Dark Shell Box Set

By Chris Beveridge     July 28, 2004
Release Date: July 02, 2004



What They Say
Contains both Dark Shell DVDs 1 and 2 in one complete box set!

At the end of World War II, after dividing up the nation, the countries that defeated Japan failed to rule the island. As a result, many independent powers were established. They developed a hatred of one another, leading the country into a never-ending spiral of civil war.

Following a group of women under the close "protection" of soldiers, will they be able to return to the safety of their own territories... or are do they have more to fear from their protectors?

The Review!
An alternate history of the world provides the backdrop for a small group of soldiers protecting a group of women trying to get to their main forces in safety.

Audio:
For our primary viewing session, we listened to this show in its original language of Japanese. The mix for it is standard fare for hentai so there wasn't much surprising about it. Dialogue is good and clean and generally center channel based. There's some use of the stereo channels for music and some of the moaning and grunting as they get creative once in awhile, but otherwise it's the usual routine. We didn't have any issues with dropouts or distortions during regular playback.

Video:
Originally released to video back in 2003, the two OVAs here look pretty good. The shows colors are from a fairly standard palette that's well used here. The transfer for the most part avoids problematic things like cross coloration or aliasing though we did notice a few brief moments of some interlacing in a couple of panning shots. The episodes are basically problem free and are on par with a lot of the hentai shows we've seen coming out during that time period.

Packaging:
Released on two discs inside the standard thin cardboard wrapper box, the package looks good overall even if it does feature artwork that doesn't occur in the show. Each of the individual keepcases highlights a couple of the girls set against the ruined backdrops of their city while having them wear military garb and showing off some skin. The back of the keepcases are simple in layout with a batch of pictures along the right while the episode summary gives away every pretty much everything you need to know about each episode except for describing how the sex itself is. The usual round of production information and the bloated features listing NuTech employs to give the illusion of things being there is along the bottom. As is standard with NuTech releases, no inserts are included in these releases. The thin cardboard box, which is little more than a wrapper really, uses artwork not used on the individual keepcases and features a shot of Kaoruko in a really attractive short little number wielding a weapon. The back side provides both summaries and a number of the photograph pictures as well.

Menu:
The menu layout uses some parts of the character artwork from their respective covers and has some obscured animation clips of the sex scenes playing in the background to part of an instrumental piece from the show. The layout is standard material for these releases with no surprises at all. The access times are nice and fast and as usual our player preset languages are ignored.

Extras:
The only included extra on each volume is a series of stills from that particular episode in a video gallery.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Every now and then, the hentai storylines manage to come up with an interesting premise that will take even the kinds of interactions that I don't normally care for and finds a way to make them not quite as disturbing as they should be. Dark Shell manages to take a hell of a lot of non-consensual and almost abusive sexual encounters and make it work within the context of the storyline.

The setting is an alternate Earth where at the end of World War II, the various powers that invaded ended up not being able to control the nation as they had intended. Instead, much like a broken Berlin, it split into various small domains with each power building up its forces there to protect the civilians that they could while trying to oust their enemies. Whereas Berlin fell into an uneasy peace and eventually a wall, Japan fell into civil war here that lasted for decades. Set against this backdrop, we're introduced to a small group of soldiers who have come across a group of women and are helping them get to safety by joining up with their main forces.

Of course, they're not doing it out of the kindness of their heart, they're doing it so that they have someone to have sex with along the way. Over the course of their journey through the ruined landscape, the various women end up offering themselves up willingly and unwillingly while they try to protect one of their youngest members, a girl named Moe whose only lines for a lot of the episodes is "we're all going to die aren't we?" Now that's positive thinking. Since the group has to stay close together for safety's sake, the women are all taken by the soldiers in front of everyone else, which only messes with their heads more.

It's not long into the show however that things take a drastic turn and in the midst of one sex scene, the girl is shot in the head by a sniper. This messes with everyone and since the sniper can't be found, they eventually move on. But it starts turning into a Ten Little Indians game of sorts as the group moves along and slowly but surely the sniper starts taking down both soldier and civilian alike. Sex, death. Death, sex. No subtle message here folks! And all the time during this you've got Moe going on about how they're all going to die.

The show is almost amusing in the way it kills the characters, both during and after the sex itself so as to provide some variety. Some of the characters even want to die, such as one woman who is taken by two of the soldiers against her will only to change her mind when she gets close to climaxing. The character animation is pretty decent and the designs for the women, while not flat out gorgeous, has some good variety to it and fits the style of the show rather well. The animation overall is standard material for hentai in that there's some decently animated sequences and some areas that you can tell a few corners were cut.

In what's becoming a standard complaint about NuTech's hentai titles though, I have to say that I'm becoming increasingly annoyed with their releases as they continue to cut corners. While the shows presentation and actual content is fantastic, their treatment of the subtitle track is just getting worse and worse. While the track is about 90% accurate to the original script and the English dub is being faithful while adding more vulgarities to it, the fact that the subtitle track is being timed to the English dub is making it difficult to watch these shows. Segments of nothing being said but there being subtitles are become as common as segments where there's talking but nothing subtitled. The bulk of the story gets through but when you hit these areas it takes you completely out of the show. It's extremely annoying as is the increasing number of misspellings that are cropping up.

In Summary:
Dark Shell was surprising in both its setting and the amount of full out violence that occurred during it and how well it managed to mix it all together. While it's no more than a countdown of the living while on a journey kind of plot, it plays out pretty well and follows some of the usual Hollywood customs. I mean, if you're being targeted and it almost always happens when you screw the girls, wouldn't you, you know, stop screwing the girls? Dark Shell's definitely not going to be up everyone's alley but it managed to take material I wouldn't normally be interested in and provided a setting where it's something more manageable. Fans of this kind of material will rather like the more extreme violence that gets mixed in every now and then.

Features
Japanese 2.0 Language,English 2.0 Language,English Subtitles,Art Gallery

Review Equipment
Panasonic PT50LC13 50" LCD RP HDTV, Panasonic RP-82 Progressive Scan codefree DVD player, Sony STR-DE835 DD/DTS receiver, Monster component cable and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.