Forum - View topicThe Mike Toole Show - The Great Unwatched
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neocloud9
 Posts: 1178 Location: Atlanta, GA |
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I have a little over 90 titles in my collection (never bothered to count the individual discs, though I'd estimate there are around 500 or so) and due to a few well-timed snow days recently, I only have 3 unwatched series left! This makes me feel far more accomplished than it probably should.
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TJ_Kat
Posts: 427 Location: Saskatoon, Canada |
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of my 1200+ discs, i have 7 that are unwatched. all because i am missing one volume from those series (if anyone wants to send me a copy of beck vol. 5.......)
on the other hand, my manga pile is a different story. i have about 50 unread volumes. i've trained myself too well to get sleepy while reading, so it's tough to make much progress at a time. i also have 8 gunpla models just waiting for me to build them. |
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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I have 1125 anime dvd/vhs's, of which I'm now looking... about 250 haven't been watched 0_o The reasons you listed- missing a volume or two, stockpilining for rainy days, finding dvd's on clearance [3 dollar anime dvd's! Geneon's crazy "send dvd's to Walmart in Canada" clearance!]- it feels good to get a deal. My collection got past the 200 range years ago by buying supercheap VHS used on Ebay when people were replacing them with DVD editions (though I haven't used Ebay in ages, because since about 2004 or so, anime's been really available, and I no longer have to bother with the hassle of Ebaying].
Then again, I also rewatch stuff- Read or Die at least once a year, and recently Slayers first season. I'm now rewatching the Patlabor TV series, which I last watched 7 or so years ago. I keep my vhs, because I don't double dip, and the quality's just fine by me [the only issue I've had was when I had my vcr hooked up to a cable box so I could tape stuff if I ever needed/wanted to that added a little fuzz, but nothing that made stuff unwatchable... it's how I'm watching Patlabor TV :)] The whole thing about anime once being rare is a big part of why I don't really mind having so many cheap dvd's I haven't watched yet- I remember pre-2000, when I had to special order any anime I wanted at the comic shop, with import costs added on at a time when the US dollar was a LOT stronger and vhs's were 35-40 bucks, and finding out VIZ had repriced the Ranma OVA's so they'd work out to $15 cdn was a godsend! So what if I hadn't seen the TV series? I now had some shiny Ranma 1/2 OVA's in clamshell cases, subtitled! I remember when Future Shop sold Cowboy Bebop single volume dvd's for $59.99. And even when anime did become easier to find [CPM's 9.99 line was the bomb, and I now have a considerable chunk of their catalogue], it was mostly single dvd'sand boxsets were $$$$, so whenever you found some on clearance, you BOUGHT IT. It was wonderous paying $5 for anime. As such a lot of folks stockpile- I imagine with online shopping it can get even worse [I only ordered from RStuf with some friends just this year- I'd gotten past 1000 dvd/vhs just by watching for sales, and buying assorted new releases at MSRP I really wanted, because it's nice to have something "new"]. Just the other day I got 8 dvd's from around 2003/4-ish for $1 each at a discount department store [including the last disc of Ranma Forever- finally ^_^!].... anime companies seriously overproduced from 2002-2004, so you tend to find a lot of stuff from this era on clearance [though I now wonder if in 5 years time, we'll have people paying insane prices for current titles that go OOP, as print runs have to be pretty low on some titles]. It's all why I have issues when people call anime "expensive" or "hard to find". When it's super easy to find cheap anime online or at retail, and prices for new releases are cheaper then they've ever been, and even 6 years ago were often pretty decent, with valuepriced lines a regular thing, it's really hard to take it when someone goes on an "evil anime corporations" rant. Though Mike's article puts that into perspective- to most fans getting into anime today, anime has never been rare, hard to find or costly, and we're all wierdos for wanting to pay for it. re:manga--- my manga pile's gotten waaaayy larger than it had ever been, mostly due to me finding a LOT of manga for super cheap in the past few years. What happened to anime in 2008 is now happening to manga, the market retracting, changing pricing/packaging policies [higher prices for lower print runs, or omnibuses to lower overall price and get out larger chunks at a time], and a lot of fans not really being part of the fandom in the same way the group who buys stuff is. |
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BeanBandit
Posts: 303 Location: Canada |
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Being a toy collector has thankfully averted me from having a huge collection of anime DVD's and just sticking to stuff I know I want to keep. At one point I had over 800 Transformers and other robot toys but sold them all off over the past couple of years as a good 60-70% of that collection was stuff I never opened and just sat in rubbermaid bins in my basement. Because of this I've avoided making the same mistake with anime. With anime too if a series does not grab me I don't have any huge compulsion to keep watching or hold onto it, nor am I afraid to just toss something outright. I purged a lot of anime stuff when I was selling off my toy collection and the anime/manga stuff that did not sell went into the donation bin at my local library. At the same time I know exactly how Mike and other collectors feel, God knows I guard my DVD copy of Gunsmith Cats with all due diligence. Same goes with Ippo and other out of print DVD's as on the flip side I definitely know the feeling of if you don't buy it now you might not ever see it again.
