Shelf Life

Tales of Bioboosting

Shelf Worthy

Noein DVD 2

Rental

Tales of Phantasia DVD

InuYasha DVD 51

Gakuen Heaven DVD 1

Guyver DVD 3

You never quite realize how much you need the internet until it stops working. Then you're faced with so many waves of unproductiveness and boredom that it's silly. Maybe it's just me, but even though I'm pretty darned unproductive when I'm online, I'm even more so when I don't have it, because then I just spend hours poking at it until it works again. Needless to say, I apologize for not having this column up at midnight, but my 'net completely let me down and presumably cheated on me with a younger girl.

Luckily, while my normally trusty T3 was on the fritz, I got the chance to go see 300, along with half of Orange County. For the rest of the night, whenever I watched any anime disc, the only thing I could think about was beefy Spartans running through the scene, slaying everything in their path with a hearty “Huuh huuh huuuuh!”

[TOP]

After spending a good two hours watching kids do their RPG thing, I began to thirst for something completely different. I had enough violent titles in my review queue that I really didn't feel like watching more flying fists for at least another two hours. I kind of wanted to watch something random, like teenagers scampering around Laguna Beach, or quarreling over whom to bring to prom. Something fluffy…but with just enough teen angst to make it funny.

[TOP]

However, there's a big difference between intellectual depth and pretension, something that's been plaguing me as of late. It's not necessary for a show or movie to have intellectual depth and be entertaining. The second you add pretension, though, it almost always adds a layer of absurdity that one of my film professors used to call “bullshit.” I'm reminded of this every time I watch some kid's video on YouTube that's nothing but ten minutes of a man rowing a canoe, stopping to forlornly eat a sandwich, and then continue rowing. It always makes me happy when I see something that's artistically beautiful, but doesn't reduce itself to forlornly doing anything to make some kind of trivial point.

[TOP]

Wow. Second volume. Imagine. To contrast, I'm currently holding volume 51 of Inuyasha in my hand. With just this series alone, someone could easily weigh down an entire Ikea shelf and maybe have enough left over to scatter to build a small fortress. Honestly, I'm very impressed with anyone who has the patience (and money!!!) to collect anything that has so many episodes. My attention span isn't nearly that long.

[TOP]

My aversion to long series is generally only topped by my aversion to watching remakes of old shows. While some of them are amazing and rocked my socks off (Area 88 TV series, now available in a thinpak!!!!!), some of them just make me roll my eyes.

[TOP]

That's it for this week! Next time, fresh from my finals wounds, I'll investigate daikon farmers, intergalactic warfare, and the mystery of how half my DVDs have disappeared into a void. Thanks for reading!

Who's up on deck this time? The amazing Rosyna Keller, whose DVD collection is so expansive that it requires multiple pictures. She has over 1100 DVDs-- and that was back in early February. We can only assume that her collection is now even bigger.

Are we awed? And yeah, I'm loving how awesome it is to have yet another person proudly displaying Stargate SG-1 DVDs right next to their anime.

Want to show off your shelves? Send your pictures to shelflife at animenewsnetwork dot com!