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I used to have a collection of over a hundred discs and used to constantly have a backlog of at least a few discs. But after my disposable income level dropped and spending about a year in Japan as a foreign exchange student I got rid of most of it. It was really being in Japan that sealed the deal about having a small collection for me. I wish to return to live there some day and I know there is no way I could really fit all the things I owned in a small Japanese apartment (not to mention the cost of having it sent overseas) so I had to rethink about what I kept and have downsized much of what I own over the past year or so.

Nowadays I only have a handful of anime DVDs (plus a couple of Blu-Rays) of series or movies that I have watched more than once and still feel I will re-watch for years to come. I've also become incredibly picky on what I buy and absolutely refuse to blind buy ever again and either watch something streamed or rent it first before even thinking about buying it.

I kinda miss having a big collection but I can't say I'm unhappy with what I have as they are all series/movies that I love. And I feel like I treasure what I have more because they are the series/movies I honestly could not part with easily.

I sold a used copy of End of Evangelion with the insert missing for $30.

I think I have a larger than average portion of my collection unwatched.
Even including laserdiscs and VHS, nearly half of my collection is still in shrinkwrap. But somehow it seems as though a large portion of what's still in shrinkwrap I've watched in some form or another.

Last edited by Cryssoberyl on Mon Jan 17, 2011 12:05 am; edited 3 times in total

Pippin4242 wrote:

Cryssoberyl, I actually gasped aloud when I saw your Utena setup! It's subtle, but it so suits your collection! It's really gorgeous. Very Happy

*~Pips~*

Thank you. I really enjoyed it too, for as long as it lasted. Unfortunately, the display no longer exists. That bookcase, which was on loan from a family friend, had to be returned, and that portion of my collection is now stuffed in a much smaller, humbler set of shelves. The Utena set still occupies an alcove of its own, but it's like exiled royalty compared to before...I'm not content to leave it like that, but at the moment there's no other really good place.

(Oh, and the roses of course have long since died, although I display the dried petals in a glass tray. The live ones were pretty much just so I could take some nice pictures. Good thing I did when I had the chance.)

I so very relate to this article. In just over a decade, my collection has swelled to just shy of 3000. The ridiculousness of that number cries out to me each time I pass my shelves.

So many things unwatched, double dipped (and a few triple-dipped...FLCL about to be next...just have to have that Blu-Ray) and half-finished.

My wife is also a fan. But the repeat purchases drive her crazy.

Back in 2009, when we bought our new house, we made our final decision based on the entire wall of built-in book shelves. Surely, they would hold our collection...wrong. Already double parking discs.

I really need to start doing some serious cardio, so as my collection doesn't outlive my ability to watch it.

I have never done an official count of all my discs but I think I have somewhere around 500 and about 1/3 are unopened. That is not to say that I haven't seen them though. I am a big anime renter. I have used rentanime.com for 7 years and netflix for 4 years and have both going right now for when one site is missing a disc.

I used to buy every series I liked even a little because of the scarcity concern but now that there are so many titles being rereleased and streaming I have learned to wait a bit and see if I really want to own a title. (Shelf space is also becoming a big issue.)

Some of the titles I haven't gotten to yet are Marmalade Boy, Vandread, SE Lain, and Vampire Princess Miyu.

Now manga is a different story. If I am buying it that means I want to read it NOW! For some reason I have slacked off on buying anime and now put most of my money into manga. I think I have about 600 manga volumes.

As for figures I never take them out of the box because I was a Barbie collector as a kid and removing the box is the ultimate taboo! It's a hard mindset to break.....

I still haven't completed my Excel file, so I can't be exactly sure, but I know that I'm somewhere over 800 discs. I should PivotTable that thing to see how many different titles...

Anyway, I've only been keeping track of when I actually finish watching each item as recently as 2009, so I can't be sure of the number of discs that I've actually watched. But...sad to say, there's a chance that I haven't watched about half of them. At least, I hope that I've watched more than half of them...

I also have over 450 volumes of manga that may have the same story...

at this point in time I've lost track of both my total anime collection and my backlog. but then given I've been buying since before DVDs came out it's kind of understandable I've given up on keeping track of my whole collection.

