I thought I might show off two pieces of anime merchandise that I have received from friends today. I’m writing this on the 18th of January but my friend only just gave me my secret Santa gift today. What had happened was the gift was set to arrive at his house the day after we did the secret Santa exchange but we couldn’t postpone the day because he had to go to Vietnam the next day. So basically he arrives back roughly two weeks ago and completely forgets that the package is with his neighbour and gets it to me a little after one month late. It was obvious before it that he had me but now it was made completely clear. But the jokes on him because he got a dildo and a blow up sex doll!
So here is what it was!
Nice wrapping there!
Oh yeah and the delivery form came with the present!
Tokyo Ghoul mug! He told me it would be a mug beforehand so he wasn’t very secret at all; he’s the kind of guy to speak before he thinks. It’s a very nice gesture, so I was happy and thanked him! If you want to know my opinion of Tokyo ghoul I thought it was good but not good enough for me to watch the second season, in terms of mainstream anime it’s one of the better ones in my opinion, death note or HxH obviously being the best. But on the order form something really concerned me; this mug is very clearly fake/unofficial. I’m not mad about it but I think it’s actually quite funny.
If you want to create fake anime merchandise then you probably shouldn’t call yourself “The busy bees” and put your company address as in Kent or say that you only trade in Europe (“Europa Trading Estate” and you especially shouldn’t misspell Ghoul on your trading form!
Also I realised I was owed £4 because he failed to meet the minimum cost of secret santa but I’m not going to push it. Also if you want to make a mug official you simply cannot make printing mistakes like the brown outline on the mugs image!
Regardless, thank you friend, I will drink from it!
For last year’s secret Santa a different friend got me an SAO flask because he knew I didn’t like it and thought it would be funny (this is the same guy who got the other guy that blow up sex doll and dildo) and it actually was! The problem was that the flask started to leak and I had to stop using it, as well as that it has a clear place where the paper inside the flask folds over which I don’t like. Still it was good when it lasted.
![20180118_183848[1]](https://mybrainiscompletelyempty.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/20180118_1838481.jpg?w=656)
When I think of anime merchandise I actually want to buy I think of Berserk 1997, Ippo, Kaiji, HxH or Shiki but obviously nearly all of them are way too obscure for anybody to sell anything relating to them so we’re just left with main stream stuff to choose from. SAO was a good comedy gift and Tokyo Ghoul is one of the better ones so I’m pretty happy!
My Brain Is Completely Empty 
*owns zero merch* Asuna! I want her!!
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Haha, hope you get some merch soon!
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Aww what nice presents 🙂
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I don’t mind fake merch as long as it is well done. I mean, you can basically take any picture and send it to a photo studio and have it printed on a mug or t-shirt or canvas. I do prefer original of course but if there isn’t such an option. My iPhone case hadn’t what I wanted so made my own with Death Note. That mug isn’t. And that is one ugly fold. Too bad you didn’t get better quality presents.
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Yeah I agree, maybe that company just prints many things so it makes sense for them to call themselves the busy bees, it’s just quite funny to me. Printing your own design is a really cool idea,I always thought it would be cool to have one with the brand from Berserk on it.
The presents are fine really, I kind of find them funny.
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They are funny! I would have loved to get some nerd stuff too for Christmas. 😎 More like the quality was a bit off. (I can’t get over that edge on the mug. That is amateurish. 🙄 )
Busy bees yeah. 😂 Well, I am thinking about making myself a mug with either Death Note or Tokyo Ghoul. I can’t decide on the design yet though so until I do it’s just a project in my head. It’s not awfully expensive either.
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The edge is terrible and makes it very clear how unofficial it is, but all the official products are really expensive.
Good luck getting that mug sorted out, I don’t really know any iconic mug items from either though.
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Yeah, they are. I haven’t found any official I like yet. At least not here and I am not sure I dare order from outside of EU (or GB. I can do with GB too. I do order ALL my manga from GB. I wonder how it works with customs now after brexit? You have any idea?) But overall I think it is hard to find merch at all that is worth it. And what you do find is mostly that mainstream like Naruto and One Piece and AoT or Shokugeki no Soma. Nothing wrong of course but still, something else would be nice.
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That’s true, you can’t really find anything you like that isn’t mainstream.
