Baka and Test Summon the Beasts Blu-ray

Baka and Test Summon the Beasts

 (TV) (2011)

Baka and Test Summon the Beasts Blu-ray delivers stunning video and audio in this excellent Blu-ray release
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For more about Baka and Test Summon the Beasts and the Baka and Test Summon the Beasts Blu-ray release, see the Baka and Test Summon the Beasts Blu-ray Review

Starring: Josh Grelle, Carli Mosier

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Baka and Test Summon the Beasts Blu-ray Review

Still crazy after all these years.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, January 10, 2013

It's been close to eighteen months since the first volume of Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts was released, and truth be told I had largely forgotten what an insane wonderment this series is. Goofy hardly even begins to describe this visually innovative and decidedly weirdly comic enterprise, one that might seem like a fairly typical shōnen enterprise on its face, but which is so completely out there so much of the time that any attempt to stuff it into this or that genre is most likely prone to utterly fail. As was discussed in the Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts Blu-ray review, "baka" is a slang term denoting an idiot, in this case the anime's "hero" (for want of a better term), Akihisa Yoshii. Akihisa may indeed be a dunderheaded fool, but he's not the only one. All of the students attending the Fumizuki Academy are separated by their abilities, with each group delineated by one letter of the alphabet, with Akihisa's class being labeled with a big fat "F". It doesn't take a rocket scientist (and one probably wouldn't be available in this motley crew anyway) to figure out what that means, and Akihisa is surrounded by a gaggle of other characters who each have their own slightly lunatic elements, as well as a quite frequent lapse in general common sense. But Fumizuki Academy isn't just any ordinary school, and its students, despite some of them not exactly being graced with outsized intelligence, have some very special talents. Fumizuki Academy might be thought of as a sort of comic version of Hogwart's, for the kids there are able to summon various beings and/or powers and they routinely engage in matches (not quite Quidditch, but still) to determine where in the ultimate pecking order they'll be placed. Now all of this may give at least a general idea of some elements of Baka and Test, but that idea is frankly on the very tippy- top of a quite bizarre iceberg.



One might assume that any show that even hinted at incest wouldn't exactly be acceptable, let alone enjoyable, but that's just one indication of how completely unexpected so much of Baka and Test turns out to be. This second season opens more or less where the first left off, with Akihisa having planned a trip to the beach with several young women (Akihisa may not be smart, but he's no dummy). This sets his sister Akira off on an insane rant, and she threatens to kill Akihisa if he so much as touches any of the girls—not because that might be wrong in and of itself, but because she obviously harbors some romantic feelings for her brother herself. Weird? Undoubtedly. Objectionable? Strangely, not so much, due to Baka and Test's utterly over the top sense of humor. (After Akira tells Akihisa she was about to kiss him, and he reacts in abject terror, she informs him, "Hey, I was more or less 30% kidding.")

In fact, the first handful or so of episodes in this second season of Baka and Test do play quite a bit like a traditional shōnen anime, albeit one with a rather outré sense of humor. We get a lot of interplay between the various kids, with "crazy shenanigans" erupting at virtually every turn. There are silly elements like various characters crossdressing, a lot of emphasis on growing breasts and the like, and Baka and Test's nonstop visual assault, which includes all sorts of seemingly tangential, even nonsensical, information being thrown at the viewer almost without let up.

That means that the more "magical" aspect of the series sometimes takes a back seat, but there are still the "summoning" aspects to the show, which in one episode include the chibi forms of the characters acting as if they're kind of drunk, completely without inhibitions and revealing the innermost thoughts of their actual human counterparts. The battle element actually starts to take over as the second season moves along toward its climax, with various opponents meeting each other in both internecine and intramural conflicts.

But really all of the plot machinations become irrelevant in a way, especially since the series repeatedly darts off on this or that tangent, and also because so much of the series is just ridiculous on its face. Add in the fact that there's such a nonstop barrage of inventive animation going on, with the frame stuffed to its veritable gills with all sorts of action, and Baka and Test becomes that rare series where it really doesn't matter so much what's going on as how it's going. The humor here is undeniably juvenile a lot of the time, but it's also just as undeniably hilarious. This is a show that is unashamed to just be downright silly, which makes it such a joyful experience so much of the time.

Baka and Test Summon the Beasts Blu-ray, Video Quality

 

Baka and Test Summon the Beasts Season Two is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of FUNimation Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. The series continues much along the same lines as Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts Season One, with an incredibly bright and varied palette that exploits everything from robust primaries to a lot of appealing pastels. The series offers an incredible variety of purely graphical elements (take a look at just some of the screenshots accompanying this review for some potent examples), and those all pop magnificently in this high definition presentation. Line detail remains strong, though this series does offer a kind of spooky recurring motif where spectral entities haunt various characters, and those sequences are intentionally much softer looking than the bulk of the series.

Baka and Test Summon the Beasts Blu-ray, Audio Quality

 

Baka and Test Summon the Beasts Season Two follows the same sonic pattern set up by the first season, with an English dub available in Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and the original Japanese language track delivered via Dolby TrueHD 2.0. The Japanese language track features some great voice work, but its lack of surround activity hobbles it somewhat, especially since this is an incredibly "busy" sounding series, and the English language track offers much more space for the listener to enter the noisiness. As with the first season, there's a lot of surround activity in any given episode, courtesy of some manic sound effects and even occasionally with some rather directional dialogue. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range is extremely wide.

Baka and Test Summon the Beasts Blu-ray, Special Features and Extras

 

• Episode 3 Commentary features Jamie Marchi, Lead Writer and voice of Shoko, and Brina Palencia (Hideyoshi and Yuko) .


• Episode 13 Commentary features Kevin Leisure, Engineer for Episodes 7 – 13, and Stephen Hoff, Engineer of Episodes 1 – 6.


• Baka and Test Summon the Beasts Spinout features:

  Beauty and the Beast (1080p; 3:53)

  Magical Hideyoshi, Hideyoshi, CM 1 (1080p; 00:49)

  Karaoke Mix (1080p; 5:33)

  Magical Hideyoshi, Hideyoshi, CM 2 (1080p; 1:11)

  Magical Hideyoshi, Hideyoshi (1080p; 3:01)

  Mission Impossibler: Baka (1080p; 4:33)

  Runaway Hiduki (1080p/ 5:08)

  Akihisa's Inquisition (1080p; 5:22)

  Cherry Blossoms Viewing Party (1080p; 6:10)

• Promo Videos (1080p; 4:10)


• Original Commercials (1080p; 1:03)


• U.S. Trailer (1080p; 1:08)


• Textless Opening Song "Kimi + Nazo + Watashi De Jump" (1080p; 1:31)


• Textless Closing Songs include:

  Eureka Baby (1080p; 1:31)

  Baka To Koshitsu To Kodoku Meshi (1080p; 1:33)

  Hi-Ho!!! (1080p; 1:32)

• Trailers for other FUNimation Entertainment Releases

Baka and Test Summon the Beasts Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation

 

Baka and Test make look like cotton candy a lot of the time, and it often is sugary sweet, but there are some kind of creepy and/or disturbing elements running just beneath the surface that may make some viewers at least a little queasy at times (and any parents who might be thinking of letting their kids watch this would be well advised to screen it first, as there are some overtly sexual references in several episodes). But the series is so incredibly wacky that it's really hard to get morally indignant about anything that goes on here. Graced by one of the most over the top but highly enjoyable animation styles of any relatively recent anime, Baka and Test is almost always a joy to behold even when it isn't making one whit of sense. This Blu-ray set looks and sounds great and comes replete with some good supplements. Highly Recommended.