 There is exceptionally little to recommend Bakugan Battle Brawlers Chapter 1, the latest 2-disc DVD set of the popular collectible game tie-in anime series. The latest in the long line of toys and games turned into animated series, Bakugan Battle Brawlers can't even manage to muster the modest charms of Pokémon or the gonzo stupidity of G.I. Joe. On consideration, those latter two shows succeed because they have no sense of self-importance, never attempting anything too grand or more substantial than 20 minutes of toy-based entertainment. Bakugan Battle Brawlers is saddled with volumes of plot and a sense of urgency that doesn't manage to gel at all with the idea that the universe needs to be saved by a bunch of kids playing a silly card game.
Despite the "chapter 1" in the title, this set picks up where the volume 6 DVD left off, covering episodes 27-39 of the show. The lead character is the young Dan, who owns a Pokémon Bakugan monster-in-a-ball named Drago. He and his friends Runo, Marucho, Shun, Julie, and Alice (and their respective Bakugan) must do battle against the evil Masquerade, with the Bakugan's home dimension of Vestroia hanging in the balance. This DVD set contains two major story turns. The first sends Dan and his friends to the "Doom Dimension," where Bakugan go when they "die" in one of their duels, and the second compels Dan to engage in Bakugan duels against his friends so that Drago can evolve to his next form. The Masquerade subplot goes dormant for most of this disc, other than a pretty big last-episode revelation.
The execution of Bakugan Battle Brawlers is just as trite and clichéd as its plot summary. While this set is my first exposure to Bakugan, the episodes on this DVD don't fill me with any great desire to backtrack and watch earlier episodes. The major offense of Bakugan Battle Brawlers is that it seems to be stuck in permanent exposition dump mode. It feels like all the dialogue is characters explaining what they're about to do, what they're doing, or what they just did. Worst of all, this wealth of exposition either bores, confuses, or bewilders, since the show seems to mistake complexity for sophistication; plots are absolutely byzantine for no very good reason and there is far too much time wasted on near-pointless blather that attempts to establish "character" for the show's one-note players or the tremendous importance of the task before them.
 There are a few moments that bring up the prospect of something genuinely interesting, although the show does little with these, dropping them quickly in favor of its threadbare collection of story and character elements. There are hints at unresolved mother issues in Shun's duels in the Doom Dimension, and the fact that a mute clown is Dan's primary opponent in that place is a bizarrely funny and unexplained grace note. It may also have been too much to hope that something substantial would be made of Dan's mother's growing alarm at the way Dan's interest in Bakugan seems to be developing into an obsession chewing up far too much of his time and energy. Unfortunately, one quick off-camera explanation that this silly card game will save the world both cuts off this potentially interesting plot element while coming off as a bracingly self-serving bit of meta-commentary rationalization.
Worst of all, the "action" sequences of Bakugan Battle Brawlers are a bewilderingly confusing mess that combine too little pointless mayhem and too much meticulous (and extraordinarily tedious) statistical analysis. Those carefully kept statistics are also happily ignored when it suits the story or goosed with the storytelling deus ex machina. Watching these battles feels like nothing so much as watching someone else play a video game that's only marginally interesting. I find it hard to believe that these battle sequences are supposed to mirror how a real-life Bakugan battle plays out, or whether it would be a good or a bad thing if they do. If they are accurate, then a Bakugan brawl is a dull, incomprehensible, and pointless affair to anybody except the people playing; if they are not, then the show loses even the tiny bit of relevance or interest it might have had. In any event, the combination of these long, drawn-out battle scenes and the windy, empty-headed dialogue make the show feel a lot more padded than it really should.
 The animation is generally poor and extremely limited, but I sincerely doubt anybody is watching the series for its technical prowess. The good news is that this two-disc set packs more than twice the episodes in one package than prior volumes have (although the bad news for folks like me is that we now have much, much more material to slog through in one sitting). The DVDs have an inexplicable imbalance in episode count, stuffing 8 of the 13 episodes on disc 1 but only 5 on disc 2. It doesn't seem to have affected video quality in the slightest, although the full-screen image and stereo sound presentation is not going to impress any home theater aficionados. There is only an English soundtrack on these discs and no extras at all, but at least they included chapter stops within episodes to allow viewers to skip the opening credits.
I must confess that it took multiple tries to get past the first few episodes on disc 1 of this set. Despite any good intentions I might have had, I would either fall asleep or my mind would start wandering to other topics. When I would literally or figuratively wake up, I'd realize that some unknown amount of time had passed and I had no idea what was going on. It turns out that the rewinding and rewatching that ensued was largely unnecessary, since the show was more than willing to recap itself regularly and the show has so little substance anyway. While I didn't find the show as irredeemably awful as the comparable Dinosaur King, I can't say I managed to find much more to like.
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