Conspiracies, giant robots and ancient Japanese demons—oh my! After a very strong start, GASARAKI gets even better in these next two installments of the series.

In the second volume, the first Tactical Armor (TA) versus Tactical Armor battle takes place as the mysterious benefactors of Belgistan, who call themselves Symbol, are revealed. Also, Yoshiro finally meets the mysterious girl Miharu who has been haunting his mind since the first episode.

In the third volume, the series gets blown wide open. With the war in Belgistan over, Yoshiro and company return home only to be immersed in a web of secrets and lies. The motives behind the Gowa family's construction of the TA are revealed, and Yoshiro sets of on a journey to find out who and what he really is.

Even though this series is starting to get really good, I was a little put off by some of the major revelations in the third volume. It's not that they were bad, but it's just that they weren't what I was expecting. But this is actually one of the strengths of the GASARAKI series. You are never quite sure what is really going on or where the story is headed. Even though several of the questions from the first volume have now been answered, many more questions have also arisen in these two volumes. GASARAKI does a good job keeping some mystery in the story without leaving the viewer totally in the dark.

GASARAKI also has many other unique features in it. It is set in an almost present-day time period and has a very realistic feel to it. When it came to designing GASARAKI, the creators looked as if they tried to make the series as realistic as possible (or as realistic as a giant robot show could get.) In the show the TAs are affected by many elements that plague real-life heavy artillery. An example of this is when the machines' performance is hampered by sand getting into the joints. One thing that many giant robot shows tend to ignore is an almost inconsequential force known as gravity. You see, when you have a giant behemoth made mostly out of metal, it takes a lot of power to move it because it is so heavy. Also, large amounts of stress would wreak havoc on the joints of the machine as it tried to move its weighty appendages. Finally in GASARAKI many of these problems are addressed.

Another aspect that sets GASARAKI apart from other giant robot shows is that this series does not exclusively take place in a war environment. Though there is a war in this series, so far that conflict has only taken place in the first two volumes and the participation of the giant robots in that war was small.

The dubbing continues to be as good as it was for the first volume, though I do have a problem with one of the voices. The voice of Misuzu Gowa, Yoshiro's younger sister, comes off as fairly annoying. Though this is partly due to the actress, it also has to do with the character. Misuzu has many long-winded and emotional lines of dialogue that the English voice actress can't seem to handle that well. Sometimes she just croaks out her lines and often comes off as being whiny and melodramatic.

So after a somewhat slow and confusing start, this show is starting to pick up steam. Like NEON GENESIS EVANGELION, there is a lot of intrigue and unanswered questions floating around. However, unlike EVANGELION, GASARAKI seems to have an excellent sense of direction and looks to be heading towards a very interesting conclusion. With each new volume the story becomes even more engrossing, and I am looking forward to following this series to its end.