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More Gunslinger Girl? Yes, please. School Rumble collected in two sets? Why yes, that is drool. Nabari No Ou complete series part one and Black Lagoon gets a complete series box set? This must be heaven.

Little girls with guns: whether you liked the concept of Gunslinger Gri (and some didn’t), GG made waves in the anime world. A secret group in the Italian Government known as the Social Welfare Agency took little girls on the verge of death or too damaged to have a normal life and gave them robotic parts and a whole course of brainwashing in order to turn them into killing machines. Strong, fast, smart, these girls are cute as buttons and deadly as can be. Handled by their trainers cum partners, called Fratellos, these two person teams take on the worst of the Italian crime underbelly and cut their way through the mob with precision gun work. Henrietta, Rico, Triela and Claes are back with a new enemy: Pinocchio.

Now, if you’re anything like me, you thought this was going to be a sequel about little girls with guns vs. a little boy with a gun. Not so. Though the show (and the trailer) does show Pinocchio as a little boy, he does grow up and becomes a killer for the mob that took him in as a child. For the next thirteen episodes, the girls of the Agency try to take down Pino in a spray of bullets and action.

I can’t even begin to tell you how ridiculously excited I was about the idea of another Gunslinger Girl series;  the first was one of those shows that I ridiculously geeked out to, waited painfully week after week for a new episode and praised the gods of the Independent Film Chanel for airing the show. So you can imagine that my expectations were ridiculously high while waiting for Il Teatrino, and that is key, as it may hold the answer to my ensuing disappointment. The second series gets off to a rough start; the first episode mainly acts as an introduction to the world of GG for new watchers, and though it does a good job of displaying the complexity of the relationship between the girls and their fratello, the action was just… disappointing. And then there’s the small matter of the art; it is lacking in depth, and where the first GG series was not the most astounding art ever (the art took a significant back seat to the story, and that was exactly as it should have been), Il Teatrino’s art just falls flat on its face. Though the story does (slowly) pick up steam again, the art never really gets sorted, and that is the biggest disappointment of the show.

If you’re anything like me, you loves some School Rumble. If you aren’t, what the hell is wrong with you? The story of a group of high school kids navigating their way through life and love with an extreme lack of style and grace, this show makes me laugh like a mad person, swoon like a tween who’s come face to face with R-Pat, and scratch my head, wondering ‘why is there a giraffe in this scene again?’. Schoorum is a stellar series, absolutely one of the funniest animes I have ever seen, and one of my favorite things to watch when a day has really kicked me in the ass. It has everything: pandas, Pocky, anime spoofs, weird pigtails, animal suits, unrequited love, sisterhood, friendship, and a group of hair-brained people who will instantly have you rooting for them.

This isn’t the first time Schoorum has come to DVD, and I’ve got the collection to prove it. The big news about this newest release is the Viridian collection of the first semester; originally released as two sets with a seperate OVA, this collection brings all SIX discs together. For those doing the math, that’s two discs for the first half of the first semester, two discs for the latter half, the OVA and the holy grail of box sets - the bonus disc. Twenty eight episodes and one hundred and sixty minutes of bonuses (including Japanese cast interviews, TV spots and commercials and trailers) make this the box set to rule them all. And as if that weren’t enough, Funimation has released the second semester in one convenient box set to go with it. It’s as if Funimation is reaching out and saying yes, people, we love you, too.

You know what game is heaps of fun? Devil May Cry. You know what anime is a lifeless, shallow copy of a fun game? Devil May Cry. Oftentimes, animes based off video games have a hard time making the transition, and this on is no different. Dante, in all of his white-haired, sword-wielding glory becomes not a badass who cuts through the things that go bump in the night but an obnoxious know it all who makes you want to change the channel, and stat. This anime is really only accessible to fans of the game, and even then, it’s not for everyone. The best part of the complete series DVD set is the crapton of video game related bonus features that come with it: seven cut scenes, E3 2007 preview, Tokyo Game Show 2006 preview and all other manner of goodies make this set fun for hard core fans of the game, but that’s it.

From the first strains of the menu music, it’s apparent something isn’t right. And then, the horror: Devil May Cry is a sad, pale shadow of a badass game series that rocked the world of electronic monster slaying. Dante is obnoxious, completely impervious to any kind of emotional connection with the audience. I made myself this mind-numbingly bad set, and I can honestly tell you that it’s not a good place to go. Some day, we’ll have an anime that does the video game to anime right (and we’ve gotten close) just not with this anime.

Black Lagoon is an anime that kicks ass. It kicks so much ass that the manga by Rei Hiroe comes in the plastic seal that lets you know naughtiness is contained within. Revy “Two Hands”, Rock, Dutch and Benny are the crewmates of the Black Lagoon, a smuggling ship that runs out of a lawless place called Roanipur. They work with many different crime syndicates, mafias, the rip-off church (nun gun runners. Seriously, I love this series) and sometimes even the US government, but are loyal to none but themselves. The two season show is collected, finally, in a box set, so the question then becomes not if you buy this series (because you need to see this one to believe it), but in which format. Everybody loves an all-in-one collection, but Funimation’s other recent release of this series, individual seasons in metal cases, is very, very pretty. Amazon has the complete series at about the same price as the two seasons would be together, so that’s not so much a factor. So it comes down to bonus features, then, and BL has always been good to fans in terms of bonus features. But here’s the truth of the matter: the complete series box set has the exact same features as the two individual seasons. And so I say go with the metal cases. They are a thing of beauty. But really, what does it matter so long as you just watch the damn show? You won’t regret it.

Nabari No Ou was not on my list of must-see animes. I was ambivalent about it, hemmed and hawed, eyed it from a distance. Though the tagline did work for me (The ninja world is at war. Whatever.) And yet, there was a little nagging voice telling me that I shouldn’t get my hopes up. So I watched it, and I leaned that the little voice that had made me so wary was a total moron.

The story of a kid, Miharu, who holds within him the most powerful weapon in the ninja world yet couldn’t care less is funny, full of action, exciting ninja antics and some really stellar art. Miharu is caught between different ninja clans who want to use him to declare war, to bring the ninja world together, to gain power, to kill, to die. It is an interesting story, but what kept me watching was the utterly beautiful art. The characters are elongated ala Clamp (which fits the action element of the show, specifically the acrobatic ninja action; a lot of these guys look like Spike Spiegel kicking people in the face, only Spike did it with more nonchalance and badassery than these guys could ever even hope for), and the color scheme is profoundly lovely, almost like looking at watercolors. Come for the story (and sassy tagline), but stay for the art. You won’t be disappointed.