Burn Up Excess-Volume 1: To Serve and Protect (1997)

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General		Extras
Category	Anime	Main Menu Audio & Animation Gallery-Production Sketches Informational Subtitles-Jiggle Counters Credits-Clean opening Credits-Clean closing Trailer-Burn Up Excess Trailer-Noir, Steel Angel Kurumi, Full Metal Panic Trailer-Zone of Enders IDOLO, Samurai X, Excel Saga
Rating
Year Of Production	1997
Running Time	100:11
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Shinichiro Kimura
Studio Distributor	Madman Entertainment	Starring	None Given
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$29.95	Music	Shinobu Uchida Koichi Namiki

    Burn Up Excess is a new anime series that follows on from the single-disc Burn-Up W. I find it amusing that this series (made in 1997) makes extensive use of the word "Showtime!" (even in the Japanese theme song) — makes me wonder if this series was any inspiration for the Murphy / de Niro movie?

    The Burn Up series is about Team Warrior. Team Warrior is a group of police officers who take on jobs the regular police force can't handle. They negotiate special pay for these missions. The leader of Team Warrior is Maki, an ultra-efficient woman who knows how to use the bureaucracy to their benefit. She can use computers well, but not with quite the facility of Lilica.

    The point man (err, person) of Team Warrior is Rio. She's hopeless at managing her personal finances, and owes money to every possible credit source. Because of that, money is her primary motivation. She's awesomely athletic, highly skilled at hand-to-hand combat, and she has amazingly fast reflexes. She can and will use a gun if she has to, but she prefers direct action.

    Backing Rio up is Maya's job. Maya loves firearms, and is often in place as a sniper. She gets awfully frustrated when she doesn't get the chance to fire her favourite guns.

    Their gadgets are provided by Nanvel. She's a major genius, but she cares more about her devices than people.

    Command and control is managed by Lilica, who can hack her way through any computer system.

    They have a token male on the team. He's Yuji, and he's often seen carrying a video camera, trying to capture footage of Rio, who he thinks he's in love with. He's completely clueless, as you'd expect. He's also a slave to lust, getting hot and bothered whenever one or more of the girls is in a revealing situation.

    The ladies of Team Warrior are all rather buxom, some of them beyond anything natural, and there are many occasions when their chests become the focus of attention, oscillating hypnotically. This is so important to some fans of the series that there's a special feature, called the Jiggle Counter, provided as an extra. This provides a counter for each member of the team, which is displayed when updating. Both Maya and Rio give the counters a serious workout. Yeah, it's a tasteless idea, but kinda funny the first time you watch it. Besides, it fits with some of the other aspects of the show, like the police uniforms that are slit high on the thigh, and the occasional male hand grabbing female anatomy (they always regret it).

    The episodes on this disc are:

    These are basically self-contained episodes, except for one mysterious woman who I'm sure we'll learn more about in later episodes.

    This series is not for everyone — it's not for children, nor for people who are easily offended... This is basically a "busty babes with big guns" series, albeit one with a bit more plot than others.

Video

    This DVD transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. It is not 16x9 enhanced.

    The image is clear and sharp. There is no significant film grain, and no low-level noise.

    Colour is brilliant, in the original meaning, with strong bright colours which are fully saturated — the transfer is very pretty to look at. There are no colour-related artefacts.

    There are some small film artefacts, like the small spot at 3:29 in Episode 1, and the hair at 3:48 in Episode 4. They are barely noticeable.

    There is surprisingly little aliasing, no moire, and minimal shimmer. This is quite a clean transfer.

    There are five sets of subtitles on this disc, all of them English. There are three levels of subtitling (none, signs and songs only, and full subtitles), with and without the Jiggle Counters — that's three times two, which is six, but we don't need a subtitle set for "no subtitles / no Jiggle Counters", hence the five subtitle sets. It's much easier to choose the subtitles from the Language menu, and Jiggle Counters from the extras menu.

    The disc is single-sided and dual layered, possibly formatted RSDL. The layer change is placed between Episode 2 and Episode 3, making it essentially invisible — it's not clear if the disc is RSDL, because there's a brief seek when changing layers.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The soundtrack is provided in English, Japanese, and Spanish. The Spanish is an unusual addition for anime. I watched all four episodes with the English soundtrack, and two episodes with the Japanese.

    The English dialogue is a nice piece of work, with the voice actors matching their lines rather well to the mouth movements. The dialogue is clear and easily understood. The Japanese dialogue sounds clear enough, and is fairly well matched to the mouth movements.

    The score is bright, brash, and cheerful, well-suited to the rest of the show. It's credited to Shinobu Uchida and Koichi Namiki.

    This is a pure 2.0 stereo soundtrack, with plenty of stereo imaging, but it makes no use of the surrounds or subwoofer. There's decent bass in the soundtrack, but it's directed to the mains.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menu is animated with music, and offers transitions between submenus. The menu images look a bit cheap, as though these menus were created on a tight budget; they are easy to use, though.

Gallery — Production Sketches (13)

    Working drawings of the main characters.

Jiggle Counters

    As discussed above, these provide the necessary (?!) service of keeping track of jiggles by character. It's frightening that they claim a trademark on the name...

Clean Opening (1:06)

    The opening theme and animation unsullied with credits. Still hard to keep track of everything shown, though, because it moves so fast.

Clean Closing (1:37)

    The closing theme and animation, minus credits. Interesting to look at, because of the unusual pencil drawings used.

Trailer (1:00)

    The trailer for Burn Up Excess.

Trailers

    Labelled ADV Previews, this is essentially the same as Madman Propaganda, but without the menu — the trailers are simply played one after another.

• Noir (1:30)
• Steel Angel Kurumi (1:27)
• Full Metal Panic (2:39)
• Zone of the Enders (ZOE) IDOLO (1:52)
• Samurai X (1:38)
• Excel Saga (1:39)

    The Region 1 version of this disc is quite similar to this one, even down to the extras (it doesn't have the ADV Previews, but it does have everything else). The transfer sounds similar, too. Looks like either version will do, but the Region 4 has an RRP of A$29.95, while the Region 1 has an MSRP of US$29.95. Even with the Australian dollar nudging 60c US, the price contrast is still strong.

    The first volume of a fairly fun series, featuring four episodes of full-figured females. Not really suitable for prudes or children.

    The video quality is excellent.

    The audio quality is very good.

    The extras are decent, but limited.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall