Awesome Series!
I gotta say, I was a little leery at first when I heard that a new Batman cartoon was coming out back in '99, but I checked it out anyway. And loved it! A techno-savvy Batman for a techno-savvy world. What a concept. I usually don't like when a character I've followed since childhood is radically changed because I liked the character the way it was (so I'm gonna dodge the upcoming "Man of Steel" movie like the plague). But this is an exception. And it didn't go completely new, either. It brought back some classic characters, albeit older versions of them. Now the fact that the new Batman is a teenager didn't bother me either, since I had graduated high school the same year the cartoon debuted. If it had debuted, say, this year, I probably wouldn't have checked it out. Now on to the product. The Batman Beyond Collection is the entire series of 52 episodes on 8 DVDs, with added bonus features on some of them. It also comes with a special 9th DVD, which has some cool features on it, like the history of DC Comics. You wouldn't get this DVD if you bought the series in the separate 3 volumes it also comes in, but at the same time, you wouldn't pay as much for the entire series that way either. I read some other reviews before I bought this collection and the main problem I found among them was that the animated movie Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker and the Justice League episode "Epilogue" (which serves as a kind of series finale for the Batman Beyond series) were not included in the set. You can buy both of them separately, tho (the Justice League episode can be found in either the season 2 collection of Justice League or in the Justice League: The Complete Series collection (both of which, I believe, are sold here on Amazon). Now, aside from the DVDs, the collection also comes with a booklet that contains the episode listings on the DVDs and also has exclusive artwork from the series. The DVDs are all together in a plastic box which, along with the booklet, are contained in a large cardboard box with cool artwork, which is then inside of a plastic sleeve, also with cool artwork. Needless to say, the series itself is awesome and worth buying. I only have 2 complaints: first, the DVDs are hard to get out of the plastic case. You really have to press down HARD in the center of the DVDs to get them out; and second, when I got the product, that was the only thing inside the mailing box. No styrofoam peanuts, nothing. Even tho it appears that the DVDs are well protected, Amazon's shipping department either forgot to put in additional packaging material or they decided that the product was protected enough and just didn't bother with it. I don't know about you, but I like my orders to be WELL PROTECTED! Despite that, I encourage you to go get the collection. I doubt you'll regret it. Read more
