No, I’m not talking about the first episode of the new season of Hayate, though as it turns out it’s being released through Crunchyroll very shortly after broadcast for those paying subscribers (and a week later for cheapskates like myself, which suits me just fine). I’m actually going to talk about the rather unusual extra shipping with the Limited Edition of the recent Hayate no Gotoku!! Episode 0 OAV – the Hayate 3D disk.

The Hayate 3D disk is about seven minutes of footage mostly pulled from the accompanying OAV, and is 3D as in one of those features where you are supposed to wear those doofy red/blue lensed glasses in an effort to imbue whatever image you are seeing with a 3D effect – except this is anime, so it’s still 2D. Mostly.
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As seen in the shows nineteenth episode, it’s not much of a surprise to see it in Haruhis homestead (well, her parents) – it’s the commoners storage solution, after all!

I’d rather forgot how variable the quality of Ouran becomes once you get into the series – it’s like you get a half-dozen episodes into it and the show starts to get a little too hung up on being clever, and half the time it comes across more as overdone and grating than it does amusing.

That said, the nineteenth episode in which the mikan box was spotted – the second episode featuring the girls from Lobelia Girls Academy – was actually one of the more entertaining episodes of the series. It’s also one of those episodes which forgoes any real attempt at being intelligent in exchange for perfectly timed comedic nonsense. Go figure.

From Totali at Subculture, taken from Minami-ke Okaeri Episode 9, apparently. What is unusual about this particular mikan box is that it actually appears to be holding oranges. Who’da thunk it?

I guess I’ll have to give Totali this one, though I don’t actually watch Minami-ke myself – I’m trusting him not to have photoshopped that image in an attempt to make me look incredibly foolish in revenge for Ringo-gate. Those reading should not take this as a cue to start photoshopping the things into random screengrabs in an attempt to confuse me…

Many, many moons (well, OK, about a year) ago, Totali tried to convince me that a Mikan Box appeared in Clannad episode 21. On that occasion, he was proved to be foolish, given that the box in question had an apple on it, clearly making it a Ringo box. Silly Totali.

That said, it turns out that there was actually a Mikan box in Clannads very first episode – scope out the box against the back wall on the right.
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Yes, I did buy all three versions. At least I’m not crazy like that crazy Japanese fan who bought 39 copies of the game (Sankaku, so possibly NSFW) in order to get all the different stores pre-order bonuses. Instead, I just got three sets of the alternative sleeves for the game. Sourcing import PSP games in the UK is actually a bit of a pain, as a few of the more popular retailers won’t ship PSP or PS3 releases over due to Sony winning a court case against Lik-Sang for selling import PSPs before the UK release. As such, my copies are the marginally more expensive Japanese release of the game. It’s nothing to do with being snobby (though I’m aware a few import gamers are a little anal about the fact), but rather it was easiest version to source back when I pre-ordered. Apparently the marginally cheaper Asian release not only comes with everything pictured above, but also a no-doubt useful English instruction manual, so it probably a better purchase if you can find it.
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