The story: After a fight with a deadly human eating homunculus creature, a high schooler named Kazuki has his heart replaced with an alchemy device called a kakugane that releases a Buso Renkin weapon. With this weapon (and with help from fellow alchemist and "Sailor Moon" lookalike Tokiko), Kazuki soon realizes his destiny revolves around fighting humonculi. This season one box set contains the first 13 episodes.

"Buso Renkin," which owes a lot to "Bleach" and "Fullmetal Alchemist," is an awkward show as the tone is literally all over the place. The show tries to balance action, horror, drama, and goofy humor, but it simply doesn't work. When the show focuses on mythology and epic action packed battles with the homunculi, the show is watchable. When the show deals with slapstick humor and ridiculous moon faced characters, I want to eject the DVD.

One of the main reasons the show fails to connect with me is because of the main villain (Papillon Masked Creator) who might very well be the worst anime character I have ever seen. Sure, all of the characters in this show are silly archetypal cliches, but Papillon goes above and beyond silly. To give you an idea of what the character is like, he sometimes wears just a speedo and sports a butterfly mask (and wings) while doing ballet dances. Need I say more?

Extras include three postcards, trailers for Viz titles, Manga ads, useless commentary tracks by voice actors for episodes 1, 6, and 9, and a 24 minute behind the scenes look at English dub voice recordings.