Volume five of Princess Nine is another hit, but with the excellence of the previous volumes behind it, this is hardly a surprise. The ups and downs of the story have kept things interesting up to this point, but this volume sets the ball in motion.

The Princess Nine have made it past quite a few obstacles up to this point, but there is a lot of tension both on and off the field. This time, a little bit of strength and a little good luck pulls the team together again; when Kanako stands up to her father, who promised his baby girl anything she wanted for her birthday. However, with the regional prelims coming up, this is hardly the time to celebrate. The girls head off to the mountains to engage in intensive training for the challenge they have to face. Ryo is in good spirits, but Izumi seems distant. Things become more complicated when genius slugger Hiroki Takasugi comes to visit the training camp, out of worry for Izumi. The volume ends in an explosive love triangle, escalating the tension two-fold from the last volume.

Ryo has her ups and downs in this volume. She has regained confidence in her abilities and her team, but still is plagued with self-doubt over other things. She has had a tendency throughout the show to take-in change and adjust, instead of taking initiative. Her appointment as captain of the team will most likely cause a change here. She still needs to learn to face her problems head-on, but she has hardly been weak. Her resilience has been one of the finer elements of the show, and continues to be.

Whoever took my Sake...will PAY!	Hikaru's heart-muscle gets a little training off the field as well as on, in this volume.

Izumi remains harsh as ever, but she is displaying increasing angst toward her teammates, and her playing ability is suffering too. She does something in this volume that makes her rather unlikable. Hopefully she'll redeem herself in the final volume. Also in the spotlight in this volume is Yuki, the left-fielder. An event happens that leaves her crushed, and despite the best efforts of Ryo, she remains upset at Volume five's close. It was a nice development to bring her into the forefront of the story, since she hasn't gotten much attention since the show's beginning.

Nothing has changed as far as the transfer quality goes. The video and audio are still clean, and the English voices remain surprisingly good. It seems the only difficulty some of the voice actors were having is speaking with conviction at a low volume. Instead, some of the voices came off as timid, which didn't fit their respective characters too well. Still, nothing in the dub made me immediately want to switch to the Japanese-language track (which remains good through this volume, by the way).

There were no off-the-wall extras this time, just a clean opening/closing, samples of the original DVD cover art for the Japan releases, and previews for a few other ADV shows. The packaging for volume five captures a focused Hiroki and Ryo in the foreground, and Izumi in the background. The back cover has a cute picture of Yuki holding her Fifi-chan (her little doll).

The fifth volume serves well to set the stage for a spectacular finish. For those who've gotten this far, there's no reason to stop watching now. Given the greatness displayed in the series so far, we can expect an ending that is nothing short of awesome. Stay tuned for our views on the conclusion of Princess Nine!

Video Quality: A+
Audio Quality: A
Presentation: A+
Content: A-
Overall: A