CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

How many people here sometimes take a gamble on buying a DVD (cheap or expensive) without having watched the movie / series on it before? Are you willing to take such a gamble, even with expensive DVDs and Box-sets?

I often do blind purchases (especially with anime since it's rarely shown on tv here) but they aren't true ones. I research the show/movie a bit (read varied reviews), watch a trailer of it and then decide.

Warrior 4 Jesus wrote:I often do blind purchases (especially with anime since it's rarely shown on tv here) but they aren't true ones. I research the show/movie a bit (read varied reviews), watch a trailer of it and then decide.

I'm a clinical blind-buyer myself, but I usually do research as well to see if I will like it; I have many DVDs in my collection that are as such, and I've only been rarely dissapointed (though not in a "this movie must burn" sense, only a mildly "that's overated" dissapointment).

Oops, I thought this was regarding Anime, so I hit "I do not buy DVDS". But in fact I should have picked "I want to watch it first, to make sure my money would be well spent". Because it is true. I only buy DVDs of movies I find incredible and worth buying.

Princess Nine, Last Exile, Ceres, HoopDays and Chance Pop Session are a few series I've taken a gamble on buying w/o knowing anything about them. And fortunately they have all turned out to be pretty good series. ^_^

Though, usually if I see something that interests me, I usually go home and read reviews first.

But there are occasions...

I buy a lot of my DVD's blindly - mostly just anime, though.

I usually don't make completely blind purchases (meaning I always have some sort of knowledge about a series from reading reviews before buying it), but I have bought thinpaks of series before seeing the entire series. I bought the Pretear thinpak after reading CAA's review, and I bought the Kaleido Star thinpak after asking around about it and watching the first two DVDs via Netflix. I think that I'll probably only ever make blind purchases when it comes to buying thinpak series, though--the boxed sets that cost 80$ and up aren't worth it unless I know the series is really good. XD

I bought my copy of Outlanders pretty much that way.

It will be a strange day when I purchase anything blindly, much less an item like a DVD. Of course, I rarely purchase those anyway, so perhaps that is part of why. Though I do make completely blind library rentals, those don't involve money and hence it isn't the same.

Mr. SmartyPants wrote:Oops, I thought this was regarding Anime, so I hit "I do not buy DVDS". But in fact I should have picked "I want to watch it first, to make sure my money would be well spent".

The poll has been edited to reflect this. Because if a poll on a random internet forum wasn't accurate, the world as we know it would end.

Certain things I'll buy blind; others I want to see first. I'll buy any Studio Ghibli film blind, whether it is Miyazaki or not. This has only backfired once: Pom Poko (yucky, yucky, ew!)

uc pseudonym wrote:Because if a poll on a random internet forum wasn't accurate, the world as we know it would end.

That is definitely worth putting in my signature.

uc pseudonym wrote:The poll has been edited to reflect this. Because if a poll on a random internet forum wasn't accurate, the world as we know it would end.

That was close. A swarm of locust had nearly devoured my house when, at 3:21 (EST) they mysteriously disappeared. Now I know why.

To my recollection, the only blind purchases I've ever made were Castle in the Sky and Kiki's Delivery Service. I was not disappointed. But everything else I've bought I had previously seen anyway, and I don't buy that much. ^_^

Besides Outlanders I also bought Please Save My Earth,Kimagure Orange Road,Cardcaptor Sakura,Bubblegum Crisis:Tokyo 2040,and a few more titles 'blind'.At least you could consider them 'blind' purchases since I may have only read up on them without having seen them.

blind buys have gone good and bad for me. Some examples being...

good: Noein, Ghost in the Shell 2, Voices of a Distant Star

bad: Chronicles of Riddick, Underworld, Bruce Lee double dvd set (crappy quality)

I have never made a blind purchase. No matter what anime I bought, I retained my sight during the entire transaction.

I only own a few DVDs... Riddick Trilogy (got in white elephant), Batman Begins (got for a white elephant, but traded back for it because the person that got it had it already, and I didn't), First two extended edition LotR, Nadesico Complete, Harvey Birdman Attourney at Law season 1, Beverly Hillbillies movie... I used to have Sailormoon R uncut and Grave of the Fireflies... So, really, I've never made a blind purchase... The closest thing to that would be that when I stole Riddick from someone in the White Elephant (she wanted someone to steal it, a trio of unrated movies wasn't something she wanted for her son) I hadn't seen it yet... I kept hearing great things about Pitch Black, so I decided I'd give it a try (I wasn't disappointed, by the way... With Pitch Black, anyhow...)

If you extend this to VHS movies, however, I've made a few blind purchases... I once purchased an entire box of user recorded tapes... Mostly the person had made copies of rental movies, but some HBO stuff too... One of my violated moments in movie watching history, that's what you get watching things you have no clue about... I also bought the first tape of Nadesico based on a brief vote of confidence from some crippled guy at the video store, and I bought Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals without really knowing what it was like... That's why I don't generally do blind purchases... (not due to Nadesico, that was good enough I later bought the entire series on DVD, but that was just a fluke )

Nate wrote:I have never made a blind purchase. No matter what anime I bought, I retained my sight during the entire transaction.

You haven't seen Dead Leaves, then...

Ichigo_89 wrote:Bruce Lee double dvd set (crappy quality)

How could you SAY such a thing?

Mr. SmartyPants wrote::wow!: How could you SAY such a thing?

I think he meant the DVD quality, not the movies (I think).

bigsleepj wrote:I think he meant the DVD quality, not the movies (I think).

Mah who cares about DVD quality! He fights CHUCK NORRIS! CHUCK NORRIS MAN!

And they have a statue of him in the Herzegoviinian city of Mostar!!

I've done this quite a few times. I think about 70% of my anime DVD collection are blind purchases. It seems a bit frivolous just to buy a DVD simply because the cover art looks good or because the summary on the back makes it seem like an appealing buy, but I've done it a lot (and luckily most of the shows turned out to be enjoyable in the end).

Well where I go to Barnes & Nobles there isn't a lot of choice animewise,a bit better with Borders still though not as large as some other places.So you have to take what you can find.