Review: Season One DVD (UK)

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If you want to own Miraculous Ladybug from an official source, and you want a physical copy, your options are pretty limited. In fact, very limited. This is as good as it gets: the Season One DVD box set. There's no Blu-ray, and I don't imagine there ever will be. There's also no S2 box set, though I hope that at least will appear on DVD at some point during 2019. As with many things Miraculous, waiting is the order of the day.

So, is this DVD worth buying? Let's have a look. What you see above is my own copy, bought with my own money. I paid £9.99 in HMV, which seems to be the best option if you want to go to an actual shop. Amazon usually has it for a similar price. The cover design, dominated by Ladybug's face and with her and Cat Noir crouching below, is pretty generic, but there's little to complain about here. It's fine for its purpose.

On the back is the expected blurb, which is... mediocre. Although it gives a vaguely accurate summary of the show, it manages to describe Marinette and Adrien as both "high school students" and "middle school kids". Oh well, it's no worse than the show itself mistranslating "troisième" as "tenth grade" in "The Pharaoh". The blurb also mentions both Hawk Moth and akumas without at any point connecting the two. There's another pic of Ladybug, oddly looking a lot more childlike here, and the expected splash: "Includes all 26 episodes from Season One!"

 
Which it does – but there's a catch. You see, that's all it includes. This is the bare-bones box set to end all bare-bones box sets. Load up a disc and beyond the usual choices of playing everything or picking your episode, the only other option is to choose between 5.1 and 2.0 audio. There's no French audio. There are no subtitles, English or otherwise. There are no music videos, no making-ofs, no interviews... not even a basic photo gallery.

Open up the box and what you see is... well, not much. Four DVDs, which I will grant are pleasantly colourful and easy to tell apart. But if you were hoping for any inserts such as posters or stickers, you're going to be disappointed. Discs 1 and 2 (red and green) contain seven episodes each, while discs 3 and 4 (purple and yellow) boast six apiece. Here's the order in which they appear:

Disc 1: Stormy Weather, The Bubbler, The Pharaoh, Lady Wifi, Timebreaker, Mr. Pigeon, The Evillustrator
Disc 2: Rogercop, Copycat, Dark Cupid, Horrificator, Darkblade, The Mime, Kung Food
Disc 3: Gamer, Animan, Antibug, The Puppeteer, Reflekta, Princess Fragrance
Disc 4:  Pixelator, Guitar Villain, Simon Says, Origins (pts 1 & 2), Volpina

Up until "Reflekta", the DVDs stick to the order you'll find in the Wikipedia ep list, but after that things change around a little – the two Jagged Stone episodes are swapped, for example, as they were for US broadcast order. Putting "Volpina" last makes sense as its story continues into the S2 premiere ("The Collector") while the "Origins" two-parter is still in a late-season spot, as it needs to be.

As for actually watching the episodes? Well, in all honesty there isn't a lot to say: the discs in my set all play fine in terms of both video and audio. Of course you only get 720 x 576 PAL definition, but unless your TV is massive this probably won't be a big deal. If you're someone who can't bear anything less than visual perfection, I doubt you'll be buying DVDs in the first place. For the rest of us, it's perfectly okay.

In the end, the Season One DVD set is what I'd expected it to be: a minimal but workable collection. I would have liked a few extras – I believe the US-spec disc does have some – so marks off there. But at least the PG rating (for "mild fantasy threat, fight scenes") means these episodes are uncut, so you get 572 minutes of Paris-based crime-fighting love-squaring action that no online streaming service can take away from you.