Episode 51: Red Garden Volume 2. Director: Kou Matsuo. Series Composition: Tomohiro Yamashita. $29.98, ADV Films, Episodes 5-8, 100 minutes. Release Date: 11/20/07.

Volume 1 picks up right where Volume 2 left off as Rachel has a breakdown after beating the brains out of a dog man with a baseball bat. She begins to question, along with the other girls, exactly what they are doing with their second lives. What are these beast men? Why are Rachel, Kate, Rose, and Claire having to kill to survive? Who is Lula and who is she working for? What really happened to Lise? There are no easy answers, and now the four girls are not only having to deal with risking their lives on an almost nightly basis, but there nighttime activities are also beginning to derail what little normalcy they have in their daytime lives.

My Grade: A

Venus Versus Virus Volume 1: Outbreak Anime DVD podcast Review Episode 50. Directed by Shinichiro Kimura (also directed Burn-Up Excess, Maburaho, Sugar, and Popotan). Series Composition by Yasutomo Yamada. ADV Films, $29.98, Episodes 1-4, 100 minutes. Release date: 11/13/2007.

Viruses are demons that are attracted to the few humans who have the ability to see them. They take shapes from the lowliest dark blobs to humanoid/animal crossovers that have superhuman abilities. Those they attack in turn become more Viruses. It's up to the Venus Vanguard to exterminate the Viruses and protect humanity from a threat most of them are ignorant of. Lucia, the cool and beautiful goth-loli gun toting killer, and Sumire, her bumbling partner, are on the front-lines of this battle. Lucia is equipped with anti-Virus bullets and Sumire has the ability to become a living anti-virus, which gives her so much power that she can literally rip Viruses into pieces using her bare hands. The problem is that when she enters this Berserker mode, she cannot differentiate between friend and foe. A stylish action anime that also relies on comedy to get the character's personalities across.

My Grade: A