region2 DVD: pub: Revelation Films. FUN72002. 1 DVD 100 minutes 4 episodes plus extras. Price: £15.99 (UK).

check out website: www.revfilms.com and www.spiral.tv

!!From now on, reviews of each volume of this series may make reference to previous volumes, so if you haven't watched said previous volumes and don't want spoilers, DON'T read any further.!!

'I'm going to pursue the mystery of the Blade Children.'
With these words Kiyotaka Narumi vanished without trace. Two years later, Kiyotaka's disappearance still haunts his younger brother Ayumu...'
From the 1st DVD back cover.

The second DVD opens with Ayumu and Hiyono investigating the recent murders. However, their investigations have come to the notice of the Blade Children, who will stop at nothing to prevent the enquiry.



Quite literally: nothing. Rio, the cute, sweet, deadly youngest Blade Child, comes up with a plan to divert the amateur detectives' suspicions from herself and her friends. It seems that Blade Children have a distinctive physical peculiarity: they're missing the seventh rib on the right side of their chests. (One wonders if this has some sort of odd biblical relevance...) Rio's answer to the risk of exposure is to blow herself up.

Well, enough to make such a mess of her ribs that she won't be recognised as a Blade Child for quite some time to come, if ever. Rio is very good with explosives, you see. She prepares a small charge and places it in a teddy bear then, acting the innocent, takes it to the school newspaper office where Ayumu and Hiyono are working, pretending it's been left behind my someone else. It explodes in her arms, injuring her badly.

Ayumu, however, is not fooled. Later, he and Hiyono visit Rio in hospital and confront her with what they know and suspect. This marks the start of a truly deadly game of bluff and counter-bluff between Ayumu and Hiyono and Rio and Kousuke. Poison, kidnapping, threat and capitulation. Everything is a game to the Blade Children and they play to win. All of them that we've so far met have killed, many times, and without remorse. Although we don't yet know all the circumstances, it is clear that they will kill anyone who comes close to exposing or hurting them.

We're given more of an insight into Ayumu and Hiyono's characters throughout these four episodes. His self-confidence was increasing as he found himself successfully solving puzzles and clues without his police-trained sister-in-law. In the second DVD, this emerging confidence is shattered when Rio 'wins' their latest game. Hiyono, however, gives him a much-needed kick, metaphorically speaking, by proving she can play by their rules and giving Ayumu the credit for teaching how to do so.

The Blade Children remain a sociopathic enigma, though, completely lacking in empathy for others and using the games they play with Ayumu's mind as a replacement for their missing emotions...

The style remains consistent. A lot of talking, not a great deal of action, which is fitting given the subject matter. This second DVD ends on a gripping cliff-hanger that had my son begging to stay up even later to watch the next episode to see what happens!

Joules Taylor
http://www.wavewrights.com