Last year I had the chance to play the Zatch Bell! fighting game for the PlayStation 2. The game was filled with a bunch of whacked-out characters that I hadn't seen before and a plot that wasn't entirely decipherable. All I got out of it was that the Mamodo were demons who required a human counterpart to use a spell book. They were taking part in a giant battle to see who would be king of the Mamodo, but the game obviously didn't shed any light on the concept as a whole. That's where Viz's DVDs come in handy.

Like One Piece and the edited Naruto, this release features the made for TV edition that runs on Cartoon Network. In whatever form you see it, Zatch Bell! was originally a manga by Makoto Raiku and the anime series ran for three years, clocking in at a whopping 150 episodes. The show was an obvious success in Japan, but considering the under-the-Otaku-radar nature of it, it hasn't really taken the anime world by storm here in the states.

Delving into the world of the anime reveals little more than the concept that I grasped when I was playing the game. The demons (Mamodo) are bound to this Earth by a spell book that is controlled by their human masters. By utilizing the spells in the tome, the humans can instruct the Mamodo to unleash a variety of attacks during battle. Comparatively the concept isn't a whole lot different than Pokemon's. In fact Zatch's character uses lightning as his primary power, so in many ways the series seem very similar.

Several Mamodo surface all vying to be crowned king of their kind. Defeating a Mamodo in battle is one way to achieve victory but by destroying the book in the hands of the human you also send the demon back to where it came from. It's the tried and true formula of tossing a bunch of characters and monsters together to watch them fight. I typically don't go for this kind of show because it has been played to death and I have to say from what I have seen of Zatch Bell! it's wholly generic .

Going into the second volume of the series I admittedly didn't get the chance to check out the first. It's always s a little disorienting going into a show part way through its run, but it's something that gets done from time to time. Things pick up presumably where they left off in the first volume with a brief little flashback tossed in for good measure. Zatch is dealing with his feelings of isolation and being generally unloved and friendless. He tries to make friends with a stray dog which turns out to be a concealed Mamodo who uses Zatch to get close to him. Once they attack Kiyo, Zatch's human counterpart, gets away from Brago and Sherry to come to his aid.

Zatch and Kiyo have kind of a gushy moment as Kiyo realizes that he has been insensitive to his little buddy's feelings. The two rekindle their friendship and become stronger than ever, though they are distracted and beaten down by the dog Mamodo. Brago and Sherry step in at the last second to defeat the doggy and try to take down Zatch in the process. Unfortunately for them, Zatch and Kiyo's new power of friendship has made them stronger than ever and not so easy to take down.

After that things get pretty episodic from there on out. In the following episode Kiyo is recuperating from his injuries at the hospital and he is staying in a room with a whiny brat with a broken leg. The kid becomes even more of a pest when he steals Zatch's spell book and runs around the hospital threatening to burn the book. The story in this episode is particularly weak to say the least. Then again it's not a whole lot better than the botanical Mamodo one where Kiyo and Zatch fight some flower-power freak in order to save some innocent bystanders or the episode featuring a mysterious young girl who is actually a Mamodo.

All things considered Zatch Bell! is a bizarre little show that doesn't really go anywhere in this volume. I found the characters to be unlikable in just about every regard and the stories were dull and predictable. It could just be that the English translation and edit of the material just didn't to the original justice, but I don't understand how a show like this ran for as long as it did in Japan. Then again, I never got into Pokemon or Dragon Ball.

Zatch Bell! is presented on DVD in its original 1.33:1 full frame aspect ratio and features quality that you'd expect from a show like this. The colors are bright and the transfer is more or less clean. Some aliasing is evident along with an occasional patch of grain or compression.

The only audio selection that is presented on this disc is 2.0 English. Naturally since this is the edited for American audiences version the original Japanese language has been omitted. Nearly as obnoxious as the look of the show is the voice acting. I didn't find one character in the whole bunch that made me think was a great cast selected for the show. I mean, it gets the job done since it's an anime that is aimed towards kids, but man, it was hard to listen to at times.

Wow, check out these extras! A one page preview of the Zatch Bell! manga, a trailer for the video game, a still advertisement shot of the card game, and some previews of other Viz products. Man, whoever put this DVD together went all out! Ok, ok, I kid. I just think it's a shame that publisher typically don't put anything on a disc other than some previews and such.

I keep a very open mind when it comes to anime and go out of my way to check out new things and shows that I normally wouldn't watch. Zatch Bell! was an experiment that just went wrong for me. The concept was entirely generic, the characters were too quirky for their own good, and each episode in this volume had nothing to offer for anybody above the age of ten. The original Japanese version may be a little different, but since this is the edited English translation, it's about all we're ever going to see.

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