Welcome to the Otaku Collection haul for the month of August 2021. This update features 1 anime title, 5 light novel volumes and 10 manga volumes.
For this month’s haul, the anime titles that were supposed to occupy most of this month’s haul got pushed back into September so what I have left remaining are mostly dedicated to a whole bunch of books. Not much was also spent in terms of future orders as well which I’ll go over later in this post.
#01 | Prison School Omnibus 7-11
The first items of the month is from a trip to York to visit a friend, and for the first time I checked out the Travelling Man store which sells comics but also manga. It was a coincidence that it was also the day they were celebrating their anniversary and thus everything in-store was 20% off including manga. After looking at their selection which was pretty good though stock issues caused by the global situation has impacted the stores as well, what I found was quite surprising actually.
They had a ton of Prison School manga available, most importantly the volumes that I needed for my collection. They did not have Omnibus 7 so I had to order it online from Amazon, but for Omnibus 8, 9, 10 & 11 I was able to acquire together for a total of £51. It does sound like a lot, but it’s worth pointing out that these are 2-in-1 omnibus volumes which means I basically have 8 volumes worth of content (basically paying about £6.38 a volume).
#02 | Dungeon of Black Company Vol 3-5
Next we have a long-awaited pickup haul actually with The Dungeon of Black Company manga Volumes 3, 4 & 5. Specifically what I want to go over is Volume 3 because this had been out of stock for months in the UK. I re-ordered it multiple times due to retailers not getting the stock within the timeframe they specified.
Eventually Amazon did manage to get more stock for Volume 3 at £9.99 so I decided enough was enough and ordered it from there alongside Volumes 4 & 5 to save myself the hassle. To provide context as to why I had been trying to get this book, Volume 3 was released in English back in 2019 so it was important to get it sooner than later due to Seven Seas very limited print runs on their physical media. While Volumes 4 & 5 were released in 2020 it was important that I try to get the series up-to-date as soon as I could.
#03 | Plus Sized Elf Vol 6
To avoid the same problem that had occurred with the previous pickup, I also ordered Plus-Sized Elf manga Volume 6 which was released at the last quarter of 2020. I was originally going to acquire this alongside Volume 7 but that got delayed to later into the year so I decided to order Volume 6 immediately. This does mean that the series is actually up-to-date which is great on the plus side.
#04 | Violet Evergarden: Eternity and the Auto Memory Doll
Next we have the only Blu-ray pickup of the month with Anime Limited’s Collector’s Edition release of Violet Evergarden: Eternity and the Auto Memory Doll, a film from Kyoto Animation. It’s been available on Netflix for a while now and I never bothered to watch it on there mainly because I was busy sorting out other things and I prefer to watch films on home video whenever I can. The collector’s package is very nice and I am happy to own it for the collection.
#05 | Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody Novels 2-3
During the latter half of the month I realised that I was in a weird void on what to do for my collection. Basically there was no real rush to buy anything and I decided to look at my light novel collection. From there, I made the decision to try and get my Yen Press (aka Yen On) titles up-to-date because a few of the publisher’s older light novels like Baccano! and Durarara!! had some volumes go out of print.
One of the first titles I had chosen was the isekai fantasy harem series Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody light novel Volumes 2 & 3, which were released in English back in 2017. I’ve admittedly not yet read the first volume outside of its prologue chapter but I have watched the anime so I have a rough idea on what to expect with the original source material. I am actually surprised this franchise is still on-going with dozens of volumes in Japan so I should try to get this series caught up as much as I can.
#06 | Goblin Slayer Novels 2-4
Alongside Death March, I ordered the fantasy series Goblin Slayer light novel Volumes 2, 3 & 4, which were also released in English back in 2017. Volume 4 was shipped separately but arrived pretty soon afterwards. Like Death March, I also watched the anime so I knew what to expect but I had actually acquired the first volume beforehand and I still haven’t read it haha. A second season has been greenlit so I should start reading in preparation.
#07 | Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs Vol 12
Last but not least we have Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs manga Volume 12 which was in a similar position to Dungeon of Black Company except I was able to find and receive a copy from Amazon France. However I did pay a bit more than SRP but considering the situation with the stock I would rather get it sooner than later so that I can get the series up-to-date whenever I can.
As the series is 24 volumes long (and was also part of Weekly Shonen Jump so it ran alongside Demon Slayer and One Piece for those curious), I want to try and acquire the rest of the volumes much closer to release in case the print run ends up getting shorter as the volumes continue. I pretty much want to avoid any stock issues or random out of print notices. Currently, there’s about 16 volumes total expected to be released by the end of 2021 so the series probably won’t be fully out in English until 2023 at the earliest.
Unboxing Links
You can view more photos & specs for the titles below:
- Violet Evergarden: Eternity and the Auto Memory Doll (CE Blu-ray)
What’s to Come for the Hauls
September Arrivals
Thanks to delays we have Lupin III: The First and Penguindrum moved into September alongside Love Live! Sunshine!! the School Idol Movie: Over the Rainbow. Along the way I have also ordered a few more items currently expected to arrive in the same month with Anime Limited’s limited edition release of Miss Hokusai and the Aniplex Japan limited edition release of Fate/Stay Night [Heaven’s Feel] III. Spring Song, the latter of which is arriving very soon.
December Arrivals
Arriving in the early days of December, just before the end of the year, is the Anime Limited Ultimate Edition release of Neon Genesis Evangelion, which was one of three big box sets that I was concerned about throughout this past year and it was a pretty expensive release, clocking in at £180 for myself due to the Unlimited membership discount and is one of the reasons why I had kept this month’s haul much smaller than usual on the spending part.
