Websites

Between the members of our society, we know of useful website who sit apart from the rest. Below we have published a select few of these in the hope that others will find them useful.

If you want to be added to the our links page then email me and if you have a banner then all the better! (our banner can be found here)

NAMSoc Nottingham Anime & Manga Society.

LUMAS Lancaster Ultimate Manga and Anime Society.

Gensen Figure — They are a Hong Kong site devoted to bringing you the best figures from Japan brand name. They specialize in comics figures, video game figures, capsule toys, mini figures, animation figure, non-action figure, ABS figure, Dragonball, Gundam, Bandai, Yujin, Namco and a hell of a lot more.

They are doing a special offer at the moment, check it out here!

http://www.animenfo.com/ — A good resource for listings of anime, quick synopses, voice actors, etc. Don’t trust their reviews though; they’re full of people giving 1/10 for animation when they just hated the story, etc. That said, the overall rating is normally a vague indication of goodness.

http://www.anidb.net/ — Tends to have a much more complete selection of episode titles; also lists fansubs in a slightly more ordered fashion. They do not, however, seem to care for fansub ethics - they list a lot of not only licensed stuff, but stuff ripped off English DVDs.

http://www.anidb.net/client/ — Some client software to help you manage your collection — the WebAOM1) is a java applet that is useful for hashing your files, thereby identifying them, renaming them and adding them to your “MyList” at AniDB.net. Note that to use any of the client you need an account with AniDB.net, as the clients will ask for your login details.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/ — Tends to have more complete credits listing, but little in the way of reviews. It proves to be very usefull when you want to know how many DVDs or manga books a series has which helps the librarian out quite a bit when it comes to ordering.

http://www.animesuki.com/ — A listing of pretty much everything available on fansub at the moment. They offer links to bittorrent sources, plus links to other big sites (AnimeNFO, AniDB, JASCII, ANN Encyclopaedia) for each series. Also has an up to date license list.

http://www.animeondvd.com/ — Lists almost every licensed anime for the last few years on their license list, and everything else in their DVD list. They review a whole lot of stuff, and they tend to do professional, unbiased and informative reviews. Both UK and US releases get listings.

http://www.animefu.com/ — Much less complete list of stuff, and is basically run by a small bunch of people who put up reviews for stuff they rent. There’s normally a few reviews for a given title, and the reviews are normally long, informative, and occasionally amusing. US releases only.

http://www.animejin.org.uk/ — Complete listings of all UK releases and gives news of all new licenses. Has a nice FAQ on buying stuff from the UK, with a good list of all the people who are busy listing stuff. Also good for http://www.animejin.org.uk/00ukrel.htm — a list of all announced releases in this country that they know of, plus normally a few months of recent releases.

http://www.mvm-films.com/ — These folks licence anime all over the board and they do it frequently too.

http://www.advfilms.co.uk/ — Licensees for about half or more of all the stuff that’s being released in the UK - and are often quite open to suggestions for new stuff to get off the US ADV.

I (Bucko) recommend you always try to buy stuff from the UK where possible. Buying from the UK supports the industry over here, which means they get more money to get new titles, and to advertise existing ones. This helps increase overall fandom, which is a good thing for anime in the UK in general. You can check what’s potentially available for release at Animejin.

That said, buying from the US will tend to get you titles sooner (though ADV at least have hinted they’re trying to reduce the lag time as much as possible - and we’re often behind the US for releases anyway), and you’re more likely to get special edition content, collector’s boxes, etc.

I personally recommend http://www.kelkoo.co.uk/ for buying just about anything in the UK - http://films.kelkoo.co.uk/ is where you want to be going for DVDs. They index a lot of big online suppliers of stuff and give you a list of matches from each supplier with price (including the P&P from each). Their website isn’t superb in implementation, but it’s quite usable if you don’t try to confuse it.

For manga, http://books.kelkoo.co.uk/ .

Amazon.co.uk are generally cheaper than stores, especially if you buy enough to get free delivery, and apparently have quite a large selection - although perhaps not the most complete information.

I (SohoLoh) will add to the list the following:

http://www.otaku.co.uk/ have a large selection of anime, manga, and lots of merchandise (art books, soundtracks, etc).

YesAsia.com is like Amazon aimed at the Asian market, if you want to be a little bit different. You can find stuff straight from Japan, or even aimed at other countries. Be a real fanboy and get your Cantonese-dub copy of your favourite anime (but make sure your DVD player can handle them!)

http://www.amazon.com/ — Obvious site; they often have stuff that’s limited edition, plus good offers on other things. Be warned — they provide informative labels on their goods, so you’ll have about 23% slapped on their prices in tax, then the huge cost of import P&P and an extra £5 (increased recently) that the Post Office charge for paying the customs fee for you. That said, their prices often cancel all that out!

http://www.up1.co.uk/ — Trading on fairly dodgy ground, they appear to operate from within the UK selling many US releases. They’re quite fast on postage when things are in stock, but can often take an awfully long time when things aren’t. Postage is a reasonable price and they’re a small enterprise, so are often quite good with customer service.

http://www.archonia.com/ — Based in Europe, they offer a large range of DVDs, manga, toys, and magazines both imported from the US and Japan. Price generally is quite good, though postage is often expensive (they charge by weight, but it levels off a lot after a certain point).

http://www.dvdboxoffice.com/ — Canadian, they offer nearly every north american release. They ship everything out individually, so you’re only going to get hit for Import Duty on any individual package above the threshold, but experience suggests that they can be slow to re-stock; if you’re ordering something that’s only just been released they’re often very prompt, but can take a month or so at times to get old stuff in. Unlike some places, you don’t pay anything on top of the listed price for shipping.

