Haruhi Limited Boxes Are All Shipped - Hallelujah!!

Thank God it's over! After three full days at it I can finally report that we've completed shipping out all of the pre-orders for the Haruhi Limited box.

As one of the largest pre-order batches we've ever processed (for pretty much anything), I want to let everyone know that I appreciate your patience this week while we worked our butts off to ship all of these out as quickly as possible alongside regular orders. We got em done a full day ahead of schedule, and a pretty good percentage of the ones that went out Priority Mail should get to customers by this weekend, and the rest early next week.

Now it's Miller time...

Have a great Memorial Day Weekend Everyone, and enjoy the pics!

Jamie helping process Haruhi domestic batch #21 . There were 30 domestic batch's of 25 units each, and 5 international batches. Here you can see that determined look on her face of "'Damn the Torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead" - or maybe that's an "Oh My God - How Many More...." Ron can be seen (with a similar look on his face) in the background working on some of the Overseas shipments.

Robert (ME) helping to process Haruhi tickets and answering e-mails from customers asking if their box has shipped out yet. Notice the tired look, slightly receding hairline, dark circles under the eyes, and 3 days stubble from not shaving - these are all requirements if you are thinking of running an Anime store... -_^

School Rumble Coming in Late August

This just in, hot off the press!

One of my inside sources at Funimation has confirmed the rumor that the first volume of School Rumble will be scheduled for release in late August and that we should have a firm date for it shortly. This is very exciting because School Rumble is one of the highest rated Anime series to come out of Japan for some time and a lot of folks have been e-mailing in asking us about it.

Better still, Funimation is planning a limited edition Tin starter box for the first volume of the series that sounds extremely cool - it's going to be shaped like a locker. I'm trying to get some preliminary (first peek) art to post so you can see what it will look like.

Update: Here's that first peak tin box art I promised you. :-)



Funimation's School Rumble site can be found here.

Barring realignment for release announcements coming later this year that we don't know about yet, so far I predict the top 8 most popular Anime DVD releases of 2007 will be:

1. Haruhi
   
2. Full Metal Panic 2nd Raid
   
3. School Rumble


4. Gits Solid State Society


5. Black Lagoon


6. Naruto


7. Bleach


8. Tsubasa
   

Of course this is highly speculative to try to call any of these this early in the year, but it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

(I think we can also drop Death Note into that list assuming Viz manages to get it out on DVD before the holidays. I sure hope they do!)

We'll get the first volume of School Rumble posted to the store as soon as Fun gives us a firm date.

School Rumble Synopsis:

Tsukamoto Tenma is an ordinary 2nd year high school student who has fallen in love with one of her classmates, Karasuma Ooji. However, currently she is unable to confess her feelings to him. To make things worse, she found out that Karasuma is transferring to another school in a year. On the other hand, Tenma's other classmate, Harima Kenji (who is a delinquent) is also in love with Tenma. Not being able to confess his feelings, Harima gets depressed day by day.

UPDATE: Video Scan reported today that the first DragonBall Z Remastered Box is the #1 selling Anime DVD so far this year, but my list above only had new series in mind, not repackaged releases.

Upcoming Black Lagoon & Hellsing Ultimate Limited Editions

Our inside contacts over at Geneon shot a couple of e-mails my way this week with the inside scoop on two upcoming exciting limited editions.

Black Lagoon DVD Vol #3 Limited Edition

The first is the proposed (BUT NOT CONFIRMED) Limited version of Black Lagoon Vol #3. Keep in mind this is early release info and final decisions have not yet been made, but Geneon is considering including a special limited edition authentic Zippo lighter and packaging it at a proposed $50 MSRP price tag. Here are images we were able to obtain of the 5 draft designs they are considering:



Hellsing Ultimate Vol #2 Limited Edition

We also have the scoop on the packaging for the next Hellsing limited edition. It comes with a 200 plus page production art collection book with tons of illustrations/original sketches and the steel case will have some pretty controversial artwork (note the 'big bird').


Pretty Sweet!

Blog Back Up - Thanks Google

Hey, we're back!

Sometime yesterday Google apparently did an electronic sweep and identified my Blog as a potential SPLOG (or Spam Blog) and automatically took it down. Google sent me an e-mail and I had to go to a screen a jump through a couple of verification hoops and then submit the Blog for review.

How it happened I have no idea, but their algorithm apparently needs further tweaking. About 4 hours later, I find it back on line, so they have seen the err in their ways.

"Hello, Your blog has been reviewed, verified, and cleared for regular use so thatit will no longer appear as potential spam. If you sign out of Blogger andsign back in again, you should be able to post as normal. Thanks for yourpatience, and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. Sincerely, The Blogger Team."

Good, I have a new post in progress so now I can finish it up. We'll, Jamie made Chicken and baked beans tonight for dinner, so maybe later....

UPDATE: Steven Den Beste over at Chizumatic writes:

"Blogspot is a lot like training wheels for a bicycle. A lot of people find out about blogging and decide they want to try it. They may make a few posts, and then lose interest in it. Blogspot is a good place for someone to try blogging out, but if they turn out to be serious and to really want to keep it up, then they should move on, because in the long run Blogspot is worth what you're paying to use it. And we still don't have an explanation for why Google decided to replace Bob's blog with a 404 page written in Japanese."

He's Right, and that's exactly what I've used this space for - a place to try out a Blog in a space that had a reasonable opportunity to gain an audience (in theory). The one thing that I have discovered is that, while I always seem to have a great deal to say, I have very little time to put those thoughts down, or when I do have those thoughts it may be several hours or days later before I have an opportunity to actually write them down and by then they are pretty stale in my mind and I don't want to write about them anymore. Most evenings I get home from the office pretty tired, and 'Post New Blog Entry' is often too far down on my things to do list to make it. If I didn't have a business to run, I'd probably Blog every day.

But I am trying and haven't given it up by any means.