also, there are a lot of kids in this cast and that makes it hard to keep track of them all, especially if you aren't used to juggling Japanese names. With 487 people on the ship, I can understand why, but they should have trimmed it a little.
I'm looking forward to a really big payoff when this is over.
Score: 7 out of 10
Languages and Audio
The series is available in English and Japanese Dolby Digital 2.0 with English subtitles. I watched it with the English subtitles and English dub and the two are often a mile apart. By and large they come to the same context, but the words can often be very different.
There's some halfway decent separation in the channels. My amp was able to fudge Dolby Pro Logic II surround, but it's still overwhelmingly a front-loaded mix. I found the Japanese dub to be much better in terms of mix between vocals and sound effects and music, whereas the English dub had louder voices and softer sounds and music.
All in all, it's good for a TV series, but nothing terribly special.
Score: 7 out of 10
The Video
The video is presented in 1.33:1 ratio full frame video, and it's as good as the previous version. There is some grain here and there and more than a few moments of interlacing problems during horizontal pans. Side-to-side pans often result in combing errors.
Other than that, it's a very good video transfer. Colors are solid with no uneven patches, there are solid lines all around the animation, preventing bleed. I also noticed no compression errors, even during moments of extreme animation action on screen. The animation is a little on the simplistic side, which doesn't stress the video performance, but what we get is doing well.
Bottom line, it's an above-average TV transfer.
Score: 7 out of 10
Packaging and Extras
The DVD comes in an Amaray case with the usual insert that lists the chapters. You also get a clear plastic decal with cover art that you can stick inside a window.
For extras, you get a clean opening and closing (meaning the opening and closing animation with no credits), commercials for the series in Japan and previews for other Bandai titles. There's also a series of short profiles on the main characters called Ryvius Illusion, done with static pages.
Score: 3 out of 10