Ben10 The Complete Collection is a DVD box set that includes 227 episodes and two movies. This collection includes Ben10, Ben10 Alien Force, Ben10 Ultimate Alien, Ben10 Omiverse, Ben10 Secret of the Omnitrix, and Ben10 Destroy All Aliens (these last two being the films).
Ben10 is an animated series that ran on Cartoon Network. It tells the story of Ben Tennyson and his alien adventures. He’s a 10 year old boy that finds an alien artifact known as the Omnitrix. This alien artifact in the form of a watch allows Ben to transform into various alien creatures, each unique to one another and each offering their own set of abilities.
The sub series that follow which are Alien Force, Ultimate Alien, and Omniverse follow Ben as he grows up and ends when he’s 16 years old. Along with Ben we meet his cousin Gwen, Grandpa Terry, and a variety of cast including friends of Ben and Gwen along the way.
This is really all I will touch on when it comes to the story of the series as I don’t want to give too much away.
With Ben10 being an American animated series that I haven’t seen in a couple of decades, I wasn’t expecting much. I was expecting the animation to be sub-par given it’s age and the fact that American animated shows aren’t as engaging to me as traditional Japanese animated shows. That’s not to say there aren’t great American animated shows out there (looking at you Dexter and the Batman series), but there is just something about Ben10 that I really didn’t care for.
I will touch on what that something is, but first I want to discuss the animation. The Ben10 series is animated very well and what really surprised me is just how much the animation improves with each sub series. You can visually see improved animation with each sub series as they got newer. It was really quite impressive to see and quite frankly visually stunning, even for DVD format.
Another really impressive aspect of the series is how well it’s voiced. The characters express emotion well in both in the animation and their voices behind it. The sound all around sounds great too, at least for DVD format.
Now for that something that I really didn’t care for. Well that would be the target audience. I know that might sound silly given it’s Ben10, but hear me out. So the story of the series is really really good, the issue I have with it is like I said, the target audience. So this series seems to be geared towards an elementary school audience.
Because of the target audience this show is going for, I found that I really couldn’t get into this series as much as I would have like to. I think it would have been a more enjoyable experience and stood the test of old age, if the target audience of the series were to be late middle school or early high school.
With that said, I will give the show credit as it does get a little better with Omniverse, but you can still tell it’s targeting an elementary school audience, despite the jump in time to everyone being much older.
The box set that the collection comes in features a slip cover that holds two clam-shell cases. Each case holds two sub series with one out of the two containing both films. As nice as this box set looks, I do have a couple of issues with it.
The first issue I have with it is that it contains too many DVDs. As a result of this, you have two DVD holders that clip into the middle of the case. These can be moved side to side in order to access the various DVDs. While they do snap into place nicely on either side, the clips can break causing it to sometimes not close correctly, which is what happened to this set that is being featured in this review.
As for the second issue, I would say that it relates to the first in that because there are so many DVDs, they are orientated in such a way that getting them out and back in can be an issue. They can be hard to remove and put back because of the death grip the holders have on each DVD. Couple this with the way they are situated in the case and you find yourself nearly snapping them and causing them to crack. This could be from trying to get them inserted, pulling them out, or even just closing the clam-shell case they come in.
The third and final issue I have with this set is the lack of special features. I mean yes, this is a DVD set, but there should be audio commentary tracks with the creators, behind the scenes stuff, maybe even deleted scenes. Instead of any of that you get TV spots. Advertisements for series sets, the video game adaptations, and a TV commercial here and there for the show.
In conclusion, is this box set worth the asking price? Well I think that if this was a Blu-Ray set and as a result had more special features, better packaged, and have a higher media quality than this set offers; then most definitely worth the asking price of just over $90.
As with previous sets, I would like to see this box set come in Blu-Ray with higher media quality, some actual special features that are worth including, and better packaging with the newer format.
Despite the lack of special features, the format being very dated by today’s standards (I mean who buys DVDs anymore?), and issues with packaging, I would suggest picking this up if you’re a hardcore fan of the show.
Disclaimer: A review copy was provided
In addition to writing articles, Ryan Byers also creates content for his YouTube channel called "Obscure Games and Consoles", collects video games, and dabbles in video game development.