I've got plenty of DVDs that remain unopened and/or unwatched for a variety of reasons. some are replacements for worn out VHS copies I've had for years, some I already watched fansubbed before they were ever licensed (some which I had doubts of ever being licensed), some I watched on TV and want to eventually rewatch, some I watched legally streamed and want to support more, some were gifts I just haven't gotten to watching yet because they're not exactly what I normally watch, and some are hard to find titles I bought because they're something I've been curious about and managed to find dirt cheap either in local used DVD stores or at conventions. I even have one set I've never opened because I got it from a con-run secondhand table for what I thought was a little bit on the expensive side (even tho it was never opened) only to find out that it can go for over $200 when unopened! sure, I want to watch it, but having something THAT collectible is kind of cool.

I had been pretty good at keeping up on everything, but then there was an anime/manga fan in the area having some financial issues and needing to sell their collections off, bit by bit over a course of a few months, to make ends meet. I managed to get some manga I'd been wanting to get cheap from the local used bookstore AND a whole lot of boxsets for dirt cheap from a local used video/game store with a buy three get one free deal that extended to boxsets. that place has wicked good deals, to the point I once wound up spending under $25 for a DVD set that was going online for up to $100 (and just $10 more for a second copy of the video game Suikoden II that was in nearly new condition, which I got for my oldest niece because she always asked to borrow my copy). some of the stuff had been OOP for a while at the time, too, and have only very recently got rereleases (which are going for more than what I got the series for used) while others have never been rereleased yet. but I just can't resist buying something I really want to watch, at least eventually, if I can buy it dirt cheap. that's why my backlog is now a bit out of control.

at east my novel backlog isn't that bad, but then I can read over 800 pages in about 5 hours if I really get going, so that's a lot easier to keep up with even if I do buy enough my friends and family groan if they hear I've picked up more than one new book a month

I kind of wonder if this dilemma that fans have had in the past will eventually disappear. As more and more people are not collecting at all, but money is still being spent (ie streaming, subscriptions, larger portion of revenue coming from ads) "collections" are becoming more virtual than physical. Why spend money on something you may not even watch, when there's so much to watch without buying physical media?

Bluray will keep physical media alive but when physical media was the only way to watch anime (aside from fansubs), people had a reason to collect and horde. With many more options for viewing things as there are, collections just won't grow as fast as they used to.

Well, I think another reason is that there are less "water-cooler" discussions about any particular anime. When people are discussing the same things, that's more incentive to keep up with what they're discussing. Like a book club.

But with more and more anime becoming available everyday, the discussion level is being spread thin. The increasingly rare discussions last just a day or two, then people move on to something else. Ironically, less and less anime are on network TV, wherein a broad swath of fans can watch the same thing at the same time at the same pace. And of course, anime clubs aren't what they used to be - forcing fans to gather because it's the best way to see some anime. Lastly, there's no longer a few central discussion places - there's a million +1 places to discuss things now, each of which are discussing different sets of shows.

So yeah, anyways, my backlog stretches all the way back back back to VHS fansubs and commercial tapes, so who am I to complain? Laughing

p.s.
Plus, we used to keep a larger collection because it was the only way to share stuff among friends - even if it's stuff that you normally wouldn't buy just for yourself, but you buy it so your friends can get to watch it, and vice versa. Now anybody could just find anything on their own, so there's a lot of previously-bought stuff left unwatched.

Wow, a lot of backlogs coming out. I wonder if Mike has come across the backlog thread here? Lots of good stuff there.

I have both an anime and manga backlog. Anime is probably about 30 series out of 50 (averaging six disks per) and about 10 movies/one-disk OVAs unwatched. Manga, according to my Excel file, is 135 volumes unread, or 29.35% of my total collection. A couple of series I've bought and haven't even started - Akira, Walkin' Butterfly, Nausicaa, Drifting Classroom.

