Updates - September 8th, 2006

Between us coming off the long holiday weekend and working out at the new place it's been a very short week for us and the whole crew has really been busting butt to get everyone's order filled. I think we are finally caught up filling new orders today. Phew!!

I wanted to mention again that while we are trying to make the move process as transparent as possible, there may be some delays filling a few orders here and there as we will be giving special attention to making sure orders go out complete this month in order to cause us fewer backlogs. This is complicated further when companies like Bandai do not print enough of new items like the .Hack//Sign DVD boxed sets and we have to hold some orders for a few days until we can make arrangements for copies from somewhere else to fill the gap in the interim.

So please be patient with us during this period of time as we will have the move completed in the next 3 to 4 weeks.

Speaking of companies not printing enough copies, my comments on TokyoPop last week seem to have created quite a stir. I'm not sure what the folks at TokyoPop are thinking about, but making some titles direct only and moving to an 'on demand' model for reprinting manga is probably the worst idea anyone in this industry has ever come up with. For folks in the direct market like us it means we will have to take deeper stock of non returnable new releases (which raises our overall cost on TokyoPop's line), and fans will see a higher number of blackout periods on manga volumes that are backordered because they are in reprint. Of course, what this boils down to is that direct sales only = no competition, scarcity = higher demand, and increasing retailer costs to carry a product = lower margins...

...which all will equal higher prices for fans and that IMHO sucks. I bite my thumb at anyone who says differently. -_^

In the news this week we've received word of several release date changes, which is very typical for the fall Anime season. I would expect this to be the norm for the next 2 or 3 months.

Here are the changes we've been able to confirm so far:

Changed From 8-29/9-6 to 9-26
Green Green 2 DVD
GaoGaiGar 1 DVD
GaoGaiGar 1 DVD w Art Box
Trinity Blood 1 DVD
Trinity Blood 1 DVD Limited

Changed From 9-26 to 10-3
Basilisk 2 DVD
Basilisk 2 DVD Limited

Changed From 10-3 to 10-10
Hare + Guu 5 DVD

Changed From 9-26 to 11-14
Fullmetal Alchemist Movie Limited

[UPDATE] As fate has it, we received Green Green Vol #2 in a late afternoon shipment arrival on Friday 9-8, so they will begin shipping on Monday 9-11. As to if it's actually arriving late or early, I'll let you guys decide... -_^

We have LOTS of preorders booked for the FMA Movie Limited edition - in fact about 75% of youpre-ordered the limited version of the movie, and many of those orders include other items that are holding for it's release, so if anyone has one on order and would like to change it just drop us an -mail (include your order number please) and we'll take care of it. It seems that the Zatch Bell movie got on a solicitation spreadsheet by mistake and is not even on Viz's 2007 schedule yet, so we have removed it from the site and cancelled any prebook orders for it that were placed during the short time it was up. Finally, Brocolli has let us know that they are sold out of all copies of the old pressing of the three FLCL DVD's, and that it will not be repressed as it is being replaced with a new edition in November (we'll have that up for pre-order shortly). We still have a few copies of the old FLCL DVD's for anyone who doesn't want to wait.

After some feedback on my search terms posting, we did a little experiment recently regarding who buys Yaoi titles, and the results might surprise you.

Not directly related to Anime, but Sony announced a couple days ago that they were delaying the launch of the PS3 game console in Europe from Nov 2006 to March 2007 in order to have enough units available for the Nov 2006 launch in Japan and North America, though they only expect to have 2 Million Units available for shipment in 2006 rather than the 4 Million they originally estimated would ship by years end. The problem is mainly that there will not be enough Blue Ray drives to go around because Sony has fallen way behind on their original manufacturing estimates. This does not bode well for the near future of the Blue Ray DVD format, as a serious shortage of components will limit the number of players available over the next few months and will keep the price high.

I've never been fond of Sony's predatory business practices which date all the way back to the 80's, so if this helps HD get a leg up on Blue Ray, that's fine with me. The sooner a single common standard is adopted, the better it will be for future high def Anime releases.

Even though it was a short week there was no lack of new early item arrivals. Some of the new volumes that came in on the manga side were not slated for release until October, which offsets the August Infinity titles that finally arrived 3 or 4 weeks late. This kinda stuff drives us nuts you know! :-) We also received the first part of a nice new figure shipment that included the absolutely gorgeous Yoakemaeyori Ruriirona Feena statue that is even bigger than I originally thought - so you know where the first one of her went! Finally, sorry we haven't updated the front page for a couple of weeks - that will be done next week for Sept along with adding about 80 new prebook items for November and December that have been accumulating in my inbox. Also I'm currently finalizing our choices for 2007 import calendars, so look for those to start going up on the site soon for pre-order. There is some great stuff coming later this fall, and I'll let you know the whole scoop on it right here over the next few weeks.