A short little post for everyone today, seeing as I have yet to complete Concealed the Conclusion and get a tripod so that I can try my hand at figure photography (though you probably won’t be seeing any of those for a while). Anyway, the purpose of this post is to highlight a little irrelevant piece of merchandise I grabbed off eBay a little while ago; something that, although not rare or valuable, is still pretty useful. What am I talking about, you ask? The title says it all – a mousepad featuring the cast of Touhou 7 – Perfect Cherry Blossom.
Now, as I said a moment ago, I got this from eBay…and we all know what anime merchandise + eBay equals. However, that raised another question that’s been bugging me for a while: just how important is legitimacy in anime merchandise? True, we all strive to buy only legit figures and artbooks, and certainly no one would want a bootlegged DVD, but what about the tiny little accessories that exist for the sake of the user rather than some form of glorified display?
Take, for instance, this little Haruhi phone strap I got off Anime Castle; I’m pretty sure it’s legit, but as you can see, it’s from the English release of the series, not the Japanese one. Would you consider this to be something that makes it inferior? True, merchandise from Japan is harder to come by and therefore more rare (and more respectable for the person who owns it), but for a thing like a phone strap, would you add the rarity factor into your criteria?
I guess it all comes down to personal preference in the end. For me, I always make every attempt to purchase legit figures from reputable sources, and I’ve started eliminating my old local Chinatown posters for those “clear” posters that Japan seems to have a lot of, but when it comes to things like a keychain or a mousepad, I guess I’m just not too picky. Seeing as I always use a laptop, I’ve never really needed a mouse until now (to be more specific, until I got into PangYa), and so when I searched online for a good-looking anime mousepad, I found this one and decided that I just had to buy it. Was it worth it? The item came from Hong Kong, has no copyright-esque logos on it, and seems to bear absolutely no relation to ZUN, but what it DOES do is brighten up my work/lurk-on-anime-blogs space.
I guess I just wanted to say that merchandise is merchandise – in my eyes, sometimes you have to put aside your collector’s pride for the sake of things that are just plain awesome. And I’m pretty sure I’m the only person in my school with a Touhou mousepad.
~ ETERNAL
つづく
