Teknoman Collection Vol. #3

By Chris Beveridge     October 06, 2006
Release Date: September 12, 2006



What They Say
Nick Carter was part of a family of space explorers, who happened upon an abandoned alien vessel. Exposure to an alien Teknopod transformed Nick into Teknoman Blade, a super-powered biotechnological warrior. However, the rest of his family and friends joined with the evil Venomoid invaders, and they also have the power to turn into Teknomen!

Blade must defend earth from his family's deadly war machine, and face off in a final duel against their champion - his own twin brother!

Contains episodes 30-43 on 2 discs.

The Review!
Teknoman comes to a rather anti-climactic ending after a dozen or so episodes that reveal the inner workings of the enemy and the ties to Blade.

Audio:
For our primary viewing session, we listened to this show in its English language adaptation as that's all that's on the disc. Due to the edits, cuts and other changes made to it so it could air on broadcast TV, the two versions can't be easily reconciled so separated editions are planned. This version has a fairly decent mono mix to it but it feels limited depending on the spread of your layout. On our main setup, it was very noticeable that it was a full sounding mix that's mostly through the center channel, but on our smaller 23" setup, the audio felt much fuller. The track is pretty decent overall without any real problems to it and we had no issues with dropouts or distortions during playback.

Video:
Originally airing in 1992, the materials for the Saban release are in pretty awful shape considering it's age. It's simply likely that they weren't taken care of in the intervening years and no real care was put into them to start but the transfer here is heavy on the grain which really shows up badly here as it makes a lot of the solid color areas look alive with how much it moves. Add that in with an already soft looking show and set of colors and then splice in some clean new looking title cards for episode names and the disparity is all the more visible. Odds are this is how this looked during its initial run and the higher resolution of DVD is drawing out the problems even more so being able to watch this will likely draw heavily on the nostalgia factor.

Packaging:
Keeping to the same kind of design layout and the really good looking "classic" character designs, Star gets the center shot this time around while others are ringed around her. If only the show itself looked as good as it did on the covers, I'd probably be a lot more excited about it. The back cover provides a standard technology oriented design for the layout with a number of shots from the show. The summary covers the basics of what the show is all about and lists the total number of episodes and basic production information, though just of the Japanese side and nothing of the Saban adaptation. The technical grid covers all of the important details otherwise and as usual there is no insert included.

Menu:
The menu layout is extremely simple, almost to the point where you really wonder why they bothered. Well, to avoid complaints about no menus more than likely! What we get here is a piece of the front cover for the layout, from the technical design to the character artwork, with the ability to either play the disc or go into scene selection. Since we only bothered hitting the play button we have no complaints about how the menu worked nor its access time and we certainly can't have any issues with language presets.

Extras:
None.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
To say my interest in the show has waned over the course of the series would be fairly accurate if a slight understatement. The premise of the series had some mildly interesting ideas to it at the start, but like most series of this length it's ended up feeling more drawn out than it should be. The final volume takes some of the revelations that have come up in recent episodes and gives them an airing before going towards the appropriately named Final Battle episode.

Blade's life hasn't been the easiest one in some time, what with his one-man fight against "his own kind" early on and then having to deal with a distrustful military on Earth that wanted to use him for heir own purposes. Along the way he's managed to keep his head above water due to friends like Star and the others in the supporting cast but it's been tenuous. The thing that has kept him the most motivated is his ability to really take the fight to the Venomoids and do some damage. But that's not a constant anymore as he learns that his constant transformations are starting to weaken his body and could go to the point where it could kill him.

As bad as the physical side of it gets, it's the mental and emotional area that may do the most damage in the long run as we start to see more of what's going on with the other Teknomen. There's been plenty of brotherly fighting going on with Blade and the other Teknomen that he's come across, but it's at long last revealed that most of those that he's been fighting against are actually his family members from when they were all space explorers. Having his past finally come to light and understanding the impact of the kind of fighting he's been doing and who its really involving comes close to pushing him over the edge. In particular, the tragedy that happens with his sister hits him hard but is also an area where he can rally himself to greater heights. If there's an area that I didn't care much for with this aspect, it's that we do see that there is a control element placed on the Carter family by the Venomoids and it tries to give them something of a free pass on their actions. Blade's brother tries to play that off by saying he would have done it anyway but it weakens some of the strengths that came into the end of the series.

The slow buildup towards the end of the series is fairly well done but it does have a dragged out feeling to it as Blade has to work against his brother and all that comes with him before going against the final big bad enemy. This isn't terribly surprising and it feels a lot like how most of the series has gone so far, especially since it pushes other characters like Ringo and Balzac out of the picture for awhile. Star gets a bit of a nod here and there as she encourages him on in her prayers, but it really becomes all about Blade as it goes on. What's worse though is that the ending hits and before you know it, it's over. A quick epilogue that doesn't really cover much of anything and the investment of time in forty three episodes feels like it wasn't given its due. What points to this all the more for me is that after all of this is over, I've got the barest recollection of the previous two volumes. Teknoman simply did not leave much of an impact.

In Summary:
Teknoman comes to a conclusion with this volume and it does so with a good deal of action and big scenes that have little real emotional impact. The show hasn't really won me over though it did have some interesting moments across the entire project. Between it being English only, the poor quality transfer and a fairly drawn out storyline that seemed to be riddled with moments of repetition, each volume had a hard time keeping my attention. This was likely made worse by the fact that there were so many episodes with each volume as well, even though they were on average four to five minutes shorter than your standard episode. Fans of this show will be happy with the release overall, one that probably would not have seen the light of day for some time to come, but I'm not sure it'll appeal to a wider audience. At this point, the show has left me unsure if I want to check out the original at all either.

Features
English Language

Review Equipment
Panasonic PT50LC13 50" LCD RP HDTV, Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray player via HDMI -> DVI with upconversion set to 1080i, Sony STR-DE835 DD/DTS receiver, Monster component cable and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.