Trzr23 is an asshole. Because of him, I ended up writing a Remembering Love review of Black Lagoon, which is one of the greatest anime ever fucking made. After writing it, I ended up reading the manga, and after reading the manga (to a certain point), I ended up desperately needing to buy the entire series of Black Lagoon. I had to own it, to hold it, to make love to it. However, Box Sets for the entire series cost upwards of $300, which is completely ridiculous, and far above my price range for an anime that I’ve already seen, some episodes several times. So what could I do?
Enter Malaysia.
Or more like, enter ebay. Ebay is a good place, but it’s also dangerous, filled with con artists and crazy fucks who are looking to scheme you for a a quick dollar. It’s kind of like Roanapur from Black Lagoon. So when I saw that someone had listed “BLACK LAGOON SEASON 1-2 CHAPTER 1-24 END + 5 OVA DVD BOXSET” for only $34.88, I was hesitant to say the least. But then that nagging voice kept popping into my head:
“What if it’s the real deal though?”
There’s no way in HELL that it’s the real deal.
“But……what if it is?”
Eventually, curiosity got the better of me, and I bought the damn thing, figuring that losing $34.88 really wasn’t that big of a deal, even if I got back a shit dvd with one episode. I needed to take this gamble.
And so I waited.
And I waited.
I waited and waited.
When I was done waiting, I waited some more.
…………
Okay this fucking thing is taking forever. Where the hell is this damn thing? Though I guess it would take forever considering it’s being mailed from fucking Malaysia, home of the kluxes.
Finally, today, on June 7, 2012 (I wrote this on June 7th, and as you can tell, it’s no longer June 7th..big whoop), I got it in the mail, encased nicely in a bunch of bubble wrap and awesome packaging.
Immediately, I tore the packaging apart and opened it up. The art on the box was awesome to say the least…do we have a picture by any chance? Ah! We do! Several, in fact!
The front cover looks like this.
After opening the box.
Inside 1
Inside 2
Inside 3
I didn’t put a picture of the back, because I forgot, but trust me when I say, “the quality of these pictures was professional grade. If all I got were this box with non-working dvds, I’d be totally fine with my purchase.
But Glo, that’s clearly not what the box set looks like. THIS is what the box set should look like. I think you got ripped off.
Hey dumbass, I did my homework. I knew going into this purchase that it wasn’t the ACTUAL box set. Or hey, maybe Malaysia just has a different box? I don’t know. But upon opening the box, I could tell right away that this wasn’t an official release. There were places for 4 dvds, but only 3 dvds. An official release would not only have the correct corresponding dvd slot to dvd ratio, but it also wouldn’t put an entire season on one dvd, because that makes way too much sense (and it probably means the dvd quality suffers).
So I popped the first dvd in. Menu screen pops up. A good sign considering the purchase. English subtitles are available. A great sign considering the purchase. THE DVD HAS ALL OF THE EPISODES AND THEY ALL WORK. FANTASTIC.
Very fantastic, as it turns out. Not only do the subtitles work and are quality, but the video quality, while certainly not HD, is still pretty damn good. Certainly better than streaming episodes or anything else you could find online, which is all I could really expect for 30 bucks.
Is it worth the $34.88 I spent (shipping was free)? FUCK YES. I got what I wanted, and that was a solid quality bunch Black Lagoon episodes that I didn’t have to download via torrent (cause you know…the whole torrent thing).
So, in parting, I’d just like to thank Malaysia, not only for their awesome looking stamps (of which there were 4 of on the package I received), but they were the only place that I could find cheap production of the series I wanted. Was it a lesser product? Yes. Was it 300 dollars worth of a lesser product? Hell no. Thank you Malaysia, for making cheap knock off shit that I can afford.
4 awesome stamps for my stamp collection! (Yeah, like I have a stamp collection. I’d have to beat my own ass if I had a stamp collection.)
(the person I bought this from apparently is no longer an ebay member haha)
Extra Shit
I’ve been trying to figure out what color I want my links to be. Mushy pointed out that they were grey, and I never really noticed it before. Yellow is indeed a dumb color, and so far I’ve settled on red, but idk.
Eye Sedso 
I bet you could have gotten it from Thailand for $29.99, though those Malaysian stamps look pretty rad I must say.
I don’t think anyone can disagree with that statement.
It’s Kluxces.
And these DVDs are warez but it is still worth it, considering the ridiculous price of an original DVD. Also, no wonder it took forever. They used the snail mail! But yes, we do have a pretty rad looking stamps XD
Malaysia is awesome indeed
There’s a “c” in there? Never knew…
I actually ordered some iphone covers the same day and they came later, despite being located in the US. My iphone now looks like an old gray Game Boy. I love it.
