アニメ Republic

Recently I made a trip up to Diamond Bar to meet someone in the parking lot of a K-Mart by a McDonalds off the 57 FWY. Now that may seem rather seedy, but it wasn’t drugs or anything else nefarious like that. It was boxes of anime VHS tapes. This person was selling a huge lot of something like 300+ anime VHS tapes on eBay. Now as you may guess shipping on something like that, even ground super-slow, would be rather high. My guess is that is what scared off any other potential buyer. Fortunately the seller was from Ontario so I figured I could just drive up and pick them up. They went the extra mile, literally, by agreeing to meet me half way, which brings us back to the parking lot in question. While transferring the boxes to my car I asked why he was selling them (figuring he was getting out of anime, dumping all VHS, or something else of that nature). Turns out he had bought them sight unseen from some dude back east who listed them on Craig’s List as “anime movies” and promised most were DVDs. Well, of course it turned out there were absolutely zero DVDs, just all VHS tapes.

Here’s the funny part. Though I didn’t want to stand there in the parking lot looking through ever box as not only would that have taken way too much time it would have just been un-cool. I did happen to notice however that all the ones I was seeing appeared to be new still in factory seal. Once I got them home I did a further inspection and to my amazement found that there were almost no duplicates and nearly all of them were still “new” and had never been opened. Now one may wonder what prompted me to go through all this effort for a bunch of boxes of old anime videos. The primary reason was, first and foremost, these four tapes of the two Galaxy Express 999 movies from VIZ in both subtitled and English dubbed form. When you look at what a couple of these go for on places like eBay you will soon discover that they alone were worth the price of admission.

To my surprise however, I found a number of other lost treasures hidden away in these boxes. These included complete sets of “AWOL” and “Ehrgeiz” both from Bandai back during the Anime Village days. Others in the lot included the English dubbed versions of all three of the original Gundam movies available only on VHS as the DVD box set included only the subtitle version.  Also in the lot were some old OVA series from CPM (Blue Sonnet and Akai Hayate) that never made their way to DVD. Add to that a couple from both ADV (Luna Varga) and Urban Vision (Goku Midnight Eye) and the whole lot becomes that much more worth it.

The remaining 200+ VHS tapes that are all from titles that have since made it to DVD will be used as give-a-ways at Anime LA 6 in January 2010 and official convention events leading up to the con in an attempt to bribe or otherwise coerce people to help out running the anime video room.

Though not in the group picked up in the lot above, I figured this would be a good time to include these others as well. First off we have the complete set of videos from the series “Super Bestial Machine God Dancougar” released back in the day by CPM under the Software Sculptors label.  Interestingly enough they managed to get the whole series released on VHS (though only a subtitled version) including the final OVA “Requiem for Victims”. A few more still include a few more from ADV (Capricorn, Girl from Phantasia and Dragoon) plus the still quite funny OVA “Junk Boy” from Manga Entertainment. Finishing things out for this round are a couple of titles from VIZ (Mermaid’s Scar and Grey: Digital Target [English dubbed version]) plus one from Right Stuff (Godmars) and the second of two volumes of “Twin Dolls” from ADV (under their SoftCel Pictures label).

That about covers all of them for the moment, but I am still on the hunt for more anime on VHS that have never made it to DVD (or Laserdisc!) and should have at least one more addition to this group in the months ahead.

Enjoy!!

As a somewhat early start to the haul for January 2009, I’ve posted some shots of an LD I just picked up off eBay. It was quite a rare find and as the seller had a ‘buy it now’ option and the listing hadn’t been up for more than half a day I was lucky enough to snag it.

From what I can tell from the reference here at the Macross World site, this is rather rare indeed. I haven’t had a chance to play it yet as I still have to get my main LD player set-up again after Anime LA. Here is a shot of the front cover with obi on and the back cover with obi off to the side. And here is a group shot with the front cover with obi off plus the two inserts. The first insert is a one-sheet with a postcard attachment and the other insert is a two sided tri-fold with character information and sketches.

Enjoy!!

