Although I’m a bit of a novice when it comes to anime, animation itself makes up quite a good size portion of my DVD; mainly from the DC Animated Universe, volumes of the old TMNT and Godzilla cartoons, the Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad, Clone Wars and obviously a few anime DVDs. That is sort of where this rant is leading off to.

A month ago, I discovered ‘Funimation TV’ on the Colours channel on Dish and needless to say, I’ve never seen a full 4 hour block of anime before. Not only has it rekindled my love for “Case Closed” (which I haven’t seen since its run on Adult Swim), but also perked up my interest for “Slayers” and “Negima!” (and its retelling “Negima!?”). The rest on the block were ‘meh.’ However when it came to buying up DVDs for these different anime, I noticed the price range, usually ranging on an average of 25, 30 bucks for a DVD. And on most of these DVDs (namely “Case Closed”) is about… 3 episodes. Same thing with “BLEACH” and same thing for “Negima!” basically (okay, so there’s like 4 or 5).

I knew that many of the box sets were pretty expensive (“Dual!” was around 80, 90 bucks and the first season of “The Big O” cost me 40), but I had no idea what a jip the single DVDs were! Hate to curse, but that is some horseshit! I’ve bought each volume of “Batman: the Animated Series” for basically the same price as the single anime DVDs, except there were four disc and 26 episodes! What the hell?!? I’ve bought the first couple volumes of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” for ten bucks *each* with about 12 to 16 episodes on them as well.

So why in the hell are anime DVDs so damn expensive? Is it because they’re ‘imported?’ Unlikely since many of my Godzilla DVDs were between 15 to 25 bucks and my Gamera DVDs were 10 bucks despite their inferior quality. Although many of my Kurosawa movie were damn expensive, but all Criterion DVDs are. Well, is it because the companies releasing them are money grubbing bastards? Possibly, the second season of “The Big O” was only 20 bucks despite how ungodly huge the box is, and the Platinum Collection for “Neon Genesis Evangelion” cost me 50 bucks. And that “FLCL Ultimate Collection” I have my eye on is like 60 bucks at Amazon. And if I were to buy all of the “Negima!” DVDs that would cost around 150 bucks more or less not counting shipping. And Lord knows how much it would cost to buy all of the “Case Closed” DVDs, since half of them aren’t even available on Amazon.

For the time being, I’m going to have to settle on renting them from Netflix as what I am doing now. Honestly I can see why there’s so many damn fansubs and torrents out there, not to mention all the DVD copying technology out there. Who the hell wants to spend 150 bucks for entire season? I may love that the show, but not that much.

So yeah, that’s it really. I’ve got a few sketches I’ll post up, but meh they’re not much. Still don’t got no drive to draw anymore I guess. =\