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* This is my first review, so please excuse any errors I've made.
** In case you're watching Ureshii's subs, for some reason they didn't translate the ranks so I've added them in parenthesis as a guide/reference.

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This DVD-only episode titled The Last Mission takes place roughly 3 years before 2nd Lieutenant (sani) Uchida Kazuhiro is assigned into the Komatsu Air Rescue Unit, from February 12th to March 1st, 2003. The episode focuses on the then Chief Master Sergeant (souchou) Motomura Hiroshi who was Komatsu's lead rescue medic. You'll notice in the TV series that he has since been promoted to become the squad's Warrant Officer ... (juni).

I feel that this episode was a touching concluding episode for the series as it goes into detail about the past of Motomura and how he met Major (sansa) Shuujirou Hongo, which I found as a surprising coincidence. The major event that occurs in this episode is Motomura's last rescue mission before resigning as a medic. The rescue mission is different from the ones seen in the TV series, it's not a disaster-type rescue but more of one of those milder rescues. The rescue holds a value of importance to Motomura which you'll see why near the end of the episode.

Overall animation is the same as the TV series, including the CGI graphics and is still nicely animated. This episode features only an ending theme, the same one from the TV series but a slightly different cut of the song.

If you watched the entire TV series, you might as well watch this special just for completion sake. For, you, the random visitor who happens upon this review and haven't watched the TV series (yet!) you should really consider giving the entire series a shot.