Sweet Dreams

I can't believe I actually own the complete series of Flag! *squeals* The last time I went to Half-Price Books a couple of months ago, they only had three (out of four) discs of Flag on the shelf. At the time, I was tempted to buy them, but I knew from a previous search that one of the discs was insanely difficult to find even used, so I decided to pass it up. Good thing, too, since when I got home and did another search, the missing disc (Vol. 2) was, of course, the one that was impossible to find -- and I mean, impossible. There wasn't a single copy to be found on the Amazon Marketplace. Well, fast-forward to today, and they had ALL FOUR DISCS! For only $6 each! Do you guys know how much that Vol. 2 is going for? I just checked the Amazon Marketplace again, and they actually have a few copies up for sell now, but the cheapest is going for $49.83. I managed to get the entire series for only $24! Yeah, this is definitely going down as one of my most amazing finds.

And to make an great day even better, I finally got to see Frozen, which I've been dying to see ever since it was released, and I absolutely loved it. Definitely my pick for the Best Animated Film Oscar.

First off, Politically Incorrect is posted at dotmoon and FF.net. (I'll post it AO3 either later today or tomorrow; I didn't have time yesterday.). Decided just to post the whole thing as a long one-shot, since it really wasn't set up to be a chaptered story. If you read it before, I made a few really minor changes, but also added a One Year Later scene at the end that you may want to check out.

The reason why I didn't have time to post it at AO3 is because yesterday Mom and I went to the movies -- we saw Hope Springs, which was pretty good -- then did a little shopping. Of course, that meant manga for me! At Barnes & Noble, I picked up Sailor Moon Vol. 7, Fushigi Yugi: Genbu Kaiden Vol. 10 (finally, a new volume!), and the first 3-in-1 omnbus edition of Skip-Beat, which I've always wanted to read but thought was too long. Actually, I still think it's too long, but you know me, I'm always a sucker for an omnibus... *laughs* We also went to Half-Price Books. For once, though, they didn't have anything I was interested in, so I decided to satisfy my craving for bargain-hunting out-of-print manga on the Amazon Marketplace. I ordered Vols. 4 & 7 of Othello, Vol. 6 of Doubt! (all three missing volumes from series I bought previously at HPB), and Clannad: After Story Collection 2. (You may remember that I got the rest of the series for ridiculously cheap during Right Stuf's holiday sale last year.) Also bought some newer manga: Arata: The Legend Vol. 9, Kimi ni Todoke Vols. 8 and 9, and Kobato. Vols. 2-4.

So, yeah, I'm going to be in manga heaven for the next couple of weeks. ^_^

I'm getting really bad about doing my meme questions, so today will be another two-for-one. They're related anyway.

19. A manga/an anime that you disliked at first but came to enjoy later on

Hmm, this is a tough question. I guess I would have to say the manga series Phantom Dream did get a lot better later in the series. I didn't really care for it at all in the beginning. As for anime.... Maybe Gundam Wing? It was a bit of a struggle to get through the first half, but past the recap, I enjoyed it more, although I never really came to love it. It's a pretty average series.

20. A manga/an anime you started out enjoying but ended up not liking as much

Ah, this question is much easier to answer! I've already mentioned Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle and xxxHolic in reply to a similar question from this meme, but for anime, it's gotta be Kare Kano. It was so, so good until the last couple of episodes! Unfortunately, the ending is so terrible that it's tainted the rest of the series for me.

Guys, I just the best deal on a Christmas gift for my mother. I knew she wanted season five of Supernatural, so I decided to see if there was a good deal on it at Amazon. Well, I'll say there was! The seasons 1-6 boxsets are going for $12.99 each. With a price that fantastic, not only did I snatch up the season five she asked for, I picked up season six for her as well. She's gonna be thrilled. 

