I found this in HMV today on sale for only £14.99 which I couldn't pass up considering it's OOP now.
I did originally order and then cancel this a few weeks back when the standard edition was on MVM's DOTW because I found out the LE included the Mihoshi Special as well as the Tenchi Muyo! Encyclopedia on DVD.
These were included on some older DVD releases but it made more sense to get this set as it's all in one and I'm glad I got a good price on this as outside of Amazon having copies for around £30.00+, this is only available second-hand now.
This also marks the start of my Tenchi collection.
More items this month though I need to be careful with the spending since some of the titles I've ordered are pretty expensive. The Discotek Haul was among those which is expected to arrive later this month so look forward to that.
Let's start off with a Nintendo Switch haul. Here we have three Japanese games that have arrived across three different days.
Capcom Fighting Collection:
Ever since the Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection was announced followed by watching a six hour Capcom PS1 video on YouTube, I wanted to get the Capcom Fighting Collection but it's somewhat hard to come by because VGP don't have it in stock and Amazon US does have stock but it'll take a while. So I went with eBay and found a seller had a copy available for regular prices so I went for it.
This collection contains 10 arcade fighting games from their 2D era. Starting with all five Darkstalkers games which are Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors (1994), Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge (1995), Vampire Savior: The Lord of Vampire aka Darkstalkers 3 (1997) as well as its updated versions Vampire Hunter 2: Darkstalkers' Revenge (1997) and Vampire Savior 2: The Lord of Vampire (1997). These were all released first in the Arcades as well as either or both on the PlayStation and SEGA Saturn.
Then we have two Pocket Fighter games with Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo (1996) and Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix (1997), both also released in the Arcades as well as both PlayStation and SEGA Saturn.
And we round it up with three individual games; Cyberbots: Full Metal Madness (1995) from the Arcades, PlayStation and SEGA Saturn; Red Earth (1996) which was exclusively in the Arcades, and also Hyper Street Fighter II: The Anniversary Edition (2003) from the PlayStation 2 then Arcades and Xbox.
This collection is also on PlayStation 4 but due to the retro aesthetic I felt the Switch was better suited.
Capcom Belt Action Collection:
Alongside the fighting collection was another collection of games that I knew about but didn't know what was included or the context behind it. So the Capcom Belt Action Collection, also known as the Capcom Beat 'em Up Bundle outside Asia, is a collection of beat 'em up arcade games of various 2D Capcom games.
This collection contains seven individual games; Final Fight (1989), Captain Commando (1991), The King of Dragons (1991) and Knights of the Round (1991) which were all released in the Arcades as well as Super NES plus Warriors of Fate (1992) from the Arcades, SEGA Saturn and PlayStation, Armored Warriors (1994) and Battle Circuit (1997) which were both only released in the Arcades until this collection.
Out of these games the one I recognised the most was Final Fight because it was pretty popular among the SNES scene and was also on Nintendo's Virtual Console.
Now I picked up this collection from eBay as well and it turns out the version that I picked up, which is the original first release of the game, is harder to find now as the more common release is the Best Price version so I didn't know that up until I started searching for the physical version. The game was never released physically in either Europe or North America so the only option was the Japanese version, which has English support.
Tokyo Xanadu eX+:
About five years ago I picked up the PlayStation 4 version of Tokyo Xanadu, which was remastered as Tokyo Xanadu eX+ and while Falcom games generally were released by XSEED, this particular game was distributed by Aksys Games instead which surprised people and happened around the same time NIS America took over the Falcom games with Ys VIII onwards.
Now admittedly I never bothered to start the game due to other games in the backlog but it seems me holding off was the right choice because the Nintendo Switch version is now here and not only does the game feature all of the benefits of the PlayStation 4 version, but most importantly it has a new English translation.
Similar to the Ys VIII controversy, Tokyo Xanadu also had translation issues but were nowhere near as bad, so to see Aksys Games go back and amend that is a complete surprise. The Switch release also includes all of the previously released DLC on the cartridge so that's neat. Basically, similar to The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Zero & Trails to Azure, the Switch version is the version to get if you want to play the game on consoles.
I pre-ordered my copy from The Game Collection so that I have access to the physical version before it gets harder to find.
Next we have a last minute pickup which I honestly did not expect to be in this situation but it was one of the small number of older Asian Cinema titles that I had yet to pick up at this point. So for some additional context, Eureka Entertainment revealed another batch of discontinued titles from their back catalogue, a majority I am not interested in but one of those surprisingly is Ronny Yu's 1993 Wuxia film The Bride with White Hair (白髮魔女傳).
I didn't bother with the first print edition back when it was first released because of cost and I didn't start getting into the craze until the Lucky Stars collection onwards. But this film has been on my radar for a while and I know they have no plans to release the second film due to poor masters I recall, but since this is going out of print I decided to get it now before prices go up.
Crunchyroll UK have recently started running a Summer sale so before the end of last month I ordered a few titles from retailer Rarewaves as their prices were pretty good. Shipping speeds are horrible but they arrived last Friday across two packages.
The newest title in this order is Handyman Saitou in Another World is one of the newer isekais released in recent years but honestly the anime is one of my favourites from the genre. I enjoyed the cast a lot more than expected and would love to see more of the world.
