Ah yeah! Gun Smith Cats and El-Hazard!
It has been so long since I watched those 
Had to think about R.O.D: Read or Die as well. Though I’m surprised to see that it already from '01. I thought it was late 90s as well.
So many nice things which were OVAs back then. But the whole distribution system worked differently in those times, now you have a lot straight to net releases as well. Those are (in a way) kinda similar to the OVAs of yesteryear.
This was better than I expected, saw it posted in the tachiyomi discord. If you like the setting of Solo Leveling, this is pretty similar but goes in a different direction with plot.
https://anilist.co/manga/123591/D-Genesis-Dungeon-ga-Dekite-3nen/
The 2000s in general were an interesting time period as the industry made the switch from mostly analog with cel animation to purely digital within the decade. It would be easy to dismiss the CG in something like the first season of Initial D as cheap, as that’s what we tend to think of it currently, but those were actually high dollar special effects at the time. Blue Submarine No. 6 is another example of animated CG mixed with hand-drawn static backgrounds, but in modern animation you tend to only see hand-drawn animation for action shots mixed with digitally drawn backgrounds. You really do have to dissociate just a bit as the CG can be immersion breaking, but you also have to kind of put yourself in the perspective of a new viewer two decades ago who wasn’t familiar with digital animation to get the full enjoyment.
The worst one I can think of is Dear Boys (localized to Hoop Days), which the best way to describe it would be an early 2000s Slam Dunk with the shoujo dial turned up to a solid 7, so a bit heavy on the drama (but no worse than Slam Dunk either). However, the biggest issue was that the basketball itself was one of the few elements that was digitally animated with CG and if you were to say to that you have not seen anything as janky since the first season of Intial D, you would be correct as the same studio also did the CG animation for that as well.
I must admit that even though I have heard of R.O.D. enough to feel like the synopsis sounds familiar, it wasn’t on my list yet even though it checks off all of the boxes that usually interest me. I found an H265 source as well so that one will probably end up in the collection when I’m done with it. I had never really thought about archiving stuff I liked in the past, but when KA got nuked for the last time it made me change my mind as there was so much obscure stuff that vanished overnight. I think the torrent scene has definitely gotten better since then, but I always have to wonder if there was anything on there that really did get erased forever.
Oh and here’s a bonus for those who both read all of my ramblings and the tl;dr’ers alike, there have been many anime about the technical aspects of making anime, but one of the most well-done examples is unquestionably the more recent Eizouken. I highly recommend this fantastic single cour show to anyone and everyone as there is so much to enjoy and for all the right reasons.
For the whole rambling; 
Yes, Eizoken is wonderful! I really like how they take you along through the process of crafting an animation. My initial impression of the animations weren’t great if I’m being honest. But the style really grew on me as I watched a few episodes.
Furthermore… I had a time where I saved all the material I watched, but I gave up on that years ago due to the storage needs/costs. It is a shame to lose resources like KA. But I’ve always loved initiatives like BakaBT to select and keep available any of them.
I almost never rewatch series, so for me personally it isn’t that much of a loss to not have it all stored (locally). But if I find anything older which I want to watch, then it is sometimes hard to get a hand on it…
And while streaming platforms make it more accessible, they’re finnicky in availability over time. Which honestly only makes them usable for new material.
Though I currently do greatly appreciate the ease of which I can watch new material on Crunchyroll and Wakanim.
Read through the first 3 chapters, this series is funny as hell
https://anilist.co/manga/130548/Kenja-ga-Nakama-ni-Natta/
Same, re-watching just isn’t on the table when there is just so much that I haven’t watched yet. My completed and watch lists ended up growing at about the same rate and now they’re both over 600, but I’ve also transitioned to mostly seasonal watcher at this point. And I’m well past the point of worrying about ever finishing my watch list.
What’s BakaBT all about? I’m not familiar with that one.
This series is funny as hell!
https://anilist.co/manga/130548/Kenja-ga-Nakama-ni-Natta/
I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets animated
Anyone read the recent chapter of call of the night? I’m pretty sure the character at the end is Lira
For context
Anyone able to recommend a good site to get manga from, not looking to give Amazon anymore money than I have to
Have you generally had good experiences with them?
I’d ask @Zealon or @Skelterz a search has posts from them
https://forum.level1techs.com/search?context=topic&context_id=126350&q=rightstuf&skip_context=false
Seems they are happy with them
I have purchased many Blu-ray’s and manga from them when I was more into collecting. They are pretty solid but sadly I went with Amazon for the majority of my collection as it was in stock and sometimes cheaper.
You can definitely see the care Rightstuff takes in packaging your goods as well. They fill the void as much as possible or use appropriate packaging to ensure nothing moves around and gets damaged.
If you haven’t used this site I really like sentaifilmworks I got multiple blu ray from them and it seems like every holiday they have a sale. The only downside is their selection isn’t huge but I think they are a partner with right stuff since a lot of the packages I revive are labeled with the rightstuff logo.
Ah yeah. Almost forgot! I think back in 2019 I got a haul of about 12-15 Blu-ray’s included 3 limited editions for about $160.
I’ll try to remember to add it to the OP.
anime triggers my inner fomo really hard…probably end up moving to Japan because of it
I would like to visit at some point, but I wouldn’t want to move there.
Ive been their twice its a very nice place to visit but I would agree I wouldn’t want to move their.
Having visited once Japan up to now, and despite the drawbacks, I would not mind living in Japan. I really like the country.
I wanted to visit again with Korea in April and May, but Japan will surely not reopen itself by May 1st, so it’s gonna be a Korea travel only 