@fineursine haha, extremely real. My escaflowne tapes are from Suncoast, IIRC. My Eva DVDs are from Media Play. I read the rest of the plot of Eva online when I was 14 and decided against buying the rest of the series. I think that was the first time I did the thing that became 'well I read the Wikipedia article so I'm extremely good on this', now that I think about it.
@fineursine that may have also been the first time I realized I was good on a piece of media because it was actively horrible to the female characters (asuka and misato were the only characters from that series I ever actually liked)