Wow. You know the wave of bankruptcies and near-misses in the anime industry is really cutting deep when three-dollar DVDs start showing up at the local Dollar General - and you end up spending significant sums of unbudgeted money on 'em. Now, admittedly, I'd not normally bother with Fancy Lala or Spirit of Wonder - while they're probably worth $3/disc, I don't think I'd spend $5 - but I've now seen multiple discs which I've paid, if not full price, then a significant fraction thereof, languishing in the three-dollar-cutout bins. Good shows, too, like Cowboy Bebop and Vandread. Meanwhile, I *almost* coughed up for a box set of Angelic Layer I saw at Best Buy the other day for south of $35, and cringed to see a modified brick of Escaflowne for $33, brand new.

It's brilliant times for the penurious and miserly, but are all the companies going to scrape their way out of the other side of the bog? CPM seems to be trembling on the brink, for one.