Nurse Witch Komugi Vol. 2

Cosplay and magic, flat chested and well-endowed girls, spoofs and perverted bunnies? It must certainly be Nurse Witch Komugi, the irreverent and insane spin-off of Tatsunoko's thirteen-episode horror series Soul Taker. How such a dark series could bring life to such an odd comedy is one of the many mysteries left unturned by Komugi and her perverted sidekick.

Nurse Witch Komugi is the story of young, cosplay idol Komugi Nakahara. That is, young, cosplay idol by day. With a swift swing of her magical scepter, plain, flat-chested Komugi transforms into the Magical Nurse Komugi, the flamboyantly dressed, flat as ever, yet immensely powerful protector of good.

It's a cruel world Komugi lives in. Though she is Kiri Pro's most popular idol, the stigma of being the flat-chested but cute girl does grate hard on the nerves. Luckily for Komugi she can take out her frustrations on rivals, whose affinity for evil can be measured by the size of their bust.

After volume one's hasty introduction, volume two seems to come to an end far too early. Death is in the near future, and just as the DVD's summary advertises, Komugi does indeed die. Actually she dies several times, each of which being a rather pathetic and anti-climactic death. They are all random deaths for a series that strives to be strange and prove its randomness.

Nurse Witch Komugi is everything an anime spoof needs to be. We get the likable leads and the many nods to series of every genre, from Speed Racer to The Ring. Even the entire process of creating anime is made fun of here. With Komugi nabbing the chance to create her own anime series, she takes over at Tatsunoko and pushes her Muscle Cutie character onto the small screen.

Working with Komugi is never an easy task, and that's something the series' cast learns as Komugi attempts to take the reigns for herself and drive the series towards completion. With so much time being spent spoofing other series and genres, it is often amazing Komugi can find the time to tell her own story and poke fun at the magical girl genre of which Nurse Witch Komugi is part of.

Score: 8 out of 10

- AD Vision

Who ever said being a ghost didn¿t have it¿s perks???

The Video

Nurse Witch Komugi is a gorgeous series with an equally beautiful transfer. Free of any type of encoding errors, ADV serves us an incredibly colorful series in its original 1.33:1 full screen aspect ratio. Colors are rich, darks are solids, and whites are vibrant here with this encode. Only the series' animation holds this title back, and even there the series tends to shine with some smooth animation.

Topped off with a great variety of styles and some creative character designs and this a one series whose fan base is destined to grow larger with every Nurse Witch Komugi-chan series created.

Score: 8 out of 10

- AD Vision

Here she comes¿Here comes Speed Racer¿She¿s a nurse witch on wheels¿

Languages and Audio

Not quite a series one watches for the incredible audio, Nurse Witch Komugi cannot claim to have the one of the best or most full audio tracks available. However, it can claim to have a solid mix that is equally supported by a great English dub headed by ADV's ADR Director, Scott McClennen.

As with the previous volume, ADV provides us with both Japanese 2.0 and English 5.1 Dolby Digital audio tracks. Both tracks are crisp with voices being nicely integrated into the audio tracks along with the music and sound effects. Both audio tracks are nearly identical in quality, but the English mix's 5.1 mix racks up points for making some great use of the sound stage. That holds especially true during action scenes where Komugi is fighting off enemies and random assortments from every direction.

Score: 7 out of 10

- AD Vision

A spoof that spoofs the spoofer??? Even Shinichi Watanabe isn¿t safe from Komugi.

Packaging and Extras

With Nurse Witch Komugi being the hard to dub series that it is, we're given a nice commentary track featuring ADR Director, Scott McClennen, along with the voices Mugimaru and Koyori, Luci Christian and Kira Vincent-Davis. Not really a commentary track as it is an interview set over the fourth episode, the three speak of the things they went through while working on the English dub for the series.

As nice as the commentary track turned out to be, it still does not do the job of carrying the DVD itself. With little more than an image gallery and textless opening and closing animations accompanying the DVD, there isn't too much to see after jumping into the DVDs extras menu.

Score: 5 out of 10

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