Baka and Test: OVA Blu-ray

Baka and Test: OVA

 (2011)

Baka and Test: OVA Blu-ray delivers great video and audio in this enjoyable Blu-ray release
No synopsis for Baka and Test: OVA.

For more about Baka and Test: OVA and the Baka and Test: OVA Blu-ray release, see the Baka and Test: OVA Blu-ray Review

Starring: Josh Grelle, Scott Freeman

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Baka and Test: OVA Blu-ray Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, February 4, 2013

There's a famous ad campaign for candy bars that has the memorable jingle, "Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't." Though that slogan is an obvious play on words, since one of the candy bars features almonds, in a more colloquial sense, if you're feeling like a nut and want to watch one of the nuttiest anime ever made, you'd be hard pressed to find a loonier show than Baka and Test. Baka and Test is a pretty slight entry to begin with, although hugely enjoyable almost all of the time due to its manic humor and (especially) its incredible visual style, but some might question the need for short form outings like OVAs to begin with in a series of these modest ambitions. These two standalone episodes fall between Baka and Test's first and second, and if they don't offer much in terms of any real plot developments (such as that is ever part of this often "skit"-like series), they also provide a perhaps surprising amount of fun and enjoyment, especially for those who are already tuned into the wild and wooly universe of this frequently over the top show.



Baka and Test is at its core an anime about a group of misfits, kind of a cartoon version of, say, The Bad News Bears or perhaps more appropriately that old sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter. The whole misfit scenario is brought home to bear rather unavoidably by the fact that the focal group of students in Baka and Test are in the lowly "Class F", the bottom most tier in a rather unusual school which might be termed an academy for fans of Magic (the card game) or Yu-Gi-Oh! or even Dragon Ball Z, in fact any medium, animated or otherwise, that employs "summoning" as part of its strategic game play. The anime's slightly (or maybe more than slightly) dunderheaded hero, Akihisa Yoshii (also transliterated Yoshi in some versions), is usually involved in some kind of harebrained scheme, though usually with the best of intentions, and quite often with the hope of improving his fellow Class F-mates' lot in school life.

While the main series sometimes strays fairly far from the school shenanigans of Yoshii and his friends, these two OVAs are pretty much resolutely school based and in fact both deal as much with Yuji Sakamoto, the "Costello" to Yoshii's "Abbott", as they do with Yoshii himself. The first episode is a kind of manic outing (nothing new for long time fans of Baka and Test), where the kids are all involved in the so-called Cultural Festival, but which ends up dealing as much with maid outfits as anything more ostensibly "cultural". (What is it with the fascination with maid's outfits in so many anime, especially when they're not part of an anime's overarching fan service?)

The second episode falls more into what is a standard trope for this series, or maybe even two standard tropes. In this one, the kids are involved in a Summoning Tournament with the hope of winning better desks for their shabbily appointed classroom. (One of the recurring gags in Baka and Test is the uncomfortable conditions in Class F as compared to the luxe accommodations in the higher ranked classrooms.) This episode turns into a cascading series of events when our already mentally challenged gang decides to start cheating to win their contests, only to be confronted by another set of people who aren't doing things by the rules of Hoyle (or whatever rules apply to a Summoning Tournament).

Neither of these OVAs is a huge deal, but they're enjoyable in a predictable fashion, offering the same over the top humor and really fun visual style that has been a hallmark of Baka and Test. There's nothing here that those who never see these two episodes is going to miss, at least from the standpoint of being able to pick up the story in, say, the second season, which occurs after these two OVAs. But on the other hand, those who have enjoyed the crazy adventures of Baka and Test may well want to check these out if only to be able to spend another hour or so laughing at the improbable occurrences that regularly dot the world of the Fumizuki Academy.

Baka and Test: OVA Blu-ray, Video Quality

 

Baka and Test: OVA is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of FUNimation Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. As readers of my previous Baka and Test reviews know, this has been one of my favorite looking anime released over the past couple of years. The two OVAs continue that visual ingenuity, and in fact one of the most interesting thing about both of these episodes is how often the animators place items in the foreground, through which the viewer catches glimpses of what's really going on in the background. As with a lot of the main arc of Baka and Test episodes, there is a ton of purely graphical information populating both of these OVAs, with polka dots, words (via Japanese ideographs) and other supposedly tangential information floating across the screen. These OVAs look just a little softer than some of the main episodes for some reason, but they both offer really nicely saturated and robust color and generally very sharp line detail.

Baka and Test: OVA Blu-ray, Audio Quality

 

Baka and Test: OVA features a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix in English and a Dolby TrueHD 2.0 mix in the original Japanese. As has been the case with a lot of anime releases, the Japanese mix is noticeably quieter than the English mix, and not simply due to it not being a surround offering. There are some interesting differences in the approaches the voice actors bring to their characters in the two languages, so real fans may want to check both of these out for that reason alone. All of this said, there's little doubt that the English track provides a lot more bombast and some nicely consistent surround activity. The two OVAs, like the main series itself, are quite noisy quite a bit (some would even argue most) of the time, and the 5.1 mix offers a little "breathing room" (and/or listening room) rather than focusing so much audio information toward the center, as the 2.0 mix does. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range is very wide.

Baka and Test: OVA Blu-ray, Special Features and Extras

 

• OVA 1 Split: Hideyoshi Kinoshita, Mizuki Himeji and Minami Shimada (1080p; 10:52)


• OVA 2 Split: Ending (1080p; 4:01)


• Promotional Videos (1080p; 4:20)


• Original Commercials (1080p; 00:33)


• Textless Opening Song "Renai Koujou Committee" (1080p; 1:32)


• Textless Closing Song "Getsuyou Wa Kirai" (1080p; 1:32)

Baka and Test: OVA Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation

 

Baka and Test: OVA is a kind of two-fer that offers a pair of standalone episodes that finds the typical manic energy and over the top humor that the main Baka and Test series revels in. This is a show that has so much lunatic information not just in the actual episodes, but in the visual style as well, that it's hard not to enjoy the silliness, even if it never really amounts to much. This is a show where a whole series of gags can be built on something as simple as al dente rice (and, no, I'm not kidding). Baka and Test is probably not a show for everyone, not even rabid anime fans, and this set of OVAs is probably further only going to really interest those who like the main series to begin with. So with the understanding that this is by its very nature a niche product, for those already initiated into the bizarre world of Baka and Test, this release comes Recommended.