As for brexit, I don’t really keep up with it but what I can tell you is that nothing is going to happen anytime soon. I think Britain’s state for the next 100 years is going to be in the middle of staying and leaving the EU, and we’ll all forget about it at this rate.
Brexit really devalued the pound though so things might be cheaper, then again trading has always been a mess and I’ve never thought to check since I’m in the country.
Did you somehow know that I was from GB? I don’t think I’ve told people really, I guess you could just ask anyway.
The thing is with Brexit is that not a lot of people I know care at all, I and many others really didn’t care much about it until everyone else in the EU started freaking out(not that you’ve done that I’ve just seen others)!
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You wrote in a comment that you were from England. Not sure in what post though and it was not to me. Might have been under an Eva post. Or an award post. Those are the posts I usually read all the comments under. That’s how I knew. I can say that I got really surprised, I thought you lived in US actually. Then I got like “Ooooh! That’s why he had that questions about the queen of England.” It felt a bit out of place if you were from anywhere else.
Yeah, that was a lot of fuzz around EU about that brexit thing. I think most of it was about how so many people didn’t really know what it was they had been voting about. We are mostly shaking our heads up here in the north. I never wanted to join EU in the first place but now we’re in it so we might as well stay.
Yeah, the price on manga fell considerably which I think is nice. So keep up the good work you guys. 😎
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Oh that makes sense!
I don’t think anyone knew what the process of leaving would actually be like and how annoying it would be. If they said you’d lose 10% of all your money because the pound devalued overnight I think that might have been enough to deter people, or the 1% needed to win the vote.
The only reason why the referendum was held was because UKIP (UK National Independence Party) got so many votes (like 1 mil but no seats) in the previous election and the current party put the referendum in their policy to try and get those votes back, I think they regret that decision. You know it’s not going to be great if the PM decides that he wants to quit as soon as he’s forced to leave the EU.
And don’t worry, we’ll keep the good work up for a very, very long time!
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That’s the problem with people, they never care to find out what things mean. They just do as someone else says. We have a party here who wants to leave EU too and they have a very strong support among the voters. Since you have voted I can very well imagine that it could be the same here if they became the second or the biggest party. It is a scary reality unfortunately. People are that stupid. (It’s our nationalist party. Not a party I want ruling the country. Most of their voters vote the way they are told. 😝 )
Ugh, I hate politics. Still one better vote, it’s the only way to have some sort of influence.
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Yeah, maybe even the most popular party will put a referendum as a policy just because it will give them the votes of your independence party.
It’s not like there’s no reason to go independent, people who wanted to leave had a point, it might even be better in the long run. We’re just at an annoying point in time where nobody wants to do anything because the EU want to wait until we’ve left before negotiations and we want to do them now.
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One of our biggest topics for this election (in the fall) is immigration. I am not sure EU is gonna be that big this year. So there’s a lot of shit going on between the parties in a try to win votes from that one party.
It’s a drag that it has to take time. I mean, just decide and go on with it. What’s there to wait for? It’s stupid. I guess there are some good reason for it though but seeing as the decision is made they might as well get on with it.
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Yeah it would be nice if politics were less complicated!
What I hate is how long the election cycle takes, especially if you look to America. It sucked hearing constant news about a country you don’t really care about for a whole year of campaigning! After hearing nothing but Trump for several months I was surprised with how much time the election had left!
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It would also be nice if politicians stoped talking bull shit and actually did something. And maybe could keep atleast one or two promises they make during the campaign.
It is so annoying to hear about it day in and day out. I actually don’t watch that much news anymore. It’s to boring and depressing. And add to that, listening to something so depressing like America’s politics. You know they are fucked before the election when you realise that Trump is winning. And when he wins and they are celebrating you can’t for your life understand how such a thing as a reality show host could become a president. Add to that an childish, narcissistic, idiot. Ugh, I guess you get what you deserve.
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For me both candidates were scumbags, the voting system is such a mess. Democracy means that the people get to choose who they vote in but if the people aren’t happy with the candidates (a lot of people weren’t happy) then they should just be changed. There are other voting systems out there, you should watch the CGP Grey animal kingdom videos for more information if you’re interested.
