7.5 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Anime | 100% |
Foreign | 90% |
Comedy | 32% |
Romance | 22% |
Fantasy | 19% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1
Japanese: Dolby TrueHD 2.0
English
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Five-disc set (2 BDs, 3 DVDs)
DVD copy
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
It’s been close to eighteen months since the first volume of Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts was released, and truth be told I had largely forgotten what an insane wonderment this series is. Goofy hardly even begins to describe this visually innovative and decidedly weirdly comic enterprise, one that might seem like a fairly typical shōnen enterprise on its face, but which is so completely out there so much of the time that any attempt to stuff it into this or that genre is most likely prone to utterly fail. As was discussed in the Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts Blu-ray review, “baka” is a slang term denoting an idiot, in this case the anime’s “hero” (for want of a better term), Akihisa Yoshii. Akihisa may indeed be a dunderheaded fool, but he’s not the only one. All of the students attending the Fumizuki Academy are separated by their abilities, with each group delineated by one letter of the alphabet, with Akihisa’s class being labeled with a big fat “F”. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (and one probably wouldn’t be available in this motley crew anyway) to figure out what that means, and Akihisa is surrounded by a gaggle of other characters who each have their own slightly lunatic elements, as well as a quite frequent lapse in general common sense. But Fumizuki Academy isn’t just any ordinary school, and its students, despite some of them not exactly being graced with outsized intelligence, have some very special talents. Fumizuki Academy might be thought of as a sort of comic version of Hogwart’s, for the kids there are able to summon various beings and/or powers and they routinely engage in matches (not quite Quidditch, but still) to determine where in the ultimate pecking order they’ll be placed. Now all of this may give at least a general idea of some elements of Baka and Test, but that idea is frankly on the very tippy- top of a quite bizarre iceberg.
Baka and Test Summon the Beasts Season Two is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of FUNimation Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. The series continues much along the same lines as Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts Season One, with an incredibly bright and varied palette that exploits everything from robust primaries to a lot of appealing pastels. The series offers an incredible variety of purely graphical elements (take a look at just some of the screenshots accompanying this review for some potent examples), and those all pop magnificently in this high definition presentation. Line detail remains strong, though this series does offer a kind of spooky recurring motif where spectral entities haunt various characters, and those sequences are intentionally much softer looking than the bulk of the series.
Baka and Test Summon the Beasts Season Two follows the same sonic pattern set up by the first season, with an English dub available in Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and the original Japanese language track delivered via Dolby TrueHD 2.0. The Japanese language track features some great voice work, but its lack of surround activity hobbles it somewhat, especially since this is an incredibly "busy" sounding series, and the English language track offers much more space for the listener to enter the noisiness. As with the first season, there's a lot of surround activity in any given episode, courtesy of some manic sound effects and even occasionally with some rather directional dialogue. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range is extremely wide.
- Beauty and the Beast (1080p; 3:53)
- Magical Hideyoshi, Hideyoshi, CM 1 (1080p; 00:49)
- Karaoke Mix (1080p; 5:33)
- Magical Hideyoshi, Hideyoshi, CM 2 (1080p; 1:11)
- Magical Hideyoshi, Hideyoshi (1080p; 3:01)
- Mission Impossibler: Baka (1080p; 4:33)
- Runaway Hiduki (1080p/ 5:08)
- Akihisa's Inquisition (1080p; 5:22)
- Cherry Blossoms Viewing Party (1080p; 6:10)
- Eureka Baby (1080p; 1:31)
- Baka To Koshitsu To Kodoku Meshi (1080p; 1:33)
- Hi-Ho!!! (1080p; 1:32)
Baka and Test make look like cotton candy a lot of the time, and it often is sugary sweet, but there are some kind of creepy and/or disturbing elements running just beneath the surface that may make some viewers at least a little queasy at times (and any parents who might be thinking of letting their kids watch this would be well advised to screen it first, as there are some overtly sexual references in several episodes). But the series is so incredibly wacky that it's really hard to get morally indignant about anything that goes on here. Graced by one of the most over the top but highly enjoyable animation styles of any relatively recent anime, Baka and Test is almost always a joy to behold even when it isn't making one whit of sense. This Blu-ray set looks and sounds great and comes replete with some good supplements. Highly Recommended.
2010
Season 1 Limited Edition
2010
Anime Classics
2010
2008-2009
Anime Classics
2002
Limited Edition
2013
Anime Classics / フルメタル·パニック!
2002
2007-2008
2010
はたらく魔王さま! / Hataraku Maou-sama!
2022
ソウルイーター
2008-2009
Classics
2006
Essentials
2010
2008-2009
Classics
2003
Anime Classics
2005
Anime Classics
2008-2009
2010
Essentials | 機巧少女は傷つかない / Mashin-Dôru wa Kizutsukanai
2013
S.A.V.E. Edition
2005
2010
2011