The one with all the anime industry support.

I’ve been watching a lot of anime lately. A lot. I’ve neglected video games, TV shows, and movies just to watch this much anime. It was very sudden too. All it took were a few key series to get me hooked in and suddenly, I was addicted again. I’m ready to accept my otaku status as vehemently as before.

Or is it just a (moon) phase? Am I just in the honeymoon stage where all I want is anime everyday until I get bored and go back to my regular habits of the past few years? It’s hard to say. All I know is that I haven’t been this passionate about something for a very long time. Sure, I’ve had some passion for my other hobbies, but this time, it’s overwhelming. I need more, want more, and am even willing to spend money on it. もっと萌え、もっとエッチ、もっと全部だ。(More moe, more ecchi, more everything.)

That said, I bought quite a bit of anime in the past couple days. It all started with a clever scheme I had to consolidate all the remaining balances on my Vanilla MasterCard and Visa gift cards I had accumulated over the year. A dollar here, five dollars there, and one card even had $14 on it; but I had nothing paltry enough to spend it on. I thought to myself, there should be a way to somehow withdraw those small amounts into an account somewhere. I came across Amazon’s gift card system. You can purchase a gift card for any amount to be sent through email or traditional means. Using the email system, it allowed you to get your money almost immediately, and add it to your Amazon gift certificate balance. I started out with the oldest Visa gift card I had and bought a $1.23 Amazon gift card. It didn’t work right away, but I surmised that it was because I was trying to buy it on Amazon.com instead of Amazon.ca, since the gift card was in Canadian funds. So, I switched over to Amazon.ca, retried the purchase, and successfully claimed my balance. Excellent! I did the same with all my Vanilla MasterCards, and while some took a few minutes and some were instant, I transferred all the balances to Amazon.ca and had a total of $31.86.

Now, the fun part was figuring out what to buy with it. I had considered manga, but then I spotted some anime that I wanted. With such a huge selection, it took me a while to decide on what I wanted in terms of title and value. While DVDs were cheap, the quality was too low for my standards with the advent of HD. It limited my choices, but there were still some good deals to be had. I wanted to pick up the BD remaster of SERIAL EXPERIMENTS LAIN, but it was quite expensive. So, I decided on another series that I liked and had seen before: B Gata H Kei. I ensured it was the uncensored version with the final episode showing full nudity (well, just Yamada’s boobs, but still). Added to cart last night and I ended up paying $7.09 after the gift balance deduction. Crazy!

Today, I checked my budget and found that I still had money left to pick up some more anime. My next choice was SERIAL EXPERIMENTS LAIN, but Amazon was charging quite a bit for it (about $72). I checked Crunchyroll of all places and I found it for US $59 due to my membership discount. Even with the US $15 shipping, I only paid US $74, whereas Amazon would have charged me full taxes for $82. The risk here is that I could potentially be paying duties and taxes over the border making it cheaper to buy from Amazon.ca, so I’m crossing my fingers.

Finally, RightStuf.com had SUMMER WARS and Koto No Ha No Niwa (Garden of Words) for less than US $20 each. The total came to US $54.60 after shipping and taxes (somehow US taxed Manitoba???), which works out to be roughly US $27.30 for each BD. Not cheap because SUMMER WARS was $25 on Amazon.ca; however, Koto No Ha No Niwa was $34, so I potentially saved… $8. Which could change depending on the damn border duty fees and taxes, as well as currency conversion rates. So, in the end, the lesson learned here is: Amazon.ca is much cheaper if you’re ordering in Canada. Bummer.

UPDATE 2013-07-07: According to this thread, any RightStuf orders don’t get charged duties to Canada. Now it’s all about the exchange rate.

One way or another, I still got a good deal on anime, especially on BD. Prices have dropped a lot since the last time I bought anime. Just talking about the LAIN box set alone; I paid less for the BDs than the DVDs. Crazy.

My original goal was to go completely digital and only buy physical copies for the titles I really wanted. I really liked SUMMER WARS, but is it worth the physical purchase? Hard to say. I do feel like watching it again, so maybe it is. Koto No Ha No Niwa is a different case, though. I really want to see it, but to buy it outright without watching it first? Bold move. I haven’t made a spontaneous decision like that for a long while. However, Shinkai Makoto is behind it, and he did the critically acclaimed Hoshi No Koe; Hoshi Wo Ou Kodomo; Kumo No Mukou, Yakusoku No Basho; and Byousoku 5 CENTIMETER. Blind trust is pretty much at work here.

以上。。。であります！