Renn's Space

Yesterday I woke up and noticed my paycheck hit! \o/. So as any sensible person would do, I went window shopping on eBay.

But first, some context, recently I’ve been fascinated with specialty audio encoding, that is, Dolby Digital, DTS-ES and the like. I don’t really know how they work/differ when compared to a standard 2.0 stream of AAC, MPEG or PCM.

What I do know is that they are darn cool just by their existence. While writing this I forgot what suffix DTS uses for their home codec so I went on Wikipedia to remind myself.

One of DTS Inc.'s initial investors was film director Steven Spielberg, who felt that theatrical sound formats up until the company's founding were no longer state of the art, and as a result were no longer optimal for use on projects where quality sound reproduction was of the utmost importance.

Like hello? Is that not cool?

Anyway, I went looking specifically for DTS encoded anime DVDs, I already have plenty of Dolby Digital encoded DVDs.

In fact I think 99 percent of my collection is encoded in Dolby Digital. The sole exception is my copy of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, which I believe contains both Dolby Digital and DTS-ES tracks.

This gave me a lead as to which publishers used DTS, that is Manga Entertainment.

Manga Entertainment was founded in 1991, they apparently produced, licensed and distributed anime throughout the 1990s into the early 2010s. Eventually they got folded into the monopoly known as Crunchyroll who merged with Funimation in 2022.

Which, given Manga’s catalogue I’m not too vexed about it..

A quick disclaimer, I have not watched any of their catalogue except for Ghost in the Shell, but looking at the DVDs they put out on eBay, aaahh some of it scares me.

It’s just off-putting.. credit where it’s due though, they lasted longer than ADV Films LOL.

Turns out however, Manga Entertainment was only partial dead-end in regards to my quest.

It seems Ghost in the Shell was the only thing they made with DTS tracks. I found a lot on eBay containing GitS: Special Edition, GitS: Innocence and GitS: SAC for $13.9 9 + shipping. I figured, while I already own the included copy of SAC, it wouldn’t hurt to offer $11 and see what happens.

It should arrive soon :D

The next publisher I had on my mind was Geneon, I own a few animes published by them like Stellvia, I suppose eventually I’ll maintain a list here or a spreadsheet of some sort to help manage my collection. Right now I just remember them all which I guess could lead to duplicates later down the line.

By this point I’ve realized how fruitless this quest is, I think I’d have better luck looking for anime movies instead of shows.

I remember that Chobits was published by Geneon before its license being taken over by Funimation so I spent some time looking for the classic Chobits DVD box set! Here’s what that looks like:

You can find more information about it here, the original release’s art is SO cute, Chi looks stunning here.

It took me awhile to find it, eBay is flooded atm with various Funimation released sets, like this one:

I have to admit, the artwork featured is very moe and I kind of regret not going for that release… but I will not falter!

>.<

OK, anyway, I found what I was looking for in a lot! The image had the box art I was looking for with the title:

“Anime DVD Collection Chobits Tactics Full Metal”, priced at $80.00 + $4.47 in shipping

So naturally I clicked and HOLY I think stumbled upon a grail, I’ll amend this post with a photo containing everything, but here’s the raw list.

• Chobits – DVD Box 1 + DVD Box 2 (Box 2 looks to be a BIT faded) – Geneon
• Tactics – Vol 1 + 3 + 4 – Manga Entertainment
• Pretear – Complete Collection Thinpak (w/box) – ADV Films
• D.N.Angel – What looks to be all DVDs in it’s original artbox, not Thinpaks (A little bent and maybe dirty) – ADV Films
• Read or Die – Original 2003 90 min DVD – Manga Entertainment
• Black Cat – The Cat Out of the Bag, Vol 1 – Funimation
• Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu – Vol 1 – ADV Films
• Chrono Crusade – Complete Collection Thinpak (w/box) – ADV Films
• Sakura Taisen: Ecole de Paris – DVD, 125min run – Funimation
• Le Portrait de Petite Cossette –  2005 DVD release, 110min run DTS! – Geneon
• Full Metal Panic! – Vol 1-7 Thinpak (no box) – ADV Films
• Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust – 105min DVD – ???

I think for $80 I did pretty well, I have not watched all of these except for Chobits so it should be fun.

Okkkk, this is getting kinda long and I’m tired.. let us and by us I mean me wrap this up.

The next 2 items were already on my watch list, that is

• Gunslinger Girl, the Complete Box Set 3-Disc DVD Collection for a frosty $27.21
• Elfen Lied: The Diclonius Report 3-Disc DVD set for $32.89

Why? I LOVE Elfen Lied, fuck all those people who told me its trash/tasteless, when I first saw it I fell in love, who doesn’t love seeing a naked girl absolutely fuck everyone and their parents up???? and the music OMG.

Gunslinger Girl is just something that looked interesting, girls + guns, it has to be good, Black Lagoon was prettty fucking good. Speaking of which I need to own that one day too.

I WILL be posting photos when they arrive. I need to figure out how I am gonna do photo hosting here, I have alot to share!

Anyway that's me signing off for now <3