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Philosophical Underpinnings of 'Only Completed Series'

There was a time when companies would release a boxset collection that would be very close to the price of buying each single disc. For instance, Pioneer released its original Trigun collection for something like $180 at a time when buying all 8 discs individually would run around $200. Those prices may not be completely accurate, but the point is there was a slight financial advantage to buying the whole series at once, but not so great that it completely undermined the sales of single discs. That seems to be what is happening now and why people are willing to wait. It's a tough line the companies have to walk, between making anime as affordable as possible and still being profitable at the same time.

It just seems to me, at first glance, that people who insist upon _only_ buying anime when they can buy a whole series in one shot are being kind of selfish and have their priorities out of sorts; and I wonder if it's reasonable or not for me to be perceiving those individuals that way.

The short answer is that, no, it isn't reasonable. People might wait for any number of reasons, the largest reasons having nothing to do with selfishness. The two largest reasons I hear are a) to save money b) so they don't have to wait.

That's why I haven't bought Bleach on DVD yet, because Viz is releasing that 4 episodes at a time for $20 a disk. Bleach is a good show, but that's a terrible method of release for a show that's over 100 episodes long.

The third reason is very closely related to the second, as like hentai4me, I don't live in North America.

I think that since I am new to anime ( about 3-4 years or so actively watching it ) I have a lot of catching up to do so I spend the majority of the money I use to buy anime on buy old completed series or movies.

Not being able to wait isn't being selfish? I know the "Ask John" articles on Animenation specifically cite that sentiment in particular as being an example of an entitled mentality.

To give a personal example, for the last six months, I have been watching Shakugan no Shana as it comes out on DVD. Precisely because I'm enthusiastic about the series, it doesn't bother me to shell out ten measley extra dollars per disc and to wait a month between releases, as opposed to waiting another year or two for a half-price boxset release. The fact that you're ostensibly interested enough to buy something, yet you'd put it off for years just to save maybe $50, is what tells me that the person's priorities as an anime fan aren't quite right.

I should mention that both of the people I know who buy this way are big fansub "consumers" also. One of them is so shameless in his demandingness, that he even pays $20/month to subscribe to some website where he can download fansubs because "HTTP downloads are so much faster than bittorrent." He, for one, has made it clear that when he wants something, he wants it _now_.

I think living in a country where anime is not easily accessible probably excludes you, hentai4me, and mostly anyone else from the group that I'm criticizing here.... I understand that would be sort of like asking American/Canadian anime fans should be importing Japanese DVDs or something like that, which would be pretty ridiculous and definitely isn't something I'm actually suggesting. I guess what I'm really saying is, with the relatively small difference in price that anime fans face at least here in America, versus the amount of time you have to wait for your typical boxset to get released, the only reasons I can see to hold out are that you're either a Scrooge-inspired penny-pincher or you're apathetic and don't really have that much interest in what you're waiting to buy.