[This is my (Sar) understanding circa half three in the morning, so it’d be appreciated if someone else could go over this and check it before anyone takes it as authoritative...]

[...Ficedula agrees generally with the information contained here, but has added some other tidbits.]

If you do choose to import, be aware that you may be liable to pay import duty, which can add up to a significant amount of money if you’re not careful. What actually happens is that the shipping company (a courier, or Royal Mail if sent by regular post) pays the import duty and then recoups the cost from you, so you will find your shiny new DVDs in hock at the local Post Office/courier depot until you cough up the cash. Luckily for you, the consumer, there are ways you can avoid or reduce the import duty you have to pay, and if you do end up paying you should be able to have a pretty accurate idea beforehand of how much it will cost you.

• There is a threshold below which Customs and Excise don’t bother to collect Import Duty - typically this is £18 for ‘merchandise’ (which legally speaking includes all purchases from mail-order companies) and £28 for ‘gifts’ (which you’ll often find shady eBay sellers offering to mark your merchandise as). The thresholds vary for different types of goods, particularly as some goods are exampt from duty, but those are the norm. This makes companies such as DVD Box Office or Play popular, as they will ship all items separately whether you ask them to or not, as this reduces the chance of you paying import duty on any of them. While you should in no way rely on it, Customs and Excise are not usually bothered with smaller packages, and won’t normally charge you for packages that are just £5 or so over the limit. On a slow day, they have been known to charge them anyway, of course.

• The UK is in ‘Customs Union’ with the whole of the EU, meaning that you never pay import duty on anything sent from anywhere within the EU - for purposes of import duty, the EU is treated as having a single, external border. This makes shops such as Archonia or Play popular, as they send from within the EU avoiding all import duty entirely. However, the flipside to this is that you do pay VAT on the items, and unless the seller is UK VAT-registered, you will pay at the rates in the country of the seller. This is not necessarily good: books and magazines are exempt from VAT in the UK, but are usually charged VAT in most (if not all?) other European countries.

• Some goods are not liable for import duty at all, or are liable at a reduced rate. Books, notably, do not incur duty. Assuming that the class of merchandise is clearly marked on the outside of the package, you should never pay duty on shipments of books. Or plastic model kits, it seems. However: be aware that a ‘mixed’ package of anime and manga may end up attracting duty; whether because Customs charge you on the whole value of the package, or because the sender didn’t bother to record the values of the books and DVD’s separately, you can end up being charged for the whole lot.

If you do think you’re going to end up paying duty (and bear in mind that Customs will occasionally open packages to verify their contents), this is what happens:

• Import Duty is calculated on a package-by-package basis. No doubt one day Customs and Excise will buy a big shiny computer with malevolent flashing red lights and ticking and clacking noises to keep track of separate parcels coming from and going to the same addresses, but that day is not today.

• The threshold is applied against the value of the goods, but not the cost of the shipping.

• If the threshold is passed, Import Duty (typically 6.5%) and the normally-applicable level of VAT (typically 17.5%) is levied against the total value - goods and shipping - of your package. This fee is required before the package leaves Customs.

• The shipping company - the courier, if sent by courier, or Royal Mail if sent by normal post - will pay the fee on your behalf. Typically they will add a handling charge to the total for lending you this money, and typically this handling charge is significantly higher than the base interest rate. Royal Mail’s standard handling fee, to my knowledge, is currently £5.

• (Sar‘s experience): The shipping company will notify you that you have a parcel, and that they have paid X in import duty on your behalf. Usually this takes the form of a slip through the letterbox telling you to visit your nearest post office, but sometimes they’ll bring the parcel to the door and accept cash in hand. If you fail to pay this fee, consisting of the total import duty plus their handling charge, then they keep your parcel.

• (Ficedula‘s experience): Sometimes couriers, DHL in particular, will deliver your parcel, then invoice you for it later, potentially more than a month after the fact. In theory, I suppose, if you moved house in that period, you might be unaware of the debt, which could be good or bad depending on whether the courier chose to take action pursueing the debt further ... other couriers are more likely to accept cash in hand; except that they usually prefer cheques, so it’s worth your while keeping a chequebook to hand if you expect an international courier delivery. No money may well mean the parcel being returned to the depot, which is likely to be rather less accessible than your local post office.