There are cheaper editions but I felt this particular edition was more than enough to be worth owning for my collection, especially as I am a big fan of the franchise (I always considered Evangelion to be my No. 1 favourite overall, and this was helped by the recent availability of Evangelion: 3.0+1.01 Thrice Upon a Time on Amazon Prime).
Other Tidbits
Due to recent UK events, the funding is going to be decreased a fair bit starting October but it won’t drastically affect my hauls, though don’t expect many massive purchases.
Moving on to the discussion of hauls as I always do with each of these monthly round-ups, there’s been some progress at least.
Anime
A few updates on the Anime Limited front. Their Summer sale was a dud, though I did order Miss Hokusai from that because I had yet to own it and has the English dub now. With Neon Genesis Evangelion out of the way, that’s now one of three big hurdles out of the way. The other two are Cardcaptor Sakura and Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny. The distributor is still working on both titles as of this moment and were supposed to be released before the end of the year.
I had expected Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny to be sorted first considering the timing of Rightstuf’s release in North America, but we’ll see how it goes as they could make it available for pre-order sooner than I had anticipated (like end of September or October time). There is also a possibility that they had intentionally delayed their plans for sorting out the UK release just in case the Nozomi discs were messed up again like what had happened with the first series.
InuYasha Season 1 was made available for pre-order, but I decided not to opt for the series for two reasons – the first is that they currently do not have the rights for Seasons 2-6 aka Episodes 28 onwards, which puts the consistency into question, and the second reason is that I don’t want to put myself in a situation where I have to buy all of the sets asap to ensure consistency and completion sake, so I’m going for the standard edition route in this case for the meantime.
In terms of new and upcoming products, we do have two more that were revealed – ON-GAKU: Our Sound and Sword Art Online Alicization -War of Underworld- Part 1 so I will be pre-ordering both when they appear during the middle of September. Given recent events in the United States I am expecting both Kakegurui and Lupin the Third Part V to be made available for pre-order this last quarter as well so I’ll need to prepare for them. There’s also more Gundam planned but it’s not clear what series or film it will be at the moment.
Over at Funimation they did announce their release schedule for October and it has a few titles that I am interested in with Goblin Slayer: Goblin’s Crown and Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun, however I am saving those for discount sales because their handling of the prices isn’t great and it doesn’t help that they’re charging £49.99 SRP on the latter when it could have gone for £34.99 SRP like Gleipnir did.
It also doesn’t help that they poorly handled the BOFURI limited edition situation because I was unsuccessful in acquiring that release, but so were many others who had actually pre-ordered it many months in advance and still had received cancellations from various retailers. It’s a mess and I question how many units were actually allocated.
Meanwhile in the US, they have limited edition releases planned for Akudama Drive, Fire Force Season 2 and Our Last Crusade or the Rise of a New World. I am actually interested in these three but funding and timing are both going to be a challenge.
MVM also revealed their batch of releases covering the last quarter of the year and the only ones that catch my eye are Aria the Animation, Haibane Renmei, Rosario+Vampire and Seitokai Yakuindomo. They’re also releasing The Skull Man on DVD (there’s no Blu-ray master to my knowledge) so that’s a random choice but if its NTSC-encoded then I wouldn’t mind going for it at a sale discount.
Light Novel & Manga
Some good progress for both light novel and manga for this month’s haul. Prison School is almost complete with Omnibus 12, 13 & 14 left remaining. While I am a few volumes behind, both Destiny Lovers and World’s End Harem will have their final English volumes released around October/November time so I’ll try and get their respective books sorted as soon as I can, with the main issue being stock issues.
In terms of any other book updates, my stance is still the same as before on the rest.
Video Games
Since I haven’t acquired any video games in a while there’s nothing else to provide in this write-up. That being said I have gone through my backlog and finished at least 9 throughout the month (Attack on Titan 2: Final Battle, God of War HD Collection Volume II, Sakura Wars, Sly Cooper HD Collection, SoulCalibur V, and Valkyria Chronicles Remastered). I’m also currently playing Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 1 because I recently discovered it wasn’t compatible with the PlayStation TV so I figured I’ll complete the game in case my device gets funny or something out of nowhere.
Asian Cinema
September should be the month that 88 Films is finally going to be releasing their next Category III film releases; Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky and Robotrix, the latter of which is uncut for the first time in the UK. Hopefully the pre-orders will go live soon so that I can make use of the Birthday discount before it expires in 18 days time.
88 Films also has more Asian films coming up for the last quarter of the year but the ones I am interested in are Black Cat and Jackie Chan’s Armour of God, both of which are getting the deluxe limited edition treatment which is great. Black Cat is not a Category III title so I’m curious to see how it looks in terms of presentation.
Third Window Films has a great line-up coming with the second Toshiaki Toyoda box set that covers about five films for £40 so I would like to get that if I can. Then there’s also Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes which is a film that is critically acclaimed by many including the director of One Cut of the Dead so I hope to get that too.
Arrow officially confirmed their release for Sailor Suit and Machine Girl film as well as a standard edition 4K Ultra HD release of Battle Royale. The latter doesn’t include the second film so I wonder if that will get a standalone release as it was included in the deluxe edition earlier in the year.
And that’s basically it for the August 2021 haul. I know it’s much more simpler than previous hauls but September should be able to pick up the pace as well as the remaining few months of the year due to the holiday season.
The Normanic Vault 