Releases Reviewed:

My Animaniacs vol.2 guide can pretty much just ditto everything I said about the first volume. Except for a couple of obvious differences they are almost the same.

One again, there is exactly 1 TVD set to choose from. There is no series box set as of this writing.

Volume 2 is once again a 5 disc DVD set.

Video:

1.33: This is TV standard ratio. It looks quite good considering this is a slightly older kids' cartoon series.

Audio:

5.1 surround: Surround sound is surprising; well, not so much since the first season had it, it's just unusual that a kid's cartoon would have this when many prime time shows don't, even some produced more recently. It really makes the orchestra sound fantastic and is quite a different experience from seeing it on broadcast TV.

Packaging:

The box and folder are the same as vol. 1 except for using different images. Unfortunately this means that the stacked DVD trays are also the same. I really hate that design.

The folder contains an episode list with the major segments from each show listed. While this is certainly better than nothing, a book with original air dates and episode information like guest stars would have been really great, and a detailed chapter list would be handy.

The interface features the theme song and is colorful but is otherwise not particularly noteworthy. You can play all the episodes or go to another menu to select specific ones. The chapters list doesn't actually have all of the chapters listed, just the major segments. The chapters list doesn’t always agree with the one printed on the box, but the former is the right one.

Extras:

-Writers' Panel: The big deal of this set is a writers' panel similar to the cast feature on the last set. Unfortunately it’s not as good as the previous feature. Not that the writers aren’t good, as a matter of fact, my problem with the thing is that there isn’t enough of the writers. The editor (or whoever makes such decisions for something like this) inserts clips from the show to illustrate and add to the comments, but there are so many clips that it becomes more about them than the interviews. I can watch the cartoon all I want, I have the episodes on the same DVD set that is providing me with the interviews, what I want now is behind the scenes information, and a minute of interviews followed by two or three minutes of cartoon clips just really isn’t that entertaining or interesting. The feature isn’t terrible, but it is disappointing in its informative content.

-Trailer: The trailer included is interesting because it is specifically for the volume 2 TVD release yet the vast majority of the clips are not from vol. 2. If you were to watch it elsewhere to see what you're would get in vol. 2 you' would be mislead.

-Previews: There are a few previews if you want to know about other projects.

-Web links: Want to know where to go on the web? This page will tell you.

Other Editions:

There are none.

Final Thoughts:

That’s it. Surely there’s more Animaniacs material out there that could be a part of these TVD sets. I’m thoroughly excited to be able to get all of the episodes, but it sure would be nice to get some material geared towards the Animaniacs collector.

Review

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Episodes:

Like the last volume you'll get 25 episodes at about 22 minutes each. There's a play all option so you can watch 5 episodes at a time as 1 presentation.

Chapter divisions are important to me with something like this. Why? Each episode is comprised of many segments (skits, songs, short jokes, etc.), and while I will sometimes watch everything other times I want to jump right to my favorite moments. The ability to get to those favorite moments quickly and easily is part of the charm of owning something like this on DVD. I want to see the Good Idea Bad Idea segment without watching "White Gloves" (not one of my favorite skits). With a chapter stop I can skip right to the one I want to see, without one I have to manually scan as with a VHS tape.

This set has better chapter stops than most similar TV shows I've seen, but what’s annoying is that they are inconsistent. Sometimes the chapters follow the show divisions, and then sometimes there will be multiple segments on a single chapter. Without typing up a reference list or having a really good memory you don’t really have a way of knowing if jumping to the next chapter will skip past something you actually wanted to see. If they had done all of these chapter divisions right I would have been really impressed.