The hypocrisy involved in me posting about this show the day after I complained about how by-the-numbers the Winter anime season looks is not lost on me.

Not that I’m going to let that stop me.

Anyway, this volume has episodes fifteen through seventeen, which are those episodes in which Haruka does her Idol thing, and they bat you around the head with the forthcoming Yukiho “twist” without actually reaching it – they’re saving that one for the next volume.

The DVD has the usual on-disk omake featurette as an extra. This time around it’s set around the time period of the episodes on the DVD, and features a discussion between Yayoi and Haruka. Yayoi fans will probably feel shortchanged with this one, as unlike the previous omake featurettes, this one is relatively service free.

Unless you count Yayoi in a chick costume. Haruka doing vocal warm-ups is pretty cute too – if I had a vaguely modern mobile phone I could totally see me using that as a text alert ^^;

As for the content of their discussion, it starts off with Haruka bemoaning the amount of effort idoling (in the not-piloting fashion) takes, whilst Yayoi wonders if her school activities combined with her after-school work is proving too much for her. This results in Yayoi once again getting the wrong idea and deciding to storm the school in an attempt to have a few choice words with That Guy who is giving Haruka problems.

But the school is all locked up that day. With this crisis averted, Haruka and Yayoi head off to do their radio show, and that’s pretty much it.

The first pressing extra this time is, at least, something other than another magnet. That isn’t to say it’s particularly great, though – it’s a fairly cheap desk calender, with this volume having cards covering the first four months of the year.

The holder for the cards is cheap and flimsy plastic, which I guess is at least better than the folded card one which came with the My-HiME DVDs many, many moons ago, though the cards with the HiME disks had rather more effort put into them (to the point where the calendar section had so many character-specific details scribbled in that it was unusable if you wanted to actually use it as a calendar). I suppose if I wanted to actually use the calendar I could use the rather more stable holder that came with the He His My Master first press R2s way back, but it’s not like I’m actually going to do that. Why would I defile my first-press extras?

Coincidently, Bandai Visuals online catalogue has the last DVD, due in March, as apparently coming with an artbox, something which the My-HiME and My-ZHiME DVD releases have been deprived of. More importantly, the on-disk extra is being reported as being an original epilogue to the series, something the show could really do with. Whether or not this will be animated or just static shots like the other omake is anyones guess, but it’ll be nice to have, I guess.

There’s a Xenoglossia mook due at the end of the month (well, the end of next month, but it’ll be this month for some of those reading this, and it’ll already be out of someone reads this way in the future) as well. At A4 size, I’m tempted to get it, but I’m undecided as of yet. Perhaps more important is that Live For You is due on 360 in February, with it’s Miki-rific game based OAV. Apparently there’s going to be some iMAS content in some Namco-based Warioware clone due to hit Japanese DS’s in March too…