Otaku Summer Cleanup 2026
In the corner, by the door, the book shelves were reorganized to hold more DVDs instead of books and the bottom-most book shelves were replaced with a smaller chest of drawers. Holiday fare and a lot of British dramas are well represented in that cubby. Movies and TV shows are on two walls with one whole bank of shelves for anime and another for cartoons. Sharp-eyed viewers will note a genuine laser-disc hanging on my door as artwork along with an actual print featuring Alias of Westgate from the book Azure Bonds.
I've taken the liberty of repackaging many of the anime on multiple discs into mutli-disc containers. Way back in the misty dawn of time, when anime was new to the US, it was common practice for American anime distributors to release a series in five, six or even seven volumes. Where possible, I try to keep all of the inserts, so, that if someone where inclined, they could re-repackage them back into single-disc containers. This has been necessary as the amount of space allocated to anime is finite and the more I can squeeze things in, the better.
I'm not a big fan of the streaming-only era. Quite a few anime get streaming releases, but, actual physical media is lagging way behind. I'm a big fan of owning my anime, as well as movies and TV shows. At the present time, I have over 5200 titles in my archive, and, about a quarter of that is anime. Recently, I've put one of my most expensive single-purchase anime up for auction. At the time of this writing (August 2026), my Garden of Sinners box set could be yours for a measly $500. While, the series is available in much cheaper formats, the original set is still highly sought after and unlike most other anime, it has not lost any of its value.
Quite a few things didn't stay after the reorganization. I had binders full of old advertisements and other anime-related ephemera that I had collected over the years. One thing I didn't get rid of, were my CDs/ I have over 400 CDs hiding at the back of the top shelf where my Batman movies and superhero cartoons live. I use iTunes to store and manage my ripped CDs and believe or don't, I use WinAmp exclusively for playback. What can I say, it's easy to use and doesn't complain very much at all.
On the infrastructure side of things, with the economy being what it is, I wanted to keep my aging PC running a bit longer, rather than buying something new at this time. So, I cloned a hard-drive for the first time in my life and swapped out my dying hard-drive for a brand new one with all of my data and apps preserved. And, while I was at it, it expanded the memory.
After consolidating the anime and reorganizing everything, I carved out a space for Star Trek and Star Wars, with Thundercats featured along with my burgeoning collection of handmade audio books and data and game CDs. I had an extra shelf leftover, so, I moved a few box sets there. Recently, I was visiting one of my favorite online authors and noticed that all of their work had been taken down. So, I decided to make some emergency audio books to preserve some of my favorite stories.
Life got complicated and I had to step away from some things for a while. Everything is still in a state of flux right now, but, I feel that I can finally get back to writing on a more regular basis.
As for Blogger, everything seems to be where I left it and the platform has yet to throw any unusual curves my way.
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