Shadow Skill - The Ultimate Edition DVD

Shadow Skill is a fairly conventional sword 'n' sorcery/martial arts comic and this anime version consists of various linked stories most of which exist purely as build-ups to prolonged displays of battle pyrotechnics. Ella is a champion in the Shadow Skill school who has adopted young orphan Gau as her brother and apprentice; Scarface, an even greater champion, also has an interest in the boy's training. A rival takes Gau hostage in order to kill Ella before an arena confrontation; the pair, and Ella's friend Fowari, helps young Quo against the monstrous King of the... Moon; an evil stepbrother misleads Fowari into attacking Ella. In the shorter feature "Epilogue", Scarface rescues Ella from the sinister Wolfman and she and Gau engage in an all-out fight as part of his training. The animation is better than that in some anime, but is nothing remarkable. On the DVD: Shadow Skill has rather aggressively loud Dolby Sound and the option of listening to it in Japanese with subtitles or in poorly dubbed English; it comes with images and short biographies of the characters as well as Web links and ads for other animes. --Roz Kaveney [show more]

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