Letting Go of Plastic & Tags - What I been Doing and How I been Adapting

Ever looked around your home and notice the amount of plastic you keep on your collections or even kept on refills for items you use daily? Well, I decided to do something about it in hopes of making my over space look and feel better!

After decluttering a lot of items I wasn't going to use, I came to realize I left many items in plastic even if I was never going to sell them! I wanted to keep them in good condition but if I really loved these items I was going to use them no matter what.

Rare trading cards are possibly the biggest exception to me taking things out of plastic coverings. Even if you didn't buy cards at their expensive value the point is if it's worth a lot now and you love the card you need to protect it. This does get harder if said card is in fact used in a deck that you play with. If that is the case triple sleeve the whole deck (one deck of mine is in fact triple sleeved). Warning it is a bit of work updating the deck but at least your cards stay in good condition.

The next large exception is Gundam model kits. Some of them are built however we have no space to display them in this apartment and cause there is so much dust in here I keep these in their boxes and plastic. If dust builds up in the model there is no way to get it out without possibly dismantling it.

All stationery I now just break it open and feel it out. Especially if it is a fresh notebook or insert. Helps me get over the fear of starting to use my supplies especially with my Traveler's Notebook inserts. I collected so many and I want to just be able to pick them up and go on adventures.

All of my plushies and mascots are finally free of plastic now. I love squishing and holding them so I am beyond happy I took the plastic off. I ended up doing something special with my PuppyCat Squishable which was laminating the signature from Fred of Frederator because it really does mean a lot to me <3 To fight against the dust in the apartment I routinely dust and fluff the plushies once a week!

No books, manga, or artbooks still have shrink wrap. If they have they have plastic it is because it is an older manga and I am protecting it after reading it several times. In the future, I hope to buy transparent book covers for both books and manga so I can stop using plastic manga and comic bags for them. Hope to update you on that in the future!

Last but not least I finally took the tags off my Sentimental Circus pencil cases. I did still keep them but instead pasted them all into my junk journal. I have no idea why I was keeping them on but things look so much neater now. Besides I won't be selling anything of them, I would only be adding the ones I am currently missing in my collection.

Unless you are trying to preserve something and only display it there is little to no reason to keep it in plastic/packaging with the tag still on. It might mentally and physically block you from using it as I did for me. Can really say I feel like I enjoy things a lot more now which is nice considering the new year is around the corner.

Hope this helped, and until next time, stay hyped!

Using Midori MD for Collection Tracking

Hello and welcome back to another stationery post! Today will be all about the Midori MD notebook! 

Thanks to the journaling community I came across the Midori MD and I have been using it ever since. One of the major things I use the Midori MD for is to track collections.

The collections I'm currently using these for are my trading cards and manga. I have been collecting all my favorite manga and light novels for a while and for the past 6 or so years I been collecting trading cards that relate to the decks I love to build.

The Midori MD notebooks I use for my collections are the Midori MD notebook Light A6 Lined pack of 3! I bought the ones I have from Kinokuniya for about $10 which isn't that bad since I just picked it up at the store thus no shipping.

For my manga collection, I write the series title and go down all the volumes or all current volumes if the series is still continuing. If I getting volumes in English or Japanese I will write it. If it is not written then I will default to English print. I put a checkmark next to each volume I have. Every time I go to a bookstore or shop online I keep this book on me to ensure I don't buy what I already have.

For my trading card collection, I search up all the cards I want from a certain set and write them down in card ID order. For each set, I write the name and ID of the set on the top of the page. Like the manga, I check off each card. However, for cards, I use as many checks as I have cards. So if I have four of the same card I check it off four times. I do this because certain cards are much rarer and hard to get and I would like to have three or four of all the common cards.

I very much recommend Midiri MD notebooks. The paper quality is amazing, they provide labeling stickers to help you keep track of the books plus they have a large range of notebooks to suit your needs. Let me know in the comments if you use any Midori MD notebooks!

Until next time, stay hyped!

PS Vita Slowdown (Personal Reasons and Changes Coming in 2020)

Hello everybody! Tsubaki here and back with not a game or a subscription crate but actually a breakdown of why I haven’t been pushing out content and some changes of content I will follow through with for 2020.

