Deltora Quest-Collection 1: Lief's Adventure Begins (2007)

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General		Extras
Category	Anime	Main Menu Audio TV Spots
Rating
Year Of Production	2007
Running Time	290:52 (Case: 286)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered Dual Disc Set	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Mitsuru Hongo
Studio Distributor	Cartoon Network Madman Entertainment	Starring	None Given
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Dual
RPI	$24.95	Music	Kô Ôtani

    Title of Show : Deltora Quest (Derutora kuesuto)

    Title of Disc : Collection 1

    Year of Production : 2006

    Country of origin : Japan

    What's included? :  The first 13 episodes of the series (seemingly 32 episodes have been made to date).

    Episode Length : About 23 minutes each (290:52 in total). I have been advised by a reader that these have been edited from the Japanese version but I do not have details of the cuts.

    Style of Production : Anime style, originally in Japanese (dubbed English here for the Cartoon Network). The creatures seem to have been done with CGI.

    Premise of show : Closely based on the extremely popular set of children's fantasy adventure books by Emily Rodda, Deltora Quest follows the adventures of Leif, a 16yo blacksmith's son, who is given the remains of a magical belt by his father. He must return the belt to its former condition by getting back the seven jewels which used to be on it. Once these jewels are restored the belt will be a powerful weapon to free the land, Deltora, from the rule of the evil Shadow Lord. He is accompanied on his mission by his older protector Barda and a free spirited girl from the Forest of Silence, Jasmine. The jewels have been spread around the kingdom and are guarded by a variety of creatures who must be defeated by the trio. Can they defeat the creatures, recover the jewels and defeat the Shadow Lord?

    Age Group : 7-12

    Related to any other children's shows? : Not really but many in the age group will be aware of the books.

    Adult's view : This is a quality fantasy adventure story based very closely on a quality set of children's books. Well worth a look certainly for fans of the books.

    Child's view : My young boys have really enjoyed these episodes and are very keen to see the next set of episodes. They recommend it highly.

    Other Releases of this show available? : This is the first release but set 2 is on the way from Madman.

    Overall : A very faithful version of the books in Anime. Supposedly the author would only sell the rights to people who agreed to stick very closely to the books.

Video

    The video quality is very good, with no obvious flaws.

     The feature is presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, which is seemingly not the original aspect ratio, non 16x9 enhanced. According to a reader, these shows were made for widescreen.

The picture was clear and sharp throughout, with no evidence of low level noise. The colour was very good. There were no obvious artefacts.

     There are no subtitles.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The audio quality is good.

    This DVD contains a dubbed English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo soundtrack encoded at 224 Kb/s. Dialogue was very clear and easy to understand and the audio sync is obviously nothing special as this is a dubbed English soundtrack. The surround speakers were not really used except for mild atmosphere. The subwoofer does not have much to do.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menu was still but had music. It allowed for episode selection.

Channel ID's (0:52, 0:31, 0:31, 0:31, 0:36)

    Short promos for the show.

Trailers

    Madman trailers for other animated children's shows.

     This seems to be the first global release of this show in English. There are a series of DVDs available for the original Japanese series but these seem to be in Japanese. Region 4 wins.

     The very popular children's books by Emily Rodda have been made into an anime series. Fans of the books will love this.

     The video quality is very good but in the wrong ratio. The audio quality is good. No proper extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall