Blue Dragon Volumes 3 & 4   Starring (voice): Daisuke Namikawa, Erino Hazuki, Keiko Nemoto and Kenyuu Horiuchi Manga Entertainment RRP: £19.99 MANG9026 Certificate: 12 Available 27 July 2009

At the beginning of time both light and dark were created, finding that they could not exist together they went to war. The war would have torn apart the whole of creation, but the sudden intervention of the original shadow lords, the Knights of Light, threw down the forces of darkness and with the power of Shadow sealed the darkness away. Many years have passed and Nene, the ruler of the Grand Kingdom, wants to marry his power and technology to the ancient Shadows, but first he has to find them. Pitted against him is Zola who has discovered that a young boy called Shu has within him the legendary Blue Dragon...

Volume 2&3 of Blue Dragon (2007) continues the adventures of Shu and his shadow alter ego the Blue Dragon. Originally based on a console game this family friendly show ignored the game's story to develop its own identity over its fifty-one episodes. The episodes presented here are the uncut versions, which should please fans of the show. Disc one is presented as volume three and holds episodes nine to twelve, which logically means that disc two is volume four. The show does retain the game's structure with Shu being able to power up his character and lean new fighting techniques, this element is very common to this genre of quest/fighting show.

When we left Shu, he had joined Zola in search of more Shadows to use in the rebellion against Nene. Travelling to an ancient library they finally meet a real Knight Master, in the form of Conrad L. Lawrence. The city is attacked by robotic shadow users led by Lt. Dragnov and following their defeat Bouquet joins the company but Shu discovers that the last seven pages of the book they had been searching for have been stolen.

So the story continues with episode nine: The Sinister Sea and the company embark on a ship which passes through a mysterious fog, which makes the company act in an unaccustomed manner, even to the point of Shu agreeing to marry Bouquet. Okay, so it’s a filler episode, fun enough in its own right, but one which does little to advance the plot.

We get back to the rebellion with episode ten: In Enemy Territory and the following episodes from disc one (episode eleven: 'Ambush', episode twelve: An Honourable Opponent) as well as the episodes from disc two (episode thirteen: Infiltrate, episode fourteen: Klute’s Wish) sees the group finally working their way up to the final confrontation with Nene. First, they split up to face various enemies before coming together for the final assault and rescue of the children which Nene’s minions are holding.

Following their confrontation with Nene, disc two finishes up with episode fifteen: The Awakening and episode sixteen: The Extra Seven. Although the fight with the Grand Kingdom and its armies is far from over the company starts to look for the seven missing pages.

The show has a nice balance of story vs the obligatory fight scenes and although it’s a requirement of the show that there is the ‘fight of the week’ there is an attempt to keep the overall story arc going. The character design is charming, similar to Naruto, which is unsurprising as both shows emanate from the same studio.

The set is provided with options for either an English 2.0 dub or the original Japanese 2.0 track with optional subtitles. Disc two has five trailers (Blue Dragon Plus; Mar; Bleach: Memories of Nobody; Bleach and Naruto) by way of extras.

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Charles Packer