Do you blind buy Anime?

I haven't seen anything Bebop related yet, £40+ for the BD from the UK seems too much, so waiting to see how FUNi price their release and then judge if it's worth the gamble.
 
When i first began collecting anime i didn't blind buy at all it was only within the past year i started. I usually only blind buy when it's either cheap/on sale like MVM's weekly deal or when i like look of the show and see it getting reviews (especially from people on here). As others have said Anime Limited is a company that i plan to get most releases of due to the types of shows/films they get and their enthusiasm for anime fan community.
 
Blind buying is very dependent on circumstances.
I used to blind buy everything before my burnout and ended up with so many dud's it killed the enjoyment of anime for me.

Now with Crunchyroll it's a lot easier to know what I'll enjoy. So my purchases vary because of it.

If something is released by Anime Limited, even if I have not seen it, it will be purchased.
If it's by Manga / MVM / Funimation / Sentai, I have to have some sort of familiarity to purchase now. Either it has to be a classic show (IE: Sailor Moon - which I've never seen) or a familiar creator who I class as creating my favorite shows (IE: Shinchiro Watanabe, Takashi Watanabe) but still manage to find some duds that way.

I'm also more likely to blind-buy older anime (pre 2000's) as I like the art style before most anime became entirely reliant on computers.

I tend not to let reviews influence my purchases as everyone has a different opinion, but if I see universal praise, it makes me likely to blind buy too.
 
I usually buy after watched the series/movies first. If I like I will buy it, If i dont... then you know. I do some blind shopping sometimes but I think a bit before do it and check some trailers too or some episodes. But basically I only buy what I like overall.
 
I've done some blind buying, but that's usually with movies/OVAs, but only four so far, New Gall Force, Appleseed, Ninja Scroll and Ghost in The Shell, even then, it was only because they were fairly cheap. Everything else I've bought anime wise I've watched beforehand, as boxsets are too expensive for me to warrant blind buying without watched at least a few episode prior to purchasing.
 
I've started to use IMDb ratings as a good indicator of what to buy - might not work for everyone, but I've found my enjoyment levels generally falling pretty in line with their ratings. Anything over a 7.5 is usually a must buy for me.
 
It is the opposite for me, I have stopped using IMDb due the fact that anime dont get a lot of votes. Infact I have stopped using IMDb for films too, dont even vote anymore. And I pretty much avoid RT now, after the crap they pulled with MoS and ASM2, anyway that is getting a bit off topic.
 
Yeah amazon, play, you lot and my general feel over the synopsis tends to be my deciding facts now.

Not to mention IMDB and I clearly have different opinions on some films and what we rate them ;) :p
 
Are people generally convinced much by art style? Ie. do you buy a show that looks like it's chock a block full of typical 'moe' style characters? (have to admit I got this one very wrong with We Without Wings).
 
I don't trust anything places like IMDB have to say, because I know that my taste might be different, it's a good gauge to see whether or not I should check out the show though. That said, with the stuff I have blind bought, I've generally done it because I've heard from other people that it's good.

It's the same with art style, again, it's usually a factor in whether or not I check out a show. I would daresay that the people involved is more important for me, I bought Roujin Z (another blind buy now that I think about it, as well as Perfect Blue) purely because Katsuhiro Otomo wrote it.
 
Can't say I have considered using IMBD for anime apart from a few films (although I do use it for live action films and series). If I want an opinion on anime I would go to an anime review site such as here, UK Anime Net, The Fandom Post or Anime News Network.

As for art style, there are one or two cases where I have avoided shows due to this such as Maken-Ki, Divergence Eve and Gankutsuou (at the time this was first released in the West some of the reviews said that some people would not like the art style. Since I had a cover disc with episode 1, I had the chance to try it first and I did not like it. I also had a cover disc with episode 1 of Divergence Eve.).
 
I suppose with IMDB, the main benefit in my eyes is just that it acts as an average of a large number of ratings - Amazon ratings don't really work as you'll usually be lucky to get over 10 people reviewing an anime show on there. And obviously a rating doesn't say everything, but it can act as a barometer at least to say 'hey, this show is pretty popular and thus, it must be popular for a reason'.
 
