No holds are barred and no secret is safe in the second half of this series, and I have to admit I love it when a studio will back up every mystery they offered with solutions towards the end of a series. Now that the girls have got their fighting groove on, so to speak, and their personal lives are slowly sorting themselves out, all truths are finally revealed to them as the enemy’s head surfaces. Two warring factions have apparently been at each other’s throats for decades, each seeking the destruction of the other so they can lift their own curse. However, each side has personal motives for fighting as well; human motives, like immediate family members or continuing the family line in general. When faced with these facts, as well as the inescapable truth about their own memories (and the subsequent loss of them all even if they win the final battle), will our girls be able to make the choices necessary to resolve this eternal conflict once and for all?
When it turns out that both factions have made personal connections with the other side, it brings up interesting questions about whether or not you can continue to think of the ‘enemy’ as ‘other’. Luckily for us, Studio Gonzo doesn’t falter, and we’re rewarded for all our hard work (watching anime, of course) with an epic battle with no pulled punches. Hooray for violence!
As a special and truly mind-blowing bonus, you are rewarded for your dedication to the series with one of the strangest OVA’s I’ve ever heard of. The OVA ‘Dead Girls’ is included on disc 2 of this collection, and is apparently the continuing story of some main characters many, many, years in the future. Completely in contrast with the sedate, approachable setting of the series, the OVA includes such bogglers as flying cars, crime-fighting super heroines who sing their own theme song as they zoom over the city on hover boards, and strangely emotional androids bent on destroying those it perceives as possible friends. Building towards an epic robot-battle in a key location from the series, this story seems to have been designed to break up everything I though I understood about this series. As another brain-warping tactic, almost every character design/name from the series has been recycled into this future world, forcing you to re-evaluate anything you thought you could deduce from their previous incarnations. If nothing else about Red Garden really rings your bell, I would recommend watching the entire series as preparation for this OVA experience.