Next we One Punch Man Season 1 which I have indeed double-dipped on. To recap, I bought Viz Media's US limited edition in May 2017 and now seven years later I decided to get the Region B version. Honestly owning this standard Blu-ray has been on my radar for a long while but it wasn't until I started playing the video game One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows on PS4 that it got me reinterested in the anime once again. I'm still surprised this still comes with a slipcase at this point.
And of course we have One Punch Man Season 2, the limited edition version that Funimation UK put out in 2021. I've also been meaning to get this one for a while, which may surprise folks since I imported the first season's limited edition and tend to keep things consistent with distributors whenever possible, but due to Viz's quality issues I decided to not bother with their releases. This limited edition has sold out a while back but there's some stock left here and there on different retailers. You can view more photos & specs on my blog.
Also ordered with these three titles is The Girl from the Other Side, but my copy did not come with a slipcase so I'll be returning this as soon as possible. As a result of discovering this I literally placed an order through Amazon. Speaking of which...
The second round of Crunchyroll UK releases arrived the next day from Amazon UK. This is the multi-language batch as I may describe it.
I review the UK anime releases on a case by case basis and ever since Crunchyroll UK started there were numerous problems here and there. It's taken a while but we are finally at a point where the releases are one to one with the North American versions (with some minor bits like BBFC logos etc) even down to the limited editions. From April onwards they revised their multi-language sets and I didn't find this out until recently is a shame as I would have pre-ordered the titles as soon as I could.
So here we are. Starting with The Girl from the Other Side, an OVA that I believe originated from a Kickstarter campaign by WIT Studio (based on a manga of course) but Crunchyroll did pick it up for streaming and home video (though they split the OVA into 3 episodes). As mentioned I actually ordered this from Rarewaves first but it didn't come with a slipcase. Amazon's did, but I do want to make note that the shrink-wrap was above the slipcases whereas Rarewave's copy is just the Amaray which does make me think the OVA is actually on its second print run which is surprising as I didn't think it was popular enough to be at this point.
I Got a Cheat Skill in Another World and Became Unrivaled in the Real World, Too is a very long anime title but also a rather flawed adaptation and a power fantasy isekai. Being honest here I actually enjoyed watching this series, the animation is very rough but the really nice artwork on the character designs is what kept me going with the anime. I also liked the story and its an interesting Isekai that isn't focused on the fantasy side but also both the real world and fantasy world which is not common when you think about how most Isekai stories ditch the real world so ridiculously fast.
Also part of the Summer Sale is The Legendary Hero is Dead!, a fantasy series that I first discovered about many years ago when it first serialised and I recall reading the first chapter, liking what the concept is going for. I recall the manga did get licensed but on a platform no one cares for and digital only, but there was an anime adaptation which I missed out on and apparently is not particularly great. Regardless it was on offer so this was a good opportunity to watch it.
Almost made the cut if it was actually on sale would have been KamiKatsu, so if it goes down in price I'll pick that up asap lol.
But being serious now, these newer multi-languages means more money saved because I don't need to import them now. In fact every single Crunchyroll title is getting a UK release nowadays which is surreal. I'll still need to get some titles from last year and whatnot (Aharen-san, Parallel World Pharmacy, Tomodachi Game for example) but hopefully this model of releasing all of the new titles to the UK is kept intact going forward.
One of the great things about the Urusei Yatsura remake is it's meant a fresh round of merchandise for the OG waifu. I've been on the lookout for a good Lum figure for decades, but always either missed the boat, didn't like the sculpts, or didn't want to pay £100+.
I was very close to buying the £140 Kotobukiya Lum when I saw this Banpresto one for £36 and went for it instead. Aside from a nicer base on the Kotobukiya, there's definitely not a £100 quality difference between the figures.
To my surprise, the figure I received looks better than the one on the box. The paint apps are much cleaner. The only sign of this being a budget figure is an obvious seam where the left shoulder is attached, but that's hidden by the hair from most angles.
Upgraded some more of my Pixar collection (Cars, Monster’s University, Up, Wall-E) with some newcomers to add as well (Soul and The Mediocre Dinosaur), plus Big Hero 6 and The Color Purple on 4K from eBay. Monster’s University sometimes goes for silly money with the slip but I got some good prices for these from the same eBay seller.
With some planned upgrades for my laptop being purchased soon, I decided to upgrade my toolkit first with the prying and opening tool assortment being the most important since the opening picks are required to get the bottom off the laptop.
I pre-ordered some Discotek titles last week from Crunchyroll US, and threw in a couple of in-stock Nozomi titles that were on sale during week two of their summer sale, and those two arrived today:
First attempt at ordering directly from the Robert's Anime Corner Store site. Despite its "I Geocities" vibe not inspiring much confidence, the order was processed and dispatched quickly, and arrived very well packaged. The only downside was the price of international postage, which started at $29 for the first item. I was only going to buy Sister Venturing Out, but added the other items to bring down the per-item postage, since it was only a few dollars more to post each.
It's good to know that there's still an option for Aniplex titles that doesn't require a forwarding company (for now, at least).
I wanted to take advantage of the 25% from all your music.
I have wanted Farming Life for a while but couldn't pick another anime title. I finally picked an old cop show the Blue Knight.
HMV in York had Darling in the Franxx so I upgraded from my 2 DVDs. I wouldn't have ordered online.
K-ON the movie is a low cost risk and BlueLock was an impulse buy at the counter. It's £9.99 for S1 P1 if you're buying something else. DVD.
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