Post by numbuheightbitstar on Jul 7, 2007 22:51:43 GMT
With the permission of the Mods, I'd like to make two review topics... one for cartoons, and one for anime (I don't think the posters want me to hijack the anime/manga discussion topic). The reason is because I feel like if I made them all just one topic, the cartoons would get drowned out by the anime.
Anyway, this is a topic for reviewing cartoon (not anime) videos and DVDs. We post reviews of specific boxed sets, DVD volumes, etc.
I'll post more detailed guidelines later. But for now, I'd like to get the ball rolling. I present for my first review:
Transformers: The Complete First Season
DVD box set
released by Rhino Video
Review by James 8-Bit Star
My score: 7/10
Before watching this boxed set, I never really got what the big deal was about Transformers. I mean yeah, the Movie was great and I'm a child of the eighties, but Transformers didn't really define my idea of that era. After watching all sixteen episodes of this set though, I came to understand the appeal.
No time is wasted on the setup: On the planet Cybertron, the good Autobots and the evil Decepticons are at war. Running low on resources, the Autobots travel to Earth and are tailed by the Decepticons, resulting in their ships crashing and lying dormant for four million years. Finally their emergency repair system kicks in and both Autobot and Decepticon are awakened to begin the battle anew on modern-day Earth (or, modern-day circa 1984 at any rate).
The show continues from there, one event happening after another. In a rather refreshing break from the typical eighties formula, plotlines in the first season of Transformers don't revolve around "latest evil plan of the badguy" schemes, rather things tend to happen as a consequence of new discoveries or play off other events. Sometimes, an episode's plot revolves around something that happened in a previous episode, so there's sort of a serialized nature that goes beyond the few multi-parters present on this set, though near the end the show starts to slip into the typical "villain plan of the day" mold.
Also refreshing is the mentality of the characters. Optimus Prime (leader of the Autobots) is the good guy but he's no goody-good--he tries outright to kill Megatron (the Decepticon leader) and makes no bones about wanting to, several times. Megatron and his Decepticons, by the same token, often attack with all-out assaults intended to destroy. Even though nobody dies, you still get the feeling that this is a real war more than you do in most other cartoons (and more than you do in later seasons of Transformers, which sadly drop almost everything that makes the first season kinda cool). This being an eighties cartoon, we also get some of the things that defined "good writing" in that era--loyalty and moral conflicts, though in Transformers these tend to play second fiddle to the robots blasting each other.
Though despite the refreshing lack of typical good and evil mentalities, the show does have rather flat characters. Most of them talk too much but don't really say or do anything too characterizing, but I guess this lack of definition is to be expected when about ten major characters are introduced all at once. The episodes are generally worthwhile, and are written efficiently so that a thirty-minute episode feels more like an hour, however at times the show gets sort of dry.
Now, about the DVDs: Generally, the quality of both the sound and video is quite good--clear sound, clean visuals. However, Rhino made some flubs. First of all, each episode has two soundtracks: A 5.1 remix and a 2.0 stereo mix. The 5.1 mix contains all sorts of additional sound effects that weren't originally in the show. The sounds themselves aren't really so bad, just sometimes they make the dialogue hard to hear. Fortunately, for all except disc two, you can simply switch to the 2.0 soundtrack to hear the show as it originally sounded. No such luck with the video though--Rhino used pre-broadcast video footage for their sets, which means there's more than a few animation errors on these sets that weren't there on TV. Fortunately, these don't really detract from the experience all that much--at worst, they provide unintentional laughs.
The DVD has a few extras, but most of them are worthless, including a "blooper reel" that doesn't make any sense. The most interesting thing it has is material on the Japanese version of Transformers (Transformers itself is not anime but it did have a large presence in Japan and they did make anime sequels). It kind of annoys me that the clips, eyecatches, and Japanese intro are not actually from Transformers but from the three made-in-Japan sequels, but other people may find this stuff interesting.
Is Transformers: The First Season worthwhile? I would say yes, if only to see what the big deal is about this whole "Transformers" thing (however, Transformers: the Movie might be a better starting point). One deterrent is that Rhino's Transformers sets are out-of-print and have become collector's items. However, the show is still in print in other countries--both Australia and Great Britain recently got boxed sets collecting the entire Transformers series. China had one long before. The one issue I've heard people had with most of these is that they're sourced from Rhino's DVDs and use Rhino's 5.1 track, so you can't get away from the remixed sounds, though its up to individual tastes whether this is even an issue. If you're a real nut, you might even try to import the Japanese sets (though these only contain one audio track and its not English). All in all, worth a look-see at the very least, if you can find it for a reasonable price.
