Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

Adventure Time: The Complete Fourth Season Blu-ray Movie Review

"Mayhaps we drank juice of the Elder Toad!"

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown October 8, 2014

You either love it, leave it, or loathe it. Or curse its very existence... and its popularity, which continues to baffle and enrage your sensibilities. Those who've invited Adventure Time home for dinner have found it to be a charming, disarmingly funny companion; one full of pleasant surprises, a quirky sense of humor and enough laughs to entertain on the dreariest of days. For those who've judged it from a safe distance, there's little sense to its seemingly random gags and references, and even less sense to its characters and stories. And really, at the end of the day, it comes down to this: you either get it or you don't. You buy in or check out. You sign up or toss the pencil across the desk and huff "good day to you, sir!" There isn't much room in between. Not that the Cartoon Network powers-that-be or creator Pendleton Ward are anything but content with the arrangement. Rather than produce an animated series for the masses, carefully calculating what might or might not attract the largest viewership, Ward and his cohorts have made a show for themselves and allowed the like-minded to gravitate to their work. Just as it should be. Even as T-shirts, action figures and other merchandising clog store shelves, the Adventure Time crew continues to hold fast, delivering the weird and wonderful without compromise. I'm sure many of you wouldn't bat an eye if it all came to an end. Some might even celebrate its demise. But Adventure Time isn't going anywhere soon, and like most everyone who's befriended Jake the Dog and Finn the Human, I couldn't be happier.

"I was thinking something else would happen."

It's one crazy adventure after another in Cartoon Network's hit comedy show and Emmy-nominated series. Follow the post-apocalyptic adventures of Finn (voiced by Jeremy Shada), a human boy with a funny hat, and his friend Jake (John DiMaggio), a magic and mischievous dog. They're out to have the most fun possible, whether it's saving Princess Bubblegum (Hynden Walch), battling zombie candy, taunting the Ice King (Tom Kenny) or rocking out with Marceline the Vampire Queen (Olivia Olson). Currently in its sixth season and already renewed for a seventh, the series is the #1 rated show among boys 6-11 and is the second highest rated show among boys 6-14 and kids 6-14, according to Nielsen Media Research. As Cartoon Network's #1 show, it has been lauded by critics, received multiple industry awards and has emerged as a fan-favorite brand for fans of all ages since its April 2010 debut.

Warner may be a few seasons behind the series' CN broadcast schedule, but slow-n-steady is a-okay by me. Adventure Time's fourth trek through the post-apocalyptic Land of Ooo offers another breath of delicious, candy-saturated fresh air. There isn't much in the way of a grand saga to root out, but no matter. Jake and Finn's latest round of Blu-ray adventures and misadventures is a 26-episode blast, complete with some of the craziest, zaniest, most colorful creatures to crawl off the brown-bag cover of a middle-school cartoonist's pre-algebra book. Voice actors continue to be cleverly mismatched with their characters, leading to a dervish of hilariously endearing outcasts and misfits perfectly suited to Ward's sugar-dusted gumdrop dystopia. And the world in which they live continues to defy the laws of physics, taste and convention, all to deliriously memorable ends. As for highlights, there are just too many to list... but here goes. Jake and Finn wake up in the hellish Nightosphere. Finn befriends a bear. Lumpy Space Princess goes undercover. Jake is captured by a Martian god. Erik Estrada as a quasi-telepathic worm king. Jake and Finn duke it out (again). Gunter clones! Bacon pancakes! Bubblegum vs. Goliad! Ron Perlman! Keith David! Card Wars! Good fun all around. Let's just leave it at this: more please.

The Blu-ray release of Adventure Time: The Complete Fourth Season features 26 episodes on a single BD-50 disc:

1. Hot to the Touch, Part 2
2. Five Short Graybies
3. Web Weirdos
4. Dream of Love
5. Return to the Nightosphere
6. Daddy's Little Monster
7. In Your Footsteps
8. Hug Wolf
9. Princess Monster Wife
10. Goliad
11. Beyond This Earthly Realm
12. Gotcha!
13. Princess Cookie
14. Card Wars
15. Sons of Mars
16. Burning Low
17. BMO Noire
18. King Worm
19. Lady & Pebbles
20. You Made Me
21. Who Would Win
22. Ignition Point
23. The Hard Easy
24. Reign of Gunters
25. I Remember You
26. The Lich

Adventure Time: The Complete Fourth Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Adventure Time returns to Blu-ray with another strong 1080p/VC-1 encoded video presentation that only suffers from a handful of predictable issues. Minor banding and almost negligible macroblocking sneak in from time to time (generally in darkly colored scenes and episodes), aliasing pops up on occasion (minor as well), and faux-zooms sometimes lead to soft, pixelated frames of animation. The majority of it is source-based, though, so there's no real cause for alarm. The series' palette is bright and bold, primaries have a nice healthy kick, black levels are inky, and detail is exacting, with crisp line art at every turn. Contrast and clarity are quite striking on the whole, especially compared to the Blu-ray's DVD counterpart, and there isn't much in the way of encoding anomalies or eyesores. And while Warner may have packed all 26 episodes on a single disc, there simply doesn't appear to be any significant compression problems to report. All told, The Complete Fourth Season is comparable to its HD predecessors and there's no shame in that.

Adventure Time: The Complete Fourth Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

I remain disappointed with the series' 320kbps Dolby Digital 2.0 audio tracks, but I'm coming to terms with the fact that this is as good as it gets. On the plus side, it's more than serviceable, hosting Adventure Time's voices, playful soundscape and heavier effects without incident. LFE support, rear speaker activity and a full-fledged lossless presentation would be preferred, of course, but there isn't much to grumble about here either, other than what might have been had Warner upped the sonic ante from previous seasons. Ah well. A boy can hope.

Adventure Time: The Complete Fourth Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Season Four Audio Commentaries: Creator Pendleton Ward and a variety of guests -- among them storyboard artist Rebecca Sugar, writer/storyboard artist Cole Sanchez, writer/storyboard artist Andy Ristaino, writer/storyboard artist Tom Herpich, storyboard artist Jesse Moynihan, writer/storyboard artist Ako Castuera and several others -- provide a five-hour audio commentary of the entire season, sharing the inspiration behind the various episodes, elaborating on the birth of dozens of jokes and references, touching on everything from the script-writing process to the animation (and beyond), and taking a hundred other production pit-stops fans of the series will gladly gobble up.
• Distant Bands (HD, 20 minutes): A candid look at the music of Adventure Time with Pen Ward, creative director/writer Pat McHale, and storyboard artists Jesse Moynihan and Rebecca Sugar. Among the topics of discussion: failed bands the showrunners tried to jumpstart long before Adventure Time came into being (Ward's all too real boy-band song is hilarious), the development of the series' theme song, the episode score and other memorable songs, and more. I couldn't get enough of this one. Great stuff.

Adventure Time: The Complete Fourth Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Adventure Time. Need I say more? With four seasons now available on Blu-ray and six airing in regular rotation on Cartoon Network, there's no excuse for standing idly by. Choose a side. If you dig the show, add this little gem to your cart. If you don't, what are you still doing reading this review? Warner's AV presentation is a mixed bag, sure, with an eye-popping video presentation paired with a lossy stereo mix. But the animation makes an impression, the encode is solid, the sound is decent enough, and the special features (among them 26 audio commentaries) add plenty of extra value. So what are you waiting for? Scoop up more Adventure Time and send Warner and Cartoon Network a clear message with your hard-earned cash: "more animated releases please! (P.S. Just with lossless audio next time, if you would.)"