So it has been a long while since I have done a blog site update, and I figured it was time to provide more details on what will be happening from this day forward.
As a recap, it’s pretty much the third year anniversary of moving The Normanic Vault from Blogger onto WordPress (back in 2018) and since then I’ve added tons of unboxings from anime to Asian Cinema, but also keeping the latest release slates of upcoming anime noted down here and there. In late 2019 I went back to University to do a Masters and then finished it last year with a distinction (1st), but with the global pandemic getting in the way, the job hunt was stalled for a long time.
New Milestone
After 9 months of proper job hunting (since I technically took a break throughout Q4 last year), I can confirm as of this moment, that I have managed to acquire a new job! This new job will not be in the same situation as the last one, so there will be no insane travel journey.
For context on the last job, due to disruption in travel caused by Northern Rail (and being asked to ‘compromise’ to avoid arriving late), I made the decision to wake up early at 5:50am every weekday, taking an early 6:30am train and after reaching the village where the train stops, wait about half an hour, and then walk 45 minutes to the job building. This was then followed by every Monday & Fridays walking 45 minutes back to the train station for a 45 minute ride back to the city with additional time added for any delays. Tuesdays to Thursdays weren’t too bad as a co-worker was kind enough to let me skip through the walk part each afternoon return trip. Also because of how messy the travel plan was, I had to sleep at 10pm each day to get used to it, leaving me with only 2-3 hours of free time each weekday.
The point of bringing this up, is that this took a mental toll to my health and it was something that I did not want to deal with ever again. Nobody should force themselves into that position, and I remember my friends and family were all concerned about it as I had kept that going between November 2018 to February 2019 without any changes to the plan at all – I also did not take much time off during the holiday season (and having my card compromised a day before the Xmas weekend didn’t help either). I lost my previous job due to a combination of factors, but it wouldn’t surprise me if this travel fiasco was part of it.
Going back to University for a Masters was essentially my way of rebooting everything, and I learned a lot out of it. It may have taken this long to find a new role, but I did try any sort of positions to see which worked best for me. This new job is also local, so the travel approach is completely different than before because I will remain at home rather than live independently. This will also allow myself to have proper savings for any paths in the foreseeable future.
I wanted to get that context out of the way because it gives you lot a rough idea on how I am able to afford the upcoming items from here on, because the benefit of this decision is that the hauls may grow even more! There will be some factors involved, but I want to use this opportunity to speed up my collection as fast as I can.
So with that said, let’s break down how it will affect the blog.
Unboxings
I love to unbox any special edition anime or other media that I can find that I feel would benefit showcasing to various readers throughout the globe. I generally take the photos during the daytime which provides the best source of lighting, but since I will be returning to work this will mean that there may be a different in presentation due to utilising room lighting. This shouldn’t be a massive issue during the middle parts of the year due to time zone changes and more sunlight outside, but I figured I would offer a heads up in case some folks wonder why it may look a bit different than the usual.
Some of you may have noticed that I stopped providing posts on regular Blu-rays, video game imports, and Asian Cinema releases. This came down to finite amount of space remaining from WordPress’s freemium plan, so I will be upgrading to a bigger plan to allow for more storage and therefore more unboxings in the long term.
Currently, I have Miss Hokusai, Neon Genesis Evangelion (Ultimate Edition), ON-GAKU: Our Sound, Penguindrum, and Sword Art Online Alicization -War of Underworld- Part 1 unboxings planned throughout this Q4 2021. More will appear!
Haul Pickups
The general theme of this year was all about catching up on various areas and avoiding a massive backlog of titles from each part of my collection that had yet to be picked up. Many of you would have noticed that a lot of the spending came down to manga and light novels because I had left them out for years, but with better income I hope this will speed up the process greatly and avoid situations like out of print releases from occurring ever again for older titles.
The anime collection has been handled pretty well throughout this past few years, but one of the biggest goals is to finally sort out the Aniplex collection so that I wouldn’t have to worry about them too much for future pickups, since their rollout of new releases has slowed down greatly over the years. I also intend on acquiring the long-awaited releases from Discotek Media but it will come down to both timing and stock availability in the long run.
For gaming, this has gone pretty well. The PS3 is mostly complete, with only physical releases of Japanese imports and the digital PSN related titles left to sort out, while the PS4 has roughly 50 more physical games left to acquire. I may consider moving to PS5 sooner than later since the console supports backwards compatibility with PS4 which adds better performance for select games in my backlog. Nintendo Switch is also planned, via the OLED model, though I may hold out until Black Friday sale for a potential good deal.
Asian Cinema will continue to be picked up here and there, as I’m in no major rush. You can expect some more pickups from this in the coming months, especially from 88 Films and Third Window Films.
Complete Otaku Collection
When I first got my job back in 2018, I moved to Sheffield where I wanted to be, but since I was living independently that also meant my collection was in another location. Now that I am remaining locally the yearly complete otaku collection updates can resume as planned at the end of the year, assuming that I can get more shelving space (and row slots) as well.
Industry News & Monthly Collection Pickups
The industry news updates will continue as planned, but I won’t be posting them early in the day due to work getting in the way of timing. The monthly collection pickups will continue as planned, but the timing of the post will also appear either very early in the morning before going to work or after work so you will have to wait a bit depending on the outcome for that.
Final Notes
Overall, I did not expect to get a new job this soon. In fact it all came very sudden throughout the past week, and it feels weird to finally move forward once again. Even if this job doesn’t turn out in 2022, that’s still additional experience for my portfolio which is better than none.
I hope that the hauls will continue to grow and be in a position where I can finally say “I am now up-to-speed on anime, games and books hooray”. Of course it won’t be easy. That said, I look forward to the Black Friday and Christmas sales this year for once.
So the general TL;DR:
- Got a new job so better income for the hauls.
- Unboxing photos will turn out slightly different to the usual due to lighting caused by timing of the day.
- The blog will eventually be updated to use a premium plan to allow for more unboxings in the future.
- Blog posts will occur outside working hours so expect them to appear in the late afternoons (GMT).
- Industry News and Otaku posts will not be affected by the change, but expect them to be published onto the blog at the time mentioned above.
If you are new to this blog, feel free to follow me on Twitter as I am quite active on there. My news reporting work over on Anime UK News will continue but at an irregular pace similar to before.
The Normanic Vault 
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