And apparently I'm getting a really amazing gift this year from my parents, so now I'm totally curious about what it is. I know Mom was talking about getting me a new TV a couple of weeks ago, but I don't think that's it, since none of the packages she brought in from shopping were big enough. I don't really need a new one, anyway. My current TV works just fine; I have no complaints with it. Maybe a Blu-Ray player? But again, I don't really need one at the moment. As long as they keep putting anime out on DVDs, I'm happy. (I didn't make the switch from VHS to DVD until Pioneer stopped releasing Card Captor Sakura and Sailor Moon SuperS on videotape, and I imagine it's going to be the same with Blu-Ray.) A gaming system would be pretty cool, I suppose, but what I'm really hoping for is a MP3 player, especially since I recently read an article that said that they're planning to stop producing CDs by 2013. I mentioned that to Mom last weekend, so hopefully she got the hint. *crosses fingers*

Man, I love bargain hunting at Amazon Marketplace. I finally decided to use up my last Visa gift card and bought myself a ton of CLAMP, because I have apparently decided that I need to own ALL their licensed works. (Except for X. I won't be buying that until they start working on it again. And Man of Many Faces, because Vol. 2 is ridiculously expensive.) I blame it on the Southside Artbook I bought a few weeks ago. After seeing all those gorgeous pictures, I need more of the pretty.

Anyway, I ordered the Northside Artbook, Miyuki-chan in Wonderland, both volumes of Duklyon Clamp School Defenders, all three volumes of Clamp School Detectives, and the first four of the five volumes of Angelic Layer. (I ran out of money on the card before I could get the last one.) My one non-CLAMP purchase was the Vol. 5 disc of Hare + Guu that I needed to finish the main series. Paid close to retail for it, but it was the cheapest available, and I didn't want to risk the possibility of never getting it. Besides, I got such a good deal on everything else that I didn't really mind paying a little extra for it.

Now I just need to get that last volume of Angelic Layer, finish up xxxHolic (which I hear is about to end soon), collect Tokyo Babylon and RG Veda, and start on Kobato., and my collection will be complete!

Yeah... I may be a little insane.

For the past week or so, I've been watching Gilgamesh through Netflix. Though I still have one more disc to see, unless the ending is really terrible -- which I've read some reviews that say it is -- I'm probably going to snatch it up for my collection.

My question is, does anybody own either of the two boxsets and can tell me if they come with the extras? If possible, I'd really like to have the extras. They seemed interesting, but because tthere were so many of them, I skipped watching some of them.

The two boxsets in question are this one and this one.

If neither come with extras, the individual discs are also an option since they are ridiculously cheap at Right Stuf, but they're out of Vol. 2 and I don't know if it'll ever come back in stock, given that it's out of print. I suppose I can always buy Vol. 2 off the Amazon Marketplace, but I would prefer one of the boxsets, provided they come with the extras.

Thanks!

EDIT: Never mind. I went over to AnimeOnDVD (Mania.com) and looked up the reviews for the boxsets. (Can't believe I didn't think of that sooner!) Neither come with the extras. Phooey. Oh, well, I guess I'll snatch up all the individual discs Right Stuf currently has in stock and wait a couple of months to see if they ever get in more Vol. 2s. If not, I'll just pick one up at the Amazon Marketplace. It's not like I'll be in any hurry to rewatch the series anyway. I have too many other series I need to rewatch before then! 

So, Mom handed me one of her credit cards today and told me to use it to order about $70 worth of Christmas presents for myself. I was hoping I would be able to order the last volume of Le Chevalier D'Eon that I needed from Right Stuf, but not only were they sold out of it again, it's apparently no longer available for purchase from them. That meant I had to try to find a copy somewhere else. (There was no way I was going to buy the upcoming boxset when I only needed one DVD to finish my collection.)

I tried all the usual places. Barnes & Noble wasn't selling it. Overstock.com wasn't selling it. Best Buy is still selling it, but it's currently on backorder and selling for about $25, more than I really wanted to pay when I had bought the rest of the DVDs for the same price at Right Stuf. Finally, I got lucky at Amazon.com. Amazon.com itself didn't have any for sale, but there were some copies available through the Marketplace, and one of the sellers was actually the head of Right Stuf (shawnek). I've never ordered anything from the Marketplace before, but I figured "what the heck?" and ordered a new copy from the aforementioned shawnek for about $11.

Not only that, but since catalina_bella was nice enough to give me her copy of Vol. 2 of SuperS that she no longer needed -- came in yesterday, thanks again! -- I decided to finish up my DVD collection of SuperS by ordering Vols. 1 & 3 through the Marketplace as well. Can you believe somebody was actually selling a new copy of Vol. 3 for $53?!  Man, if I had known back then how valuable they would become, I would have stocked up! *laughs* Needless to say, I ended up ordering a used copy of that volume that still cost about twenty dollars, but I think it'll be worth it to finally have the whole season on DVD. ^_^

Can it be Christmas yet? Please?