A few facts beforehand:
- This is the first time Beast Wars has ever been released on home video in Germany, not counting the pilot episodes Beast Wars Part I and II that where released as pack-in VHSs (remember those) and I believe those where in English.
- This is the first DVD release of the full first season of Beast Wars in Europe.
- It's the full first season and it's handled in a very respectable way.
- Beast Wars is awesome.
translation of the back of the box wrote:The Predacons, the descendants of the insidious Decepticons, land on a mysterious Planet in search for the super fuel Energon. Optimus Primal and his Maximals must prevent by all means that Megatron and his henchmen get their hands on this substance, because with the Energon they can fulfil their plan of ruling the Universe.
"Beast Wars", Hasbro's Dinosaur heavy reboot of the Transformers franchise, is regarded by many fans, even today, as the best Transformers series of all time. The ground-breaking usage of 3D computer animation was honoured with the Emmy®-Award for outstanding achievements in animation.
How's that for a DVD box back!
As for the box itself, it's a digipack, and contains all 26 episodes on 5 discs, in both English and German language. There are however no subtitles or special features save for four character art-cards using edited screen-shots.
The episodes are uncut and uncensored, well they are slightly cut since they are missing the ending credits but that's all they're missing.
The video and sound are good, I have no complaints with either, the picture is crisp and clear, sadly it's so clear and crisp that you can sometimes see imperfections in the 3D models and the separate parts they're made from. Sometimes you can also tell that the background textures are of a lower quality than the character models, but that's not a fault of the DVDs.
The menus are pretty nice, simple and functional. the main menu of each disc shows the different episode titles contained on the disc (in German) while clips from the episodes are shown with the theme song.
The video uses the German title cards, even when the English track is selected, this is kinda annoying but for those who don't read German, the DVD box contains a list of all episodes in German alongside the original English titles in brackets.
If you live in Europe and have no way of watching the US or Australian releases this is a good alternative, so should you be interested in importing this and don't know any German, here's a little help in using the DVDs:
Looking at the box, the way it's made and presented, ant the promotional inlay for other releases, I say there is a good chance that Seasons 2 and 3 will also see release even if they haven't been dubbed into German.
Now excuse me, I still have a few episodes to watch!
