Burn Up! Excess-Volume 2: Crimes and Misdemeanors (1997)

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General		Extras
Category	Anime	Main Menu Audio & Animation Gallery-Production Sketches (18) Informational Subtitles-Jiggle counters Credits-Clean opening Credits-Clean closing Trailer-Burn Up Excess Trailer-Noir, Steel Angel Kurumi, Samurai X
Rating
Year Of Production	1997
Running Time	76:06 (Case: 75)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	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 rather fun, if you don't mind your fun being a bit slapstick, with boing-boing sound-effects as a well-endowed woman bounces into view. Don't get the wrong impression: it's not particularly rude, just a bit crass. You'll find the background to this series in my review of Volume 1: To Serve and Protect.

    The episodes on this disc are:

    Note that the back cover has listed episodes six and seven in the wrong order — above is what's on the disc.

    Someone has been trying to save money — there's an animation sequence of the girls in the locker room near the start of Episode 7 that's a repeat of the sequence at the start and end of Episode 4.

    We get a little bit of development of the longer story arc in Episode 5, and we get a better understanding of the background to Team Warrior in Episode 6 (I hadn't realised that the team was supposed to be secret from other police — that clarifies a couple of things that puzzled me). We meet Rio's friend Miyuki in Episodes 6 and 7, and get some interesting background on Maki in Episode 7. So there are no wasted episodes here, completely apart from the fact that each is really quite entertaining.

    The first volume's cover featured Rio. This one shows us Maya, complete with rifle. Interesting to see that she's carrying something a lot like a Steyr assault rifle, rather than the sniper rifle you'd expect — I wonder why?

    Please don't watch this series if you're likely to be offended, and I don't recommend putting it in front of children (it is M rated, after all). Otherwise, have fun — it's quite a giggle.

Video

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

    The image is mostly very good in the clear and sharp department, with just a few scenes showing a little more softness than we'd want. There is no significant film grain, and no low-level noise.

    Colour is bright and vivid, and fully-saturated. There are no colour-related artefacts.

    There are a few small film artefacts, such as the white spot at 8:09 in Episode 5, and the dark mark at 8:34 in Episode 6. You have to be really fussy to object to these low-level artefacts.

    There is a little more aliasing than on the first disc (but still not much), no moire, and minimal shimmer. This is a nice clean transfer.

    Once again we get five sets of subtitles, all of them English. I watched the full English subtitles (while listening to the Japanese soundtrack, unsurprisingly), and they seem comprehensive (I cannot comment on their accuracy because I don't understand Japanese). They are easy to read, and seem well-timed. The Jiggle Counter "subtitles" are legible...

    The disc is single-sided (with a nice picture label), and single layered. That means no layer change, which is not a bad thing.

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, all in Dolby Digital 2.0, not surround-encoded. I watched all three episodes with the English soundtrack, and two episodes with the Japanese.

    The English dialogue is entertaining, and matches the animation well. It's clear and comprehensible even when two characters are talking at once (usually someone talking over Rio raving). The Japanese sounds clear. I noticed one interesting change in the English dialogue: at one point the subtitles refer to a style of music called "enka", but the dialogue refers to "country music" — "enka" is not country music (it's a style found in Japan, China and Korea using a pentatonic scale), but the change makes the joke work, so I think it was a wise change.

    The score is bouncy and brash, perfect for this material! It's credited to Shinobu Uchida and Koichi Namiki.

    These are pure 2.0 stereo soundtracks, with good stereo imaging, but no use of the surrounds or subwoofer.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    These aren't bad extras, but they are almost exactly the same as on the first disc. The only difference is that we only get half as many trailers in the ADV Previews this time, but all the ones we get were on the first disc.

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

    The (trademarked) Jiggle Counters are still bouncing away...

Clean Opening (1:06)

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

Clean Closing (1:37)

    The closing theme and animation, minus credits.

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 (1:28)
• Samurai X (1:38)

    The Region 1 version of this disc is very similar, with the same episodes and same extras, so as far as I can tell you could get either disc and be happy. Interestingly, there's no volume numbering on the R1 cover, but our version has numbers; unfortunately, the digit 2 is upside-down (not easy to tell in this font, but it definitely is!).

    Three more episodes of fun. Not suitable for prudes or children.

    The video quality is very good.

    The audio quality is very good.

    The extras are decent, but limited.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall