Saturday, July 22

Change

Last night, an epiphany hit me as I sat down in The Sanctum and glanced at the corner of the room where I had my piles of anime VCDs.

It's been ages... perhaps even months... since I have just sat down and watched anime on the TV. My pace of living has changed so much that I don't seem to have the time, or even just the patience to just sit down and watch. These days, I just get my anime or even movies digitally from online, encode them in DIVX or XVID and load them into my mobile phone for viewing when the bug hits me. Seriously.

And so, I got up and started grabbing my VCDs, taking them out of their cases (which I can now reuse or sell at my leisure) and putting the lot into plastic bags for storing or disposing. It's kind of a waste, probably- I easily have dozens an dozens of VCDs (irritatingly enough, I have multiple copies of several titles)- but I guess it's good as well that from now on, I won't be buying anime from local dealers (who basically get them from online as well anyway). It's an end of an era, but something I am glad to be free of. No more dealing with irritating, anime-incompetent counter monkeys, and unresponsive geeky or smarmy anime shop owners. No more trudging all the way to an anime shop just to be told the title you're looking for is OUT OF STOCK.

Thanks be to Bittorrent, I can now get my anime and movies directly to my PC, and I couldn't be any happier.

In any case, I'll still retain my DVD collection and probably will buy the odd DVD, mainly for the rest of the household's viewing. I also will probably buy the occasional DVD from a dealer that sells anime in large quantities as DIVX files (which saves me on download times).

It's a weird feeling. Maybe I felt it before, when I got rid of the trusty Betamax and finally embraced VHS years and years ago. Gosh, who knows where technology will bring our entertainment in another decade or so. Direct-to-brain transfers? Wild, man. Simply Wild.

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