Where do you get your Anime/Manga?

I was busy over on AnimeNewsNetwork.com looking at some articles when I stumbled across a really interesting interview [http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/chicks-on-anime/2009-04-07] with the co-owner of a video store in Colorado and her experiences with renters, and some pretty harsh words directed towards users of services like Netflx and those that stream online [legally and otherwise] This evoked a lot of emotion in me and got me thinking about the changes that we have been going through in the community in the last few years, and where we are headed going forward.

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few years you know that a lot has changed with regards to traditional media, streaming, piracy, scanning, e-books, and of course DVRs have changed how we look at much of what we watch, listen and read.

Anime and Manga has been a lighting rod for this issue, mostly due to the fact what was once a very small niche hobby has gone much more mainstream. For a little bit of backstory, lets do a bit of a retrospective to how we got where we are today.

My first encounter with Anime like many people was with Star Blazers as a child, it was one of the few cartoons that my parents supported me watching because they were impressed with the story and it wasn't a mass toy commercial, unlike most of the others at the time. After this I wandered away onto other more mundane affair, but my love of Star Blazers never ceased. [ask my father about desperately trying to get the antenna pointed in the right direction so I could still watch my favorite show when it was on]

When I was 13 I started playing the ROBOTECH: RPG from Palladium Books, which got me into watching the old show again. We started a ROBOTECH fan club in Jr. High, and one night we were at the local comic store and I picked up a copy of Protoculture Addicts and I saw all these articles on other shows that I had never heard of, there was this whole world of animation geared to the more mature person and I had no inclination it existed.

From here I spent the next two years trying to get access to anything I could of the Anime variety, it was at this point that Viz Comics was getting into stride and I got a hold of my first issue of Ranma 1/2, Crying Freeman [really glad the parentals didn't look at that too closely] I was in love. During this time my father [a commercial airline pilot] worked with a guy who knew of an Anime club near my house, my father at that time found the whole concept fascinating, probably due to the fact this stuff was geared to a much more mature audience, so he was willing to drive me to the club meetings once per month.

The Club meetings were the golden age for me in the mid 1990’s, here were all these series that I had never heard of, everything from giant robot drama's Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory to slice of life shows like Maison Ikkoku. to the magical girl genre of Sailor Moon. What also made this time so interesting was the fact that almost none of what we were watching was commercial releases over here, what we were watching were Anime that had been copied directly off Japanese tv then subtitled on an Amiga computer for fans.

This was an amazing time, Arctic Animation the parent of our club was an North American power when it came to fansubbing, they were one of the only games in town, since at the time the few VHS releases available cost a fortune, it wasn’t uncommon for tapes to cost in the $50+ range, and we certainly didn’t have DVD’s. There wasn’t Netflix, and video stores were terrified of it [I was there when they had to explain to an angry parent that they thought Akira was a childrens cartoon] there was so little in the range of sources it was scary at times.

But the seeds were planted, even though the tapes cost a fortune, Manga Entertainment, Viz, Animego, Central Park Media, US Manga Corps, Central Park Media were the pioneers, they saw the future and jumped on it.

Manga was a slightly different story Viz had been around for some time releasing a few select titles, along with Dark Horse Comics but there was even less selection on this front, and what was available was fairly expensive.
Fast forward to today, and the landscape is much different, we have companies dedicated to bringing out Manga in its original digest form, for far more palatable price, and one only needs to walk into their local Best Buy or FYE to see the selection of Anime available. Even the video stores are getting in on the act with Blockbuster and Hollywood Video renting large selections of Anime.

Going a step further are the legal online services such as Netflix and Crunchyroll [though their background is a little more than dubious] offering on demand streaming, or direct to mail rentals.

Times they have definitely changed…

So my question to you is this, where do you get your Anime/Manga? Tell me where you like to buy, and why, what makes for a great experience, and what makes for a bad one.