First off, I’d like to welcome you guys to a new column entitled Anime and the love of Headphones, which I plan on running for a couple articles. As a short introduction, I’m actually a big personal hi-fi audio geek. It’s probably a hereditary thing since each guy in my family seems to have their own personal preference for audio. For my father, it’s home audio systems; my brother is an expert in car audio (and he even serves as a professional judge in some gigs); for me, it’s headphones and other high-performance audio recording equipment.

Which makes watching anime all the more fun when they cameo real-life equipment in a show. It’s a fact that the headphone market has seen a marked boost in popularity after the release of Beats by dr. dre, and other commercials/celebrities that promote these headsets as forms of fashion statements simply add to the whole headphone craze. And though it might serve as a touch of class in anime for the casual viewer, it’s a pleasant little easter egg for headphone enthusiasts like me when I see a model that I’ve either tested in the past or better yet own myself.

So in these next few articles, I’ll pay tribute to some of the great headphone models that have made their cameo appearances in well known anime (and even manga). I’m pretty sure some of you might have spotted some of these models before, but here’s the point where I share a little extra trivia on what you might not have known about these wonderful pieces of ear jewelry. Heck, you might even be inclined to buy them yourselves!

So enough chit-chat and let’s get started! Continue reading →