Maburaho Volume 2 DVD Review

By Dansolo Published: February 21, 2006

PACKAGING AND MENU

9 / 10

The DVD cover has an image of Yuna with a smaller image of Kazuki just above her hand. The spine and back are a dark green. The blurb on the back is once again not to my liking, though it’s better than the first volume. The menus are again fast and pretty easy to navigate. The music is the same as volume 1 and is generic background music from the show that lends itself well to a menu.

Also, I didn’t touch upon this previously, but I’d like to quickly mention the neat inserts that accompany these discs. While not being as thorough as Azumanga Daioh, it has some background information (relating some information from the show to some real people) and some short comics. In this volume, we have some text about Piotr Twardowski, a sixteenth century alchemist said to also be involved with magic. It’s certainly worth a look. It’d be nice if this would be done with more series.

FEATURES

6.5 / 10

The extras presented include interviews with Blake Shepard (Kazuki in the English dub) and Luci Christian (Yamase in the English dub), clean opening/ending sequences, and picture galleries. I’m giving this a lower grade than volume 1 because I am not a fan of the dub, so the interviews with the voice actors mean less to me. However, since there at least was an interview, that must be awarded some points.

VIDEO

6 / 10

Not much has changed here from volume 1. The video is presented in an interlaced format. There is a fair amount of dot crawl and rainbowing present. The picture is fairly blurry, both in lines and in detail. It is likely that much of this is not ADV’s fault, but nonetheless, it is a problem.

AUDIO

6 / 10

Again, not much has changed from volume 1. The dub is still bad, with some characters completely mispronouncing names. The English track is still presented in 5.1 surround with some directionality and no major technical problems that I noted. The Japanese track is once again stereo with lacking directionality. The Japanese track is what I recommend you listen to, as the voice actors continue to do a good job here. The background music is typically pretty boring in either case, though.

CONTENT

7 / 10

Yuna and Kuriko have their hands full trying to teach Rin to be feminine. Is that even possible? Then, Kazuki’s parents plan to visit, so everyone is in a rush to meet them. A little class rivalry at the school festival has Kazuki torn between his own class and his childhood friend. To top that off, a little kid tries to steal some jewels from the dorm! Will Kazuki ever get to have a day off?!

While being a pretty generic harem, I must say that I have been enjoying Maburaho. I particularly like the character designs, especially Yuna and Rin. There is no shortage of ecchi, yet I don’t consider it as trying too hard in that area. Those scenes are particularly destroyed in the English track, however.

The voice actors (in Japanese), as noted before, do a good job. Kazuki can speak with a little too much excitement sometimes, but I would guess that was purposeful. I’m not going to include the dub in my content rating because that’s not how I normally watch it and so it doesn’t detract from my normal viewing experience.

Everything that happens in volume 2 is pretty generic, but I still found it interesting. Kazuki can get kind of annoying sometimes, but usually those scenes don’t last long. Volume 2 does see some character development, especially in Rin, which is probably one of the things I was hoping for the most.

At the end of the day, it’s still a generic harem show. If you’re into them, I suggest you check Maburaho out. If you’re not, then this is not the show for you.

OVERALL

6 / 10

While I am enjoying Maburaho so far, there are some things I don’t like about the release. The video quality is not very good. The English dub is terrible. The Japanese dub makes up for that, fortunately. The subtitles seem to be pretty accurate, though the editing could use a little more work. It’s not terrible, though. The editors need to work harder when splitting up lines due to pauses. For example, “But what their target was… my genes!”

The bottom line is if you like the first volume, pick up the second. If you have yet to see Maburaho, then decide first on whether the content sounds good to you, and then decide if the bad English dub or the less-than-stellar video quality would bug you. If you only watch anime dubbed in English, you should probably pass on this one.