DVD Review: Battle Girls: Time Paradox – The Complete Collection

History once again rears its head in MVM Entertainment’s latest DVD Release of Battle Girls: Time Paradox; but does it put that history to good use? Probably not, but what does the DVD have to offer? Find out in our review.

Synopsis:

Yoshino Hide (nickname Hideyoshi) is your average, everyday teenager, interested only in fashion, snacks, and her afterschool free time. She’s destined to fail her next history test without some sort of miraculous intervention, so she stops by the local shrine to offer up a prayer or two to any deity that might be listening.

Her prayers are interrupted by a mysterious blue light that engulfs her and leaves Hideyoshi stranded in a strange new world that appears to be feudal Japan. All the inhabitants of this world, however, including feudal warlord Oda Nobunaga, are women! Now Hideyoshi finds herself on a quest to gather the pieces of the Crimson Armor and help Nobunaga conquer the land!

Our View:

Battle Girls: Time Paradox is one of those types of shows that may potentially let you down, that is if you’ve been suckered in by the shows deceptive title. What’s on offer isn’t exactly time traveling or even girls battling its infact a simple straight forward story that doesn’t really go anyway – yet despite all of this I still found myself heavily enjoying the show and even cracking a smile; bizzare.

So what’s on offer? Well Battle Girls: Time Paradox is a 13 episode long series that sees your average high-school girl Yoshino Hide, who is nicknamed Hideyoshi, time warped into the feudal-era of Japan whereby upon arriving finds herself agreeing to help Oda Nobunaga obtain all pieces of the crimson armour so that she can rule the land. This is pretty much the series in a nutshell; a story which sees a girl from the distant future help out a skilled warrior in obtaining a mysterious piece of armour – although don’t be too disappointed as there is more on offer; just not in the way you might have expected.

For starters each episode acts as an individual story, so you can always expect something a bit different, such as the ghost story episode, which sees our main characters, Hideyoshi, Nobunaga and Mitsuhide, attempt to tell 100 stories so that they can escape the forest, or the episode which sees Hideyoshi become ill in an unknown land. Of course while these individual stories fill-out an episode there are then the events which are spread-out across the entire series, for instance the relationship between Hideyoshi and Nobunaga grows from “servant and master” to a “sisterly love” a fact which leaves Mitsuhide, who has feelings for Nobunaga, unsure of what she should do. There is then the inclusion of multiple support characters which, over time, develop their own interests in the armour and start to retaliate against Nobunaga.

In retrospect I guess this is the charm of the series; taking everything you expect from a traditional sengoku styled series and throwing it out of the window: a fact which should be painfully obvious due to the fact that every character within the series is a female – don’t expect an explanation but we can only assume this is the ‘time paradox’ part at work.

Extras:

With the series not leaving much of an impression a similar response can be had to the bonus materials included on the disc as the only extras are a selection of trailers and the original textless songs for the series.

There isn’t much really to say about the extra materials as the basic requirements, such as textless songs and promotional materials, have been met; however the promotional materials in question are for other MVM Entertainment released shows in this case trailers include Garden of Sinners, Rosario & Vampire, Rosario & Vampire Capu – all of which are now available on DVD within the UK.

Specs:

Media: DVD 9 x2
Region: 2
Running Time: 2:44:41 (Disc 1), 2:20:45 (Disc 2)
Video: MPEG-2
Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 224kbps (English & Japanese)
Subtitles: English (Yellow)
Resolution: 720 x 576 (576i)
Aspect Ratio: 16:9 Widescreen
Frame Rate: 25 fps

Overall:

From the offset Battle Girls: Time Paradox looks like it will offer a female only version of Sengoku Basara, whereby multiple nations of Japan fight each other for power and supremacy – when in reality it’s a story that sees a young girl finding herself trapped in feudal Japan and helping her newly acquainted master become the ruler of Japan; it’s an alternate twist on an age-old Japanese story and despite its lack of battles it works quite well.

With a title such as Battle Girls, and taking place in the feudal-era of Japan, you’d expect something along the lines of destructible fist fights between characters but instead characters resort to amusing games of skill and tactics – it’s not necessarily a bad thing; its just with the opening animation being pretty amazing you’d be forgiven for thinking the show would offer a similar approach to the fights. In spite of this there is variety to be had, not to mention the occasional fight between warlords, but at times you do wonder how any of it relates to the main storyline of Nobunaga becoming lord of the land or Hideyoshi finding a way home.

While some may find the series a bit hit and miss, although I did find myself to enjoy it, this DVD release by MVM Entertainment can also raise some interesting questions. It’s not the quality, as both visual and audio are clearly presented throughout both discs, its just the English Dub is pretty terrible, though this is a Sentai Produced Dub, and the English subtitles have their weird moments. For instance some lines of text feel like they have been translated (or entered) incorrectly and I noticed three instances of this throughout the entire collection. Another ‘interesting aspect’ of the subtitles is that when multiple characters speak the subtitles will be split into two different fonts and colours – fair enough it makes it easier to see which subtitles relate to which character but the it’s the size adjustment that partial throws you off a little bit; plus not to mention it fills up half of the screen in doing so.

Battle Girls: Time Paradox is a show that I enjoyed although I’m not quite sure why – there is nothing to really keep you entertained and other than the characters there is nothing really to keep you watching; however if you’d like a more ‘comical’ take on the sengoku / feudal period of Japan then Battle Girls: Time Paradox has got you covered.

Score:

Battle Girls: Time Paradox – The Complete Collection will be available on DVD from the 26th January 2015.