Red Garden Volume 1: Live To Kill (DVD)

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"Red Garden" volume 1 contains episodes 1 through 4 of this 22 episode series. There has been a trend, in the last few years, of series featuring pretty girls surrounded by death and killing. The girls are often the ones doing the killing. As a part of that general trend, "Red Garden" is a welcome, stand-out series. The production values are high, with smooth animation, slick design, engaging characters- I may not like how Lula looks, but she sure is interesting- and horrific mystery. How can the girls be dead, yet still appear to be alive? How can regular teenage girls be expected to kill beasts with their bare hands? Volume 1 sets up the impossible situation that these dead girls are in, and hints at greater back story that will hopefully be revealed in future volumes.

Video:
"Red Garden" volume 1 is presented in 16:9 wide screen and looks fabulous. This series has a nice mix of bright colors and dark scenes. Both are handled equally well. Edges are crisp and colors are solid, with no artifacts. I spotted a few small jagged lines on the bridge in the opening, however, it is minimal, and hard to notice amidst all the whirling colors. The DVD menu is simplicity at its best. The vivid butterfly and bold, no-frills text menus are easy to navigate and somehow fit the stark mood of the show.

Audio:
ADV gives us two audio tracks on this disc. The first is a powerful English dub track in Dolby Digital 5.1. The second is a solid 2.0 stereo Japanese track. Both sounded just fine in both the quiet school scenes and the loud action scenes. The characters often break out into spontaneous gloomy singing, and it sounds equally haunting on both tracks.

Extras:
ADV is stingy with the extras on this disc. They consist solely of textless opening and ending credits. That's it. Granted, the opening and ending are really fun to watch, however, I would like to see more about the production of this series on future volumes. The Extras Menu on this DVD is rather irksome because the menu selections are all text, and the actual worthwhile extras- the textless credits- are written in a small font, while the advertisements and DVD credits options are huge and fill the screen. How obnoxious.

--Miscellaneous--
This release is fairly minimal, however there will be a collector´s box released with volume 2.

Film Value:
"Red Garden" is an engaging series with unique style, suspenseful action, and heart-pounding mystery. The end of volume 1 had me itching to see more. "Red Garden" takes the worn out pretty-girls-killing-things storyline and puts a stylish, gruesome spin to it.

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