The fifth volume of RahXephon adds quite a bit of entertainment value to the series, as the various thoughts that were carelessly strewn about in the early parts of the series are starting to piece together coherently. I'm not a huge fan of this style of storytelling, but it certainly does give you a sense of having accomplished something when you begin to understand. The emotional weight of the story increases in this volume, but the full impact of the change is not felt yet. The fifth volume leaves us with a premonition of big events to come.

Vermillion gets its first real dispatch in this volume, but the pilot is less than happy about it. She's been sent to bring back that whiny fool Ayato and his winged superbot. Ayato's search for the truth brings him to Tokyo, where he is surrounded by more cute girls and cryptic messages. The real meat of these episodes lies not in what he finds, but who he finds. These episodes shed light on Haruka's relationship to Ayato, as well as a clue to the mystery of the Dolems.

The final episode on this volume is hard-hitting and tragic - certainly a turning point for the story, which until this point had been relatively light-hearted (for an apocalyptic giant robot series). Now there appears to be a very personal consequence to what TERRA does, and the revelation comes as quite a surprise - even given a subtle hint to this link early in the series. Needless to say, these developments have been sorely needed to keep the story from derailing, and they go above and beyond the call of duty, turning the whole show into something special.

Hiroko starts to notice that things aren't quite right in Tokyo.	Words written on buildings to express a character's thoughts is one of the neatest concepts I've seen.

The packaging and insert booklet for this volume are darn nice, just like for previous volumes. The cover features the title character/robot-thing in a "Don't come any closer" pose. The extras in this volume are a bit of a downer, though, despite being the kind of thing I like to see. On the up-side are clean opening and closing sequences, some production artwork, and the cover art for the Japanese releases. You would think that the interview of character designer Hiroki Kanno on this volume would be a nice thing as well, but the actual product is a different story. The camera angle used to film Kanno makes it look like he is cowering away from the camera. The questions asked are uninteresting, and it is obvious that the artist's answers were not being considered when the questions were being asked, as he has to repeat himself on some things. The last issue is a bit of an aesthetic problem but still important: the video would switch between a blank screen with questions on it and the subsequent footage of the artist answering. This approach hurts the continuity of the video and makes it difficult to sit through the whole thing. Right Stuf uses a much better format for interviews, where the question being asked is displayed while it's being answered. Extras are secondary to the actual work of course, but since I'm a paying customer I reserve the right to complain about insignificant things. :)

To put it plainly, I enjoyed the message of this volume quite a bit and have no reservations about continuing the story to the finish. The day I've been awaiting for so long - the day the show remembers it has an audience to please - has finally arrived! And there was much rejoicing.

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