Maburaho Volume 4 DVD Review

By Dansolo Published: March 23, 2006

PACKAGING AND MENU

8.5 / 10

The DVD cover has a cute image of Shino holding Kazuki in a bird cage with a yellow and white background. I’d say it’s quite appropriate for this volume, and it’s probably one of my favorite cover images to the show. The spine is a pleasant shade of purple that looks nice with the other discs in the box.

The blurb on the back is much better than previous volumes but I really prefer a basic summary of the disc. 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 Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, “the father of modern magic.” While still being somewhat interesting, I think this one kind of drags on a little bit more than the information in the previous volumes with very generic info on him.

FEATURES

7 / 10

The extras presented include interviews with Jessica Boone (Yuna in the English dub) and Monica Rial (Shino in the English dub) clean opening/ending sequences, and picture galleries. Again, I am not a fan of the dub, but I did somewhat enjoy this interview – I enjoy the discussion between these two because they’re interesting and occasionally funny. And they even do a decent job pronouncing most of the Japanese, which seems a bit rare in this show.

VIDEO

6.5 / 10

This volume seems to be a little better than previous volumes, but there is still some dot crawl present. Detail is still a bit lacking. Dark scenes have some banding and blocking but it is not overly distracting. Rainbowing is basically non-existent in this volume, fortunately.

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. Shino appears in this volume and she does a decent job. The Japanese track is presented in stereo and is what I recommend you listen to, as the voice actors all continue to do a good job here. I do want to mention that Kazuki as a ghost has a neat echo effect added to his voice which I thought was a good touch.

CONTENT

7 / 10

Kazuki is now a ghost. He has a hard time even picking up a pencil, but those aren’t his only problems. A “ghost fanatic” has appeared and has her eye set on a new ghost, and that just happens to be Kazuki! And Kazuki, not being the most intelligent of people, keeps falling into her traps. But fortunately, he has some help…

And just when they think they’ve won, they find out that this “fanatic” is a relative of someone they know well, and now she’ll be working as an assistant at school! Will Kazuki be okay!?

Taking a break from Shino, Rin’s kendo tutor comes by to bring Rin back, but she refuses because… she’s become engaged to Kazuki!? Will he buy it? What? He’s going to test them by… fighting them!? Do they have any chance of winning?

There’s not much of a change from previous volumes here. Kazuki is annoyingly stupid and overly nice, as usual. We have less Kuriko than usual here, but we do have some Rin time, which is always nice – especially when we get to see her be nice. On one hand, the plot here is kind of random, but on the other hand, that also means it’s probably not a show where you can just tell what’s going to happen without even watching the rest. I am continuing to enjoy it.

OVERALL

6.5 / 10

While the dub still bothers me, the technical qualities on this volume appear to have slightly improved. The interview extra was also more enjoyable than the previous ones.

While not much changes in this volume, it’s still fairly interesting and new characters are introduced. Again, if you’ve liked the previous volumes, stick with it.