Now almost all the gamers and PlayStation fanatics know that the PS Vita has been office discontinued. This is a major reason why no one is expecting more physical game releases for it. The PS Vita community is honestly very grateful for companies like Limited Run Games and Play Asia for still having physical Vita games for the people that really want to collect and buy them, but it still has slowed down because of the super low and almost non existent stock of PS Vita cartridges. They need cartridges to sell the physical games but if they barely have a thousand or so left and several games people are really willing to buy physically, not everyone will have the game or all the games they want. With that being explained my collecting has slowed to a crawl because the games that were released are not of my interest. But I am happy they still sell out of their stock because I want these companies to know that we support them. 

Keeping this in mind I have been obtaining games for the Nintendo Switch but not that rapidly and not collector’s editions or limited editions because I just want to play stuff and not also have it as a keepsake. Please stay tuned for Switch content because I do have some opinions of my play throughs of the Switch games I have. PS4 limited and collector’s editions will be reviewed as per usual.

Current Nintendo Switch games besides Let’s Go Pikachu which I have digitally. 

Besides the set back of the Vita being discontinued, one other major item is in fact, money. My spouse had two trips to the ER because of a condition with his liver that is causing it to swell and not detox this blood well and is still on going with major stomach problems. So not only did I have to burn my extra paycheck to make sure we aren’t behind in bills but I been rethinking lifestyle choices. I been collecting for at least the last three or four years but only until now there was a medical emergency. So now I have found a better budgeting layout and organizing system but there is no room for buying video games unless it was saved up from multiple paychecks. Maybe in the future I will make a full post on how I save for all video games while still balancing everything else.

Last thing I want to let out is that 2019 has been very anxiety and stress inducing which has been mitigated by journaling. I want to add journaling as topics in Otaku On Hype, specifically junk journaling/kawaii journaling. Journaling has not only helped me get past all these trips to the ER and rough times at work but helped me realize all the amazing artists out there that are making awesome stationery and merchandise! Every journal post that uses stickers and items from artists will be featured in case you want to check out and get some for yourself. 

My journal is overflowing with stickers, postcards and everything from this year. I’m so thankful for finding this to be my creative outlet.

Otaku on Hype will continue to go strong in 2020 with more content! Can’t wait to see everyone again! 

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon And Ritual of the Night

Hello everybody! And welcome back to another limited edition review. Today we have Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon which was already released digitally on only on the PlayStation store but also to people who backed Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night on Kickstarter and Fangamer and the actual Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night! Many people backed it mostly for the solid fact that Koji Igarashi, one of the godfathers of gothic exploration-focused action platformers, is behind this game! Must say I backed it on Fangamer and love playing Curse of the Moon on veteran mode. It just brings back nostalgic memories. Ritual of the Night arrived last week! So this review will actually cover both!

Now let us start with Curse of the Moon! Now it is called Classic Edition because it is in a nostalgic NES style outer box and case sleeve. Limited Run has been superb with these physical collections so it wasn’t any surprise that this game sold out almost instantly.

 Honestly, it looks super beautiful with full-color interior art, a reversible 18" by 24" poster and CD soundtrack.

The soundtrack has a whopping 41 tracks! Which is huge considering most soundtracks keep around 10 to 15.

I wanted to grab the PlayStation Vita version of this game but me using my phone and Starbucks wifi right after work didn’t get it within that two-second time period that it was completely sold out. But it is ok because Ritual of the Night will be on PS4 and I plan on getting it for PS4 because they already said they will not have it for Vita due to it being discontinued. So I guess it will look nice because I have both games for PS4 so they can stand side by side together in the collection. 

Now for Ritual of the Night! 

I backed this on Fangamer and when it was delivered it came with this cool rainbow shine slipcover!

I am not sure if you get the same backer slipcover if you backed it before on Kickstarter but I would hope it would be just as epic.

There is no full art cover side but just playing this game is everything. You get to see everybody from Curse of the Moon and the whole story just connects completely. I also love how funny some of the monsters are in the game. Even if you didn't get both of these games physically I would highly recommend it for its interesting and continuous gameplay! 

If you like these reviews and want to help support this blog check out my Patreon!

Until next time, keep playing what you love!