Maburaho Volume 3 DVD Review

By Dansolo Published: March 10, 2006

PACKAGING AND MENU

9 / 10

The DVD cover has an image of Yuna (somewhat scantily clad) holding a much smaller Kazuki. The spine and back are a pleasant blue. The blurb on the back is still not to my liking. I think they’re trying too hard in that area. The menus are again fast and pretty easy to navigate. The music is the same as the previous volumes and is generic background music from the show that lends itself well to a menu.

Again, 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 and some short comics. In this volume, we have some information about Paracelsus, another alchemist said to be the father of toxicology. It’s pretty interesting. It’d be nice if this would be done with more series.

FEATURES

6.5 / 10

The extras presented include interviews with Tiffany Grant (Kuriko in the English dub) clean opening/ending sequences, and picture galleries. Again, I am not a fan of the dub, so the interview means little to me. However, since there at least was an interview, that must again be awarded some points.

VIDEO

6 / 10

Not much has changed here from the previous volumes. 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 the previous volumes. The dub is still bad, with many characters completely mispronouncing names. The English track is still presented in 5.1 surround. In addition to the normal voices, we have plenty of southern accents appearing which always bugs me. That choice was made because the characters in question have a heavily accented speech in Japanese, but I still can’t stand southern accents in my dubs. I couldn’t bring myself to listen to the whole track. 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.

CONTENT

7 / 10

This volume is spent trying to increase Kazuki’s magic. Can Kazuki stay underwater for over two years to do so? Everyone ends up playing baseball to increase his spell power, but if they lose, they go to… Hell? Then, the group learns of a magical charm (magatama) that belonged to a former student of Aoi Gakuen, but that student has already passed away. Will they find it? Also, Yuna’s father tells her of a medicine that might be able to help, but Yuna ends up getting sick. Will Kazuki be able to last the whole volume without running out of magic?

The third volume of the series continues like the previous volumes, though the focus is shifted to increasing Kazuki’s magic. Kazuki continues as usual, being happy-go-lucky all the time, and at times being downright annoying. Fortunately, the moments where I find him annoying generally don’t last too long.

The first few episodes don’t link together very much, making the volume seem episodic at first, which is not something I really mind. However, there is progression later in the disc. It’s kind of a cliffhanger and it makes me look forward to watching volume 4. As a side-note, make sure you watch the next episode previews on this disc if you don’t normally.

OVERALL

6 / 10

The technical qualities as well as the dub continue to bother me. I noticed more editing errors in the subtitles than the previous volumes, though I haven’t gone through any of them with a fine tooth comb.

Though it has its bad points, this volume does again manage to progress the plot, so I would recommend sticking with it if you’ve liked the show so far. However, if you don’t like cliffhangers, you might want to obtain later volumes before finishing this one off.