The Garden of Sinners

The Garden of Sinners aka 空の境界

When you have great works like this anime title, I don’t think the people behind it have any reason to worry about piracy.

Because after watching this, I went through a lot of trouble to locate one of it’s rare 1/8 PVC figurine.

Ryougi Shiki - Garan no dou

At first, a local blogger was selling this at $90 SGD (66USD). I made a bid for it.

Another person decided to contest against me. We both continued out bidding each other for over a week.

The person selling has a rule that if someone offers twice the amount of the original selling price, bidding will end and that person will win the bid.

My rival offered $180. I lost the bid.

This then fueled my desire to obtain it. I asked friends to help me keep and eye out and make forum posts to look for it. Even asked the local figurine sellers to help me look out for it.

And one day, one of them found it in Japan and brought it back to Singapore. His price is $235 SGD (173USD) for it. After receiving news that he had brought it back, I went down to his shop immediately to buy it.

Till now,  I don’t feel a single ounce of regret spending so much on it. Each time I think about that day when I first held it with my hands, I can’t help but smile. That’s how much I love this series.

I’ve even managed to find it’s Japanese novels at Kinokuniya and bought them as well. There’s still copies available at both Liang Court and Orchard stores if anyone’s interested.

There’s a few 4-square comics on this series and I’ve bought a few of them.

I’ve also bought the “Seventh Heaven” album by Kalafina featuring the songs that appeared in this movie series.

Seventh Heaven / Kalafina

In my upcoming trip to Japan in November, I will see if I can find the OSTs in the shops of Akihabara.

And now, with news of it’s Bluray discs coming out next year, I’m prepared to say goodbye to another $800 SGD (626USD) just for it.

[Theatrical Anime] Kara no Kyokai / Animation

And guess what caused all this spending spree?

The internet.

What’s wrong with having one’s purchasing history stored?

Most people seem to freak out when their purchase history is stored.

I don’t see what’s so bad about it.

In fact, because I’ve signed up for a membership card at Kinokuniya and that I shop from them so often, I’ve always hoped they would store my purchase history.

So I can make sure I won’t purchase a manga that I’ve already did in a previous visit. So they can make recommendations to me when a new series is released that matches the genres of manga I’ve purchased in the past. Or alert me when a new book in the series I’m collecting is out for purchasing.

There’s so many things they could do to make my experience with them a better one. And not just me, but many other manga lovers in Singapore.

But because it’s a Japanese company, and from my own observations, they seem to be afraid of trying such things in case it offends their customers, they probably won’t attempt something like this.

But I’ll drop them an email anyway and pray for the better.