Originally published on otakureview.net

The Story

The girls all now realize the truth. They really are living borrowed lives after they were all murdered one night and they really do have to kill these hideous creatures while taking orders from an insane woman. The next order of business for them is to begin fighting because if they keep fighting they might be able to return to their old lives, but one of the girls will start to break under the pressure and tries to run away.

Good and the Bad

On the first volume, the writing is what really caught my attention the most and on this volume it's a little vexing to see some of that writing lose its edge. I love that the writing in this series spent so much time on this volume showing how much psychological trauma each of the girls is facing. It was like a psychological study to watch how they all reacted to the terrible trauma they were facing and see them progress step by step.

The acceptance stage near the end of the volume is where the growth of the girls was most apparent and was also very well done. As the girls start to accept their new fates and start to accept that there might be light at the end of the tunnel, it's really interesting to see how the girls react and start to cope with things. It was also really nice to see the girls start to progress more into the territory of friends.

On that same note, I was also a little disappointed to see that the pace of this volume really slowed the series down to a crawl. The first volume was filled with so much suspense and intrigue from start to finish but this volume spent so much time developing the characters and side story that there was very little to keep the audience engaged and on the edge of their seat like in the first volume.

Music

I really have to applaud ADV for taking the time to translate the song that keeps getting sung by the characters into English for the dub track. I really thought that it added a lot to the series and characters by being able to listen to the song in the same language as whichever one I was listening to for that particular episode.

Dub vs. Sub

Once again both tracks were well done but neither track really had anyone that particularly stood out as amazing. Maggie Flecknoe was once again very strong as Rachel, especially in the bedroom scene early in the volume. Kara Greenberg and Melissa Davis were also very strong as Claire and Kate, respectively.

Extras

Just clean animations.

Overall

While I am certainly nowhere near as impressed with this volume as I was the first volume, I'm still very intrigued by the new twists in the story that was shown to me on this volume. There are still so many things that I want to see developed though, I want to know more about that weird jumping ability that Rachel had on volume one and I'd really like to know why everyone sings the exact same song when they're bored or stressed.

While this volume may not increase the size of the audience for this series, I highly doubt that it will shrink it either. Worth viewing.

Related Reviews

Red Garden Vol. 1: Live to Kill


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older