Review for Darker Than Black: Gemini of the Meteor (Review)
Tuesday, 13th December 2011, 16:37

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Introduction
It's been my observation that lightning rarely strikes twice in the entertainment industry. You may manage to bottle magic once, mostly through sheer good luck, coincidence and random factors, but if you try and replicate the feat through design, you either fail, or you over-egg the pudding. Sometimes the result is only a minor disappointment compared to the original, sometimes it's utterly deflating. You see it happen again and again, in movies like The Matrix and its sequels, Star Wars and its prequels, and the Terminator movies. On TV there was the Muppet Show and then Muppets Tonight, the continuing attempts to resurrect Charlie's Angels, and so on and so forth. It's no less true for anime, and another observation is that the bigger the hit the first time around, the greater the decline with its sequel. On top of that, the bigger the hit, the more people want a sequel, despite knowing how most sequels turn out. Manga Entertainment's release of Darker Than Black a few years ago introduced the UK fanbase to one of the smartest, action packed anime shows in recent memory, the show that Heroes could have been. It was a world of superheroes called Contractors, where powers always came with a price, and where nation states employ these Contractors to act clandestinely against each other. It was the best thing since sliced bread.

Of course everyone wanted another loaf. It's now here, after a delay or two. We in the UK can now see what happens next, in Darker Than Black: Gemini of the Meteor, as the 12 episode series comes to UK DVD. There was supposed to be a concurrent Blu-ray release, but that has been indefinitely delayed, dependent on the performance of the DVDs. That's disappointment one. Disappointment two is that Yoko Kanno doesn't return to compose the music for the sequel. Even still, knowing what I do about hits and their subsequent sequels, I'm still here, grasping these discs with a combination of eagerness and dread, praying that this time at least, lightning will strike twice. I guess that makes me a sucker for punishment. Incidentally, I know that most of you have been eagerly awaiting Gemini of the Meteor as much as I have, but the first thing you need to do when you get this collection is to put the two series discs to one side, and go for disc 3 instead. That contains the Darker Than Black OVAs, 4 episodes that bridge Seasons 1 and 2, and explain a whole lot about the characters in Gemini of the Meteor that would otherwise have you scratching your head.

When Hei's Contractor team got caught in the middle, as the EPR and the Syndicate battled for the fate of the world in Hell's Gate in Tokyo, twin brother and sister Suo and Shion Pavlichenko were relaxing with their research scientist father, camping in Siberia. It was when the false stars began to fall that their world changed, as one of the stars fell right where they were camping. Two years later, for Suo Pavlichenko the world is destined to change again. She is a normal school girl, albeit one with an unconventional family. The day the stars fell was the day that Shion became a Contractor, but their father has kept him hidden away since then, confined to a wheelchair as he continues to pay his price, the price that all contractors must pay for their abilities. And even as the world has learned of the existence of Contractors, the need to control them still exists, and Suo's father's research involves the ME techniques that erase memories.

It's when one of Suo's school friends suddenly exhibits Contractor abilities that her world falls apart again. The authorities need to control the situation, and that leads them to investigate Suo's family, realising her brother's existence, and it turns out that a whole lot of people, the Russians, the CIA, MI6, and what remains of the Syndicate are interested in Shion and a 'meteor's shard'. She gets back home just in time for a raid by the various factions. Her brother has vanished, although his voice lingers long enough to help her escape. Her father is killed, and she witnesses The Black Reaper who she assumes is responsible. That's nothing compared to the changes in her life when that dark figure captures her, mistaking her for her brother. Hei has changed, and changed for the worse in the two years since Hell's Gate, and he's single-minded about his missions. He wants Shion and he'll use his sister to get to him. This means getting to Tokyo. It means finding and destroying a package called Izanami, and it means a very personal mission of vengeance, as Hei has someone that he just has to kill. It also means training Suo as a Contractor, as the change has come upon her as well.

Manga Entertainment present twelve episodes of Darker Than Black: Gemini of the Meteor across two discs. The third disc contains the 4-episode prequel series.

Disc 1

1. Black Cats Do Not Dream Of Stars
2. Fallen Meteor
3. Vanishing in a Sea of Ice
4. The Ark Adrift on the Lake
5. Gunsmoke Blows, Life Flows
6. An Aroma Sweet, A Heart Bitter

Disc 2

7. The Doll Sings in the Winter Wind
8. Twinkling Sun on a Summer Day
9. They Met One Day, Unexpectedly
10. Your Smile on a False Street Corner
11. The Sea Floor Dries Up, And The Moon Grows Full
12. Ark of Stars

Picture
For the second series of Darker Than Black, we get that really very pleasant trend of sourcing native PAL transfers for the show via Australia, as opposed to the earlier season's standards converted effort. The absence of ghosting and judder is very welcome, and Studio Bones' animation maintains the high quality set by the first series, with memorable character designs, strong world designs, and a consistency and quality in animation that is barely a notch below theatrical quality. Some of the action sequences in the show, especially in the OVA are jaw-droppingly intense enough to warrant skipping back and watching them over again. As always for modern television anime, the aspect ratio on these discs is 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, and looks pretty nifty scaled up to an HD panel. I didn't notice any significant colour banding or compression artefacts, and detail levels were good throughout. It's hard to tell what a Blu-ray could add to that other than reduced compression, greater depth of colour, and the correct frame rate.

Sound
Just as before, Darker than Black: Gemini of the Meteor gets audio options in DD 5.1 English and DD 2.0 Japanese flavour, with optional subtitles and a signs only track. I was more than happy with the original language track, despite the stereo, the actors were suited to their parts, and the action was represented well. I only sampled the English dub, and I may have chosen the wrong bit to sample, as I thought that the dub didn't quite match what had come before, didn't quite seem to capture the dramatic intensity of the story. Surprisingly the absence of Yoko Kanno wasn't felt, as the sequel series gets some appropriate theme songs, while the incidental music really drives the pace of the show well, as well as having enough individual identity to it to make it stand out as a show's score. It's good stuff. The subtitles are legible, free of error, and correctly timed throughout.

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