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I usually try to rent a series before deciding to buy it, but lately a few good sales and bargain bin items have caused me to order a few things blindly. I used to blind buy more frequently when I first became a fan. After being burned a few times, and getting angry at myself about the money I wasted, I learned to rent first.

But this recent bit of blind buying got me thinking about my best blind buy -- Haibane Renmei.

I first noticed the boxed set sitting on the shelf at Borders a few weeks before I purchased it. It had a high price, high enough to make me think long and hard about spending the money. But the box art of these angelic-looking people caught my eye. Looking it up in ANN's encyclopedia, I found the premise interesting. I also noticed how highly rated it was. I was convinced. So, I swallowed hard over the price and bought the series. (Looking back, I probably paid too much. Should've checked online first.)

I was not disappointed. The series was beautiful and moving with interesting characters and a good mystery. And, the series made me think. Watching it made me wish I had made up my mind to buy it sooner.

So, what's your best blind buy? What were the circumstances leading to it's purchase? What was your reaction to the series when you watched it?

I have tons of blind buys, if we're talking about stuff I never saw before I bought it. However, some of the series were well-researched before buying (asking on forums, review sites, etc.) so I'm not sure if that counts as a blind buy.

My best "walk into a store and pick it off the shelf with no research" would probably be Fruits Basket. I knew nothing about this anime. I was in Suncoast, where I never buy anime since it's usually full price. I was just in the mood to buy something, anything (I get these moods, sometimes). I saw the title, and thought it looked unique. I thought the character designs were pretty (I like bishies). I read the back cover and thought it sounded very cute and funny (I also like the Chinese Zodiac). And it had a good blurb from AoDVD, who I trusted at the time. So I bought the first disc.

When I got home and saw the first episode I knew I had a winner. Everyone was pretty. The heroine was endearing. She had amusing friends and schoolmates. The story was funny (at first; I didn't realize it would get so dark, not that I mind at all). And I fell in love with Kyo (hence my user name, which is from my very early anime days). This anime remains a favorite of mine, even if it didn't stick to the manga story.

Haibane Renmei is probably mine as well. Gankutsuou is probably second.

For Haibane Renmei, I bought it volume by volume as it came out back in 2003, which was early into my anime fandom. I was messing around looking at what was on the anime racks at I believe my local, since-deceased Sam Goody. I was ravenous for anything anime at the time, and the cover art looked absolutely gorgeous. I may have read a blurb review in Animerica or something, but I really didn't know much about it past what the back of the box said. So I bought it and watched it. What I saw in the first disc blew me away. I was practically counting the days until vol. 2 came out (which wasn't too long, since I didn't buy vol. 1 immediately after its release, but a few months after at least. I have the first print run pencil boards for all of the discs except vol. 1). Haibane Renmei has since sat at my top spot for what I think are the best anime ever produced, and I doubt if anything will knock it down.

As for Gankutsuou, I obtained the box set for Christmas after much begging my parents the same year Geneon went down. I bought it because
1. a friend of mine that has very high standards for anime and tastes similar to mine had mentioned buying it during TRSI's Christmas sale
2. Geneon had just gone down and I didn't want to risk not being able to see it
3. The box art was gorgeous

Watching it completely blew me away, particularly thanks to the animation. Gankutsuou takes my #3 spot on that best anime ever produced list. (The #2 goes to Princess Tutu, which I bought after hearing several positive reviews and seeing the first episode or two at a local anime club).

Well I've only ever made two, both at the Kawaii Kon in Honolulu earlier this year. So I guess my best one would be my favorite of the two, thus relegating Samurai 7 to the worst blind buy ever spot even though it's not by any stretch a bad anime.

Planetes however was just fantastic. I'd heard it was good, but it was aactually better than I expected. I really loved the attention to detail and realism and though the characters could be a bit annoying at time I eventually got attached to them. I started reading the manga afterwards and was surprised by the differences, but the fact that Tanabe doesn't appear until allot later on, and is different while still maintaining what makes her her was really interesting. Wish I could find the res of the series.

I don't have a lot of blind buys anymore, since I either watch the fansubs for shows or catch a streaming episode on ANN, CR, etc. Back in the day, though, before I was into file-sharing, it was a different matter entirely.

