An ongoing trend at Amazon is sales that let you pick from a long list of random things. In the week leading up to Valentine's Day, Amazon is going with the “Buy one, get one 50% off” approach. The sale includes a pretty wide spread of Blu-rays and box sets as well as books, board games, and, for whatever reason, a large selection of Annie’s mac and cheese.
You can scroll through the full sale here, but if you're looking for inspiration, one of the major highlights is the number of eligible anime Blu-rays and DVDs. With Crunchyroll hiking prices and a general crackdown on the, um, old-school methods of watching anime, physical media is becoming one of the best ways to guarantee a future rewatch. It’s also just a beautiful thing to be able to line up your favorite shows and movies along a shelf.
Amazon’s BOGO(ish) Sale Includes a Ridiculous Amount of Anime
To get the deal, in theory, you just have to add two eligible items to your cart, and Amazon will automatically discount the cheaper item by 50%. The discounts will only apply when you go to check out, and in my experience, can get a little funky with what's being discounted. For example, some of the Blu-rays I picked up got 25% discounts across the board instead of an even 50% on one DVD.
The sale also doesn’t limit you to a particular category, so you can get the discount through any combination of DVDs, books, and board games. As with any sale with this many options, I’d highly recommend just doing some scrolling and directly searching for anything that’s been on your physical media wishlist.
On the anime front, you’ll find classics like the 25th Anniversary Cowboy Bebop collection, a spread of DVDs from the original Pokemon show, and complete box sets for Death Note, Nana, and Yuri!!! on Ice. In terms of more recent releases, I'd recommend the Dan Da Dan Season 1 Collector's Edition, which includes a decent amount of random merch, as well as the most recent Bleach movie, Thousand Year Blood War Part 3, which just released on Blu-ray in January.
You’ll also find tons of anime movies, including Studio Ghibli releases like Grave of the Fireflies and Kiki’s Delivery Service as well as movies directed by Satoshi Kon and Mamoru Hosoda. There’s also a heck of a lot of Digimon.
The Sale Also Includes Some Solid Cartoon Collections
Amazon happens to take the easy route and include these in the list of "anime," but it's generally worth noting you'll also find a ton of western cartoons. You could theoretically go for the Avatar double-feature with both Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra eligible for the deal. The full list also includes the complete collection of MTV’s Aeon Flux, Nickelodeon's Rugrats, and the original Transformers series, which was technically animated by Toei Animation over in Japan.
If you're looking for animated movies, you can also check out all of the 4K Disney movies included in this sale.
Blythe (she/her) is an Audience Development Coordinator at IGN who spends way too much time in character customization screens and tracking down collectibles.
