A trip to MCM Comic Con Birmingham plus a few more items acquired throughout the month. Some were on sale while others are hard to find!
For this update we have 6 video games, 7 anime titles, and 2 live-action asian cinema titles.
#01 | 428: Shibuya Scramble
The first item of the month is a recent video game now hard to find in Europe. Spike Chunsoft localised the visual novel 428 which received critical acclaim in Japan years back on the Wii, and now it’s here on PS4 which is the version I acquired. I did try to get the game a few months back but they priced it incorrectly and that same retailer offered the game at a lower price point luckily.
#02 | Nights of Azure, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Splitz, and Valkyria Chronicles
While I was at home I checked out the local CeX to see if they had any games worth acquiring. I found a few for low prices that were on my list to pickup. Nights of Azure on PS4 from Gust and Koei Tecmo, Super Monkey Ball on Vita from SEGA, and Valkyria Chronicles on PS4 from SEGA also. The VC set does include the limited edition contents that were included in the release. I’ve placed them back at home for safe-keeping.
#03 | Lady Snowblood and The Villainess
Arrow Video ran a sale to celebrate International Women’s Day and they had a few films I was interested in picking up. The films were the Lady Snowblood collection (Japanese films from director Toshiya Fujita) and The Villainess (South Korean film from director Jung Byung-gil). I did watch The Villainess recently and I liked it, but I wasn’t completely sold on the editing during the action scenes as it felt quite rough and off-putting.
#04 | MCM Comic Con Birmingham Haul
The big pickup of the month is a trip to MCM Comic Con Birmingham with my friends from the university’s anime society. I had enough funds to make a good haul so I went in with an open mind since I honestly didn’t know what to acquire, and eventually I settled on a couple anime sets. Some of these anime sets were handy to acquire as I wanted to fill the gaps for a few of the shows I already owned, while others are a neat addition.
Assassination Classroom Season 2 is one of the sets I was hoping would have gone on sale back in Anime Limited’s Christmas sale but it made its appearance at the convention for £20 per part. Also available was Hyouka Part 2, going for £30. Both Assassination Classroom Season 2 and Hyouka Part 2 were the sets I had been looking for to complete the show’s collection on my shelf.
Then we have Kiznaiver which I expected to see make its appearance at the convention, but luckily I was able to acquire the series with the Anime Limited Shop Exclusive artbook for £35 (original early bird price was £40). And Sound! Euphonium Season 1 was around for £35 also which I had already watched and enjoyed.
Finally we have both parts for Nisekoi: False Love Season 2. A surprise addition considering I am not a fan of Kaze, however I wasn’t exactly happy to pay a lot for the Aniplex sets when its basically just the case with a couple artcards – definitely one of, if not, the weakest Aniplex release to date. So with that said, the US sets eventually went out of print and I got the UK sets for £10 per part.
If I had my job still I would have acquired a few more titles, but unfortunately life happens.
#05 | Attack on Titan: Wings of Freedom and Danganronpa 1 & 2 Reload
And the last pickup of the month is a quick trip to town before the month was over. I was initially going to buy a few films in HMV but I decided to take a look at CeX once again to see if they had anything different than before. To my surprise they did. For starters Attack on Titan was there as per usual but the condition was better than before so I acquired it at £15. The other was Danganronpa 1 & 2 Reload for £32, which is hard to find now because of the low print run and the re-release of the franchise’s trilogy recently.
Additional Notes
That’s every item I received during the month of March. My job search has been going okay, managed to get 3-4 interviews so far which is pretty good progress for what was only a month thus far. April’s haul will be much smaller but I have ordered and paid off two larger sets to keep the collection occupied.
The two sets I mentioned are Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody and Perfect Blue’s Ultimate Edition release. The former went out of print and UP1 weren’t able to acquire stock so I had to re-order it through Amazon which was annoying. The latter was available for an early bird and while disc reviews have been mixed I was happy enough to settle at that price point considering I really enjoyed the film and like the contents the re-release provides.
The Normanic Vault 