Erufailon4

While I did know it was coming thanks to the ever-so-reliable sakuga community hyping it up, I couldn't expect just how great Bocchi the Rock!  would be. There are many aspects that aided its rise to the top of my - and many others' - top 10 list of last year, and one of them was its music. The anime's in-universe Kessoku Band played many memorable songs throughout the series, in addition to the excellent OP & EDs, so when Aniplex released all of them, in addition to a few completely new songs, on a limited-time CD with some extras, I just had to get it. Amazon Japan didn't want to ship it overseas, but luckily CDJapan was there to save the day. They didn't have any store bonus available, not even the general one, so I did miss out on that, but I'm not too bothered by that. I could also use a 500 yen off coupon since it was my first time ordering from them, which essentially got me free tracking&insurance and a little off the base shipping cost too. Japa...

You'd think that in a country where One Piece  has a beloved translation and is the longest manga ever published and still ongoing after 17 years and 101 volumes, it'd be easy to get the franchise's new anime film in theaters, especially in an anime boom like this where more Japanese cinema is seeing wide theatrical releases in Finland than ever before. But, as it turns out, fans have had to fight tooth and nail to convince concerned parties that yes, it actually does have an audience that wants to see it. No such problems with Jujutsu Kaisen , Dragon Ball Super  or Sword Art Online  though!  Well, all's end that ends well - One Piece Film: Red  will open in theaters on the 20th, distributed by the ever-so-trusty Cinema Mondo for the film's European licensor Piece of Magic Entertainment. Interesting arrangement, by the way - CM's deals with Aniplex/Wakanim/Crunchyroll have not included any home media rights, only theatrical, so I wonder how it is with Piece of ...

2022 was the year I really started expanding my "Japan Collection" (for the lack of a better name), as I essentially doubled the amount of manga and light novels I have, and went from two blu-ray releases to fourteen. This hasn't exactly been the cheapest possible hobby, but still living with my parents means I don't really have to worry about budgeting my life all that much yet, so I've been taking advantage of the situation with my many purchases during the year. As a consequence of them, I've assembled myself quite a collection, the current state of which I'll be going over in this post.  Manga & Light Novels  I've categorized my manga by trim size, meaning the largest volumes are first. That of course means starting with English volumes from Viz Media, mainly the deluxe box set of Nausicaä  which I bought in 2021 and unboxed on this blog. At the start of 2022, I only had it and three other Viz releases, but since then, I've bought three mo...

While not the biggest fan of isekai, I hold Re:Zero  in high regard due to its writing, characters, and music, and have wanted to own season 1 on blu-ray for a while. The opportunity presented itself during All the Anime's Christmas Sale last month, where the standard editions were part of the "buy one get one free" offer at £19.99, and the limited edition complete box set was at the same price. I went for the latter since why not get more for the same price, buying it on day 2 of the sale just before it was sold out. It's worth noting that this edition is different from the original collector's edition releases Anime Limited did for the series (which have been unboxed on NormanicGrav's blog ), and is essentially the standard editions in a box with a bonus booklet, similarly to what AL is doing for Revolutionary Girl Utena  this year. Subtracting UK tax and adding shipping costs, I bought this for £28.16 in total, then paying the sales tax in Finland during t...

It has been a long journey since I started reading the One Piece  manga on December 24, 2019. I'd go as far as to say I'm a completely different person now than I was then. OP itself has also continued during that time - back then, there were 966 chapters out, and the Finnish volume releases had only just begun the Wa(no) arc. And on December 29, 2022, when I after 3 years and 5 days finally catched up to the manga, the last chapter I read was 1070. Over 100 chapters came out during those three years while I was reading!  In my  previous blog post  back in November 2021 when I reached volume 50, I made a chart that showed my reading progress until then, and now I can present the final version:  (Interactive chart can be found here .) As you can see, 2022 has really been a year of reading One Piece  for me. I essentially doubled my speed, reading as much in 2022 as I did in 2020 and 2021 combined, if not more. As for the sagas:  East Blue:  Decemb...