Let's get physical (media)
An ode to discs, tapes, and boxes.
by Rollin Bishop
My love of physical media probably traces back to my father. I've written before about The Wall, but what made that homemade stereo system impress people was a curated collection of CDs and DVDs. Whenever he wanted to show off, he'd play The Matrix's lobby scene for his friends and coworkers. He'd boot it up, skip to the right chapter, and the whole house would shake for minutes.
So, it comes from a place of deep love when I say: you, too, should invest in physical media.
I've collected movies and CDs and TV shows since I was in my early teens — my first real job was at Blockbuster, which meant an employee discount, which meant a lot of my paycheck went right back into the company coffers — but the moment it got serious for me when I inherited The Wall's 300-disc CD player. That's when I started up my spreadsheets and cataloguing and generally keeping an eye out for anything cheap.
It's also when I really began buying animation en masse. And while my other habits have scaled back significantly due to the economy and competing responsibilities, I still regularly find myself picking up something, anything from sales or thrift stores simply because I don't have it already. Case in point: the latest Amazon sale ended up with me owning all of The Wild Thornberrys, CatDog, Danny Phantom, and more.
This isn't for everyone; I know that. It's not cheap to buy these things, and not everyone's going to have the space, but I do also think that perhaps more people should invest than currently do. I'm an outlier, doing this as a job on top of being an obsessive nerd, but the reality is that compared to the sheer amount of art on offer it is almost always more efficient to buy a physical piece of media. That The Wild Thornberrys set? 15 discs, 91 episodes, 34.5 hours of Tim Curry doing one of the wildest voices you can imagine while still managing to mostly sound human. For less than $20, that's hard to beat, even if it is 4:3 and without subtitles.
But streaming services and digital purchases are ephemeral, intangible in a way that discs are not. I'm not foolish enough to believe that my DVDs are going to last forever. Rationally, I know they're susceptible to disc rot, but this is outweighed by my distrust of Netflix and its peers. That's especially true when it comes to animation, which as a medium seems poorly supported at the best of times and first on the chopping block at the worst. For every example like the flashy Arcane home video release, there's a Voltron: Legendary Defender that still to this day hasn't had its final seasons release physically, despite being removed from Netflix.
Beyond it being good for access in the long term, physical copies are regularly in better quality than most streaming services can accomplish. This isn't always the case for any number of reasons like low-quality originals with low resolution, and some subscriptions allow for higher-quality streaming, but it seems to be more often the case than not. It's common enough for anime releases, for example, to look night and day between what streams on Crunchyroll during simulcasts in any given season, and what ultimately makes it to Blu-ray months later. Animation in general seems to suffer the most scrutiny in these comparisons of quality levels, so any step up (or down) is immediately noticeable.
Physical collections, especially when it comes to animation, can also be art objects all their own. Perfect Blue's a great example. GKIDS is selling a pricey 4K UHD collector's edition of the remastered Satoshi Kon film, which is great in its own right as a film alone, that comes with an art booklet, art cards, a poster, and some gorgeous box art. I mean, just look at it:
"Perfect Blue: Collector's Edition" (4K UHD + Blu-Ray) is up for pre-orders (USA). Remastered film + 128 page booklet, 10 art cards, poster, complete 117-min Lectures by Satoshi Kon... >> https://www.catsuka.com/shopping/index.php?mode=produit&produit=perfect_blue_collector_s_edition_4k_uhd_blu_ray_us
— Catsuka (@catsuka.bsky.social) 2025-10-09T14:01:44.382Z
You absolutely do not need to start with the $100 special editions, and if you're starting from scratch or nearly scratch I wouldn't recommend it. Better to grab bits and pieces that interest you while they're on sale or from your local Goodwill and the like. Or even your nonlocal Goodwill — you wouldn't believe the sheer amount of anime that people donate, absentmindedly or intentionally, that's up for bid every single day.
Again, this isn't some perfect solution. There's no surefire way of making anything last, let alone animation on physical media, as time comes for us all. And this is a selfish plea in part because if there's more people like me, the more support these releases get. But if you're looking to have and hold 40 Peanuts TV specials on Blu-ray or 114 Tom & Jerry theatrical cartoon shorts (also on Blu-ray) that's something you can do, and it's something you can do right now in a way that hasn't previously been possible. Even Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Devilman Crybaby are finally escaping Netflix jail.
I can't wait. Join me, won't you?