Bruce Von Stiers

I just got a chance to view the seventh volume in the Gasaraki saga. It held some interesting turns of the storyline in this continuing series from ADV Films. This volume is called In the Spider’s Web.

The disc has other things in addition to the series episodes. There is a Behind the Scenes segment that shows Chris Patton, the voice of Yushiro, recording the dialog. A Glossary of Terms has items like Badge, which is the Early Warning System for Japan. A partial written interview of the Mechanics Designer, Shinji Aramaki is available to read. There are DVD credits and trailers for other ADV Films titles like Burn Up Excess and Reboot.

As for the language options, you can either have English or Japanese. The English sub titles can be turned on or off.

The first of the three episodes on this DVD is Upheaval. At the beginning we find that the female lead of the series, Miharu, has been kidnapped. The folks behind this are Symbol, an international conglomerate that has definite world domination dreams.

The new leader of Japan is now siding with the Gawa family, thinking that he is indeed saving Japan from imminent doom. Members of the Gawa family have played pivotal roles in this series.

The mechanized warriors known as TA’s are be used to control the crowds at a protest against the government. The pilots of the TA’s end up losing it. As a result, there is a lot of chaos and the Prime Minister is almost assassinated

In the second episode, Run, Yushiro has reached out to a friend to help him find Miharu.

The riots are in full swing in Japan. Yushiro has help breaking into a military airfield to save Miharu before she is flown out to the U.S. The captain uses her TA to provide backup for Yushiro. But he couldn’t get there in time to rescue her.

The third episode is Personification Yushiro has been injured during the attempted rescue of Miharu. He goes to his brother to try to stop the Gawa's from their quest for power. Yushiro learns that his TA unit is on the military base where he’s at and will soon be attacked by forces led by U.S. TA’s.

The leader of the conspiracy tells his minion about a three year plan to vanquish Japan and the TA team finds out that they will be fighting against the units they fought against in Belgistan.

The US Carrier fleet gets a shipment of TA’s. and there is a secret caller that is feeding information to the President of the US.

The episodes are around 20 minutes long. The total time for the volume is not quite an hour and twenty minutes long.

This volume brings forward the tale of the Gasaraki. It is a strange and mystical tale, with spiritualism mixed in with greed and military might.

The dubbing is good and the animation well done. The descriptions that accompany the line art in the Production Sheets can be really informative if you don’t exactly remember who is whom.

As I have mentioned in reviews of earlier volumes, you might not get everything out of this volume if you hadn’t seen the previous episodes of Gasaraki. You really should watch all of the previous volumes to get an exact feel of what’s going on in the show.

This volume can be found as a single unit or as part of a boxed set. The boxed set contains all eight volumes in this set. Single volumes and the boxed set can be found at retailers everywhere.

For more information check out the ADV Films web site. It is at www.advfilms.com.