Coming to DVD December 4th 2012 is Kaijudo: Rise of the Duel Masters-Creatures Unleashed.
Brought to you by Shout Factory home video and created by Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast.

Kaijudo is new to the genre of dueling—monsters against monsters…in the wake of Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon and a million thereafter, Kaijudo stands closer to Yu-gi-oh by taking on bullying, friendship and adding racism in the attempt to get kids to get along with one another.

The basic story has Ray and his friends Allie and Gabe joining the duel masters and learning to tame monsters from another world, however, the kids would rather unite with the monsters as friends over making them pawns in the battle against evil.

Kaijudo is not 100% kid friendly and that may be a reason why I enjoyed it. There are some good dramatic moments where Ray remembers his dad who is assumed deceased—I’m guessing that he was once a Kaijudo Master and was probably killed in battle? My favorite character is Alakshmi who is the stereotypical evil goth chick (which gets old), however, she does have an awesome puppet monster called Razorkinder who pulls his face off causing children to wet themselves—to the point where they don’t show what they are looking at.

The artwork is nice with having the appearance of hand drawn, thick lines and such. The animation is decent and contains a healthy amount of motion—sometimes, maybe too much in the case of the Power Ranger-style moves the characters make when calling upon their monsters.

The voice cast is known, which for me makes the show even more interesting because of it. Some members of the cast are John DiMaggio, best known for Bender and a ton of other great voices. Scott Wolfe from Party of Five fame and my favorite, Kari Wahlgren who has voiced so many Anime and other cartoons, it comes to the point where I just say: “Its Fuu!” (Samurai Champloo).

The music with-in the cartoon is a good mix of different genres and used by the mood of the scene like most music scores.
The picture is DVD quality and clear and the sound is as good as your speakers can handle.

The DVD includes 5 episodes and a bonus feature with a making of. Also included is a collectible game card within the snap case.

I’m always worried when companies issue single DVD’s containing a few episodes and then stopping suddenly to release a full season set; of course this is usually a way to judge what sales could be on a box set, however it is also a way to double dip.

If you play the card game, then I’d recommend getting the first volume to get the card; as a very old fan of Yu-gi-oh, I’ve picked up games for systems I didn’t have just to get the cards, so for about 15 bucks MSRP, I’d recommend it. If you like the show and you want to see the first 5 episodes at your leisure without the commercials, I’d also recommend it.

All in all, Kaijudo is pretty entertaining.

GRADE: B

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