As a sidenote just to pass on a funny story regarding that Crusher Joe DVD set, I found about 5-8 sealed copies at a used video game store in Toronto for like $5 each a few years back and had a hard time hooking people up at cost. One guy took a copy as I had emailed Daryl over at Anime World Order, and hooked up another guy from Denmark on another anime forum, but I had to sell the rest on eBay and got like $40-50 even though I offered to hook people up at cost. Just thought I would relate that story as I think it also illustrates how small and niche the anime collectors market really is. Last edited by BeanBandit on Sun Jan 16, 2011 4:59 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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The King of Harts
 Posts: 6712 Location: Mount Crawford, Virginia |
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I am very upset that you tease us with a thumb of your collection, but have no actual pictures in your article. Maybe I'm weird, but I love looking at people's collections; I'd be especially interested in yours since I'm sure you have tons of stuff I've never even heard of.
First off, I'm curious as to how I've been buying for only two years and have amassed 619 discs, but you've been buying for 10 years (as far as DVDs go) and have a squeak over 800? Now, as for the question at hand, I have 91 unwatched disks. The pile consists of 5 cm/s with the BZ dub, Adventures of Mini Goddess, Aria, Burst Angel (bought the box, but getting the BD), the Sakura Book for CCS (I don't have the damn Clow Book), Project Eden, Gankutsuo, Genshiken 2 (I don't have season 1), Honey x Clover set 1, Magic Knight Rayearth seasons 1 and 2, My Bride is a Mermaid part 2 (don't have part 1), My Otome (only have the box so far), Saber Marionette J Again and J to X (I don't like how each installment has a different dub), Sailor Moon R, S, SuperS, and the three movies, To Heart, Tenjho Tenge (dropped after 3 disks), and Welcome to the NHK. I've managed to keep it small because I'm a social lockout and don't work long hours, which gives me time to chew through it even though I buy ~$200 worth of stuff every month; I buy the new shiny things and the old stuff. That may change, though, since I've recently dropped my restriction on fansubs, which will eat into DVD time. I also watch streams off Youtube and Crunchyroll, which does the same thing.
Ugh, don't remind me. I have to track down volume 5 of Ah My Goddess 2 which is strangely expensive, the Clow Book for CCS which is about $200, the Ranma OVAs, and Shin Chan season 1 part 2 which is also strangely expensive. It's rediculous how much people charge for this stuff. I mean, the most you'll get at GoHastings is $2, but some you how think you can sell it for $100 on Amazon/Ebay? Absolutely absurd. It's so hard to be both a collector with an affinity for art boxes + singles and a new fan who missed out on them at first. Last edited by The King of Harts on Sun Jan 16, 2011 5:06 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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jared_thorin
Posts: 30 Location: Omaha Ne. |
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Oh man.... I'd say I've gotat least three hundred dvds that I just can't make time for. Series that have gone unwatched include SAC, Patlabor, Tweeny Witches, Ghost Sweeper Mikami, and more. And it's not that I don't want to watch any of these shows, but I'm married with a full time job. So it's real hard to find the time to get to lesser priority titles. *sigh* I wish I was a teenager again.....
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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I'm not Mike, but I'm guessing a lot of that has to do with anime being pretty expensive/hard to find 10 years ago- I know I only bought a vhs once every other month when I started collecting. A large chunk of my collection is from 2007-onwards, when anime suddenly started showing up on clearance *everywhere* and even MSRP stuff was quite cheap compared to 6 years ago. PS--- on a manga note, my collection is around 800, but I have a friend whose collection is twice mine, and has actually sold/donated/given away over 1000 books (so her current giant collection is the result of massive pruning). I don't think most people involved in online anime fandom have any notion of just how scary awesome the collections of the hardcore not-bootlegging fans can get Last edited by Paploo on Sun Jan 16, 2011 5:12 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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CrazyCanuck
 Posts: 104 Location: Canada |
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Out of 3955 anime DVDs in my collection, 2612 sit in my totally unwatched pile. That is to say I have not only watched my DVD, but have not seen the primary content at all.
I have 180 DVDs that are from non-canceled series' that I do not own all of. There are only 17 series' represented in that list. Only three of those seventeen have had all their discs released. All those have been completed in the last monthish and I am simply waiting for my orders to ship. The rest, while incomplete, are all up to date. The other 14 include four 'long haul' shows (Naruto, Bleach, Dragonball Z Kai and One Piece). A few are simply not officially canceled yet. I hate holes in my collection and go to any necessary lengths to fill them. I own the last two Aura Battler Dunbine discs, the singles for Kanon, all of City Hunter, Marmalade Boy, everything Imaginasian released, Princess Tutu singles, all the R1 Sailor Moon released, all twelve Urusei Yatsura box sets... The list goes on. I think the only titles mentioned in the article I don't own are Battle Arena Toshinden and Gude Crest. I admit, I may not be the most well adjusted collector out there. 
