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R2 DVD Reviews
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Written by maehara
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Friday, 13 July 2007 17:00 |
 As well as serving up the dreaded recap episode, this volume of Fantastic Children finally gives the Children of Befort the chance to explain what they’ve been searching for for so long, and why, as they finally catch up with the latest reincarnation of their beloved Tina: Helga. But their best intentions may still not be entirely in Helga’s best interests...
11 - A Special Person
Helga & Chitto leave the island to go in search of the scene from Helga’s painting, and Thoma doesn't take their departure well - he thought they'd become friends, and doesn't understand why Helga would want to leave when she’d just found somewhere where she could live in peace. He's keen to bring her back, and while his mother does her best to talk him out of the idea, he's soon out on their trail - if not to bring them home, then to at least help them in their search. The Children are getting closer to Helga, too - they've traced her as far as the orphanage, where the records have the first image they've seen of what the latest incarnation of Tina looks like. Meanwhile, Helga and Chitto's rowing boat becomes caught in a storm - and for better or worse, their rescuers are a GED Group ship with Professor Gherta on board...
12 - Enma
Just as Gherta thinks she has Kirchner captured on board her ship, he unleashes a few surprises of his own to change her mind - however powerful they thought he'd become, he's far beyond it. The Children and Thoma arrive at the ship just in time to see the fireworks display set off by Kirchner's escape, and they fear the worst for Helga, who they know is also on board. After boarding the ship and beginning their search, though, the Children realise there's worse awaiting them, as the shadowy Enma are also present - and Kirchner appears to be their prey...
13 - Memories of Greecia
The picture Helga has been drawing - and that the other incarnations of Tina drew before her - is a picture of the planet Greecia. Or so the Children claim - not that Thoma or Chitto believe them, at least at first. After carrying out a few small test to ensure that Helga really is Tina's reincarnation, though, the Children begin to explain what happened on Greecia many years previously, how they came to be on Earth, and how the Zone, Orsel and Enma are all connected to them. After listening to their story, Thoma realises that returning Tina to her homeworld via the Zone of Death may involve killing Helga - and hearing their plan put in those terms causes some of the Children themselves to begin to doubt what they've been doing. Helga, though, is determined to decide on her own fate, and not allow others to do it for her...
14 - The Path
The dreaded recap episode. All been seen before, so I'm not going to cover it here.
Four episodes on this disc, but the final one is the dreaded recap episode (and not a very imaginatively-done one, at that), and can be safely ignored. The rest of the disc is top-notch stuff, though, as Helga, Thoma, GED and the Children are united and some sense is made of what’s been going on up until now. The way the three arcs are brought together doesn’t feel at all forced, either, and leaves you with the feeling that the series is finally going somewhere, after two discs of disparate and only vaguely connected stories. That just leaves Inspector Cooks’ arc to be brought into the mix – he’s sadly missing from this disc (apart from some scenes in the recap episode), but I’ve got no doubt he’ll be back.
The science behind the transference between the Children’s’ home world of Greecia and Earth gets an airing here, which on one level is crucial to the story – after hearing the Children’s’ explanation, Thoma throws it back at them in far more simple terms, and that one scene is enough to plant doubts in some of them that their search for Tina, and their plan to send her home, is really the right thing to do. I’ll admit I was scratching my head at this point, and wondering why it took Thoma’s simple version of the process to make them stop and think – they’re scientists, they know what’s involved in using the technology they created, why didn’t they think of the downside before now? Without wanting to give too much a way, a little hint: central to their plan to send Helga / Tina back to Greecia is what’s known as the Zone, or more fully as the Zone of Death. Kirchner’s problems were a direct result of him having been sent there by Prof. Gherta (the only one to survive, remember) – would Helga really fare any better if she had to make a journey through it herself?
GED Group’s involvement is also intriguing – their experimentation into the Zone had been prompted by Dante, and Gherta seems to be carrying out her tests and research with little or no idea of the real consequences. Nobody seems to be challenging Dante about his motives or what he hopes to gain by opening the Zone to humanity, but from his rare appearances, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the welfare of mankind is probably not very high up his agenda.
Plenty going on here, then, and a lot of background explained as the disparate groups that began the series are finally brought together. It’s not all good, though – on the downside, the fate of Crooks and his assistant are left up in the air, after a cliff-hanger ending last volume that left them in serious trouble but that goes unmentioned this time around. There’s also a continued lack of any sort of character development for many of the cast, most noticeably Helga, who continues to say very little and do even less. As the centre of so much attention, I’d like to see more made of her, but the poor girl seems destined to remain as little more than a walking plot device.
Fantastic Children serves up another engrossing volume, and finally begins slotting the various pieces of the story together before taking Helga off on a journey to explore her past. Where the show falls down is in what it doesn’t do, as some characters and story threads get a little neglected, but when what is done is done so well it’s a little unfair to be too critical. The series is now at its halfway point and nicely poised – if the remaining volumes are as good as what we’ve had up to now, this could be a real classic. Highly recommended.
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