With “Adventure Time” getting regular home video releases in full season sets, one might wonder why Warner Brothers and Cartoon Network would bother to release a compilation style DVD. Fortunately there is a good reason this time. This DVD collects a number of episodes dealing with the Enchiridion, the Book Of Heroes, a volume acting as a sort of “how to” guide for adventurers and heroes.
Unfortunately this collection does not feature all of the episodes that deal directly with the Enchiridion, nor does it present the episodes in chronological order. Here is the list of episodes on the disc.
1. The Enchiridion
2. In Your Footsteps
3. Henchmen
4. Billy’s Bucket List
5. Betty
6. Ocarina
7. Astral Plane
8. Ghost Fly
9. Root Beer Guy
10. The Pajama War
11. What Have you done?
12. James II
13. Web Weirdos
14. The Gut Grinder
15. No One Can Hear You
16. Dungeon Train
As you can see a season six episode (“James II”) is presented on the disc before an episode from season four (“Web Weirdos”). And not all of these directly relate to the Enchiridion itself. With some key episodes of the story arc of the book missing, some of the episodes on the DVD are …. interesting inclusions.
Still, despite this problem with the content and presentation, I still have to recommend this DVD. What we have is probably one of the most cost effective introductions to the series. The first episode helps set up much of the premise of the entire series, and while the Enchiridion itself isn’t used much throughout “Adventure Time” itself, it does help as an establishment and support for many things to come.
Essentially what we have here is the best primer and overview of the series.
No special features, no bonus product to entice consumers to pick this up if they already own the previous season sets. I would have liked a featurette or audio commentary on a couple of episodes talking about the Enchiridion itself and what it meant to the series.
Oh well. Still, for the price, it might not be a bad purchase.