Crumbs, it’s been a while since I’ve posted one of these. By which I mean a Mikan Watch post, the last of which was way back in September last year, rather than a post in general, which a good couple of weeks ago now. Blame videogames, I guess – I hammered my way through Mass Effect 2, then the Japanese release of Ar Tonelico 3 (hey, it’s probably more legible than the NIS’ English release of AT2 ^^;) over the last couple of weeks, which leaves precious little time for consuming media of a bloggable nature. Except, you know, reading Spice and Wolf and Paprika and watching the second half of Bamboo Blade and watching the first season of, err, Spice and Wolf. Nothing that had me particularly itching to blog, though.

But, anyway, back to point – My-HiME, Mikan Box, episode six. That’s the big Midori episode with the wedding at Shiho’s shrine, for those who can’t remember as far back as 2004. Seriously, this shows six years old already? Well, five, technically, since it started at the end of a year, but time surely does fly.

It’s another month, which means the arrival of another ludicrously monikered instalment of Haruhi to make me squint in an attempt to correctly read off it’s annoying string of numbers. It’s Endless Eight again, of course, meaning that there’s really little point in saying anything at all about the content (even the extras are, once again, just continuations of the previous volumes) beyond mentioning that it’s the final instalment of that particular run of episodes. Presumably that means that next months (or this months, if you live in one of those parts of the world where it’s ticked over into 2010 already) will, aside from containing the first instalment of Sighs, see the end of Yuki’s dominance of the front-cover space.

But it’s not as if discussing the content is really the point behind these posts. Rather, it’s all about the eternal struggle of Man versus Kadokawa. Let’s cut to the chase, shall we?
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I did a silly thing this month – I allowed myself to get optimistic. Reports from those receiving copies of the latest Haruhi disk earlier than myself over at AoD were positive, with a couple of people landing their first film strips of the series. Faced with such evidence, I couldn’t help but start to ponder – had they, perhaps, increased the percentage of copies carrying said extra in an attempt to maintain their sales? Perhaps the random nature of the shipping had seen CDJapan receiving a stack with copies carrying this most elusive of extras this month. Whatever the case, somehow I was feeling strangely positive about this months release.

Yup, it’s a pretty normal looking haul isn’t it?

Well, I say normal looking, but let’s just take a closer look at that front cover…
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I’m going to have to open this one with a disclaimer – I’ve not actually got around to watching this DVD yet. It’s a net result of me spending far too much time playing video games and way too little time watching cartoons as of late. I must work to rectify this.

Still, it’s not like it particularly matters much in regards to what I’d be writing here anyway – by this point, I hope it’s abundantly clear that the on-disk content for these Haruhi release will continue to do little but iterate upon the previous volumes. It’s the same thing every month, only with the numbers incremented. They’re essentially the same – quite literally at the moment, given that the release is presently neck-deep in Endless Eight (absolutely not the reason why I’ve yet to watch this – Honest!)

So this post is really just another update in the battle between the heroic Collector and the evil forces of Chairman Kadokawa…

And that blasted Kadokawa is victorious once more! Alas, once again, no film strip nor extra coaster.

Still, this months volume (well, last months, the next disk being out on Friday, which is what has lit the fire under my arse required for me to write this) also came with a clear file – that thing you can see in the upper-center of the image. Kind of amusing that, with this and the previous volume, they’ve resorted to supplying additional physical extras with these Haruhi disks beyond just the randoms. Absolutely nothing to do with them being worried that Endless Eight will cause their sales to under-perform otherwise, I’m sure…

Bayonetta – Kind of nuts. In a good way.

I’m sure there was something else I wanted to write about here this evening, but it’s really not coming to me right now ^^;