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I am so happy that Fafner is still continuing. With how many events and characters, I'll definitely need to do a proper re-watch of the entire series.

-Story: For what very little Japanese that I know, I feel like I have the gist of what is going on. If I recall correctly, Soushi has been reborn as the new Mir like Tsubaki was, however he has been taken into the custody of Festum Humans. As for if it's a disguise or if those humans have been Festums all along, I am unsure but I will not state who since I feel like that would be too ... much of a spoiler even though they directly show and tell you. Most of the first episode is the operation to retrieve Soushi. I could be wrong, but I think the time gap between this and Exodus is about five years; I thought I heard something mentioned about that. When Kazuki goes to find Soushi he seems to be in a subconscious, or alternate dimension mirroring the Island and is seemingly living his normal everyday life unaware that he is entrapped by Festum. It's a very nice episode that brings back the feeling from when they were younger and in more innocent times not having to worry about war and people dying or having to kill people. But then there's the twist for him when Kazuki shows up that causes what seems will become a driving force for Soushi's future actions. I know that sounds vague but that is a key part in the story that is worth mentioning within these episodes that will hopefully sound enticing. Hopefully my "story" segment won't be too comparable to an updated synopsis since that's about all I can say without actually spoiling for these first three episodes. The run-time is above average too being 28:28 for episode 01, 29:09 for episode 02, and 26:42 for episode 03. It's kinda hard to fairly rate the story since this is just the first three episodes but I'm sure it'll still be great like the rest. Unless you're able to see these in theaters in Japan, we'll have to wait for months, even a year, to eventually have the whole story but I'm sure the wait will be well worth it. It feels like it's progressing nicely.

-Art+Sound: Holy crap, the production value is insane! This is probably one of the best looking recent anime I've ever seen on Blu-Ray. This literally blows everything out of the water. You can tell they care and have enough time and resources to make this the best it can be and even being priced slightly less than every other comparable anime Blu-Ray volume. It seems like most releases recently are so basic and don't have proper care to ensure quality but that is not the case at all with Fafner. Not only is the art super gorgeous, but everything is super vibrant and clear and there's no visible color banding or other artifacts. I am so happy that they went the extra ten miles (hopefully pioneering for more shows to come) with high resolution audio across the board, main feature and extras. Fafner The Beyond includes 96kHz 24bit Dolby TrueHD with both a stereo and 3.1 for main feature and clean OP/ED. To my knowledge it's an advanced up-sample process but regardless, still insane. Specs aside, it still sounds as great as ever with great sound design and of course the music. I was kinda bummed that they didn't use 'Those who seek the future' (未来を求める者) from the new soundtrack but used the original 'Counterattack' which was the version from Heaven and Earth and Exodus but perhaps in a later episode they will make use of it. This release is the premium that consumers deserve and I hope to see more like it in the future.

-Characters: Still lots of characters and I love that they still have everyone back in the story. I totally need to re-watch the previous ones to re-familiarize myself with everyone. For me the most notable character so far is Maya. She definitely seems a lot more stern and militaristic which is a great natural progression considering what she went though in Exodus. We did see some of that in Exodus but this feels like the full outcome. It's like her character is going opposite of Kanon, where she was that way but gradually opened up and became friendly. Thinking about Kanon still makes me want to cry. Miwa has also grown-up more (obviously since there's a time gap) and is super adorable. She's also a Fafner pilot now. There's some mystery going on with Kazuki but I'll leave it at that for you to discover.

If you're a fan of the series, it should be obvious to continue watching Fafner. If you love the series be sure to support it when possible (as goes for anything you like). It's too bad Fafner doesn't get released with English subtitles. Hopefully someday Funimation will finally licence the rest of the series so it can be available and easier to access for more people. If you're new to the series I highly recommend it if you enjoy military mecha and tragic sad things as well as great action scenes and music.

I decided to seek these out after watching all of the episodes of Dream Hunter Rem since I enjoyed the anime. In my opinion, just like the OVAs, the story continues to tread on weird territory of what type of work it wants to be. Yes this is an 18+ RX as was the very first original version of the OVA, however a lot of the time and with the overarching message the story wants to tell, it feels more innocent, like a moral for younger kids and actually kind of thought provoking (mainly towards the conclusion) and also throws in some cute stuff like ... with Alpha and Beta (Rem's Cat and Dog). But then it has sexually explicit content tied to the storytelling which seems slightly unnecessary but at the same time they somewhat logically relate it to the story. Perhaps I'm just over analyzing something just meant to be fapped to, I don't know.

For the art, I thought it was very well made. It mostly looks like a modern version of the series and its consistent all the way through. Alpha and Beta are adorable, the returning characters look how they should and I love Rem's character design just like the original. I did however get a little lost sometimes going back and forth between locations.

