Sunday, December 03, 2006

Insanity, anime and a small country

Insanity is one of the ailments that plagues man. It's strange that, otherwise balanced, productive and amiable people, can lose their minds, and cease to function in society. All medical technologies and knowledge aside, we still do not know why people go koo-koo.

Here's part of the answer: Japanese merchandise and import delays.

As you all know, the single purpose of the existence of anime is to brainwash helpless otaku and to pave the way for large, faceless corporations to sap these suckers of the little financial assets they have.

That is the usual scenario. In the figurine world, this is amplified to new and uncharted levels. Instead of large companies (like Bandai), the publishers are smaller (but not less evil) and release their merchandise in small quantities, and without restocking after 1 or 2 shipments. Combined with (undoubtedly through evil, underhanded) agreements with ruthless webshops that heat things up with preorders, user reviews (written by their own staff) and box/real-life pictures.

The worse of it all is import tax and delays. Since I live in an utter anime-less corner of the world (Belgium), I have to solely rely on these webshops. But because I refuse to risk having to pay import tax, I prefer Belgium-based shops, who usually get supplied by European importers. Although they are slightly more expensive than the Japanese webshops, import tax and shipping result in favour of local dealers. But here's the thing: since demand for anime stuff is really, really, really slim in Belgium (most people here think that all anime is Pokemon), deliveries are really unreliable and in small numbers. Also, since it's Belgium (it's the size of a postal stamp), European distributors will supply to Germany, France, UK..and leave us little schmucks hanging.

The reason for this rant?



Announced for 8/2006, released 10/2006, arrived in Europe mid 11/2006. But not with me yet. Argh. *going insane*.

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