Anyway, this is a topic for reviewing cartoon (not anime) videos and DVDs. We post reviews of specific boxed sets, DVD volumes, etc.
I'll post more detailed guidelines later. But for now, I'd like to get the ball rolling. I present for my first review:
Transformers: The Complete First Season
DVD box set
released by Rhino Video
Review by James 8-Bit Star
My score: 7/10
Before watching this boxed set, I never really got what the big deal was about Transformers. I mean yeah, the Movie was great and I'm a child of the eighties, but Transformers didn't really define my idea of that era. After watching all sixteen episodes of this set though, I came to understand the appeal.
No time is wasted on the setup: On the planet Cybertron, the good Autobots and the evil Decepticons are at war. Running low on resources, the Autobots travel to Earth and are tailed by the Decepticons, resulting in their ships crashing and lying dormant for four million years. Finally their emergency repair system kicks in and both Autobot and Decepticon are awakened to begin the battle anew on modern-day Earth (or, modern-day circa 1984 at any rate).
The show continues from there, one event happening after another. In a rather refreshing break from the typical eighties formula, plotlines in the first season of Transformers don't revolve around "latest evil plan of the badguy" schemes, rather things tend to happen as a consequence of new discoveries or play off other events. Sometimes, an episode's plot revolves around something that happened in a previous episode, so there's sort of a serialized nature that goes beyond the few multi-parters present on this set, though near the end the show starts to slip into the typical "villain plan of the day" mold.
Also refreshing is the mentality of the characters. Optimus Prime (leader of the Autobots) is the good guy but he's no goody-good--he tries outright to kill Megatron (the Decepticon leader) and makes no bones about wanting to, several times. Megatron and his Decepticons, by the same token, often attack with all-out assaults intended to destroy. Even though nobody dies, you still get the feeling that this is a real war more than you do in most other cartoons (and more than you do in later seasons of Transformers, which sadly drop almost everything that makes the first season kinda cool). This being an eighties cartoon, we also get some of the things that defined "good writing" in that era--loyalty and moral conflicts, though in Transformers these tend to play second fiddle to the robots blasting each other.
Though despite the refreshing lack of typical good and evil mentalities, the show does have rather flat characters. Most of them talk too much but don't really say or do anything too characterizing, but I guess this lack of definition is to be expected when about ten major characters are introduced all at once. The episodes are generally worthwhile, and are written efficiently so that a thirty-minute episode feels more like an hour, however at times the show gets sort of dry.
Now, about the DVDs: Generally, the quality of both the sound and video is quite good--clear sound, clean visuals. However, Rhino made some flubs. First of all, each episode has two soundtracks: A 5.1 remix and a 2.0 stereo mix. The 5.1 mix contains all sorts of additional sound effects that weren't originally in the show. The sounds themselves aren't really so bad, just sometimes they make the dialogue hard to hear. Fortunately, for all except disc two, you can simply switch to the 2.0 soundtrack to hear the show as it originally sounded. No such luck with the video though--Rhino used pre-broadcast video footage for their sets, which means there's more than a few animation errors on these sets that weren't there on TV. Fortunately, these don't really detract from the experience all that much--at worst, they provide unintentional laughs.
The DVD has a few extras, but most of them are worthless, including a "blooper reel" that doesn't make any sense. The most interesting thing it has is material on the Japanese version of Transformers (Transformers itself is not anime but it did have a large presence in Japan and they did make anime sequels). It kind of annoys me that the clips, eyecatches, and Japanese intro are not actually from Transformers but from the three made-in-Japan sequels, but other people may find this stuff interesting.
Is Transformers: The First Season worthwhile? I would say yes, if only to see what the big deal is about this whole "Transformers" thing (however, Transformers: the Movie might be a better starting point). One deterrent is that Rhino's Transformers sets are out-of-print and have become collector's items. However, the show is still in print in other countries--both Australia and Great Britain recently got boxed sets collecting the entire Transformers series. China had one long before. The one issue I've heard people had with most of these is that they're sourced from Rhino's DVDs and use Rhino's 5.1 track, so you can't get away from the remixed sounds, though its up to individual tastes whether this is even an issue. If you're a real nut, you might even try to import the Japanese sets (though these only contain one audio track and its not English). All in all, worth a look-see at the very least, if you can find it for a reasonable price.