I heard the song. I watched the episode. I was hooked from then on.

No, hooked isn’t enough. Addicted is more like it (so much so that I bought the action figures). This show has so much more to offer than a catchy title song. It has everything you want in an engaging story. A relatable character, great cast of supporting members, and one of the best uplifting stories you could ever watch.

You really care for everyone in the series–even the “bad” guys. Not only that, they do justice to the sport of boxing. Everything in this anime has a foundation to stand on, even the boxing. They treat it with respect, and you will definitely know a thing or two about the sport after watching the first disk alone.

By far, this is one of the few anime series that deserve a much broader appeal and exposure than what is mostly on TV these days. I would swap all of the anime shows on TV, just so we could get this one show on. It is that good.

Buy this DVD. It is not a waste of money. It is an investment into pure excellence. Something you will remember for a long time.

Must have.

While this looks good (from the top down) as a jet, and also looks good as a robot, the design is incredibly lazy. The robot does not change into the jet. Instead, the jet is on the back of the robot and the robot simply retracts arms, legs, and heads while the nose of the jet comes down. The robot is not hidden in alternate mode at all.

On the plus side, an easy one for the younger children. Mine is durable and they should be able to easily handle the transformation themselves.

Unfortunately, it’s not going to be that easy. “Bleach: The Rescue” kicks everything about this brilliant anime up a notch — lots of blood, sword-fights, a fiery climax at the execution grounds, and some amazing character development. But the best part is that the treacherous conspiracy merely hinted at in prior episodes, which sparks a minor civil war within the Seireitei.

Yoruichi starts the badly-wounded Ichigo on a special new training regimen — to rescue Rukia, he must achieve achieve bankai (the ultimate release of a zanpakuto) in three days. In the meantime, Uryu has encountered the most horrendous of Soul Reapers, who is responsible for the death of a loved one, and Captain Hitsugaya is confronted by an old friend who tries to kill him — accusing him of murdering Captain Aizen.

But the chaos really starts when Rukia’s execution day rolls around: mass murder is revealed, captains turn against one another, and Renji fights a devastating battle against the implacable Byakuya. Ichigo appears on the execution hill with devastating new power — intent on rescuing Rukia and defeating her brother once and for all. But when he seems to be losing, a horrific new change comes over him.

And in the meantime, the conspiracy that’s ripping apart the Soul Reapers is revealed — the identify of the Big Bad and his sidekicks, the reason he wants Rukia dead, and how many people he’ll coldly destroy to get what he wants.

“Bleach: The Rescue” is a turning point for the entire series — everything before it has built to this point, and everything in the future will spring from it. For an action anime, it is also quite heavy on the plot as it sets up the Big Bad: faked murders, real murders, conspiracies, hypnotic tricks, betrayals, a clever triple-cross perpetrated by Gin Ichimaru, and Urahara’s hidden motive in helping Rukia.

There’s also lots of brilliantly explosive action using ice dragons, black fire, razor-sharp cherry blossoms, exploding Soul Reapers, a giant bone-snake, and a firebird the size of a submarine. The action only serves to underscore the tension that is building throughout the entire season, until it explodes on Sokyoku Hill. It’s also got solid dialogue, some quiet moments for Ichigo’s pals (hanging out in prison) and some flashbacks to Renji, Rukia, Kira and Momo’s days at the Academy.

Fortunately, all this dark stuff is speckled with funny moments like Ichigo’s relaxation in a healing spring (”I AM GOING TO DROWN YOU!”), and an entire episode in which the characters unwind and recover after the events of “the rescue.”

Our Hero really shows his stuff in this season — Ichigo puts his life on the line to reach an incredible level of spiritual power, and rescue Rukia no matter what happens. Too bad he turns out to have a freaky dark side (and Johnny Yong Bosch has a brilliant demon cackle). And Uryu inadvertently gets to the bottom of his grandfather’s death, and goes to devastating lengths to get revenge for what happened to him.

But most of the characters get to shine in this, although Chad and Orihime are somewhat neglected: the Yoruichi-obsessed Soi Fon, the kindly Ukitake and his best buddy Kyoraku, the happily hyperaggressive Zaraki, boy-genius Hitsugaya, and the fusty and arrogant Head Captain Yamamoto (among many others). We also learn how far Renji will go for Rukia, as well as the true reason why Byakuya has been so cold and seemingly cruel.

As for the limited edition, the big collectible toy bonus that differs from the regular one is apparently… a Hollow mask. Given the storyline here, I presume it’s one belonging to a certain orange-haired teen.

“Bleach: The Rescue” is a brilliant arc of action-packed, tightly-wound anime, with a shocking twist at the core of the story. Definitely a must-see — especially for everything that comes later.

The series is generally comedy mixed with some mech battles and other action scenes. The first three episodes introduce all of the principle characters; subsequent episodes place the characters in various situations, including playing host to dignitaries, saving a whale, saving people from burning buildings, and investigating monster stories. Many of the episodes focus on humorous personal stories, such as an arraigned marriage or a team trip to go drink sake, that are sometimes more entertaining than the mech battles themselves. Other stories, however, can become more serious; for example, episodes 10 and 11 focus on a mysterious military mech called “Phantom” that black-market arms dealers decide to test in Tokyo.

Since the series is relatively old by anime standards, the animation is not as smooth or as stylized as many newer series. Nonetheless, the animation is still reasonably good. A few of the details in some of the storylines are out-of-date; for example, one story discusses a defector from the now-defunct Soviet Union, and another story refers to mechs made in “West Germany”. Despite this, the anime series is still very entertaining.

The subtitled version of this series is fine. The dubbed version, however, sounds awful; the English-speaking voice actors are poorly matched to their characters, and some of the background music is altered.

So, in conclusion, this is a great series even for casual fans of Japanese animation. Everyone will find this series funny. However, people who watch anime dubbed rather than subtitled should not watch this version of the series!

The first few episodes of this DVD set aren’t quite the best Patlabor has to offer, but the series finds its feet very quickly, so much so that this set has some of the best of the 47 episode run of this series. The two-part plot of “Eve’s Trap” and “Eve’s Shudder” will please action fans, and “Ota’s Afternoon of Puzzlement”, “You Win!”, and “Captain Goto is the Target” are some of the funniest episodes of Patlabor. The rest of the episodes on the disc are also great.

The DVD transfer is just about average, though. There aren’t many obvious video or audio errors, but the menus are a bit lacking, and the extras are weak. The subtitles are also slightly off. They miss almost all of the onscreen text, making a few scenes hard to understand if you can’t read Japanese. Unfortunately, this DVD version is also saddled with a terrible English dub. As if overacting and cheesy delivery weren’t enough, most of the actors can’t seem to properly pronounce the characters’ names. A real shame, especially considering the sterling quality of the original Japanese voice acting. Be sure to watch this one with subtitles!

All in all, I give this DVD set 5 stars for content, and three for presentation. It’s too bad that Central Park Media didn’t spend more time on the production for these DVDs… but this set is still the best way by far to see this classic series, so don’t hesitate to buy.