Burn Up! Excess-Volume 3: Under the Gun (1991)

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General		Extras
Category	Anime	Menu Audio Gallery-production sketches Informational Subtitles-jiggle counters Credits-clean opening Credits-clean closing Trailer-Burn Up Excess Trailer-Rah Xephon, Samurai X Featurette-Yuji Omake Theatre (2)
Rating
Year Of Production	1991
Running Time	80:10 (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 a little rude, more than a little crude, and good silly fun. It's extremely violent in the "things blow up but no one dies" way.

    You'll find the background to this series in my review of Volume 1: To Serve and Protect, not to mention the second volume, Crimes and Misdemeanours...

    The episodes on this disc are:

    These episodes don't advance the larger story, but they are quite entertaining. It's nice to see Nanvel getting to do some inventing — she has been neglected in most of the previous episodes. We still don't know why she wears the funny things on her head, though.

    The double-episode is rather topical, as it concerns a dictator in a Middle-Eastern country trying to get his hands on an advanced weapon. Funnily enough, it reminded me a bit of Tank Girl, the Lori Petty film.

    This volume features an episode centred on Nanvel, and two that focus on Rio, although Maya gets a bit of a look-in, so it's obvious that the cover should feature Lilica, right?

    In the second episode we get to see Rio naked, but she's like a store mannequin — all smooth — that's a bit coy on the part of the animators. In the first episode there are several shots of people naked, and each is censored by a squiggly black blob over the naughty bits — I wonder if a different animator was responsible?

    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. That's how this show appeared on television.

    The image is clear and sharp, with nice levels of detail. There is no film grain, and no low-level noise.

    Colour is bright, vivid, and fully-saturated — everything we could ask for. There are no colour-related artefacts.

    There are next to no film artefacts. There's almost no aliasing, no moire, and no MPEG artefacts. There is a minor case of interlacing and a frame tear at 16:43 in the first episode. All-in-all, this is a very clean transfer.

    There are five sets of subtitles, all of them in English, just like the first two volumes. I watched the full English subtitles again (while listening to the Japanese soundtrack), and they seem comprehensive, well-timed, and easy to read.

    The disc is single-sided (with a nice picture label) and single layered. That means no layer change, and there's not enough on the disc to make a second layer necessary.

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 both the English and Japanese soundtracks.

    The English dialogue is well-written, with some clever lines, and matches the animation well. It's clear and comprehensible even when two characters are talking at once (usually someone talking over Rio raving). It doesn't match the subtitles closely — I think they changed the dialogue to be faithful to the feel, rather than sticking to the literal meaning. The Japanese dialogue sounds clear enough.

    The score is well-suited to this outrageous show. 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 extras are (again) almost exactly the same as on the first disc.

Menu

    The menus are static with music.

Gallery — Production Sketches (14)

    Working drawings of the main characters.

Jiggle Counters

    The (trademarked) Jiggle Counters are still bouncing away, but get a lot less action this time. Only Nanvel's bounces are tallied in the first episode, and only Rio in the second — that seems biased.

Clean Opening (1:06)

    The opening theme and animation unsullied with credits. Exactly the same as on both previous discs.

Clean Closing (1:37)

    The closing theme and animation, minus credits. Exactly the same as on both previous discs.

Trailer (1:00)

    The trailer for Burn Up Excess. Exactly as on both previous discs.

Trailers

    Labelled ADV Previews, these are two trailers played one after the other.

• Rah Xephon (1:00)
• Samurai X (1:39)

Omake spots

    These are two spots labelled Yuji's Omake Theatre. The first comes at the end of the first episode after a couple of minutes of fake NTSC colour bars (you can tell they are fake — they've been drawn with coloured pencils), and features Yuji using a Pink Elephant (watch the episode to understand). The second comes at the end of the third episode, and features Yuji sneaking a peek at a sleeping Rio. Both pieces end with Yuji getting a blood nose, unsurprisingly (it is a piece of anime culture that feelings of lust in geeky male characters result in blood noses).

    The Region 1 version of this disc is very similar, with the same episodes and same extras as far as I can tell. There are no real distinguishing characteristics between the two.

    Once again, there's no volume numbering on the R1 cover, but our version has numbers. I guess Madman learned from ADV's mistake. Apart from the volume number and the obligatory rating, there's no real difference between the covers.

    Three more episodes of fun from the ladies (and Yuji) of Team Warrior. Definitely not for children, though.

    The video quality is very good.

    The audio quality is very good.

    The extras are decent, but far from original. Why can't we have something original (an interview with the show's creators, maybe?)?

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall