Review by Bird Boy, Scans By Stu

I've never been a fan of X-Men: Evolution, but upon receiving this DVD, it was a "Why not?" situation. As in, why not watch it? It's there; you don't have to do much other than press 'play.' Well, it may have that been that easy to DO... but to watch was another thing. The episodes -- albeit really nice transfers, though there's some noticeable compression at times (compression? on a DVD? Why?), were just... too teen-ish. True, true, the whole show revolves around teenagers, it's about teenagers, and how to deal with new 'evolutions' during that 'period' in time, and as Boyd Kirkland stated in one of the episode intros, 'Evolution' is just an exaggeration of the 'changes' during that point in time. It's not how I remember X-Men as a kid, and for that reason, it probably doesn't appeal to me. Then again, I'm out of Kids' WB!'s target audience, so that's to be considered...

Moving into the disc itself -- like I stated above, there is some compression in the video of X-Men, in fact, there's a little bit in all of the new DVDs, but Evolution seems to show it the worst. Red is known to compress badly, and the red in the logo and in the episodes is no exception. While it's not stand-out-in-your-face horrible, it's there, and it can bother a DVD 'purist.' For the fans though, I'm sure it's a small thing that can be overlooked.

Special features -- I got to say "boo" on this batch. The episode introductions, even to non-fans (such as myself), were really interesting, and fun to watch, although I wish they were longer. Despite those, the DVD's pretty boring otherwise -- there's character bios, and some other kid-oriented games, so those Evolution fans looking for an in-depth video similar to the voice-acting one on the BTAS: Tales of the Dark Knight disc and the "Behind the League" featurette on the Justice League: Justice On Trial disc will be disappointed. That's really what brought the above mentioned DVDs together -- that mini-featurette coupled with the episode intros at least gave the DVD something else to look at, but the Evolution disc sadly doesn't have any of that.

Menu navigation -- Do I even need to say it? Simple, nice graphics, music, and the easy hop-to-hop menus make it kid-friendly and extremely easy to use.

Overall? Not my favorite DVD of the new four, but it's got its moments. Definitely more for the X-Men: Evolution fans who've been wanting a DVD instead of the VHS releases over the years. Final word -- Not worth it, but fans will eat it up.