Much more than with many other media, anime/manga collections are a signal of personal allegiance and preference. For example, I can still recall the bitternes

Much more than with many other media, anime/manga collections are a signal of personal allegiance and preference. For example, I can still recall the bitterness in the early US One Piece fandom when it seemed like Naruto and Bleach got all the marketing, the high-quality dubs, and merchandise galore, while they had to suffer through one of the most atrocious dubs in modern history and a manga release schedule that was 40 volumes behind Japan. I still have the tokens of this-- some untranslated copies found in secondhand shops and from fan-forum group buys, terrible figures, artbooks purchased at conventions long before the translated versions existed. Bookshelves full of print manga will not disappear for anything short of a house fire. The same with owned DVDs, or properly maintained pirate content. They remain an ongoing symbol of the commitment to these franchises. In a way that would make sense to mainstream marketers, it's more like sports memorabelia-- keeping the cards/jerseys/etc. of their favourite baseball players from their childhood-- than a bookshelf full of novels. Conversely, anything you consume on a "subscription service" basis will go poof when some MBA sees a KPI trending in the wrong direction. Can you really build the same anchored relationship with that sort of fragile foundation?