Updates - September 29th, 2006

Hey guys and gals! We're knee deep in the move for the next two weeks, so I'm going to have to make this a brief update.

This week we heard that the new Robotech production 'Shadow Chronicles' was named the Best Animated Sci-Fi Feature at the 2006 International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival, but unfortunately the DVD release that was originally scheduled for November has been pushed to Spring of 2007. Figures. We received some more of the Voltron tins so it finally came off pre-order status as I think we have enough now to say that's it's in stock. The Shana DVD/CD combo pack experienced a last minute delay from Geneon (they missed the street date of 9/26), but we've confirmed that they are now on the way and we should have them in a day or two.

I've noticed lately that Funimation's limited edition boxes REALLY ARE limited, and that we have been unable to go back to them for restocks (on the popular ones) after our initial shipment. Because of this we're ramping up our initial orders for these types of items to make sure we can keep them in stock longer. A couple of recent releases that come to mind are the Negima Limited box #1, and especially the new Trinity Blood DVD box, both of which are sold out at Funimation's level and are getting in short supply in our warehouse. We have also run out of the Samurai 7 collectors art boxes and Funimation will not be pressing anymore. With this in mind, my advice for everyone out there that wants a new Funimation limited release is to go ahead and pre-order it so that your place in line for one is secured.

We have been working on some site enhancements that you have requested, along with upgrading some of our backend functions. We changed the software that monitors site statistics, and as a result went ahead and reset our counter back to 10 Million from 12 Million unique visits. The new software keeps track of visitors more accurately, and I felt the reset was probably indicative of the margin of error with the old software. We are also changing the layout for our upcoming releases page to make it more manageable. We're also experimenting with features that will allow that list to be sorted by date and title. I'll let you know in a few weeks how that's coming along.

A few new DVD releases in this week, most notably Speedgrapher #3 and the final volume of Ichigo Mashimarof, and a lite manga update that included Berserk #13 and a new series 'Line' which looks really good. We received another nice new figure shipment including two Ex figures of Rei and Asuka, and a truly lovely figure of Asa Shigure from Shuffle, plus several others. By the way, Sega is calling the Rei figure 'Rei Matsuri', and several people have written in thinking that's a typo. Matsuri just means 'festival', so Rei Matsuri basically translates to 'festival version Rei'. We do indeed know her last name is Ayanami. -_^ Finally, our cheap-skate of the week is devoted Anime fan John S., who by way of our e-mail conversations this week is taking both 'Frugal' and 'Perfect Condition' to a new level. Are you reading this John??!! We love you man! -_^ Actually a lot of you guys have written in recently about financial strains and such (the biggest reason we participated in the Geneon sale), so I did a coupon for our newsletter subscribers this week that should help ease the pain a little. :-)