Drink From Every Cup

Anime VHS Tapes from My Library

I’ve been reorganizing storage boxes in the garage, and today I got to a section of anime storage boxes. There are a lot of cool – but useless – memorabilia. I have a lot of magazines and publications that I can’t yet bear to part with – Newtype, Newtype USA, Manga Max, Protoculture Addicts, Animag, Animerica – and more. There are booklets from the early days of Anime Expo and Kumoricon. Also, I have printouts of email correspondence from fandom in the 1990s, including fansubbers. I reboxed the items (from old, limp bankers boxes into the new, sturdier ones from the remodel) and put them back onto the storage shelves.

However, there were three bankers boxes of VHS videotapes. And I’ve decided it’s finally time to discard them. All they are doing now is taking up valuable space – and I no longer can play VHS videotapes, anyway.

Bankers Boxes of Anime VHS Videotapes

I unloaded the boxes for the group photo at the top of this post. The photo will be the only record of that collection once the tapes are gone.

Memories of the days of anime fansub exchange are precious. Some of the correspondence I kept brought back memories. (I had a good relationship with well-known fansub champions Bruce and Karen Duffy, who lived just outside of Salem – an hour from Portland – and who I actually got to visit a time or two. Trivia: Piro of Megatokyo fame did some of the illustrations for the Duffy’s fabulous VHS tape labels – for the Marmalade Boy series, I believe.)

As far as the commercial VHS tapes go, I think I have DVDs or Blu-rays of all of those series. The only anime VHS tapes that are withheld from this purge are my Gunbuster VHS tapes. My Gunbuster collection is sacred. And of course, the Gunbuster tapes weren’t in the boxes in the garage anyway.

So... sayonara, VHS collection. I’m letting go of the 1990s – finally!

I’ve got a few links I should clear from my browser.

Endgame for the Open Web by Anil Dash. Tangentially related: I quit. The clankers won by David Bushell.
The World Wide Web is a mess, filled with AI slop – and getting locked down behind walled gardens. I’m grateful for Dreamwidth being a safe haven (for now). Dreamwidth is the best of what’s left of the old open web.

Sort of related to the above links – last time I linked to Kagi Small Web. This time it’s Blogosphere. We could do more to find interesting blogs; they are out there!

For tech geeks (I used to be a programmer): Claude Code's Entire Source Code Got Leaked via a Sourcemap in npm, Let's Talk About it by Kuber Mehta.
There’s a bunch of interesting stuff here – and I’m happy to see some of the developers are having fun. They’re doing some things that I would have done. I had some fun Easter eggs in the code I wrote.

Artemis II Is Not Safe to Fly by Maciej Ceglowski.
This is pretty scary. Reminds me of The Slide That Killed Seven People. (I’ve used that slide when teaching people how to (and how not to) use PowerPoint.)

A lighter side of space... maybe you’d like your own Mars Perseverance Rover (working replica kit)? (Yanko Design always features awesome stuff – like this Tiny House with the Bedroom on the Ground Floor.)

After 11 Years, Naruto’s True Canon Ending(s) Have Aged Like Fine-Wine by Jason Hon at ScreenRant (WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE END OF NARUTO). Related article from 2024: Naruto Shippuden Ending Explained; How the Beloved Anime Changes the Manga, also by Jason Hon. (WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE END OF NARUTO)
The articles reminded me how much I loved the ending of Naruto – and I was motivated to rewatch the final arc, starting with Naruto Shippuden Episode 494 – Hidden Leaf Story, The Perfect Day for a Wedding, Part 1: Naruto’s Wedding. With the start of the new Spring anime season, this is a terrible time to watch more episodes in already full days – so I’m going to watch just one episode a night.

Speaking of anime, Random Curiosity has its Spring 2026 Preview posted. As usual, it’s full of good information.