The DVD starts out with an episode titled The Suitor. We look in on Peppermint Butler as he continues the dark ceremony already underway. He appears to be summoning a demon into the body of Cinnamon Bun. Believe me, if any show can make demonic possession kind of funny and adorable, it’s this show. I will likely continue to write "WTF" sentences such as this as this review goes on, so brace yourself.
If you’re not worried about the content because you think things like demons will fly over your kid’s head, there still might be cause for concern in this DVD. When the suitor, Braco, goes searching for the rare soul stone, he goes through some pretty scary terrain. There are huge, dark, clawed creatures, some with split heads and gaping mouths that are the fuel for children’s nightmares. There’s a lot of this sort of strange and awful stuff in this collection. For example, in Wizards Only, Fools, there’s an elite guard that keeps the non-wizard folk out of the city. They are blindfolded until they attack, pulling up the blindfold and vaporizing their targets with a magical blast. For adults, it’s funny because it’s an extreme moment of terror in an otherwise silly environment. It’s the bizarre, serious and not so serious moments of Adventure Time that help build a rich world and make it so compelling to watch. But hey, some of those moments are probably a bit much for very young kids. I’m in the camp that kids can and should get over this kind of thing (Heck, have you ever seen The Neverending Story? That’s from when I grew up.), but I’d like to put out fair warning.
It’s not all "scary" strange in this DVD. There’s plenty of milder, crazy episodes like James Baxter the Horse. It’s an episode about a horse that cheers people up by rolling around on a beach ball and neighing his name, "James Baxter." Yeah, there might not be drug testing over at the Adventure Time studio, but you know what? That’s A-OK.
This is another compilation episode, so you’re not getting episodes here in any particular order. It does seem to focus mostly on Season 5, but there are some S4, S3, S2 and S1 episodes in here as well. The full list of episodes is listed above.
Special features of this DVD are limited to only one. It’s another fact sheet compilation about Adventure Time characters featured in this DVD. It’s great if you want to brush up on your Adventure Time trivia, but not good for much else. Overall, this is another DVD that you’re going to just have to decide on based on the grab-bag of episodes. You can also pick up these episodes, and more current Seasons in digital formats, so that might sway your decision. Good episodes? Yes. Do they belong together? My answer is no, but it might work for someone else.
