Season 5 of Adventure Time ended on a revelation from the fallen warrior Billy (“Nothung!”): Finn’s human father was still alive, trapped in the Citadel. After a season of confronting the Lich, first heartbreak, wet dreams and Root Beer guys, the stage was set for Finn to confront adulthood head-on in Season 6, one of the best seasons of TV, ever, from any show. And now the complete Season 6 is out on Blu-ray.
The Adventure Time Season 6 Blu-ray has animatics, song demos, concept art and a featurette that’s supposed to be about the making of “Food Chain,” but is really not much more than a short reel, mostly from the actual episode. The special features are all nice, but nothing extravagant. Hard to go wrong with Lumpy Space Princess anything. The real argument for the Adventure Time Season 6 Blu-ray are the episodes themselves.
You’ve got “Wake Up” and “Escape from the Citadel,” which not only expand the Adventure Time world to galactic proportions, but introduce Finn’s father, a selfish space rogue, with nothing but concern for his own hide. Discovering that the only other human in existence, his own father, has no interest in knowing him sends Finn rocketing toward adulthood. Finn tormented himself, grew, got seduced by LSP, and then was very nearly set aside for the most wide-ranging season of Adventure Time yet.
Adventure Time has been telling dungeon-crawling adventure stories since the first season episode “The Enchiridion!” but Season 6 ups the fantasy game to myth-making proportions. “Something Big” played on our overwrought fantasy epics, giving Ooo it’s own Helm’s Deep, while “Little Brother” told a worm story worthy of the Redwall Abbey tapestry. “Evergreen” took the show to a primordial time of barbarian adventure and “The Mountain” follows a nightmarish dream-quest worthy of Clive Barker.
Episodes like “Everything’s Jake” and “Joshua & Margaret Investigations” took the dog’s shape-shifting powers in new directions and gave him a mysterious, occult origin. But my favorite has to be “Jake the Brick,” as Jake’s agreeable ramblings on his natural surroundings becomes a radio show treasured by Ooo-lings.
Other secondary characters are shown in a new light, especially Princess Bubblegum, whose realpolitik surveillance state finds its limit in “The Cooler.” We also get great episodes with Jake’s children, Kim Kil Whan in “Ocarina” and T.V. in “The Diary.”
But Season 6 of Adventure Time is most worthwhile for “Is That You?” my single favorite episode of the series. It’s an elaborate time travel, dimension-hopping story, very a nearly an animated Primer.
Really, I could gush about almost every one of Season 6’s 43 (!) episodes (except “Water Park Prank”). It’s all there on the Blu-ray. It looks great. It’s Adventure Time… Adventure Time at it’s very best. If you’re a buyer of things, this could be a product you’d enjoy.
