Pen Pen's Evangelion
A Pen Pen for your Thoughts
This section will just be for, basically random thoughts and feelings. Since my thought process is mostly random you can probably expect this to be updated frequently. Back to Previous Pennys. Back to Pen Penny.
Anime For Rent
The other day I was browsing through the rental section of a local video store when I noticed that they finally separated the DVDs into different categories. After first looking through the new releases which aren't separated, I looked in the newly created anime' DVD section. Yes, that's right, the anime' section. Now first off, what's the deal with the '? So is anime from France now or something? Anime is not French. The characters don't go around saying: Bonjour (for our non-linguist types that means hello) and eating croissants. They eat ramen and talk in something I believe to be called Japanese. This could be because anime originates from Japan and not France. Now with all due respect to the French, which is none, anime should not be followed by a '. Just think, if all the stores of the chain did this, that'd be over a thousand 's, think of how much wasted money that is.
Now, as I was looking through the anime (ha! look, no ') section I noticed something. Several of the DVDs previously available for rental had vanished. Now, I didn't have the anime they had to rent memorized (completely), but there were several volumes that had somehow disappeared from the rental area. I don't know if they somehow got lost while they moved them, or if they thought that people wouldn't notice if they got rid of several discs or what. I do know that several volumes of anime that at one time I could rent if I wanted to, were gone. This sad occurrence came as a shock. I checked the used DVD section to see if any of these volumes were transferred there and could be tracked down, thus ending speculation, but, alas, they had vanished completely. And they didn't get rid of the volumes that didn't matter much.
For some reason, this video store gets volumes of anime in the middle of a series. There are several volumes they have only the second volume. There are two where they have the fifth volume only. There's one series where they have only the second and fourth volumes to rent. I don't get this absurdity. What profits do they make from doing this? I really don't understand the business mentality to order DVDs for use of renting in the middle of a series. Also, (now that several volumes have disappeared) the largest amount of DVDs for a series to rent they have is Dai-Guard. Now, I have never seen it, but do they really get that many rentals out of that series? I've heard of it when updating new release dates, but that's it. Is there some great zenith of anime, if not apex of all mankind's achievements present in this series people have neglected to tell me about? Perhaps.
I've also been to the same store in a different city and they have the same, seemingly random volumes to rent. I guess it's just a chain-wide policy of foolishness or something. However, they did have some more because there is also the matter that a couple of the anime DVDs in my local store that have been stolen. Now, I don't want to take blind jumps to any conclusions without all the facts being present, but they most definitely seem to be stolen. Now, if they aren't stolen they're well over a year late. With that hefty sum, I highly doubt they would be returned even if the person didn't intend to steal it and just lost it in a messy, messy room, unless they never rent again. Although the person who (it looks like) stole it must not have rented anything for quite some time or this would likely have been brought up at some time. After all, I have been cheated by this rental store for paying late fees at different times.
This store has two drop boxes, one right outside the store, the other across town. Now, at first glance this seems convenient, however, it most definitely is not. For some reason, which I still haven't deciphered, they empty both of the drop boxes from nine to ten in the evening. Now this wouldn't be so bad except the fact that they close and the rentals are due at eleven. So, those who turn their rentals in before it's late still get charged late fees. It is also sort of difficult to argue this fact the next time you rent something. Those who realize this evilness or idiocy (can't decide which it is) on part of the store can easily counter it by walking inside and putting it in. However, whether or not they'll continue to empty that after they close is questionable if you look at the drop boxes.
I did mention the odd volume ordering system down on the comments and suggestions paper they had near the exit and suggested they change it. Mine was right below the suggestions "more porn," "free porn rentals," and "mor pornos." It also presumably was above "more porn movies" or something to that effect. It seems they didn't listen to my suggestion, although the amount of pornography seems to have increased; however it isn't free. Perhaps I should try writing with bad grammar, multiple times and they'll comply. Maybe they just thought that ordering more porn was a more reasonable suggestion or comment to accommodate. -4/27/03
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