Official Synopsis
Marceline wishes to be an undead, red-sucker no more, but can Princess Bubblegum concoct a cure? At the same time, five of Marceline’s most fearsome foes return from her past. What might her most powerful nemesis, the Vampire King, have in store? Finn, Jake, Princess Bubblegum and their friends join the Vampire Queen’s fight against her immortal enemies. But for Marceline, the stakes have never been higher throughout these eight special episodes of Adventure Time!
I have always championed these Adventure Time releases. When you want a quick fix, you can’t beat the small DVD snippets of the show to satisfy the kids in the household. Generally, these DVD releases, outside of the season releases, typically are either themed or they’re a compilation of seasonal episodes. Regardless of form, they’re nothing more than rehashes of already released material in cheaper, standalone formats.
This is why I’m enormously impressed with Stakes, which is an eight episode mini-series that surrounds the life and time of Marceline, our favorite vampire of the AT gang. The DVD release isn’t a rehash of a season-based set of shows, rather it’s a concurrent storyline that takes us from Marceline’s tragic past that eventually catches up to her.
Without further jibber-jabber, let’s break this puppy down.
The first few episodes give you a background of pre-Jake/Finn Marceline, as she survived the budding/restructuring of the Land of Ooo. The first few episodes set up her survival and her vampire hunting skills that lead into later episodes. The first episodes are sort of sad in a sense, as we see a lot of her values, such as not wanting to kill humans, take her on a tragic route into what seems like a hopeless set of morals. She protects humans, while trying to fend off vampires that are heck-bent on exterminating them. Love the grounded, dark sense the series gives off from the get-go.
As that background story concludes, the rest of the episodes set up the revival of the main vampires she was hunting in the past. They end up in the modern day Land of Ooo and begin to instantly start trouble. Of course nothing is easy with this storyline, so just in time for their arrival, Princess Bubblegum finds a way to turn Marceline from bloodsucker to normal. So, if you needed something to cause a horrible uphill battle for Marceline’s plight to get rid of her past problems, then that be it.
As each episode comes and goes, they’re individually dedicated to Marceline hunting down each one of the vampires in the group of vampires and taking them down. Once taken, she sucks their souls and ingests their powers. With each one gone, it all leads up to the fight with the vampire king. The last episode is a spectacular way to conclude the mini-series, as it shifts gears from a normal Adventure Time storyline to something that can only be comparable to Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke’s final battle (not quite as violent, but definitely in the same vein). It’s a very emotional and fantastic conclusion to the series.
Overall, Adventure Time – Stakes is a breath of fresh air from the typical DVD releases coming from the Adventure Time/Cartoon Network folks. It’s a bit darker than usual, but it’s more coherent than the other releases. In addition, it gives some much needed depth to Marceline’s character, which until now was either stuck with Simon or focused on her relationship with her father.
Anyway, Stakes is a great addition to the Adventure Time family. I hope they explore more characters this way.
