Nightwalker Vol. #2

By Chris Beveridge     June 12, 2001
Release Date: June 12, 2001



What They Say
Shido's a midnight detective, half human and half vampire, who specializes in solving supernatural murders. But can he solve the secrets of his fellow Nightbreed before the city life goes straight to hell?! Contains violence and brief nudity; parental discretion advised. Episodes 7-12.

The Review!
The first Nightwalker disc surprised us with a solid vampire tale and an interesting cast of characters. The second disc's storytelling qualities slip a bit, but we still find ourselves wanting more stories about Shido...

Audio:
For our primary reviewing session, we listened to this disc in its original language of Japanese. Throughout the show, the dialogue and most of the effects took place through the center channel, while the music made the most use of the left/right channels. Dialogue was nice and clean with no noticeable distortions or dropouts. A pretty basic but solid TV mix.

Video:
Things look a fair bit improved here over the first volume, with some of the softness clearing away and providing a slightly sharper looking image. The opening is still fairly soft, apparently by intent, while the only real noticeable things throughout the rest of the shows is in the dark blue skies here and there. Backgrounds look mostly solid and there's not much in the way of color banding. Rainbows and line noise are practically non-existent, so we had plenty of reasons to enjoy how this show looked.

Packaging:
Ah, a great looking cover here with Shido and Riho embracing, with Riho out of her normal outfit and in something a bit slinkier. The dark style works really well here and just has me continuing to admire it. The back cover has a brief summary mixed with a few screenshots and a list of the various features inside the disc. The reverse side of the cover (which you may not know exists since the keepcase isn't clear) has a nice full picture of Shido and Yayoi dancing as well as the cast list and other information.

Menus:
Even though the menu layout is the standard one we see for most CPM titles, it works really well here with the design style, the music and the animation playing. Selections are quick to load and moving about the menus is fairly painless.

Extras:
On the video side, we get the meet the cast section and the visual presentation of storyboards to anime, showing off a few scenes and how the storyboards transition into actual end animation, which is pretty interesting to watch.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
This second volume of Nightwalker brings episode's 7 through 12, which also is the conclusion to the series. The show focuses more on single story episodes here, as opposed to the slightly continuing story of Cain in the previous volume.

While I certainly don't mind this at all, the slightly bothersome part is that the stories in general are a fair share weaker than the original episodes. The darker edge to first episode gives way to more conventional "escape routes" for the possessed characters, though there are a few episodes that showcase some hard choices.

The episodes that do stand out here are the ones that focus on the past lives of the characters here. We're shown when Shido first arrives in town, and meets the mini Guni whose stayed with him ever since. They're meeting with Yayoi caught me completely by surprise, and her past was something I simply had not expected.

We're also treated to a story from the past with Shido and Cain, where he's dealing with a possessed woman whose killed off her entire village while waiting for her groom to be to return from a war that ended years before. The contrast between what Cain believes and what Shido believes serves well to introduce the final episode of the series that deals with a complete breakdown in the miniature family that Shido, Riho, Yayoi and Guni have created.

One of the things that several of the episodes in this batch lacks is Riho. With a couple of episodes focusing on the past before she became a part of the family, she's simply not there. Which is a disappointment, as I enjoyed her character a lot. But the stories themselves overall are decent, if a bit predictable in areas.

When there are six relatively self-contained episodes on a disc, it can get hard to give a review without spoiling each of the episodes or simply saying too little about them. With Nightwalker now complete, I found the series overall to be quite enjoyable and was definitely disappointed that it was over, even with the second half being weaker than the first. The cast was enjoyable, the style of the show was done right and the overall package was solid.

Nightwalker's a show that'll be nice to revisit in the future to rediscover and to see what I missed the first time around. Recommended.

Features
Japanese Language,English Language,English Subtitles,Storyboards


Review Equipment
Toshiba TW40X81 40" HDTV, Pioneer 414 codefree DVD player, Sony STR-DE835 DD/DTS receiver, Monster component cable and Sony speakers.