'Adventure Time' Season One on DVD

On air, Adventure Time is already well into its fourth season. On home video, DVD compilations have already cracked the third season. But for various reasons, the popular animated series about a scrappy kid and his shapeshifting dog have yet to earn a full season DVD set release until now. Supported by a cult of adventure seeking kids and adults, Adventure Time hits home video in early July 2012 with its most sufficient release yet. Adventure Time: The Complete First Season is scheduled to include all twenty-six episodes segments in addition to several episode commentaries by cast and crew.

The most recent home video releases for Adventure Time with Finn & Jake -- "It Came from the Nightosphere" (03/2012) and "My Two Favorite People" (09/2012) -- were populated with non-sequential episodes from the first two or the first three seasons. As such, for a time, the something-is-better-than-nothing philosophy prevailed for fans of the cartoon. However, what fans of the Cartoon Network animation had wanted all along was a DVD box set.

The first season of Adventure Time hits retail July 10th ($26.98), runtime 286 minutes, and crams onto two discs the fearless exploits of a kid with a funny hat and his best buddy, a dog.

To put it mildly, this chronological collection of cryptic dungeons, evil pie-throwing robots, witches, and thieves is long overdue. Special features for the DVD set include episode animatics, behind-the-scenes featurettes, notes from the composers, and more ("filmed by creator Pendleton Ward with his very own camera phone").

Episode commentary will be supplied by Ward as well as many of the series' central and guest voice actors, like John DiMaggio, Tom Kenny, and George Takei.

Altogether, Finn is an excitable boy whose fists speak the truth (largely because he's not very bright), and Jake is a crafty dog whose boisterous personality is a perfect match for the duo's endless fighting against the evils of the Land of Ooo. In Adventure Time with Finn & Jake, there isn't a lot that makes sense -- vampire girls are pretty amicable and giant ogres aren't quite what they seem -- but that's all part and parcel of the cartoon's quirkiness.

Key episodes of the first season include #07a, "City of Thieves," where Finn and Jake encounter a town where everyone is susceptible to wrongdoing; #13a, "His Hero," in which viewers get a rather intriguing glance at the hero at the heart of Finn's crazy adventurer spirit; and #10b "The Dungeon," where Finn and Jake's action-compatibility is put to the test when they enter a wicked dungeon on separate occasions.

Also, a few key encounters with Marceline, the vampire rock goddess, include the comical episode where she kicks Finn and Jake from their treehouse pad, as well as an amusing encounter in which Finn pledges to become her henchman. Much like Adventure Time, young Marceline appears a bit off-kilter and unusual at first glance, but the longer passersby pay attention, the more her eccentric behaviors seem to make sense.

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"Undersea Adventure: Sealab 2020 Animation on DVD" at AnimationInsider.net (05/2012)
"Real Adv. of Jonny Quest Animation News" at AnimationInsider.net (03/2012)