"Actor: Nozomu Sasaki"

• Yu Yu Hakusho - Episodes 1 To 4 | DVD | (09/09/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Yu Yu Hakusho Video: Ep. 1 2 3 4 - The Ghost Files: Yusuke Lost Yusuke Found. Suprised To Be Dead - Fourteen-year-old Yusuke Urameshi is having a typical day. He's cutting class at school having arguments with his teachers and getting into fistfights with his rival Kuwabara. Hey - when you're the toughest kid in town you have a reputation to maintain! But then Yusuke does something that betrays his killer rep. He dives in front of a speeding car to push a little boy out of harm's way! Yusuke makes the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of another but is it really time for this brash young man's life to come to an end? Koenma Appears - Pulled by the sprightly pink-robed Botan Yusuke enters a realm that is not quite normal - Spirit World. There Yusuke meets Koenma a 700 year-old ruler with the body of a toddler pacifier and all! But there's no room for laughs as Koenma gives Yusuke an ordeal to restore his life. Hatching a Spirit Beast! Kuwabara: A Promise Between Men - The same age as Yusuke and a fellow fighter Kuwabara was tormented by his rival's death. The loser in all 156 of his brawls against Yusuke he's now lost any chance he ever had of evening the score! But with Yusuke out of the way Kuwabara is the new kid to beat which means he's making plenty of enemies. Yusuke isn't fond of this classmate but if he wants to win back his life he'll need to give him a ghostly hand. Requirements for Lovers - Spirit World forgot an important question - does anyone want Yusuke back? Koenma sends an Investigator to find out and Yusuke's friends answer quickly when a fire threatens to char his earthly body. But will Yusuke give up the Spirit Beast his one chance of reviving to rescue his friends?

• Yu Yu Hakusho 4 | DVD | (05/12/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Yusuke returns from training with the great psychic Genkai and not a moment too soon! Dreadful Makai Insects are invading his own city part of a sinister scheme to flood the earth with demons! Kuwabara Kurama and Hiei join forces with the Spirit Detective as he dives into a forbidden demon city. Their target: four deadly creatures known as the Saint Beasts! This awkward alliance must learn to trust each other quickly as they battle their way toward Maze Castle and the Gate of Betr

• Bubblegum Crisis, Vol. 2 | DVD | (16/02/1999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.94

  The second instalment of the popular Japanese anime, Bubblegum Crisis 2 contains the fourth, fifth and sixth episodes of the eight original videos. In a devastated high-tech Tokyo of a Blade Runner-ish future, four beautiful women disguised by their heavily armed exoskeletons protect society from killer androids and from an ambitious corporation that tries to take over the world, while also having complicated personal lives. The cute teenager NeNe always has a crush on someone or other; flighty Linna has to fit her superhero life into a busy social schedule; and Priss has her career as a rock singer as well as a habit of feeling emotional. Only the austere Sylia is entirely in control of her life--so much so that she needs the others for a bit of productive chaos. In the episodes included they deal with a mysterious car that is riding down motorcyclists, help a tragic android who is vampirising citizens to feed a damaged friend and cope with attempts by an evil conspirator to frame them for mass mayhem. The stories rely rather too heavily on extended sequences of fast bikes and car racing, or mechanised bodysuits and big robots tearing each other apart, but the plotting can be subtle and the emotional scenes tense and fraught. Someone trying to get a sense of anime's strengths and weaknesses could do a lot worse than start here. On the DVD: the disc is presented in a visual aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and has a very loud Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack which presents every screech of tortured metal vehemently and every pounding anthem in the slightly pompous score. There are no extras apart from a very extended documentation of the credits. --Roz Kaveney

• Bubblegum Crisis, Vol. 1 | DVD | (16/02/1999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.94

  The second instalment of the popular Japanese anime, Bubblegum Crisis 2 contains the fourth, fifth and sixth episodes of the eight original videos. In a devastated high-tech Tokyo of a Blade Runner-ish future, four beautiful women disguised by their heavily armed exoskeletons protect society from killer androids and from an ambitious corporation that tries to take over the world, while also having complicated personal lives. The cute teenager NeNe always has a crush on someone or other; flighty Linna has to fit her superhero life into a busy social schedule; and Priss has her career as a rock singer as well as a habit of feeling emotional. Only the austere Sylia is entirely in control of her life--so much so that she needs the others for a bit of productive chaos. In the episodes included they deal with a mysterious car that is riding down motorcyclists, help a tragic android who is vampirising citizens to feed a damaged friend and cope with attempts by an evil conspirator to frame them for mass mayhem. The stories rely rather too heavily on extended sequences of fast bikes and car racing, or mechanised bodysuits and big robots tearing each other apart, but the plotting can be subtle and the emotional scenes tense and fraught. Someone trying to get a sense of anime's strengths and weaknesses could do a lot worse than start here. On the DVD: the disc is presented in a visual aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and has a very loud Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack which presents every screech of tortured metal vehemently and every pounding anthem in the slightly pompous score. There are no extras apart from a very extended documentation of the credits. --Roz Kaveney