All Rise...

Judge Adam Arseneau fights for what's right before it's gone, gone, gone.

Editor's Note

Our reviews of Bakugan, Volume 1: Battle Brawlers (published January 10th, 2009) and Bakugan, Volume 2: Game On (published January 10th, 2009) are also available.

The Charge

Get ready! Go!

The Case

Another installment of Bakugan, another cry for help written by yours truly disguised as a DVD review…please…stop me before I kill again…

The story so far: Bakugan is a loosely disguised vessel to hock bad toys and cards onto kids, like Pog: The Cartoon. You know, Pogs? You guys remember Pogs, right? Man, I'm too old. When powerful cards from an alternate world start falling from the sky, kids everywhere collect them and begin using them for a new battle game called Bakugan. Unknown to them, the cards have special power that ties them into an alternate dimension called Vestroia, where giant monsters battle for the entire universe.

Beyond this, there is nothing you need to know about the show, because it's terrible.

Bakugan, Vol. 3: Good Versus Evil contains the next four episodes in the series:

"10: A Perfect Match"
After losing a battle to her childhood friend, Julie desperately wishes for a talking Bakugan, when suddenly Bakugan Gorem appears.

"11: Grandpa's Got a Brand New Bag"
When Marucho and Runo try and convince Shun to join the team, he challenges them to a brawl. If they defeat him, he'll join.

"12: Bakugan Stall"
Dan recalls the last battle that he had with Shun, and the reason why he decided to leave the game for good.

"13: Just for the Shun of It"
Dan joins Runo and Marucho in another attempt to recruit Shun, but when they arrive at his home, Masquerade is waiting for them.

Ah, the joys of watching Bakugan set in Bakugan Valley while playing with Bakugan toys and trading Bakugan cards with my friends. It's like a root canal goes on in my brain, and then somebody tries to sell me toys. This is my third installment reviewing the cartoon series; every time I watch it, I loathe myself a little more.

In Vol. 3 we get a bit more character development, mostly about Shun, the enigmatic battler and his back history. Not sure why I'd watch such a thing, but oh, well. Episodes pretty much are never-ending sequences of recycled battle footage where nonsensical rules are pulled out of nowhere to justify why one Bakugan brawler can use some ridiculous ability to win a match. Twelve episodes later, and I still have no idea of the rhyme or reason as to how this damn game is actually played. Actually, I'm relieved, because if I did understand the game, I'd pretty much have to give it all up and move to a monastery.

Now that everyone and their uncle is talking Bakugan, the show is actually getting worse, which is something I had thought impossible. Now, instead of having a show centered on five or six annoying pre-teens with squawky voices, we now have a show centered on five or six annoying pre-teens with squawky voices that each have a tiny, sphere-shaped squawky voiced Bakugan to quip and chime in verbal puns. Hooray.

Vol. 3 is pretty much identical to the last two offerings, with a stripped-down, supplement-free presentation—full-frame, pleasantly saturated colors, mediocre black levels, soft detail. It's not awful, but it was definitely made for television. Audio is a simple stereo presentation with a chug-metal score and clear dialogue. No fuss, no muss.

I pretty much despise Bakugan as a franchise, so I'm understandably harsh on Bakugan, Vol. 3: Good Versus Evil. These episodes are marginally more interesting than some of the previous episodes (Shun is almost interesting) but we're talking microscopic deviations here. It's like saying you prefer to get chlamydia over syphilis. It might be true, but it's Sophie's Choice, man.

The Verdict

Guilty, guilty, guilty.

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