Ni No Kuni II Artbook Discovery

Serendipity is nice. I was having a date-night with my wife this past weekend. While eating pizza for dinner, we reminisced about how we went to video stores like Blockbuster and looked for a movie to watch on a Friday night. Sometimes we'd end up walking around the aisles, browsing for something that would catch our eyes. It was nice to discover new entertainment.

After dinner, we went to our local mall to shop and browse at Books-a-Million. It's always fun to look around and check out all the cool or unique collectibles and browse for books. I wanted to see if an old Octopath Traveler book — a big hardback — was still for sale. Instead, I ended up finding something cool that I wasn't even looking for and didn't know existed.

There on a bookshelf was a different big hardback book for another JRPG that I've been planning to play — it's on my Switch backlog, a shelf in my house. The book title: The Art of Ni No Kuni II Revenant Kingdom. Whoa, cool!

The book is for a game I'm sure to enjoy — my wife has already played through it. I played and finished the first one on Switch: Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. It's one of my most favorite JRPGs. So this artbook for the sequel is a cool collectible that I hope will help me enjoy and appreciate the game even more (when I finally play it).

What makes this new book discovery more serendipitous is the fact that it demonstrated the very nice topic we had just talked about at dinner: walking up and down physical store aisles to browse and discover new things you didn't know existed, things you would like.

Best of all, the Ni No Kuni II artbook was on the bargain bookshelf. While normally retailing for $40, the price tag was only $13 — score!

I may be old-school, but kids these days, raised on instant digital gratification, are missing out on the benefits of scarcity and limitations of physical goods. While it's convenient that I can access any entertainment I want 24/7, there's value in going to a store for a new movie or book and finding it rented or sold out because then you may discover a new (or old) title that turns out to be a better treat than you would have hoped for.

We like to control life — on-demand viewing — but if you let it, sometimes life will surprise and delight you. I like to think such blessings are providence rather than coincidence.