Boom! Yummy. Yet another great DVD from The Venture Bros. On a scale from “1” to “Awesome,” I can confidently rate this collection “Swinging Cartoon Penis,” because that’s pretty much all you’re going to remember after watching this.
All right, let me just talk about this and get it out of the way. There were a few times while watching the uncensored DVDs that I actually threw my hands towards the screen and half-laughed, half-screamed, “Why!?,” startling everyone around me. Have you ever wondered what super-old Colonel Gentleman or terribly calloused Ned look like without pants? Well, you’re going to find out, whether you like it or not. The language is also uncensored, but you’re probably going to be too distracted by the unnecessary views of balls from behind to notice. Those Korean animators love detail.
The HD widescreen format is really incredible, allowing one to fully enjoy the painted backgrounds. My God, this season’s backgrounds sent my art-nerd heart all aflutter. Sometimes you get lost in the animation and you forget this is something from [adult swim]. I mean, let’s be honest here, [as] has a pretty awesome aesthetic, but most if it is ugly-good.
Previous DVDs from the series have treated us to some extra-bizarre extras featuring the creators themselves, Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer. After that S1 DVD extra of the guys and James Urbaniak dressing up as their respective characters and the S2 tour of the Astrobase with Jackson and Doc in their specially designed speedsuits, I guess I was expecting something equally strange for this set. However, the only extras are deleted scenes and commentary. I’m not knocking the commentary, of course. The commentary features just Jackson and Doc (and, unlike in the S2 commentary, Jackson is fully audible here) and is hilarious as always. Those that are unfamiliar with their style of DVD commentary should be warned that the guys barely ever talk about the actual episode but instead veer off onto wild tangents. Here are some highlights:
Side note: AdultSwim.com also did these video commentaries for “The Buddy System” and “ORB”, which are worth checking out. I’m kind of bummed they didn’t find a way to include these on the DVD, as well, though I can imagine the interactive aspect could have been difficult to replicate.
As for the deleted scenes, they are … deleted scenes. Yup. Some are hits, some are misses. Pretty straight-forward. It’s interesting to see the different artistic styles present in the storyboard stage before it gets filtered for that Venture “look.”
The menus are hilarious annoying, on the other hand. To match the super-sweet Atari 2600 packaging, the animated menus are all 8-bit-y versions of various characters. The packaging also features a photo of four live actors dressed up as Dr. Venture, Brock and the boys playing the made-up VB Atari game. It is absolutely beautiful.
Those that buy the Blu-Ray set also get JG Thirlwell’s score for the show, which is fucking epic. For serious. I turn it up when I go to the supermarket and pretend I’m having a really intense time picking out produce. The Mantis Eye Experiment even posted these two extra tracks that didn’t make it on the soundtrack, so there’s a little bonus. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for an eventual release of the full version of the OSI theme. If you don’t do the whole Blu-Ray thing, Williams Street sell vinyl and CD and, as always, Amazon and iTunes have your back with MP3s.
All in all, the DVD is a must-have for all VB fans, naturally. Anyone looking for super-special bonus features will probably be disappointed, but the visual quality of the episodes themselves is incredibly impressive and the commentaries are a lot of fun. Also, swinging cartoon penis. That is all.
Epic review ;-)
Now if only Amazon would deliver things faster. FASTER!
I really enjoyed their version of commentary this episode, where they didn’t actually try to comment on the episode much. Instead they were just goofing off while the they watched the episodes in the background, which I find much more interesting than minutia about each and every specific scene.