Medabots: The Complete First Season dvd movie.|
Medabots: The Complete First Season buy bestselling dvd movies, videos find reviews, ratings, prices |
 |
List Price: $34.99 Our Price: $29.99 You Save: $5 Features • Animated • Box set • Color • DVD-Video • Full Screen • NTSC In Theaters : 1990 DVD Release : 15 January, 2008 |
| [ + Zoom ] [ Buy Now ] | DVD : Usually ships in 24 hours |
|
|
| ♥♥♥♥♥ | BE WARNED! Missing episodes and no Japanese audio track! |
| Medabots - The Complete First Season.
Medabots is the latest in a long-line of Pokemon rip-offs. The series follows the adventures of various kids in the future, and robots they use to battle each other. In particular, the adventures of a boy named Ikki are followed, who has to save up money to buy an outdated robot model, which is all he can afford. As far as Pokemon rip-offs go (and there are a LOT of them out there), Medabots isn't bad. The characters and their robots are all interesting, and definitely add to the appeal. But perhaps best of all, unlike Pokemon, this is a series that stays true to its Japanese roots - with darker storyline elements retained, and virtually no changes to character names/pronunciations. In other words, a good series, and even more importantly, an anime that has been dubbed well. If all the praise for the series, why such a low rating? There are a TON of negative issues with this set, unfortunately. While this reviewer certainly applauds Shout! Factory's attempts to bring this and numerous other series to DVD, let's be realistic - the execution of these projects has been spotty (no disclaimers for changed music, frequent false promises of a complete series/season/etc., bad menus, poor picture quality - you get the idea.) Regretfully, Medabots not only falls victim to the usual Shout! Factory issues, it fares even WORSE! Read on for the issues. 1) Episodes are not shown in original Japanese production order. Because of this, the overall progressing-arc plotline of the series makes no sense. The purpose of a set like this is to unite the episodes, so they can be viewed continuously, as intended by the creator. Naturally, this doesn't work with a progressing-arc series that has been aired out of order. 2) Contains the ENGLISH DUBBED VERSION ONLY. When you put anime on DVD, you ALWAYS INCLUDE THE ORIGINAL JAPANESE AUDIO TRACK WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES. Period. Failure to do this strikes a fatal blow to what could have been a great compilation. A Shout! Factory representative claims this was due to edits and such being made to the dub, but in the day and age of seamless branching and multiple audio tracks, why should this even be a problem? 3) MISSING EPISODES. Yes, you read that right. Missing episodes. Shout! Factory is falsely marketing this as a "COMPLETE First Season", yet omits three vital episodes. You DO NOT market your set as complete unless it is seriously complete, and free of missing content. This only further cripples the progressive plotline arc the series has going for it. Audio/visual quality is more or less what we've come to expect from Shout! Factory releases. The show has been slapped on DVD with no remastering or sound improvement of any kind. Image quality is dirty and unrefined, and the sound suffers as well. It's an improvement over the TV airings and VHS pressings of the series, but a huge disappointment for the DVD format. All we get as far as bonus material goes is an episode of another series called Oban Star Racers. So, in other words, Shout! Factory can give us an episode of a completely irrelevant series, yet can't give us the PROMISED complete first season? Seriously, the bonus episode of that show featured on here isn't half bad, but it doesn't belong on here, especially not in lieu of missing episodes of the series the DVD is actually for! Medabots is probably the best in a long line of Pokemon rip-offs. And as much as I would like to recommend this set, the horrid DVD set with missing episodes, weak audio and visual quality, episodes out of order, and no Japanese audio track completely ruin it. Hopefully, Medabots will eventually get a DVD set done right. But this isn't it. |
|
|