Bill, The Galactic Hero
(via せんす・おぶ・わんだぁ)
I love this Eiji Yokoyama (Scramble Effect, Space Convenience Store) cover illustration.
Bill, The Galactic Hero
(via Amazon)
According to this site - this seventies edition was illustrated by Fujiko Fujio! Anyone know which one of them it was?
Star Smashers of Galaxy Rangers
(via スペースオペラの巻)
Star Smashers of Galaxy Rangers
(via Amazon)
This more recent one I believe is by Masuda Mikio.
The Technicolor Time Machine
(via Amazon)
Yes, that is Monkey Punch illustrating this 1976 edition. The idea of this post came from a twitter discussion a few weeks back comparing Spike from Cowboy Bebop to Stainless Steel Rat & Lupin III. It struck me that Monkey Punch would have been a good artist for Harry Harrison’s sensibilities, and was pleasantly surprised he had indeed illustrated a Japanese edition of one of his novels.
In this introductory episode Anthony Askew and I chat about how we got into anime, UK anime conventions, favourite anime, the early 90s grey import console scene, watching bootleg films during school time, and much, much more.
Dynamite in the Brain, the podcast that loves anime and hates fun!
Theme music by Paul Smith of quiet quiet band.
You can find Anthony Askew on the web here. He also writes for DefConTwo, so why not check that out too.
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[C] The Money of Soul and Possibility Control – It’s Kenji Nakamura (Mononoke, Trapeze) and Noboru Takagi (Bacanno, Durarara) on an original anime for noitaminA. Start getting excited… now!
Kaiji Season 2 – the most wanted sequel for a certain section of anime fans. You know, adults.
Toriko – This probably can’t fail. Cooking manga taken to ludicrous extremes. The anime will probably be solid with flashes of brilliance, it is a Toei SJ adaptation after all, but should be a good boost for the manga.
Tiger & Bunny – What’s that? A robot show from the guy (Keiichi Satou) who designed the hell out of Big O? I’m in.
Blue Exorcist - Tensai Okamura (Darker than Black, Cowboy Bebop the Movie), doesn’t always hit it out the park, but he’s better than most. So this A-1 Pictures show should be worth checking out.
X-Men – Iron Man was exactly what a Yuzo Sato Iron Man show would be like. What little of Wolverine I’ve seen was a step up. Hadn’t realised X-Men was next, will be interested in seeing what we get this time.
Dororon Enma-kun – Brains Base do Go Nagai? From the director of GaoGaiGar? Excitement levels rising!
Cardboard War Chronicles - As strong a job as OLM have done with Pokemon over the years, their relationship with Level 5 has produced some cracking animation both on screen and in the games. So this new show from the pair of them has my interest.
Those of you who follow me on twitter will have been regaled with my DVD bargain hunting since last April. I’m giving it a little rest, as when I went through the pile of stuff I bought (not to mention the haul from Amecon’s dealer room last year) I found a series set that I’d forgotten I’d bought. If that’s not a sign that you’re buying too many DVDs then I don’t know what is.
As I’m stopping for a while I thought I’d write about my approach to bargain hunting.
First things first, Auctions Only. The Buy It Now on DVDs is full of people selling second hand goods more expensively than if I shopped wisely on Amazon, Play etc. If you want real bargains, you’ll need to bid.
If you’re bidding on an auction you need to know your your limit from the outset. In all but one of these cases I set myself a limit of £3 per disc (including P&P). This is because most of the time I am either buying on a whim, or I know that the item will show up cheaply with some frequency.
If I am bidding to win, as I was with the Dirty Pair box set, then I set the limit at 80% of what it would cost new or on Amazon marketplace.
As far as avoiding bootlegs, the big clues tend to be the subtitles they list, the disc count to episode ratio or the sleeve scan. You don’t see too many below the £3 mark in Auctions, and they tend to be obvious. Though that may be my time at Videolog talking there, I do know otherwise intelligent people who’ve been tricked by bootlegs. And once in my haste I bought a Gundam model made by BENDAI…
Finally, you should set up searches to find what you want and I recommend the plugins eBay has for Firefox and Chrome to monitor your bids.
Here’s the list of my haul since last April:
- Doctor Who – Series 1 Vol. 2 – £2 I’m planning on seeing just how cheap and how far I can get the Dr Who DVDs. Due to the commentaries on the boxsets, you can pick these single volumes up dirt cheap.
- Rushmore – £2.24
- Doctor Who – Series 1 Vol. 1 – £1.94
- Shaun of The Dead – £1.99
- Bottle Rocket – £2
- The Life Aquatic – £1.99
- The Darjeeling Limited – £2.04
- Azumanga Daioh v.5 – £3 Middle to end volumes of shows go cheap, but don’t show up often unless you get a fool trying to sell a series volume by volume, or someone is off loading stock.
- Azumanga Daioh v.4 – £3
- Dirty Pair Part 1 – £19.70
- Shigurui – £4.79 This was the DVD set I forgot I bought.
- A Serious Man – £3 This was really tricky to get cheap and in order to get it for two quid plus P&P I used a risky trick. Though not that risky when the stakes are spending £3 on a DVD. After a few weeks of trying to get this I was able to get a rough idea of how many people were after it. Once one auction went, the price of the next one would rapidly rise as people bid against one another. My trick was to bid on THREE all ending within 24 hours of each other. This split the people bidding and luckily I only ended up with winning only one.
- Blood Simple – £1.98
- The Man Who Wasn’t There – £1.99 The seller included a FREE GIFT, which turned out to be a bootleg copy of the Nicholas Cage version of Wicker Man. I’ve not watched it in case it’s a The Ring-esque situation and Nicholas Cage in his bear suit will climb out the TV.
- The Ladykillers – £1.99
- No Country For Old Men – £1.99
- Burn After Reading – £1.99
- Intolerable Cruelty – £1.99
- Azumanga Daioh Vol. 6 – £1.99 This appeared to be overstock as not only was it sealed and stickered, the seller accidentally sent me it twice!
- Heat Guy J – £6.74
- Coen Brothers Collection – Fargo/Raising Arizona/Miller’s Crossing – £5
- Tokyo Godfathers – £1.99 The only item I had problems with and the seller replaced it without complaint.
- Tekkonkinkreet – £1.99
- Metropolis – £2.20
- Memories – £2.99
- Millennium Actress – £2.45
- Nadia Vol. 10 – £1.99
- Martian Successor Nadesico Vol. 6 – £3.00
- Martian Successor Nadesico Vol. 6 – £2.99
- Gunbuster 2 – £5.97 The only Buy It Now item – it was marked down in an eBay shop.
