Duel Masters - The Good, The Bad and the Bolshack (DVD, 2005)

As DVD reviews should not be confused with series reviews, it is more my intent to review the actual disc of "Duel Masters" than the series, which in itself holds subjective praise and criticism from fans worldwide.

This, being the first disc of Paramount Entertaiment's series of "Duel Masters" DVDs, could be accepted with a few flaws (especially considering the company's near-total inexperience with Japanese animation) but the presentation on this disc is totally unacceptable. The disc boots and directly moves to movie-style trailers of other programs, and while this has become commonplace for many mainstream film companies to do, the option to skip directly to the main menu is disabled in every way, thus forcing the viewer to manually skip ahead through each individual trailer until reaching the main menu, whereupon, finally, he or she can start watching Duel Masters.

The menus are moving, which is a plus, and though not particularly exciting, do a decent job for a DVD oriented toward younger audiences. Unfortunately, the two options for viewers are "PLAY MOVIE" and "SPECIAL FEATURES" with no 'scene select' to be found anywhere. Considering that this is a multi-episode disc, this is deplorable, to say the least, as it demands that, to watch different parts of the main animated portion of the disc, one must start the movie and manually skip to the desired scene. In some cases, even I could forgive such laziness, but Paramount (again, rather green in the realm of Japanese animation), didn't seem to care very much about placing chapter stops in the proper places, nor did they allow for a way to watch individual episodes with the show's opening and ending sequences left intact. Even for a disc geared toward children, this is not acceptable in any way, and the main portion of the disc gets no credit from me.

As for those "SPECIAL FEATURES," there's actually only one. Really. The two options on this side-menu are 1) to watch those lovely previews you had to manually skip-through all over again, and 2) a visual tutorial on how to play the Duel Masters trading card game. While the second option may seem interesting to the curious, it seems rather out-of-place on an animation disc, as there are certainly those who would enjoy the show itself and not care about the actual card game. Thus, it comes across as a promotional item placed by Hasbro upon the disc to sell their Wizards of the Coast-brand Duel Masters cards. To their credit, its actually quite good at teaching the mechanics of the game, and likely more intuitive to younger viewers than reading through an instruction manual.

But overall, this first disc of the series is a disappointment. The menus are lazy, the extras are nearly nonexistent, and the navigation of the show itself is pitiful. Fans of the series needn't be scared away, as the show itself is left intact in its hilarious English-dubbed form, without optional Japanese dubbing (as is common in children's Japanese animation ports), but I honestly can't give Paramount any more credit than that.