Probably my number one blind buy is Serial Experiments Lain (keeping on the ABe line of thought), back in 2001. I'd read descriptions of the show and seen pictures of the art style, but never had the occasion to watch it until I had ordered the first disc online and finally saw it. Of course, upon seeing it, I had to go out and order the other three discs immediately.

My other one is Baccano!, which occurred much more recently for me. I'd heard nothing but good things about this show, and reading it's description it did indeed sound like my cup of tea, so I just went out and bought the first volume. Afterwards, I had to go out and buy the first volume + box, but ultimately that's a good problem to have. I gave away my extra volume one in the anime club I sponsor.

All anime I buy are blind buys since buying stuff is how I primarily view anime, though in terms of stuff I didn't preorder and just picked off the shelf randomly, I say I was most overall pleased with Blue Submarine No.6. A complete OVA series in a decent boxset with a whack of extras, excellent musical score, creative designs and some excellent CG animation. Really swanky stuff.

I sure got some pretty bad blind buys, BUT I did get some good ones...

When the second batch of Miyazakis were released by Disney, I picked up Nausicaa and Howl (Howl was also a blind buy, technically, but knowing it was Miyazaki, I knew I would like it anyways :p) The true blind buy was The Cat Returns. More info on Howl was released around this time so I knew absolutely nothing about this movie, except another Ghibli member did it, and it involved a big white cat. Either way it was Ghibli and involved cats. Couldn't have been more pleased! I ended up watching it several times when I first got it and showed it to a few friends too! Definately my best blind purchause!

...my next blind purchause is Mermaid Forest from the TRSI sale, but it sits at the bfs house out of the country (one way to avoid expensive duty fees >_>) Next time I'm there I'll watch it, but I have a feeling I'll enjoy it. Been wanting to check it out for a while.

These days I do almost no blind buys, as I am far more active on the Internet than I used to be. Yeah, that includes me watching fansubs, but I have this self-imposed rule where if I watch more than three episodes of a show by way of fansubs, then I have to buy the series when it comes out on DVD. So, most of my Anime buys nowadays are just me buying shows that I've already watched.

Anywho, my best blind buy was Kino's Journey. The only boxset of the show - and indeed the only DVDs of the show in that store, period - had been sitting on the shelf of my local game store (which also sold Anime) for months. While I could have dismissed it as crap (because why would a decent show sit on the shelf that long), I instead got curious about it. I wondered what kind of show it was. Something about the rich yet humble colour of the box called out to me, and the artwork looked interesting. One day, when the latest shipment was overdue and so I had money to burn, I went ahead and bought it. Even today, four years after I bought it, I still consider it to be among the ten best shows I've ever seen.

Most of my purchases are blind buys, insofar as I haven't seen any of it beforehand. But I do tend to do a lot of research on series when I buy online. I never buy anime new instore... but I will buy used on the spur of the moment. The best of the (very few) used purchases is Boogiepop Phantom--which was the huge-ass limited box set edition. Great series.

Ironically, as there are probably only 5 series on my shelf that AREN'T blind buys (Bleach, Naruto, Death Note, Please Teacher, and Neon Genesis Evangelion), I think my success rate on non-blind purchases is much lower than blind purchases--I only purchased Neon Genesis Evangelion to pay off my fansub debt. Thus a full 1/5th of my non-blind-buys collection is ranked very poorly by me.

I would probably say that my best blind buy was Devil May Cry. I had recently bought and played Devil May Cry 4 on Xbox 360 and I came across the first DVD with the boxset box and a first volume DVD. I decided to watch the dub as that is what the game was and I found it quite good, especialy the character Dante. Though I was dissapointed that he hasn't done much of voice acting. Kind of felt a little bit like Hellsing, but Dante was more funny such as when he can easily beat a demon, but a little girl is still much more responsible.

TheTheory wrote:

Most of my purchases are blind buys, insofar as I haven't seen any of it beforehand. But I do tend to do a lot of research on series when I buy online. I never buy anime new instore... but I will buy used on the spur of the moment. The best of the (very few) used purchases is Boogiepop Phantom--which was the huge-ass limited box set edition. Great series.

Yeah, with the amount of information online [publisher websites, online trailers, reviews], it's hard to get something that's a true blind buy like it was back in the 90's. Even back in 2000 when I ordered Maetel Legend, I had CPM's websites info, Diamond's online solicitation information, and assorted Galaxy Express 999 fansites reviews to get an idea if it would be a good buy [reviews weren't great, but I didn't mind that, as I was a big Maetel/Emereldas fan, and was pretty happy with the vhs copy I got]

I'd say anime fans have very little reason not to be informed nowadays.

