No pain, no gain.

Do note: The set, has as you can see, been in its factory sealed packaging until after a few photos were already taken. I took the photos for my own excitement, not the expectation of finding something wrong with the set. Yen Press is singlehandedly to blame. Archonia.com is a great vendor, and in no way are they to blame. I’ll use them again. They are great in the sense that they’ve even somewhat tailored my ordering experience to my preference. I was anxious with worry whether or not I’ll be missing out on this thing, and as a response to my worry, they’d shipped for me 1 hour after I had placed the order. People all over the world have received their copy in identical states (I’ve seen 3 pictures without the chest having crumpled edges so that much can be attributed to shipping, but regardless, the books are the primary thing and they will, by design, be damaged). There’s another Tumblr that I’ve seen has posted the photos of their copy. top-shelf-manga Look at their post about it, look at the photos where the books are visible. You can see the same exact thing on their books, it’s just only slightly visible, but that is because of the lighting. https://topshelfmanga.tumblr.com/post/167599850305/pandora-box Sidenote; People like that Tumblr and everyone else not complaining about this IMO goes to say how they’ve just bought this without actually consuming it, just for collecting. They’ve not even given it a proper look(what the hell is up with that). The girl on Youtube who did an unboxing literally didn’t want to even pull out the books(in an unboxing video). Am I the only one thus far who's noticed this??? Anyways, as I’ve said, look for the traces of this issue on any other photo taken   by someone else of their set.  This is something that at least the majority of the produced copies bear, in my opinion. I’d have lived on fine with just the chest being in the state that it arrived in.

So now, time to tell my experience:

The package wasn’t due to come for a week more. I shivered due to my excitement. Had a shower, cleaned my room, did some other stuff to approach the unpackaging with a serene mind-set.

Btw. I had thought that I was aware of how weighty this thing is. Nope, it blew past my expectations(knowing it’s 11.5kg does nothing, once I’d picked it up, wow).

Imgur album with the full-res photographs: https://imgur.com/a/AWQFf

Already here you see the dented corners. I had believed that it was just tough luck on the part of those people who have thus far posted online, but nope.

That bookmark, I love small stuff like that. Archonia.com <3

On my legs to convey the size of the thing.

Next to my 21.5inch PC screen, again for size grasping.

The plastic wrapping was tough, needed a knife to get through it. Liked that.

What a beautiful thing..

From here on out, the beginning of my euphoria sinking to 0, and then in to the negative spectrum unfolds..

As you can see, one of the books was actually fucking hit on one of its corners. It might look minuscule,which it isn’t, but even if it was...

I have extensively with a micro-fiber cloth sipped in warm water(on the lukewarm side, not on the hot side) tried to “wash the dirt off” off of volume 10 (the one on the image below). The picture was taken after leaving the book to dry off slightly. This is what was the crushing blow, the verification of the not even fathomed, that it’s actually physical damage and not just dirt(EDIT-IN: and why the fuck would the freshly opened, “mint” condition books be dirty to begin with).

How the right side connection between the two chest pieces looks(how it should be)

How the left side connection between the two chest pieces looks

The right-upper corner of the chest

The left-upper corner. It’s torn on the outside and broken on the inside(I can pull apart the sections).

NOTICE: Inside of at least one of the books(the final volume), there are marks of someone as if having had stepped on it. A short black drag-mark as if created by a black-rubber surface which had been pressed against it.

I could’ve taken so many more pictures of the ruptures/damages of the chest, and obviously I’ve not even photographed all of the volumes. I got too disheartened and I’d concluded that this much is enough.

Dang, the picture would've been such a nice one, if only I could've kept my hands steady. But I've found beauty in it(not that it was hard to do so to begin with). I was nervous and thus lightly trembling as I was on my way to the very first job interview of mine.