The fourth chapter will leave you with even more questions so be warned! haha

So yeah, I’m just very stubborn when it comes down to it. I’d just rather view the videos on my computer rather than on TV and that’s just how I do things.

Since I have an HD TV and a Blu-ray player, I watch my BDs with those and don’t need to use my computer. But going by what you said, I’m assuming that you don’t have an HD TV and rely on your computer to watch DVDs and BDs? My HD TV is also my computer monitor, so it’s almost like I’m watching BDs on my computer anyway =P

Things like figures and T-shirts aren’t for everyone, but I like showing off my love of anime both in my room and when I go out sometimes.

On the topic at hand, I myself have a collection of manga that I proudly own. I do enjoy anime, don’t get me wrong, but I can never bring myself to buy a DVD or Blu-Ray of anime. I have always found myself buying volumes of manga priced at 15 dollars at most. I just happen to enjoy reading manga more than watching anime. Now this doesn’t mean I wouldn’t buy anime though. It’s just that I happen to find manga appealing in two ways. The first is that some anime detract from the manga and thus the story the anime has pales to the story in the manga. The second reason is that manga in my case is more private than anime. Now this isn’t to say that anime can’t be viewed privately, it is just that my situation would make me pop my anime into a Bluray player and view it for all to see.

I am the type of person that enjoys quality. I nearly refuse to get music at anything less than 256 kbps and even then I will sometimes buy CD’s or get it in FLAC from Bandcamp. Likewise then is that for anime I will get nothing less than Blurays and there lies a problem. While one can easily view DVD’s on a PC, Blurays are a different story. The simple gist is this, Bluray has some DRM on it that can only be bypassed by acquiring expensive software from one of two companies. Every other method still would make me pay for software to just view Bluray on my computer and that in itself is cumbersome. As such, this issue deters me from even trying to shill out money for a Bluray release of say K-On! or Hellsing.

Now a fair argument one could make is for me to simply buy the DVD’s. While logical and valid, it’s hard to tell someone like myself to simply get the lesser and to not worry. I strive for the best and the best is what I will attempt to get close to.

Now one more thing before I go is the topic of merchandise. Stuff like pens, shirts, pillows, figurines, plushies, and the rest of that stuff. I don’t really see a need for them. Maybe it’s because my room is a relatively small and cluttered space with a slowly shrinking storage capacity for reading material. Actually that is exactly it. I don’t buy stuff like figurines simply because to me they hold little value to me. I’m also not one to really show off my love of anime too much so I don’t own shirts relative to the anime or manga series I like. So no, I’m not one for keychains and stickers, I’d rather spend it on Anime and manga.

For the most part though I don’t really buy Manga all too often. I just recently bought the last two volumes I needed to complete Chibi Vampire (Karin) and the last time I seemed to have bought anything manga related seems to have been around maybe two years ago or so. I have a picture of my collection from 2008 and my collection doesn’t seem to have budged since then.

That’s too bad that you don’t have much access to anime products. But perhaps one day you’ll have the opportunity to come to the US or Japan and do all your anime buying at once! XD

I actually wrote a past post about my experience with bootleg anime products. But yes, I also learned about them the hard way from buying bootleg Inuyasha DVDs at Anime Plus and bootleg figures at my early anime conventions. With the lax copyright laws in China, I’ve learned to avoid any suspicious anime products that may be bootleg, such as DVDs with Chinese subtitles or anime products from Hong Kong sellers.

I’ve actually never heard of Fye’s Media either. But we did have a store called Sam Goody, which was a sort of off-shoot of Suncoast (there was a Sam Goody located right next to the Suncoast at my local mall actually, but they closed down at roughly the same time).