Bo is a gorgeous renegade. An irresistible beauty. And a deadly succubus. For years, she had no idea what she was - or why every new lover died in the throes of passion. She fled one corpse after another until a chance encounter with the puckish thief Kenzi exposed Bo's existence to the Fae. This ancient society of supernatural beings exists outside the realm of mere mortals. Within their world, there are only two sides: Light and Dark. Each member of the Fae must choose who they will serve. But not Bo. Driven to discover who she really is, Bo vows to live on her own terms - even if it means existing in the abyss between darkness and light. With the help of the mischievous, but loyal, Kenzi, the handsome shapeshifter Dyson, and the beautiful human scientist Lauren, Bo will use her powers of seduction to unravel the riddle of her mysterious past.
I grew to love Lost Girl when eOne first released it to DVD in Canada, but I had a feeling it would look much better on Blu-ray. Thankfully FUNimation stepped up here, and they've released the show on both DVD and Blu-ray, with extras! It's also really nice to see FUNimation step back into the TV realm; they did some North American TV for awhile, but recently it's just been anime. Normally I don't comment on the packaging for a set, but I really like this one. It's just a standard 3-disc BD case, but the slip cover has a great shot of 3 cast members, and it's printed on metallic paper to give it a nice look. It's a lot prettier than the eOne DVD, that's for sure!
This 3-disc set includes all 13 episodes from the first season:
Disc 1 (3:39:51)
It's a Fae, Fae, Fae, Fae World (43:40)
Where There's a Will, There's a Fae (44:02)
Oh Kappa, My Kappa (44:04)
Faetal Attraction (44:01)
Dead Lucky (44:04)
Disc 2 (3:40:26)
Food for Thought (44:04)
ArachnoFaebia (44:06)
Vexed (44:08)
Fae Day (44:01)
The Mourning After (44:07)
After watching this on DVD when eOne released the first season in Canada, I can honestly say that it looks much, much better on Blu-ray. The picture is nice and crisp, with just a little bit of noise in some scenes. Black levels are great, except for a few scenes (which were a problem with the DVD as well, so it's clearly the production, not the BDs). There's a "play all" on each disc, and FUNimation has provided a chapter after the opening of each episode.
As mentioned on the packaging, these are the full-length "Canadian" versions of the episodes, which contain a minute or two more than the episodes which aired on SyFy (and they match the ones on the eOne DVDs, give or take a second or two).
Audio
The show sounds as good as it looks; this Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track is excellent. The DVDs suffered from a quiet track, but that's not an issue here. The audio is great, and there's a lot of use of the surround speakers; music sounds excellent here as well. There are English subtitles if you need them.
Cast Interviews (15:57)
They really, really needed to have a "play all" for each actor, as the setup is quite horrible. Each actor has 3-7 clips (in SD) which can only be played one at a time, and there are 26 of them. The times you see below are for all the clips added together, with the shortest clip being 0:14, and the longest being 1:27 (most are around 30-40 seconds).
Anna Silk - Bo (4:03)
Kris Holden-Ried - Dyson (4:13)
Ksenia Solo - Kenzi (2:44)
Zoie Palmer - Lauren (1:42)
Rick Howland - Trick (2:16)
K.C. Collins - Hale (0:59)
Crew Interviews (7:53)
Same problems as above; short clips that are a pain to navigate to. The quality of these is very poor; they look like preview renders to me. The frame rate is bad (10 fps?), and the quality isn't good at all. Just take a look at the Peter Monahan clips - they're the worst of the bunch.
Michelle Lovretta - Creator (2:37)
Fay Firestone - Executive Producer (1:39)
Peter Monahan - Executive Producer (1:26)
Annie Dixon - Costume Designer (0:26)
David Greene - Director of Photography (0:54)
Ian Brock - Production Designer (0:51)
Behind the Scenes Clips (7:01)
These look like the "Crew Interviews" - low resolution, SD, with a poor frame rate. There are 10 clips, ranging from 0:14 to 1:15.
Previews (5:28)
Four previews for other FUNimation releases.
Summary
Well, I was right, the show looks a lot better on Blu-ray (and sounds better, too). FUNimation did a top-notch job with the A/V on this release, but the extras leave a LOT to be desired. The navigation for them is truly abysmal, the content is severely lacking, and the quality is pretty much crap. I don't know what happened there, but the crew interviews, and the behind-the-scenes clips look really bad, while the cast interviews just look like normal SD material. I think the problems are magnified because it's on Blu-ray, so you go from looking at near-pristine HD material, to something that looks as though it's 320x240. I also really, really don't like forced trailers. I accidentally stopped a disc while it was on the main menu, and when I played it again I had to sit through the forced trailer. I liked watching it the first time I saw it (I didn't even try to skip it), but I really, really hated being forced to sit through it a second time.
Lost Girl is a wonderful show, and the A/V on this disc is great, just don't get excited over the bonus material because it'll let you down.