Hmm, now this is a fun question! I try not to blind buy too often, when I went to Otakon, I had a list of stuff I'd most likely be interested in to prevent as many blind buys as possible (sadly, some of my planned buys that come highly recommended with great reviews and praise often seem to turn out worse than my blind ones lately). I count a blind buy to mean I did no research whatsoever on it, at best heard about it in passing, didn't even youtube the opening. The ones that come to mind here are:

Noein, bought it for $25, really not sure what to expect from it. What got me to actually buy it was the quote on the back that said "the anime Donnie Darko", which is a movie I like a great deal, so for $25, I figured I'd give it a shot, even though I'd heard nothing about it and just seen a few singles here and there at Best Buy that I rather passed over. I would have gladly paid the $40 MRSP if not up to $50 for it.

Shingu was a good blind buy too, I got it off TRSI just to get free shipping honestly and I liked it a heck of a lot more than the show I had originally made the order for! Paid $20 for it, low price probably helped me be more generous to it, but I really liked it, I would've paid upwards of $40 for it at most though. The show I bought with it was Kurau out of the bargain bin which I found to be massively overrated and probably took me at least two weeks longer to finish it. Now, I had seen this title in the Buried Treasure column, but I honestly didn't look at the column that week and it more or less slipped into memory.

Much like Shingu, I must've registered They Were 11 being on Buried Treasure too, because it was quite honestly the only thing I could remember about it when I saw it at Otakon for $5, I couldn't even name the genre. But most of the time, Buried Treasure steers me right, and for $5, why not? Good buy, what can say? Please Save My Earth, same thing, and then it made me get the manga too (although at that point the manga wouldn't have been a blind buy).

Now, Golden Boy was a bit of a strange blind buy for me, I paid $4 for it at a used store and the only thing I could remember hearing about it was the word "ecchi" and I kinda don't like ecchi, but hey, it was 5 for $20 on $5 each DVDs so what they hey, let's throw it in there! While I wouldn't have probably paid about $15 for it (it is only 6 eps and it's a pretty old show), it was a lot of fun to watch and they type of thing that I know certain friends of mine would just love to watch.

Of all things you'd expect most otaku to have at least heard of, I'd never heard of Robotech before I saw the first 4 discs of the Macross Saga (was unaware it was 6 discs total for Macross) of the 80's broadcast set used for $20 while on vacation. I could see that it was a very old series and a pretty damn cheap one at less than $1 an episode and hey, it was how I spent most of my vacation money, but I fell in love with the series instantly. I actually went practically out of my way to ensure I got the 80s fuzzy version even though the cleaned up version had just been released because I really do find something charming about the fuzz of it all when you're watching it (and having borrowed my friend's Protoculture collection back in high school, I determined that I thought cleaned up version actually made the series look worse by highlighting how bad the animation kinda holds up at times today). I probably only paid $10-$20 more to get the whole thing in fuzzy version than I would have if I'd just gotten the Protoculture collection.

Another thing I should've heard of before was Great Teacher Onizuka, which at best I'd heard of in passing and considering the fairly classic status of this series, I'm shocked I hadn't heard of it before. I've been getting someone else addicted to it too lately Twisted Evil

Oban Star Racers was pretty much a blind buy too, the first mention I'd heard of it was over on retail forum with Keonyn going on about its hidden gem status. Basically, I'd seen it in Best Buy before, but never the whole thing for some reason, so last Thanksgiving break, I was back home and went to a different Best Buy with a friend who had put aside a good bit of money when the Twilight movie came out on the off-chance it was good and she might see it in theaters multiple times and buy a bunch of bs for it, but she could see how bad the movie was and decided to just blow the money set aside for the movie on anime. I kinda didn't want to feel left out and that particular Best Buy had both sets for $32 combined+tax, so while she spent over a $100 on anime (she set quite a bit aside for that movie), I just got my Oban with no idea if it was going to be good or not. Well, I cried at the end of it and really enjoyed it. I've actually been watching it online in German to see if that helps me out in class a bit, it kinda is.