I have the real season 1 and season 2 DVDs. But no OVAs, as they didn’t exist back in 2009. And I paid $39.99 for them, which is probably like $42 after three years of inflation. So you beat me by about $8.11, 5 OVAs, and -3 years.
I love it when a plan comes together.
I suppose whores will have their trinkets.
We sure do…I wish I had sex with enough women to be considered a whore…
My dad bought me a box-set of Rurouni Kenshin from a Malaysian eBay seller. His reasoning?
“The official DVDs are too bloody expensive, they’re American, and I’m not paying £50 for DVDs you have to piss about with on the computer or buy another multi-region DVD player to make work. So I bought you that Kenshin thing you wanted from Malaysia. Free shipping, and it were only £25.”
Got to love cheapskate parents, eh?
So I got the Kenshin box-set and… it’s nice and all, with good quality episodes and the subtitles are okay, but the discs come in flimsy little CD sleeves. And the CD art itself changes after five discs of so. It looks like the CLAMP School Detectives anime, but with some Kenshin characters shopped in. Wut.
The only real problem with Malaysian anime box-sets (of which I have a few) is that they’re very difficult to sell on. Used DVD places refuse to take them because they aren’t rated by the British Board of Film Classification (ah, that lovely old institution which banned horror classics The Exorcist and A Clockwork Orange in the UK for goddamn years), and I can’t take them to a car boot sale/flea market because to combat the tide of pirated DVDs and what have you, trading standards officials and police officers are sometimes on patrol. I saw one guy with a pirate DVD stand getting arrested once. I just don’t want to run the risk.
Oh well. Glad to see you got a good deal on an anime you really love. 🙂
Oh I don’t plan on selling. Perhaps someday, when I am a rich entrepreneur, I will dabble in some actual box sets, but not now, because I am poor as fuck. For now, I’ll cheers to your dad for his great taste in rip-off country.
British people are cheapskates. In general. My dear old grandmother and I went to a cafe and I ordered a latte, she ordered a cup of tea. The bill came to about £6, which is really quite cheap for the area it’s in. Grandma puts on her glasses to read the bill… “HOW MUCH!? SIX POUNDS!!! SIX POUNDS!!!”
Irrelevant, I know, but still kind of amusing to me.
I think old people don’t understand inflation, and that’s why they are always surprised when things don’t cost a dime like they used to. My grandma used to take food and put it in her purse from places that had free rolls or something.
Cultural experiences are great.
I wish I could get some cultural experiences from some hot foreign girls, IF you know what I mean.
Why wouldn’t you just torrent some Blu-Ray version, though? I mean, they’re both ripped copies after all :v
You clearly don’t know about the torrent event of years past.
I’m sure it was…
…torrential.
hahahahahaha
the good think of gambling, is that sometimes you win.
oh please, dont use read. it fells like ‘i already cliked on that link’ of just plain awful. there are 216 colors here for starters: http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_colors.asp
Red it is!
First off, I think your link colors should be purple. Because I really like purple. Probably a brighter one so it doesn’t get lost on the ISSS set up colors and whatnot. Second of all, I am so incredibly jealous. I love Black Lagoon and it definitely goes in my top ten of all fucking time. This kinda makes me wanna watch it all over again, and then read the manga. Now, I shall faithfully continue my stalking from the shadows…
Purple is obviously the first choice but the problem is they don’t have the right shade of purple. I might go orange, but red matches the header.
Red is good. The color of…red things. Pasta.
I was thinking more along the lines of blood.
Malaysia is great and better than Thailand in the anime department ( Thai people do not watch anime that much, I suppose.) . But in its defense for illegal dvd marget, Thailand got many great quality live-action DVD. But…
*door bell rings*
Omg, it’s the police right at my doorstep!
I’ve got to hide all my illegal DVD collection
*runs away*
Hey, it’s not like I knew any better, I can’t get in trouble.
After watching a few episodes the subs really are pretty awful. Oh well. At some point I do want to get the actual box set, and that was always the plan anyway.
The problem with vids in that part of the world is you always have to check the subs before buying, because often they’ll just put computer-generated subs that don’t actually make any sense, translate the idiomatic expressions literally (so that they don’t make any sense unless you know the original), etc.
I know what you mean. They make sense to me, but it’s almost like someone took the text and used one of those online translators to translate it.
I thought you’re making a trip to Msia, lol.
So I’ll probably be seeing you fapping at Revy tonight eh?
No that was many nights ago.