If you want an average of a large number of reviews, why not try the Anime News Network encyclopedia? Just search for a show or film and it will give a brief description of the anime along with a rating based off a number of user ratings. The latest review on the ANN website is Date A Live and the encyclopedia link is here,

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclo ... p?id=14953

The show has a rating of 7 out of 10 based off 570 user ratings (the site also has ratings for manga in the encyclopedia).
 
Rui said:
So long as you don't just randomly buy things from genres you're not normally interested in, I find very little anime is so bad that it's actively a waste of money if its concept and art attracted you enough to consider it in the first place.
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Essentially this. I still blind-buy pretty much everything based on what I've read or heard from others. AUKN has been great in that respect because I've learned and now know who here usually shares my tastes with a few (usually really odd) exceptions here and there.

Lutga said:
Are people generally convinced much by art style? Ie. do you buy a show that looks like it's chock a block full of typical 'moe' style characters? (have to admit I got this one very wrong with We Without Wings).
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Well, I tend to not buy a show that looks like it's chock a block full of typical 'moe' style characters, but there are situations where I admit this can be a wrong decision. Higurashi/When They Cry being a prime example; If I hadn't looked any deeper into that I would probably never have given it the time of day because I'm not really a fan of that particular art style. I guess Azumanga and Strawberry Marshmallow would technically count as 'moe' but those designs are inoffensive enough to not have put me off.

There are however a trinity of shows I will never watch (Air, Clannad, Kanon) regardless of how good they may or may not otherwise be simply because the character designs in those shows make me want to vomit.
 
ayase said:
Well, I tend to not buy a show that looks like it's chock a block full of typical 'moe' style characters, but there are situations where I admit this can be a wrong decision. Higurashi/When They Cry being a prime example; If I hadn't looked any deeper into that I would probably never have given it the time of day because I'm not really a fan of that particular art style. I guess Azumanga and Strawberry Marshmallow would technically count as 'moe' but those designs are inoffensive enough to not have put me off.

There are however a trinity of shows I will never watch (Air, Clannad, Kanon) regardless of how good they may or may not otherwise be simply because the character designs in those shows make me want to vomit.
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Higurashi is a classic example of why people shouldn't judge a book by it's cover, I find the disparity between the art style and the content of the show to be the main pulling factor for me.

I'm also with you on shows like Clannad, I can't stand the art style, it's just far too moe for me (I can only go as far as shows such as K-ON!, maybe Lucky Star too at a push). Also, to me it's the catalyst of all those really bland/generic manga submissions on DeviantART, and does nothing but perpetuate the idea that anime and manga is just for weeaboos (no offense to anyone who likes those shows, I'm sure they're great, I just can't stand that particular art style).
 
I tend to look up a few reviews on anime I am unfamiliar with but that spark my interest. If I don't decide to buy straightaway on the backs of those then I'll find the first episode or 2 and that usually solidifies my decision. I used to blind buy in the past.
 
Revive an older thread time!

Really now I find it impossible to blind by anime as I'm only tend to buy stuff I've either seen or know I want before hand. If anything I might get manga I like the looks of, though if its sealed so I cant have a quick flick through I wont get it.

Back in the late 90's early 2000's it was harder. When I first started buying VHS's I got pretty much all of it mail order via a printed list of title names with a catalog number no cover images or anything like that. That was really blind buying. Total luck of the Draw back then. Especially when the old manga video trailers were the same what 10 or so on all there videos.
 
I blind buy a heck of a lot, but that's largely limited to stuff I pick up for cheap on Amazon. If something's only a quid or two, I figure - why not? I feel like I owe it to myself to educate myself as to some of the older titles out there, especially as many of them are out of print and will only get more scarce as the years go by.

In terms of newer stuff, I generally just buy 'good' shows - ie. stuff that's typically rated 8 or above on Anime News Network, as an arbiter of quality/likelihood I'll enjoy it.
 
I don't tend to blind buy any of my anime series usually, but occasionally I will invest in a few that I haven't seen before or probably wouldn't have ever considered watching before just to give it a go as nine times out of ten I usually end up really enjoying it anyway :)
 
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