Another shout to a mod, I blind bought Key the Metal Idol too. Got it used at Gamestop when they were getting rid of their DVDs like they were all infected by smallpox or something. If I had known it was nothing like what I had clearly misinterpreted by most plot synopsis, I would've gotten it a hell of a lot earlier. I honestly thought the main character was supposed to be like Osaka or Chiyo-chan from Azumanga (because friend making sounds like a happy cheery perky type main character to me) and it was going to be a cutesy series that I'd prefer to avoid like the plague. Luckily for the DVD covers, they didn't reaffirm what I had so clearly misinterpreted and since I'd never even seen the DVDs before, I decided to just go ahead and get them.

While my subsequent Satoshi Kon movies certainly weren't blind buys, my first one, Tokyo Godfathers was. Heard it was supposed to be good from maybe 1 sentence somewhere I kinda glanced over, it certainly was!

My very first order from TRSI was a blind buy on Master Keaton. Now, I admit, I tend to do a lot of blind buys based on creator/director, such as any Junichi Sato stuff I've ever gotten after having seen Princess Tutu (which include Kaleido Star, although that was recommended by a friend several times, and Junkers Come Here!). Of course, I got most of Master Keaton (except disc 2, which they managed to get in later much to my delight) during the first major Geneon sale after they went under and each disc was $5. I knew it wasn't going to be Monster, but I honestly had no idea what to expect from it, getting them all at once was a pretty big risk (well, $35 isn't too bad, but still), good thing I liked it, even if it has fairly low re-watch value for me. Good thing I got them all then too (and the one disc a bit later), the site has sold out of most of them.

@Maryohki, I've actually blind bought Gankutsuou myself for xmas/bday, I'll find out this winter! I do like the OP though.

I third Haibane Renmei. RightStuf was having one of their 10-for-$50 sales on Geneon items and I wanted to grab Serial Experiments Lain, so I got the Haibane Renmei singles along with a couple of soundtracks I'd been eying. It wasn't a totally blind buy, since I vaguely remembered hearing people talk about how good it was, but I went into it without knowing the general plot and without even having heard the music, which is usually how I get introduced to anime.

My second best is probably the Arjuna complete collection I picked up at my first Ohayocon. I go back and forth on whether or not I really love it for itself, but it was a good show and it holds a special place in my heart. I bought it only knowing that I'd enjoy the soundtrack - I'd wanted to see it ever since I first heard "Aqua" by Gabriela Robin, and it ended up being the series to really get me hooked on Yoko Kanno. Unfortunately Netflix didn't have it available back then, so I said "what the hell, I'll just buy it." Ultimately I'm quite glad I did.

Blind buy? Three come to mind. The first one was Key the Metal Idol. It was one of the first anime series I ever purchased, and I think the only reason I did buy it was because somehow (I've forgotten at this point) I managed to see the opener for it. That alone persuaded me to buy it (thankfully I lucked out and it was an awesome show).

Trigun was a blind purchase... but I was persuaded by my friend to buy it. He told me it was "cowboys in space" and I was already interested. Needless to say I was happy with my purchase.

And lastly Saber Marionette J vol 1, which is one of my "comfort" animes (like "comfort" food). I think I bought it because although it came with dual DVDs totaling 9 episodes, the price was closer to single releases that cost 30 bucks for 4 episodes (this was back in 2002 after all).

I blind buy all the time because I trust how well I know myself. I used to download the first 4 episodes of a show I was interested in, but I stopped doing that immediately because it made the beginning of the show very boring when I bought it. I also don't do any research other than reading synopses; I don't read reviews because there is no opinion I trust more than mine (no offense to the people who do reviews). The results? Right now I'm 20 for 20 on all my blind buys; meaning I haven't been disappointed.

Picking a best is hard because I've grabbed masterpieces like Bebop, FMA, Eva, Princess Tutu, Nadesico and some other greats and pretty goods.

Looking at my shelf, though, Slayers really stands out. I bought the first three seasons, the OVA box and the Movie box for about $100 with never seeing an episode besides half of a sub on the International Channel 6 years ago. That's all I ever saw prior to buying it. Now Slayers is one of my hands down favorites. Every now and then when I have nothing to do, it's easy to put on one of the OVAs or Movies and just laugh the night away. Now that I think about it, this easily my best blind buy.

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Forum - View topicYour best anime blind buy?

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Your best anime blind buy?