I think an option is that you can both vote for a person and also vote for new candidates if theirs a high enough amount of people unhappy with the people running.
Also at the start of the voting collection Hillary was given a 90% chance to win, good job! It was funny watching the young turks break down over the course of the election. Do you also find it terrible that the winner had less votes than the loser, how stupid is that! It’s not democracy if the majority don’t get what they want!
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Hilary wasn’t an angel, no, but she was the better choice of the two. I just don’t get how the voting system can be so twisted. I mean, come one, I get why it was like that a 100 years ago when not everyone had the right to vote but today? It is fucked up that the winner has less votes than the loser. That is a clear sign that maybe someone should look over that whole voting process.
We can vote either for a single person (both those who are on the roll but you can put your own candidate as well) in a party or, if we can’t chose or it doesn’t care, we can just vote for a party. I think that is great if you have someone you root for or someone who is extra driven in one cause you burn for. Here everyone’s vote counts too.
I watched the young turks a little at the start of the real campaigning. They were so optimistic. Then I watched them again in the end of October, like a month before the election. Poor guys. I like them though.
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Yeah the Young Turks are fine really, doesn’t mean I can’t use them so I can get some enjoyment out of the terrible election result!
You can put who you want down but it’s basically a waste of a vote unless it’s a national movement.
In short politics can really sucks and I can’t wait until that future when we literally have to do nothing and robots take care of our every need! That will definitely happen.
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Because that’s not a scary future. 🤖 I’m gonna be a rebel, hide in caves deep in the forest and go completely off grid when that happen.
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It’s not that scary, we’ll have protection measures in place, also good luck hiding from them!
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I don’t trust protection. Protection can fail. When they get smart enough they will make sure they bypass that protection.
Of course I can hide from them. I have a plan. Sort of. Die is a plan, right? If I’m dead they can’t find me. 😎 No, but going off grid shouldn’t be too hard. Not up here. We have enormous spaces where nothing is monitored. Well, I find comfort in the fact that it will not happen withing in the near future and by the day it will I am too old to care or dead.
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You can’t die, the singularity would have happened by then and you’d be screwed! Getting off the grid might not be possible but having the illusion that you are is, why should a robot find you if you’re out in nowhere? It will just leave you alone and think you’re strange.
I think you’d really like Serial Experiments Lain because it has similar pacing to Eva and is all about the consequences of developing technology and it’s set as this mind breaking new device that is very dangerous is coming out.
“We are all connected” is one of my most favorite and scary themes.
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I think you have mentioned that one before. I added it to my already too long watchlist. It seems like something I would like, yes. I am a huge fan of Black Mirror (have you seen it? Not an anime.). I think it is really scary, the themes they deal with there. Tbh, I am a little afraid of technology. Or you get afraid because in that serie it is so close to reality.
My uncle have a cabin in the woods and he could easily go off the grid. All he have to do is ditch the mobile phone and he is completely hidden. There is no running water and no electricity. No phone, no nothing. No one knows they are there except someone can trace their cell phones. Well, we know of course but people who don’t know them have no clue about this cabin. As for robots leaving you alone, I think they would have as a mission to find all people, not just some. They wouldn’t think one is strange for being out in the woods hiding, they would think there is a human lets take it. At least that’s what I imagine it to be. Because, why leave some who can plot against them?
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Yeah they might pay extra attention to you to see if your up to something and keep checking back!
Your Uncle sounds really cool! What I’m thinking though is that he’d have to be there illegally to get off the grid. If not he has proof somewhere of rental / ownership of the land he’s on which can be traced to find him. All the robots have to do is wonder, who owns that land? Or who used to own this land? If the robots have gotten everything, even then they’d need to know who your uncle was to get the land in the first place.
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That’s true. I’m thinking though that it is old land and those papers aren’t digitalized but in paper form (yeah, that is actually a thing here, you have to go down in some basement and find them. Like everything before the computers was a thing. I guess they are working on digitalizing everything but stuff like that takes time. Cabins in the woods isn’t highly prioritiezed. Especially not when they are built in the end of the 1800s)) so it would be easy to get rid of that when you notice what is happening. And yes, he is cool. The fact that they have owned that cabin for 40 years this summer and still not installed electricity speaks a lot about who he is.
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