DVD REVIEW: FUTURAMA VOL:7

The first half of Futrama’s 7th Season was one of the show’s strongest yet and as such are psyched about its return next summer on Comedy Central. That said, is that enough to warrant a purchase of the home release with all 13 episodes included?? We tell you after the jump.

With 24 million fans on Facebook, Futurama is one of the biggest animated television shows on the planet. If you were to add up the total fans of FOX’s The  Cleveland Show, American Dad, and Bob’s Burgers combined that would come up short comparably.  So why did FOX cancel Futurama??? Who knows, but its proof that some cartoons just need to find their audiences and some take longer than others. However, most of anyone you will talk to of whom have followed Futurama, even after all of these years, can agree that the  move from FOX to Comedy Central has been for the better. For one, the season orders are typically shorter than they would be on FOX of whom typically asks for almost 30 episodes a season whereas Comedy Central wisely asks for around 26, but usually splits them up similar to this year where they did one half for 2012 and the other half for 2013. Doing this allows the writers to crank out more quality material and more importantly come up with crazier ideas for episodes like ‘Naturama’.

That said, we aren’t here to talk about the season…yet(look for that later this week) but instead wonder if putting 13 episodes on a disc is enough to warrant a purchase that’s a little over $20. A yes would suggest that there is enough exclusive material on here to show that allows you to see the value of said purchase. Unfortunately, this is a so-so case with Vol: 7 as yes you do get a strong season featuring episodes like ‘31st Century FOX’,  “NEAR-DEATH WISH“, and “THE BUTTERJUNK EFFECT“, but the only real strong special features include cast members Billy West, John DiMaggio, and Maurice LaMarche providing guest commentaries of which are all god damned funny plain and simple., but that’s it.  The other features include screensavers which I guess are cool, but are a novelty at best. Having said that, if you are one that likes to hear your own singing voice you can also sing along with various Futurama characters, but for anyone else that doesn’t like to do that(including me) you probably will never do this and I couldn’t blame you.  The other features on here include “Christopher Tyng’s Big Score”, an alternate ending for ‘Zapp Dingbat’ as well as a bunch of deleted scenes, all of which do add a certain amount of value, but for the most part you can tell why the deleted scenes were left out as they weren’t very funny.

Overall, Futurama Vol: 7  just doesn’t have enough for me to say go out and buy it right now. That said, as I mentioned earlier Futurama is immensely popular and with Zoidberg’s mug all over the cover its going to appeal to even the most casual of fans. That said, I might be content in just streaming the episodes on NetFlix due to the fact that the special features just didn’t have enough in them for me to care about the DVD. Instead, just on the strength of the episodes alone, I will probably wait until the second half of season 7 airs and just complete the set then.

(8.0 out of 10)