Now beyond the jurisdiction of the United Earth Forces, the bridge crew exploits a long awaited lull in the fighting. Captain Yurika, however, gets no rest - her busy schedule includes presiding over hundreds of funerals for dead crewmembers. Yurika's hectic job impedes her efforts to speak with Akito about their relationship, but it also inspires introspection on her uncertain role in Nadesico's future. Yurika, eager to understand the point of her exertions as captain, leaves Jun to finish her funeral duties while she meditates. Through meditation she hopes to throw off her worldly passions - including her feelings for Akito - but she discovers that he, too, has retreated to the meditation room.

The Nadesico arrives on Mars and heads straight for an old Nergal research facility designed to double as a survival shelter. Akito asks permission to take an Aestivalis with Megumi to the destroyed Utopia colony where he used to live. While on the surface, as Megumi pours her heart out to him, he falls into a crevice. Underneath the planet, Akito and Megumi discover the last survivors of the Jovian attack, led by a woman named Inez Fressange - who happens to be one of the Nadesico's original designers. She scorns their attempt at rescue and declares that the Nadesico will never make it back to Earth.

While Yurika and Ruri film a video to explain the incident at Mars, Miss Fressange reveals some surprises about the Nadesico, including the origin of the phase transition engine. (The revelations aren't just technical - the crew finds that Ryoko and Miss Fressange might be the latest to join Akito's band of admirers.) As they digest this information, the crew discovers an Earth ship - the Crocus - on the surface of Mars. Meanwhile, Akito now believes that the Nadesico's own admiral was responsible for the Utopia colony's destruction so long ago. Angered beyond reason, he attacks the admiral.

Eight months later, the Nadesico comes out of dimensional gateway and finds itself back at Earth. During that time, Nergal and the United Earth Forces have teamed up and created new technologies. The Nadesico now has a sister ship, the Cosmos, and has been reassigned to the UEAF's Far Eastern command. The crew is soon reunited with Admiral Munetake, and greeted by UEAF liaison Erina Won as well as the cocky hotshot pilot Nagare Akatsuki. Akito, in the thick of a fight against the Jovians, finds his old fear of battle returning and loses control. Yurika and Megumi, hoping to save Akito, chase after him. When they get into trouble of their own, however, Akito must somehow rescue all three of them and return to the Nadesico.

Once again, the writers of "Martian Successor Nadesico" spin a quirky, romantic and darkly satiric tale that weaves new relationships, conflicts and characters into a complex but seamless story. And director Tatsuo Sato adds sophisticated surprises in the development of a delicious mystery that, even as it reveals more about the characters and plot, puts motives and situations under suspicion.

With the return to Earth and the introduction of several dubious characters, Sato thickens the plot with possible conspiracy - enigmatic incidences such as the strange truce between UEF and Nergal cast shadows around the characters Nagare and Erina Won, who clearly know more than they let on. Their hidden agenda, while completely unsuspected by the crew, creates an atmosphere full of unanswered questions. But the conspiracy, if one exists, still remains in an early stage.

Characters mark the strength of the series, Sato integrating elements of comedy and pathos into each - criminals have good points that must be acknowledged, and the good guys have dark sides they must confront. And individual foibles or failings provide dimension to secondary players - for example, Hikari's not-so-secret affinity for men-on-men comics. Ruri, the 12-year-old science officer, whose unspoken mantra "Grown-ups are idiots" embellishes her cynical nature, especially achieves depth in this second installment of episodes, demonstrating more empathetic qualities, such as concern about Yurika's romantic dilemma. Cute little Ruri shows signs of becoming a scene-stealer. The romantic triangle between Akito, Yurika and Megumi that waxed so promising in the first DVD has grown in complexity and, for that matter, participants. Ryoko and Miss Fressange both leap on to the Akito-crush bandwagon, although their salivating is mild compared to the mounting jealousy in Yurika and Megumi. Played with a light touch, the romantic machinations of the Nadesico crew never crosses the line into melodrama, even in dialogue-heavy scenes between lovers.

Technical revelations, however, do help the story along. For the first time the crew discovers what Jovian chulips really do, how the Mars colonists made the atmosphere breathable, and that Nergal didn't actually invent phase transition. The aliens themselves remain an ambiguity, with little more than their chulip and grasshopper ships appearing on screen. Again, another mystery to be solved in future installments.

"Nadesico's" creators have settled into a cheeky original style that oscillates between dark overtones and lighthearted slapstick, treating even Yurika's presiding at funerals of every religion in every type of ethnic costume with a precise, unyielding black humor. This quality of the series makes watching it a continual delight, even as viewers wait with bated breath to discover the baffling secrets at which Sato so discreetly hints.