AMAZING NURSE NANAKO finishes itself off in this last of 3 volumes. Be sure to check out our first look at AMAZING NURSE NANAKO for a little back story.

This volume has Nanako and Dr. Ogami on the run after strange, armed men raid the remnants of the Ogami Hospital. Eventually this leads the two to a mountain base in another country, and to a final encounter with the church and the alien specimen. The Vatican's and military's plans split, and Nanako finds herself in the middle of the mess. Plus, Dr. Ogami is finally able to perform the mysterious operation he has been planning for all this time.

After everything though, did anything really happen? Nanako herself never really seemed to change over the course of this short series, although we finally get to know her secret and why the U.S. military and the Vatican are after her. We also see a "little" bit of Dr. Ogami's soft side, but much like Techno in DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE DAISY, he still remains in my "unlikable" category. The other supporting characters get so little airtime that they might as well never have been introduced.

The plot also is very unfulfilling. While there are some interesting themes and moments, in general the story seems like a lot of small pieces glued together with no real cohesion. That lack of cohesion and the ending was a bit of a letdown to this viewer.

The animation quality is decent, although it still suffers from the occasional abuse of digital panning and random CG. The character drawing is relatively consistent, though it looks like they cut corners in some of the animated motions. The voice work does its job as both the Japanese and English tracks are quite passable.

The DVD offers another standard Pioneer high quality transfer. However, this time the disk does not contain any memorable extras other than a small gallery. The "Nanakotronic" anime videos found on the previous two volumes is not available on this DVD, even though the packaging indicates it should have one. I could also could not find a Japanese TV spot (not to mention the humorous spelling mistake of the show's title on the spine).

So overall, we have NANAKO right in the middle. On one side, the plot and characters never really get developed or interesting enough to hold the show on its own. On the other side, the show's "fan service" in my mind was too sparse to prop up the show either. While I had hopes NANAKO would get more interesting, I found the show does not evolve much at all over its course. If you enjoyed the first volume, you will find the following two offer about the same sort of things. AMAZING NURSE NANAKO is a rental-first title, and much like the character Nanako herself, you may need to turn off your brain first to enjoy it.