And try though I may, I have never made it all the way through disc one of Excel Saga. |
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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I don't have Gude Crest, but do have Battle Arena Toshinden. Which I actually bought years after it came out at my first anime con. Because I actually wanted it, having seen it on vhs via rentals ages before, and having loved the video game. I've since concluded I have horrible taste in anime.
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Fletcher1991
 Posts: 514 Location: Long Island, NY |
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I don't have a very large collection, but I just started collecting within the past year. I have 11 total, 2 on pre-order that I will get in February.
Owned ones: 5 Centimeters Per Second (ADV) Air Movie (Funimation) Air t.v. (Funimation) Clannad (Sentai dub version) Kanon (Funimation) Princess Mononoke (Buena Vista) Spirited Away (Buena Vista) Sword of the Stranger (Bandai) The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (Bandai) The Place Promised in Our Early Days (ADV) Voices of a Distant Star (ADV) Pre-ordered ones: FLCL Blu-ray (Funimation) Summer Wars Blu-ray (Funimation) |
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Hoofbites
 Posts: 49 Location: under your porch |
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I have yet to finish Tekkaman Blade, Full Metal Panic!, Brain Powered, Toward the Terra, Code Geass, and many others. It's most irritating when I'm about 2/3 of the way through the show and I just... stop for some reason. Usually it's because the disc started skipping like mad on account of it having scratches right out of the shrinkwrap (FUNimation's DVDs in particular are terrible about this).
The only series I haven't finished because I'm missing a disc in the middle is (ironically enough) Haré+Guu. Last edited by Hoofbites on Sun Jan 16, 2011 5:28 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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PseudoFiction
Posts: 98 |
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I steam anime at home and take my unwatched DVDs to work to watch on break, so I'm getting through them at a decent rate.
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12skippy21
 Posts: 785 Location: York, England |
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I am quite thankful (though not really) that living in the UK means that cheap boxsets are a rarity unless you have a multi-regional DVD player (which I do not have at the moment, but I shall some day I swear), therefore the temptation to buy everything is pretty much non-existent. You can find the occasional cheap DVD on the internet but the standard in shops I see for a boxset is £30-£40. All of Code Geass in HMV for example will set you back £160 (about $240).
This allows me to save money but also avoid holes since only boxsets really come out. I rarely buy singles though because boxsets have 5.1 sound while singles only have 2.0 and extras do not fascinate me much. You can still get Sherlock Hounds where I live because it is not a popular title. Personally I only own 12 boxsets and I have watched them all, the latest being Baccano. If anime was cheaper then I might buy more but my issue lies in the fact that they do not release the shows I like and probably never will (Higurashi series). I feel like I let the side down considering my purchases versus what I have watched. 
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PBsallad
 Posts: 338 Location: Phoenix |
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Does this pile of unwatched DVDs count for shows I've already seen, on say TV?
If not, then not many. My collection is sort of small, not 100's/1000's of discs, but the only thing I haven't watched before is the original Gundam Movie trilogy (seen the series before though). I'm not sure if I've seen the entirety of Gundam 8th MS when it was on TV. But I've stalled on disc 3. Being distracted by other stuff. Oh, almost forgot about Shin-Chan. I have season 1 but I'm not sure if I saw everything on [AS]. Other then that I've seen everything else either through TV, streaming, renting, or bought the DVDs because I've heard the show was good and watched them soon after. Edit: I've never seen Miller's Report either, so that's 2 things I've haven't seen. On the other hand, theres quite a few shows I've seen already but haven't watched the DVDs I own. Which is about 18. 13 if you consider the Trigun singles as one and 12 if you consider the FMA season sets as a single series too (or something, I'm bad with math. lol). That also doesn't count Gundam 08th MS team and Shin-Chan. Last edited by PBsallad on Sun Jan 16, 2011 5:46 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Macron One
 Posts: 151 Location: Netherlands |
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PICTURES!! You can't just tell us this and then not include any pictures of such an awesome collection. As a cel collector, i'm especially curious about your cel collection. The dreaded pile of unwatched anime DVDs is something i remember well and am happy to have at last eliminated. While i used to have a considerable backlog myself, which at one point numbered 300+ DVDs, i reduced my anime DVD buying considerably since mid-2009 and recently managed to get around to watching the last hold-outs of my former backlog and am finally completely up to speed with my collection (currently 1666 DVDs and 41 BDs). I now own almost all of the older releases that had been on my wishlist (still need to get Saint Tail though) and am a bit pickier with the new and upcoming releases i purchase, as it dawned on me that the reason i collect anime DVDs is to watch them, not just to add them to the pile. The last backlog anime series i finished was Sailor Moon, which was a rather expensive purchase as a result of being out of print and my insistance on buying everything in sealed condition. I had already purchased season 1, 3 and 4, but postponed watching until i could get season 2 (Sailor Moon R) for a not-too-crazy price, which seemed to take forever. As you mentioned, the out-of-print-ness of many older titles and specific DVD volumes is a serious obstacle for a collector wanting to complete the watching of a series. |
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