Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

D-Frag!: Complete Series LE Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 2, 2015

Japan has a burnished reputation for being an ordered, highly intellectual society where well behaved kids thrive in rather strict academic settings. Is it all just an illusion? One might be forgiven for thinking so courtesy of any number of manga and anime, which, while existing within the shōnen subgenre, seem to suggest that many (maybe even most) Japanese schoolchildren are less interested in their day to day class activities than in their extracurricular clubs. The “club” phenomenon in Japan is truly unlike anything in the United States. Sure, American kids will stay after school to participate in sporting activities or theater productions or any number of other social activities, but the Japanese, for whatever reason, seem to have raised this aspect to a level approaching Art. There are clubs for any number of outré subjects, at least in the often wild and wooly world of Japanese fiction and animation. D-Frag! might initially be seen as “just another” club based anime, but there’s actually another interesting subtext going on, this one actually pertinent to that “other” element of Japanese culture, namely that Japanese kids are so well behaved. Lead character Kenji Kazama actually considers himself to be something of a renegade, and as a newcomer to his high school is out to prove just what a “bad boy” he really is. Unfortunately for Kenji, he’s not nearly the juvenile delinquent he evidently thinks he is, and soon enough he’s ensnared in the chaotic machinations of the school’s so-called Game Creation Club, which (as so often seems to be the case in club based manga and anime) is on the verge of extinction, badly in need of new members. Kenji is targeted as a likely inductee by a gaggle of girls who have their own delusions at play.

It’s perhaps indicative of how goofily surreal D-Frag! can be that it’s not immediately clear whether the coterie of girls who are trying to recruit Kenji into the Game Creation Club are semi-delusional or actually do have “magical” powers (hint: it’s the former, kind of, anyway). This weirdness is perhaps best exemplified by club president Roka Shibasaki, a girl who like the other females in the club supposedly has an “elemental” power at her beck and call, which is initially supposed to be fire. When that “power” doesn’t work out, Roka is able to fall back on another talent, darkness, which in this case means pulling a bag over the head of whomever she is trying to put a spell on.

It’s this sort of patently gonzo approach that gives D-Frag! its most distinctive flavor. The anime is relentlessly noisy and frenetic a lot of the times, with cascading sight gags spilling over each other as the girls, none of whom suffer fools gladly, become surprisingly aggressive about making sure the Game Creation Club continues to survive, if not thrive. Kenji’s badass attitude is threatened by these overt displays of “girl power,” in one of the series’ nice touches of gender inequality. The interplay between Kenji and the main girls of the Game Creation Club tends to work at least a little better than some of the offshoots of the plot, including a second similar club whose existence threatens the first.

What’s a little unexpected about D-Frag!, at least in its early going, is how the whole Game Development angle is curiously lacking in any, well, game development. The series instead focuses on the characters rather than their exploits, but that actually provides suitable foundation for the middle part of the series, when some game competition does come into the picture. While always extremely colorful, some of the supporting characters, such as Kenji’s two acolytes, are at times more “types” than actual characters, though Kenji and the focal female quartet in the Game Development Club are offered enough time to establish distinctive characteristics.

Occasionally a bit too repetitive for its own good, D-Frag! ultimately succeeds simply because it never takes anything, let alone itself, very seriously. Kenji’s membership in the Game Development Club finally gets him into an initially competitive relationship with Tama Sakai, a former student council president who seems to have more than a passing interest in Kenji from the get go. Here the series is a bit more traditional, allowing initial combatants a chance to move on to something more “meaningful,” but through it all, the craziness of the supporting characters keeps a lot of D-Frag! feeling like a three ring circus that’s just slightly out of control.

D-Frag!: Complete Series LE Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

D-Frag! is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of FUNimation Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is one of the crisper, more precise and enjoyable looking anime we've had from FUNimation lately, one that exhibits a number of different design aesthetics (contrast "colored pencil" screenshots like numbers 1 and 6 with more traditional looking moments like those found in screenshot 2 or 8). Colors are appealingly robust, with blues, reds and purples especially vivid and well saturated. Line detail is sharp and consistent. The overall image is commendably sharp and clear, and D-Frag! is even largely free of bugaboos like banding.

D-Frag!: Complete Series LE Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

D-Frag! features the original Japanese language track delivered in Dolby TrueHD 2.0, and an English dub in Dolby TrueHD 5.1. Considering what a frenetic, even manic, enterprise D-Frag! often is, the 5.1 track is curiously tamped down at times, content to let surround activity spill out in occasional sound effects and brief bursts of low frequency sonics. Voice work on both tracks in clean and clear, and neither track exhibits any problems of any kind.

D-Frag!: Complete Series LE Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Disc One:

• Episode 1 Commentary features Austin Tindle, Ian Sinclair, J. Michael Tatum and Josh Grelle.

Disc Two:

• Episode 10 Commentary features Jerry Jewell, Whitney Rodgers, and Bryn Apprill.


• Pre Air Commercials:

  A bird? A plane? No, it's a new anime! (1080i; 00:17)

  You want to join my club, don't you? (1080i; 00:32)

• Promotional Video (1080i; 1:52)


• The New BD/DVD Cheer (1080i; 00:49)


• The New BD/DVD Cheer (Funabori Version) (1080i; 00:17)


• A Commercial Within a Commercial (1080i; 00:17)


• Mobile Rally Commercial (1080i; 00:17)


• Textless Opening Song "Stalemate!" (1080p; 1:32)


• Textless Closing Song "Minna no Namae wo Irete Kudasai" (1080p; 1:32)


• U.S. Trailer (1080p; 1:33)

D-Frag!: Complete Series LE Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Occasionally just a bit forced feeling, and often relentlessly frenetic to the point of almost being annoying, D-Frag! still is so generally wacky and even bizarre that it manages to overcome any momentary stumbles to provide an overall very enjoyable viewing experience. Some of the characters are fairly two dimensional, seemingly only there to fulfill certain "type" requirements, but Kenji and the focal females are all quite engaging and the series maintains a generally high level of goofy humor. Technical merits are very strong, and D-Frag! comes Recommended.