Virus Buster Serge Vol. 3
(Manga Entertainment  Region 1 DVD)
(2003)
review by Big McLargehuge

Well, I am still completely in the dark about the plot of the Virus Buster Serge series as I’ve just completed a second viewing of the third DVD and STILL can’t make heads or tails of it.

Let me repeat a comment from the Volume 2 review: I can honestly say that for the entire 120 minute running time of Virus: Volume 3 I had no idea what in the hell was going on. Subsequent viewings failed to clarify plot, character motivation, or milieu.

So, screw the story, let’s talk about the visuals.

Virus’ character designs my Masami Obari are very stylistic, even for anime. The design reminds me more of Peter Chung’s Aeon Flux/Reign designs with overly long torso’s long spindly legs, and lots of anatomically questionable muscles, than of the Sailor Moon, Akira, Battle Angel Aelita characters.

The only real stylistic drawback is that most of the characters are kind of hard to distinguish from one another. Here’s a hint for figuring out who is who, for men use hairstyles, for women, bra sizes.

Hey, it ain’t much but it helped me.

The animation is above par for a television series. Characters move fluidly, and considering the detail in their bodies, this is pretty impressive. The backgrounds are rather standard TV quality, but that’s okay. In the interview Obari describes the difficulties of putting together a “quality product” on the television schedule.

Overall the presentation, and I am going to go out on a limb and say the story, owes alot to Masamune Shirow’s “Ghost in the Shell” in that the characters appear to be somewhat cybernetic. They can also flip around and generate an armored battle suit. Obari explains that Virus is based on a Sega Saturn title released in the Japanese market. That fact probably helps explain some of the confusion within the episode structure.

Volume 3 of the Virus series contains the episodes:

Reactivate the Body

Transcendental Salvation

The Struggle Within

A House Divided

Manga really does a nice job with their titles, and Virus isn’t any different. Manga really packs their DVDs with stuff. Virus: Virus Buster Serge Volume 2 contains both an English and Japanese language track, Dolby 5.1 stereo on the English dub, Mecha design boards, character design boards, commercial break boards (those short one shot graphics that frame commercial breaks) a detailed interview with Virus director and character designer Masami Obari which answers lots of questions about the origin of the series, but none about the content... oh well.

Manga also shoves their regular slew of Manga trailers, merchandise, and web links.