I can relate to all of the reasons Mike stated for having a backlog, especially having things go OOP. I got burned when I missed my chances to get Tenchi Muyo DVD 4 and Saikano GN 7, so now I'll try to grab what's interesting out of fear that I'll miss my chance. I gotta have the ending, or what's the point? I also have this thing where I'll save the last two volumes of a manga series so I can get my fix in between releases. For example, I'm doing this now with Negima because the new one won't come out until May, so vol. 27 and 28 sit unread in case I get a craving in the meantime. It makes no sense but that's how I roll.

I do miss having the round-table anime discussions. Nowadays it only happens with new streaming shows and I just can't keep up. Friends and the ANN Book Club were useful, especially when they chose a series I already owned. Maybe I'll give Anime Thursdays a shot to work on my backlog.

Both collections will still grow. That ROD set looks sexy.

My collection is over a couple thousand individual DVDs, about a thousand i have with me here (alaska), and the rest sitting in boxes back home (boston)

I shop eBay regularly and get a couple box sets every week, and all those box sets are shipped to my Boston home, soooo I have at least 100 box sets some I don't even remember buying left unwatched

here with me i have several series I haven't watched, those include, utena, sailor moon, ramma 1/2, zeta gundam, case closed, one piece, koy kara maoh, rurouni kenshin amongst others. Right now i'm finally finishing up Baccano! and Corpse Princess.

I guess I fall in the I have the means to buy them and want all the anime, so my backlog grows faster then I can watch them

This is one of those topics where the secret is that little voice in the back of your head. Crazy, you say? Like a fox, I say! Or something like that. Smile

The days of shortages are over. Right!Right? I mean the world is digital now. Right!Right? Once something is on the net it's here forever. Right!Right? At least on person has a pristine copy, none of that hard subbed, vanity tagged, badly encoded junk. Right!Right? Etc Etc.

You hope...what if everyone looks to someone else to 'catch the baby' and no one actually does.

Oops.

It's one thing if the little voice never talks to you, but if it does, does it leave you with a sense of comfort or dread?

The Metropolis movie is almost a hundred years old now and they are still finding lost footage(stepped on, beat up, but still the best you can hope for for now, perhaps ever). Why didn't someone take better care of this classic?

It's only a movie....now replace 'movie' with 'anime'.

Sure not all anime is worthy of such concern. Now turn to any random fan and see if you can agree on what titles are the worthy ones.

Good luck.

I watched everything that's in my collection, I always seperate "yet to watch" from "already watched" pile. As of now I'm trying to watch what there is for the ADV films release of Saint Seiya. I keep a save word file on my pc to keep in track of what I don't own so there's always something new to buy every month for me. As of right now I'm trying to get caught up with the Blu-Ray they just came out with already on DVD anime.

My current anime DVD backlog is School Rumble S2 (finished up to disc 3) and Saint Tail (up to volume 4), though I've already seen both of them completely on TV. The School Rumble DVDs seem to have footage that wasn't in the Tagalog dub on Hero TV, not even counting the extras like seiyuu interviews.

Still trying to complete Kimagure Orange Road TV. For some reason volume 10 is ridiculously expensive. Should've gotten it from CATS while I had the chance (only managed to grab volumes 2 to 5 before they closed for good).

Still have my Ghost in the Shell series to watch - I bought the sets a few years ago and still sitting on the shelf. I've lent it out to people so they have been watched but just not by me. There are series I've downloaded and watched before way back in 2000 on my computer and they were in those small horrible rm files like Utena and Saiyuki in which I have the dvds but never rewatched - which is weird I guess. Yet I can watch my Yu Yu Hakusho or Mushishi dvds repeatedly.

It's easier to control the amount of dvds I own since I'm pretty picky on what I like to watch. However manga is a different story. I used to amass an insane amount of manga but last year after dropping nearly 300 books off at the library (they're always short on funds and purchasing manga with whatever money they have is not their first priority, so they were really grateful), I felt good to get rid of some clutter - the last thing I need is to be called a hoarder. I used to buy the first volume, don't really enjoy it but still go and order the second and third volumes simply to collect the series. Now I have the series I want to keep and the ones I want to continue to purchase.

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