Updates - September 1st, 2006

Our Ranson, WV order processing center will be closed on Monday, September 4th for the labor day holiday, and again for part of Thursday September 7th for relocation activities. We will be spending most of the long weekend working out at the new facility, and will be moving some of our infrastructure to the new warehouse on Thursday the 7th. Since our facilities are far to large to relocate in one or two days, we will be moving our operations to the new location in stages over the next several weeks, and we are going to structure the move to cause the least disruption to our shipping operations as possible.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it! -_^

Saturday, Sept 2nd: Jamie can be seen helping to assemble the upper tiers of some of the pick/pull
shelving units at the new facility. She's such a trooper!

It's going to be a wet weekend for us as the remains of tropical storm Ernesto passes through our area today and tomorrow. It's already raining heavily and the wind is really picking up outside, and the guys in the know say we might get 5 or 6 inches of rain over the next 24 hours. Sounds like a good time to kick back and catch up on a few Anime flicks that are in the backlog pile!

A couple of new release tid bits this week. First, rumor has it that the Limited Edition version of the Fullmetal Alchemist movie has been delayed until November. I should have confirmation on that next week from Funimation, and I hope this is not going to be the case as this would be a really big deal, as about 75% of the folks that pre-ordered the movie ordered the limited version, so we'll try to get some definite word on that as soon as we can. We also received a retailer recall notice today from Geneon for the Trigun Remix Vol #2 DVD, though they did not indicate why - I've inquired as to what the actual problem is with the disk, but they are closed today and Monday for the holiday so we won't know until next week.

[Update: The rumor has been confirmed, release date for the limited edition version of the Fullmetal Alchemist movie has indeed been bumped to November 14th. That info comes right from our guy at Funimation.]

TokyoPop announced this week a rather half baked plan to go direct with certain manga titles, including One, Neck and Neck, Heaven Above Heaven, Sorcerer Hunters, Soul to Seoul, Dragon Head, Dragon Voice, and Arm of Kannon (for starters). Chip Meyers, who is the VP of marketing over there explains that the move is to drive fan traffic to their website so that it can become a 'fan portal' per say and allow them to sell more advertising.

ICV2 recently published 'MY' personal opinion of the move by TokyoPop. You can read it here.

Here on the RACS side Blog, I recently posted the top 50 search terms for the store over the last 30 days. It may be a bit of a surprise what some folks are looking for.

Gordon gives us his latest review this week, and reminds us that Fans of anime are always fans of Hayao Miyazaki however, fans of Hayao Miyazaki [and other Studio Ghibli productions] are not always fans of anime.

Good updates all around this week with the Alchemist movie and the IY Season 3 boxed set arriving early. Another really huge manga update this week - we put in a lot of extra hours getting all those new volumes posted to the site, especially considering there were 13 brand new series mixed in there. A couple new shipments of statues and figures arrived and I must say for the price both the Bome figures (Kiddy Grade and Jingai Makyo) are really excellent. The paint scheme used on the Kiddy Grade set is exceptional and I was a little surprised at just how nice they are. We also received an extremely cool figure of Hikaru from Peace at Pieces which I immediately took home for my own collection! :-) We also have lots of new character merchandise in this week including new hats, patches, posters, keychains, and more.

There is something for everyone, so make sure to check it all out while you are lounging around this weekend!