Adventure Time: The Enchiridion DVD

This week sees the release of a brand-spanking new Adventure Time book, The Enchiridion & Marcy’s Super Secret Scrapbook!!! and an accompanying DVD release, Adventure Time: The Enchiridion! The DVD features 16 episodes (ten of which are from Seasons 5 and 6!) that all take a look at heroism in its many Adventure Time forms.

You see, The Enchiridion is the rare, magical Hero’s Handbook, and the collection opens with the first season episode of the same name, wherein Princess Bubblegum tasks Finn and Jake with retrieving the Enchiridion from the top of Mount Cragdor. It’s a book that can only be acquired by heroes “whose hearts are righteous,” so Finn is in. There are a number of trials, a brief loss of faith, and then both an Ogre and a sorcerer to overcome. But in the end, Finn and Jake are welcomed by the righteous Mannish Man and given the book.

This episode is not followed, sadly, by all of the appearances of The Enchiridion (of which there were seven), but instead jumps right to “In Your Footsteps” (from Season 4), where Finn decides to give The Enchiridion to a bear who has been copying his style. It’s a cute episode with some decidedly weird elements (especially the bear’s awkward attempts to borrow Finn’s identity), but it really comes together in the coda, where we learn that the bear had been tasked with retrieving The Enchiridion for the Lich-possessed snail that had been lurking around in the background for a while.

This story appeared early in the season, but led directly to the Season 4 finale where the Lich used the book to open a portal to the Time Room and nearly destroyed all of creation. Unfortunately, that story is not included here (it was already included on the Finn the Human collection and the Complete Fourth Season release).

Instead we get a lot of good and a few great episodes that all explore some aspect of heroism in the Land of Ooo. The standouts are Season Five’s “Betty” and “Billy’s Bucket List,” which are not only two of my favorite episodes, they’re two that really contribute to the world-building that went on that season, emphasizing the emotional underpinnings of the show that help to make it unique.

The collection also includes the yet-to-be-collected-anywhere-else Season Six episodes, “Ocarina,” “Ghost Fly,” “James II,” “The Pajama War,” and my personal favorite of the S6 batch, “Astral Plane” (but I’m a sucker for anything Jesse Moynihanworks on). Moynihan co-wrote this one with Canadian artist Jillian Tamaki (Gilded Lilies, Skim, Indoor Voice, This One Summer and last year’s SuperMutant Magic Academy), and it sees Finn’s astral body pulled from his physical form and drawn through and then finally up and out of Ooo to Mars. Along the way Finn discovers that everybody is sad and lonely, that birth is the greatest act of creation, and that Grob Gob Glob Grod is willing to sacrifice his life to save Mars from the approaching Catalyst Comet.

Yes, Gob is dead.

I really can’t wait for Season Six to be released in its entirety. While I enjoy these 16-episode collections — and The Enchiridion is one of the better ones — I love immersing myself in the seasons and catching all the little things that I missed along the way. Season Six’s overarching storyline involving the approaching Catalyst Comet is huge and I want to dig into it again.

Until then, though, The Enchiridion is a nice taste of things that have come and things to be.

APPIP ERROR: amazonproducts[
AccessDeniedAwsUsers|The Access Key Id AKIAIIK4RQAHE2XK6RNA is not enabled for accessing this version of Product Advertising API. Please migrate your credentials as referred here https://webservices.amazon.com/paapi5/documentation/migrating-your-product-advertising-api-account-from-your-aws-account.html.
]