Gotta Collect ‘Em All!

Basically, where I gloat over my collection so far…even if it’s tiny compared to most other people’s collections…

Meta context: I was waiting for April 1st to come to lay down some great content, but after scrapping stuff that was either not good enough for my publishing standards or that happened to used the same main theme as someone else’s post from a few months before April rolled around (I wrote mine first but kept it secret for obvious reasons), I figured I should just be extremely honest for April Fool’s Day for once and dig out an old draft I’ve been procrastinating on…

Haul or collection posts are mostly a thing for blogs that don’t have restrictive image space (i.e. not the Spellbook), but luckily enough my collection did get featured on Anime News Network’s Shelf Life column at one point so I don’t have to worry about the images too much! Hooray for getting other people to host your images! Also, the pink shelves weren’t my choice.

Note: For the rest of this post, Japanese language volumes are denoted with their Japanese titles and English language volumes are denoted with their localised titles.

On the shelves, from left to right and back to front:

• Black Butler: Book of Murder DVD
• Blue Exorcist season 1 DVD vol. 1 (episodes 1 – 4)
• Cute High Earth Defence Club LOVE! (season 1) DVD
• The Devil is a Part-timer! DVD
• Case Closed manga vol. 52
• Detective Conan: Conan Kara no Chousenjou! Kaiketsu-hen (the subtitle translates to “Challenge From Conan! Solution Part”) – this particular book explains the clues to certain cases and then also has certain chapters from the main series – it’s the first one of its kind as documented on this page. I haven’t gone through this book in detail yet because I want to get my Japanese skill up to scratch enough to understand it.
• One Punch Man manga vol. 2
• Detective Conan manga vol. 80
• Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi manga vol. 1
• Detective Conan: Chiisana Mokuteki (the subtitle translates to “A Small Target”, which matches chapter 274, or the first chapter of volume 28) – if you can read the Japanese, there’s a page here with a few details on my book. This book isn’t even documented on the Detective Conan wiki, but it’s part of the My First Big Encore series and has certain chapters from the main series…I haven’t gone through this book in detail yet because I want to get my Japanese skill up to scratch enough to understand it.
• Noragami manga vol. 1
• Kagerou Daze light novel vol. 1
• AniWave (Cantonese-language anime magazine from Hong Kong) vol. 384 – it has Yuri!!! on Ice’s Victor, Yuuri and Yuri on the front
• Step-by-Step Manga by Ben Krefta (one of many “How to Draw Manga” guides that has been published over the years – I didn’t actually find it very helpful, but at least it comes with metallic pencils…)
• Coldplay fanbook from the A Head Full of Dreams tour – the front looks kind of like this, which is why it’s so big and shiny. Obviously not anime/manga, but it’s there, so why not.
• Ryuu Zaou (Binan Koukou Chikyuu Boueibu LOVE!) Picktam strap

Sidebar: The thing about Detective Conan is that despite its reading level being quite easy due to its being shonen, there are still a lot of technical words. In fact, I probably learnt the Japanese word for “murder” from Detective Conan before I learnt more basic things in that language! (If you don’t get it, a lot of Detective Conan cases are known as the ○○殺人事件 or, in English, the [topic/distinctive item of the case] Murder Case, such as the first case in the series being known as the Roller Coaster Murder Case.)

(Currently outdated) wall picture:

• Bungou Stray Dogs January – June 2017 calendar (from the AniWave on the shelf)
• Yuri!!! on Ice poster (from the AniWave on the shelf) – for some reason the Bungou Stray Dogs calendar only has half the year and the Code Geass calendar on the other side has the same half of the year, so I had to use this Yuri!!! on Ice poster to make up for the missing half.

Sidebar: Currently, the pictured wall isn’t very interesting. It just has some old study notes and a 2018 calendar on it. I do have a Magical Girl Raising Project poster (of Snow White and La Pucelle, from the AniWave) I want to use, but having to explain it to people will be even harder than trying to explain the Yuri!!! on Ice poster…

There was also a Rem and Ram (from Re:Zero) full-year calendar with the magazine as well, but it was obvious their images were from dakimakura, which meant I passed on that one too.

Not pictured, but obtained at the time of the pictures:

• Detective Conan: Shikkoku no Chaser (movie 13) clear file with the normal movie visual on one side and the Gosho Aoyama-drawn visual on the back

Sidebar: The Raven Chaser was the first movie I saw out of all of the Detective Conan movies. I distinctly remember looking at nigh-incomprehensible English subs talking about a Weaver Princess and a Cowherd (Orihime and Hikoboshi, from the Tanabata legend)…

There are a few items missing from there though, since my collecting picked up a bit in the past few months:

• Short Peace DVD
• Case Closed vol. 36
• My Hero Academia manga vol. 5

Note this is only my official merchandise though.

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So, what do you think of the collection? Anything you’d like to know about any of the items in particular?

By the way, do you like the sidebars that have been scattered throughout the post? I’ve been deliberating on whether to have more posts with them, but my usual style of posts doesn’t lend itself well to the inclusion of sidebars.