Get Backers Volume 8: Memories, Mementos & Monkeys

Review Date: 2006 October 16 09:59

Reviewed by: Azure

Released by: ADV Films UK

Age Rating: 12

Region: 2 - UK

Volume 7 of 10

Length: 125 minutes

Subtitles: English

Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1
Japanese 2.0 Stereo

Summary

This volume of Get Backer's it’s all go, Natume gets her first job, there's a baby to Get Back and there are all sort of reasons that you probably shouldn't visit Ginji in hospital, make monkeys angry or ask Shido any favours.

Review

Volume 8 of Get Backers focuses on the lighter and far superior comedy aspect of Get Backers. The five episodes on this disc are self-contained keeping the pace fast and the jokes coming thick and fast.In the first episode " Children of Destiny" is the most serious the Get Backers must retrieve a baby who has been kidnapped by his own grand father, they are aided by Himiko who sees a lot of herself in the baby.

Natsumi gets an episode to herself in the second episode as the series parodies itself. Natsumi manages to land get self a retrieval job whilst the Get Backers are already out on a mission. The laughs come partly from Natsumi trying out many of Ginji and Ban's favourite strategies with typically funny results, and partly from Ginji and Ban who spend most of the episode trying to find their own mission. Watching the dub for this episode Natsume's high pitched voice really got irritating after a while, sub fans will find little respite either since both languages use actresses whose pitch is very similar. If you can get past that then it's a great episode especially when the shows extended cast get involved.

Get Backers travels well into the realms of utterly bizarre with the final two episodes on the DVD which cover what happens when a bunch of clueless super powered men visit the hospital, and the reason why it's probably never really a good idea to ask a favour from Beast Master Shido.

There's not very much substance these episodes, but they work so much better giving the characters the space they need to express themselves. It's often unclear in many episodes if Getbackers really is supposed to be a comedy, which is a shame the serious episodes are enjoyable but it's with the comedy that it really shines. The visual gags are always very enjoyable, especially the ones involving super deformed Ginji as Ban attempts to use his reduced size to aid his escape plans.

There are almost no extras this DVD with the exception of the usual clean opening and closing there is a change of ending sequence during this DVD and both are included and are accessible under the "clean closing" title of the extras menu. The new ending is certainly unusual bringing to mind South Park in terms of animation style.

This episode of Get Backers is over the top, silly and full of slapstick and it's all the better for it. I could happily watch episodes like this for the rest of the series.

Rating: 9/10