As for the Characters most of them return for this one-off story but most of the time it's spent with Rem and the new villain. The reoccurring villain from the OVA series makes a return however he's mostly just observing whats happening.

The story I feel is actually kind of interesting and I like the concept. Overall I feel it fell a little flat. It answers the question brought up about who Rem is and more about the Dream Guardians. Something you don't get is Alpha and Beta powering up into their attack forms to help Rem fight the bad guys but only some parts take place in the dream but you do get to see Rem power up in her iconic bikini armor and sword two different times and looks as great as ever. There's a really hilarious moment on page 100 with Alpha driving Rem's new upgraded Hummer, both Alpha and Beta look adorable in the driver's seat and Enko asks, "Still, is it really okay for a cat to be driving?" and Detective Sakaki responds, "You might be right about that, but I'm not going to stop him". As for the 18+ content, it's brought up numerous times with the girls the villain captured and most of it is Rem being tentacle raped for some extended amounts of time but there really isn't that much of it. They wrapped things up pretty quickly at the end then it was like nothing even happened and it was back to happy fun times again getting burgers with everyone. That's why I feel like this series somewhat has an identity crisis. I don't think it's bad but it leaves more to be desired, mostly in the "non-18+" realm since most of the story telling and themes don't really have much to do with being adult content. If you come into this for the adult content you'll probably be very disappointed. The art is fantastic and everything looks great but the focus doesn't seem to be on the adult stuff. With all that being said, I think it would be cool if this was adapted for an OVA episode or just a new series in general because I think they have a lot of potential for storytelling.

If you are a fan of Dream Hunter Rem, I do recommend this if you're looking for another story about Rem. If you haven't seen the OVAs I recommend doing so first to familiarize yourself with the characters and universe. I looked all over for this and the only place I could find it was nhentai. to my knowledge there is no official translation. I will be reading Dream Hunter Rem Alternative to see where else the story goes.

For buying all the DVD's on a whim since Rightstuf had seven volumes for only $2, I am genuinely surprised by how great this show is. I really enjoyed this a lot.

As for the story it has comedic moments sprinkled throughout each episode and I feel like they generally mix very well with the situations at hand. There's also a decent amount of actually incredible scenes that look fantastic and have great sound design; I love the sound of when they open a gate to use their abilities and then scream "GATE OPEN!" and even though it's essentially the same thing every time it feels ... different depending of what's going on and everything else and how the audio is mixed. It makes a lot of scenes feel really epic and I'd rewind and watch the sequence again because it seemed so cool however it doesn't seem like it's trying too hard to be cool or anything like that (at least not to me) and I feel like that's why comes off really good and really kept me engaged with the show and wanting to continue watching.

The art and animation is pretty consistent throughout the whole show and how good the CGI is really took me by surprise. There was only one episode with a purple CG helicopter that was super bad but other than they did a heck of a job considering this was from the year 2000.

My favorite character was definitely Ikusawa, Ruriko or Rurippe as the nickname given to her by Ukiya, Shun which you will hear most of the time. Kawasumi, Ayako does a fantastic job voicing her and I love when she yells, perfect tone in comedic moments and intense moment and everything in-between. I also really liked Mei and how she'd say "Gate Open" and her powers in Chinese most of the time. Reiko seemed to be a little too much of an air-head but she still seemed to get some good moments and she cares for everyone and not just Ukiya. Kaoru to me felt too pushy to assert herself onto her Senpai Ukiya but I didn't dislike her and she does get some great moments to shine throughout the series. I like how she transformers to use her powers by just whooshing off her normal clothes with her tracksuit underneath. The only character I didn't like so much was Megumi which is kinda backwards for me since I generally really like the quiet ones with glasses. The different tensions with her still had impacts on the story and wasn't meaningless even though she wasn't very nice or anything. Finally for our main character Ukiya, Shun I'd say he's actually likable. He does share some typical traits that you'd expect from a main character but there's also more to him. He also has a couple really good character arcs that he goes through and you get to see him struggle.

If you happen to stumble across this show I highly recommend it, especially if you can still get the DVD's for super cheap like I was able to. As for re-watching, I definitely will eventually and I still have the sequel OVA series to watch too which I will watch next out of the countless DVD's and Blu-Rays that I have. I would've liked to see an HD remaster with PCM audio if they did it correctly/still had the original master but I'm not too concerned since the DVD's still scale nicely. I'd say the average score for this show is an accurate assessment of how it's score should be but I just had such a blast watching this and it felt really refreshing. Anyways, hope my review will be insightful for somebody!