Hmm. Well, a brief update here (I’ll be more detailed tomorrow - I swear!). Today was an interesting day. Mum and Dad are still on their cruise - they’re due back on Friday - so I got to take darling Gracie to Preschool this morning. Since Grandad and Nanna are staying over as adultish supervision (and cooks!) Grandad accompanied me - I drove, probably due to better reflexes, vision, and the actual knowledge of where we were going. ^_^

Anyway, after dropping her off and returning home, I went shopping for some things - Nan was roasting a piece of pork, so I had every incentive to buy the best ingredients - Nan can roast pork like you wouldn’t believe…mmmmm… drool. ^_^

Afterwards? Well, there was the pork. And potatoes. And honeyed carrots. And butter/boiled beans. And blackberry & apple pie. And custard. Then? It was back to burning all of my anime to CD. Started on Chobits - seven disks in total, as I’d calculated it. But Fernne was getting bored - and Grace was out - so we decided to go shopping at Westfield and spend some Christmas gift vouchers, whilst killing time before we picked up Grace.

At Westfield, I wandered around Sanity, and picked up the soundtrack to Return of the King - $32.99. Little bit steep, but hey, I had a $25 gift voucher - all good. Then, whilst waiting for Fernne to turn up - she’d gone chemicals shopping - I browsed through the CD Wallet section. There I stumbled upon a pile of 64 CD wallets - for 14.99 each, down from 19.99 - which might have been a special itself. I picked out the best looking one (green) and took it to the counter. The lady scanned it - $9.99. Turns out they’d forgotten to put the new tickets on them.

Well. I came this close to walking back over there and picking up another wallet - but I was strong.

Fernne arrived at this point, and I snitched my wallet back (for reasons of EFTPOS) and left her to browse CDs whilst I meandered down to Electronics Boutique - in order to find out a) when they expected their January Anime in and b) how much they would be selling the Hellsing box set for. I expected they’d be getting it in on Wednesday/Thursday - that is after all when the publisher said it’d be out. Imagine my surprise as I browsed the anime section, waiting for a free sales guy, when I saw the Hellsing box sitting there - no DVDs, just the empty box.

My first thought was “Hmm. Must be a promo thing.”

Anyway, I grabbed the box, accosted a sales guy, and asked if/when the collection was actually coming in stock. He said ‘We got it today.’ Nice. And here was me, thinking it was Monday. He asked if I wanted it. I thought about it for about 5 milliseconds, then said, ‘Yeah. Sure.’ The sales guy went out the back, grabbed the DVDs, put them in the box, wandered over to the checkout/counter (with me in tow) and proceeded to divest me of $99.95 via EFT.

I walked out a slightly poorer man… but an infinitely more vampirically filled one.

Yes, for the unlearned - Hellsing is an anime about vampires. British vampires. That hunt down and kill other, nasty, evil vampires for the Hellsing Organisation - a group of vampire hunters/exterminators led by the descendants of Dr. von Helsing, the man who killed Dracula (according to Bram Stoker).

I’ve had the series (fansubbed) for ages - telling the truth, it was the first anime I ever really watched in it’s entirety - my introduction to the world of anime was seeing vampires killing other vampires with big guns and funky soundtracks. Interesting, what? ^_^

Now? Well, I’ve seen about… three… entire series (counting Hellsing) - Neon Genesis: Evangelion (which I have the box set for, counting the Movie Collection), Haibane Renmei (which I’m buying as it comes out - have the first two DVDs and the box) and now Hellsing (which I just bought the box for).

Other anime I’ve watched? serial experiments: lain (will see it all, will see it all, provide me time!), Excel Saga (almost seen it all - the last six episodes in my set I refuse to watch, due to absolutely awful subbing), Ghost in the Shell (the movie - I’ve started to watch it about half a dozen times), Hoshi no Koe (Voices of a Distant Star - a really interesting watch, have the DVD), Spirited Away (have the DVD, have yet to finish the film - lack of time, yet again), and assorted bits and pieces.

To link part of the earlier bits of this rant to here (following my chains of thought) I originally bought my 64 CD wallet in order to hold my anime CD collection. Currently in the folder I have:

Haibane Renme (complete)rnserial experiments: lain (complete)rnHellsing (complete)rnTrigun (missing two episodes)rnMaritan Successor Nadesico (complete, + movie)rnExcel Saga (complete, need better episodes for last disk or two)rnNeon Genesis Evangelion (complete, + movies)rnLove Hina (complete)rnChobits (complete)rnGhost in the Shell

And, yet to burn to CD:

Cowboy Bebop (first three episodes - a sampler, if you will)rnNausicaa: Valley of the Wind

Am I an anime junkie? Well… yeah, I suppose. In a way. I’m not planning to buy too much more anime in the immediate future - only Haibane Renmei as it comes out, and the Excel Saga box set (please, someone, let them make one!) if it ever comes out.

Gah. I wanted to do a short post - not a bloody 20 minute long exposition. Ah well. I’ll still post tomorrow.

Maybe.

-Andiyar