Updates - January 30th, 2007

I was talking a little bit in my last about how cold it was here at Anime Corner World Headquarters, but that was when it was around 30 degrees (F) outside. Last night it got down to 4 degrees with a 30mph wind so whatever perceptions I had last week have been shattered - it REALLY IS cold now! Of course, everything is relative, and while 4 degrees is extreme weather to someone living in Florida, it might seem like a nice day to someone living in, say, Minnesota. I was talking to one of our contacts at Navarre last week - they are up there in New Hope, MN. I was joking around with her that we would have to do lunch sometime, and she said lunch sounded great - as long as it was anywhere WARM!

Speaking of things that are 'relative', this coming Wednesday is my 37th birthday. Now before you all start sending in masses of birthday wishes (wink) you should probably know that it's mostly just a technical date and that I stopped officially aging at 29 (and mentally at about 17) so to me it's just my 8th 29th birthday... -_^

Seriously though, while everyone will tell you 37 is young, in Anime circles I'm considered 'relatively' old, at least among most of the fan base. Nothing is falling off yet though, and there are two or three Anime fans older than me, like my friend Jerry who turned 50 this week (happy birthday!). The cool thing about Anime for us 'old men' is that despite our rapid aging, it helps us stay young at heart - and that's all that really matters!

In the news this week we have one date change for you. Geneon has pushed the 4th Shana DVD a couple of weeks from March 6th to March 20th. We got the word that Solid State Society is coming to a DVD near you in July, and we've made it available to you in pre-order at 40% off MSRP for a limited time. Fun finally announced a new date for the rescheduled Initial D season 1 DVD boxed set (March 13th), and we also have made it available to you in pre-order for a short time at 40% off MSRP. In other news Funimation announced 5 new licenses this week as part of their 2007 kick-off event - Ragnarok: The Animation, Suzuka, Aquarion, Shuffle!, and My Santa. All 5 are set to begin coming out on DVD during the second half of 2007.

After getting some exchange requests, we hit up Bandai this week about the problem a few people are having with the Gundam Seed Destiny Vol #6 DVD where part of Episode 25 is not playable. Bandai did some investigating and found out that one batch (but not all) seems to have been delivered bad from the presser. Right now this problem appears to be effecting about 15% of customers, but we have pulled all of our GSD 6 DVD's and returned them to Bandai. I apologize in advance for any backorder situations that this may cause. Also, if you do have a bad disk, you can let us know and we'll replace it for you, or you can e-mail Larry at Bandai directly (vongl@bandai.com) and they will send you a new disk.

The backorder situation with Geneon continues (we are calling it the 'GENEON EFFECT' around here), as they still have not completed their warehouse move. A few catalog items have started to ship again, but all of the new January releases are still in transit and won't start to ship to retailers again until next week. We apologize for any backorder situations (or extended order holds) this has caused for titles like Disgaea - with Geneon being closed for almost a month now it's been a difficult situation for everyone. We're staying on top of them (I've really been giving them hell for not planning this better) and we will make sure we get these back in as quickly as possible in order to get your copies out to you. Hopefully in about another week this will all be just a memory.

Our work continues on updating our checkout process to make it more user friendly, and I think you will be very pleased with the results once we get it finished. One feature will be an integrated shipping/billing screen that will eliminate one step from the current checkout, and another will be a calculator right in the shopping cart that will allow you to apply a coupon code or credit code prior to checking out so you know what your order total will be ahead of time. And the big announcement is that we are planning to bring back PayPal as a payment method on a trial basis. Long time customers will remember the terrible fraud problems we had with Paypal back in 2004, but that was a long time ago and we're hoping things are better now. We've built an ASP right into the checkout process that will allow you to access your paypal account and fund your order quickly, easily, and securely through PayPal, and we are currently testing it to make sure there are no bugs or snags in the process. We're hoping to make that live around the second week of February, so stay tuned!

Lots of new DVD arrivals this week including Shadow Chronicles for all you Robotech fans, and the early arrival of the DBZ Vegeta remastered set. Since the DBZ set arrived early, I've extended the 40% off 'pre-order' price through the street date of February 6th, but they are shipping now! We have another batch of beautiful new PVC figures for you this week including the very large and beautiful 1/5 scale Chi's (we're calling her the B.F. Chi around here), and the burst version of Fate Testerossa which comes in a gorgeous window box. We've been diligently adding new figures for pre-order, and I've included a partial list below. Finally, since my birthday is coming up, I have some special B-Day coupons that will help you guys celebrate along with me!

To save 3% off any order over $37, use the following coupon code during checkout:

birthday37

Or, to save 5% off any order over $137, use the following coupon code during checkout:

birthday137

Or, to save 7% off any order over $337, use the following coupon code during checkout:

birthday337

Coupons are valid ONLY for NEW orders, and good through Wednesday, January 31st only, so don't wait!