A few items came in that fall neatly into this category so I figured I would list them all together. Please note that many of these images in this update are very much NSFW. You have been warned.

First up is a figure I picked up recently off eBay. This is a modified version of an existing figure with added…..enhancements. I would put the scale at about 1/6. I have included a few shots of this new one in its new home along with Ryofu and Kanu, also in various states of undress. I also included the detailed pictures from the eBay auction listing (thanks!) as they are very good and thus save me the time in taking my own. At the end of the batch are the “censored” shots mainly just for humor value. These were used on the eBay listing its self as eBay tends to not like boobs.

And in the “why even bother” category I have added in a couple more pillow covers, both from Ikki Tousen. These are also to be considered very NSFW. For whatever reason I decided pony up a few bucks for a couple of these more than likely bootleg pillow covers from some dude in China. I really don’t need to say any more than that.

First up is the Kanu cover. Here is a shot of one side and the other. Next up is the Ryomou cover. Again here is a shot of one side and the other side. Notice the high degree of sheen on these. Yeah, that’s pretty much what they look like. Well, at least now I know. I also picked up a slightly less suspect “sports” towel of Ryomou from the same guy. At least this one looks somewhat legit.

This concludes the NSFW update. Into storage they go. After all it’s not like I will actually use them.

Enjoy!!

The December 2008 batch of items brings a close to the year. It’s another small but rather notable grouping this time around. Here is a quick group shot of the DVDs, CD, and Blu-ray for this round.

Leading the charge of course is the latest volume in the Ikki Tousen Great Guardians series. Volume 4 comes with a box (yes, I did get two. It’s me after all) to house the remaining volumes in the series (4-6) plus all the standard goodies such as two more postcards, a new pencil board, reversible cover (same image as the pencil board), booklet and mini poster.

The best thing about this volume in my opinion has to be the bonus CD that comes with the DVD. This CD has a fairly large number of pre-sized wallpapers from all three series (IT, IT: DD & IT: GG) plus several screen saver apps (install is in Japanese, but it’s pretty easy to figure out. Hint: rename the file first before trying to run the install) as well as a bunch of character icons. I have already loaded up one of the screen savers, applied one of the wallpapers and tried out a few of the icons. Not truly that big of a deal, but if you want to jazz up your desktop with a bunch of Ikki Tousen theme items; it’s the way to go.

Next up is the fifth volume for Macross Frontier. This is the Blu-ray edition and comes with a box (no, I only got one) to house the first five volumes (Blu-ray) of the series. I picked up the first volume of this series just to check it out and then picked up volume two because of the first press “pins” that came with it (unfortunately those turned out to be less the stellar). This is as far as I’ll go with this series for now unless they release a later volume with another box. I know the series will not get picked up in R1 land, but since the JP releases do not have any English access I really can’t justify it past a couple of “just to check it out” volumes.

Moving happily along is the CD/DVD combo for the new Ichigo Marshmallow OVA series. The CD is for the OP/ED songs and the DVD has the OP/ED credit less animations. I’ll probably pick up this OVA series when it starts as it is only a short OVA series. And for more Nobue.

Rounding things off, I picked up another Ikki Tousen poster (seen here with the mini-poster for IT: GG volume 4). This is described as a “bathtub poster”. Apparently this is the idea of how it is supposed to be used.  Yeah, as cool as that may be I don’t think I’ll be doing that anytime soon.  And finally here are a couple of shots of the latest in the line of never-to-be-used Ikki Tousen body pillow covers. This one is of Ryofu Housen in (or in this case ‘mostly out of’) school uniform.

Well that’s all for this round. Until next time.

Enjoy!!

I’ve pretty much given up on the whole idea of disclaiming how I won’t buy any more of these as it is quite obvious that will not be happening any time soon. But at least I know they will stay in mint condition! Here are a couple of shots of the latest in the line of never-to-be-used Ikki Tousen body pillow covers. This one is of Ryofu Housen in (or in this case ‘mostly out of’) school uniform. I have a couple more on order of the more… how should it be put…NSFW versions. More on those later though.

Enjoy!!