The DVD is a set of five episodes that detail the adventures of a young man, Tsukasa, who becomes pulled into battle between a powerful, and evil, creature, Makuamuuge, and a ninja, Goemon. Both of these two beings come from a world of videogames and cross over into the world of humans after a new arcade is opened, the biggest in the world, in Japan. Each side has its supporters and young Tsukasa sticks to the side of good with Goemon. In each generic episode, the evildoers plot some scheme to cause their power to increase (by plotting to blow things up, take out power supplies or otherwise upset people) and it is Goemon's task to stop them by any means necessary.

I'd break down the episodes individually but, to be up front, there wasn't a whole lot going on here. The level of the writing would insult a ten year old and there was no creativity displayed here. ADV lists this one as a 13+ but I really don't think they considered it very much since the show looked made for someone half (or less) that age. For an adult such as myself, it was pretty painful to watch and more than once I considered handing it to some kids to see what they thought.

For the most part, the stories had all been done before (and better) and the dubbing seemed almost as if done on the fly. The inflections, tone and mix were off although the technical aspects were objectively decent, so I can't even say that I wanted to hear some of my favorites do their thing with the dub track. I'm rating this one as a Skip It for anyone except the absolutely youngest audience since it was so one-dimensional.

Picture: The picture was presented in the original 1.33:1 ratio full frame color. It wasn't bad but the retro look of it initially made me think this was a show put out in the late 1970's. The colors were usually a bit muted and there was some grain but overall it looked pretty fair. My biggest complaint was with the animation style used; it was the kind I'm seeing a lot of on domestic Saturday morning releases, made with a tiny budget.

Sound: The audio was presented with the usual choices of 2.0 Dolby Digital English or the original Japanese with optional English subtitles. Neither track had any noticeable separation and the original was better by a long shot this time. The music and vocals were reasonably well mixed but didn't appear to have the kind of budgets I've seen in better releases from ADV Films of late. For a show so obviously made for younger kids, this isn't a huge problem but it wouldn't have been too difficult to "do it right" either.

Extras: There were some trailers and a paper insert that didn't provide much information.

Final Thoughts: With all the good anime on the market, this title will undoubtedly be held up as an example of "what's wrong with anime releases" since it was so lacking on so many levels. I could try to gloss over the problems it has but there's no reason to do so when a release is this bad.