Updates - November 16th, 2007

It's cold and windy today, and it certainly feels like fall! The Thanksgiving holiday is coming up next week, and that means good food and time with Family and friends.

This year has been a turbulent one in the Anime industry with many good companies vanishing from the scene, and many great people having to look for new jobs outside of the field they know and love. We'd like to take some time to send them all our best wishes and hopes for the future, and I'd like to personally thank each and every one of you for the continued support you've shown us this year. We come to work everyday to serve you, and it's only your support that makes what we do possible.

Thank you very much!

Couple more schedule changes in this week. Funimation has let us know that they have moved back the release of both the Gunslinger Girl and the new Spiral economy boxed sets from Nov 20th to Dec 13th. That means we now expect them to arrive around the first week of December.

Speaking of Gunslinger Girl, many of Funimation's second/third/fourth generation re-releases (and hence price downs) are being released under the name 'the Viridian Collection', and a lot of people are writing in wondering what that means, and if there is anything special about it. The answer is no, except that the marketing folks at Fun are very smart and came up with something that created a buzz. Viridian (other than being a shade of bright green) = Anime Legends = Signature Series = Essential Anime = etc.etc. They are just cool sounding buzz terms that indicate that this version is a re-re-re-re-re-released version of an older title at a lower MSRP. Actually, I think 'Viridian' has a rather nice ring to it myself - I always thought 'Essential Anime' was kinda 'cliche', especially when they stamp it on any old title whether it's essential or not... -_^

You'd be surprised how many fans are pretty disconnected from current events in the industry, and we are still fielding a couple dozen inquires a week from people wondering why 'X' Geneon title was canceled or is sold out. Since Geneon products are starting to become rather scarce (try finding a complete set of Fate/Stay), many of you have requested we post a list of Geneon titles. You can find that list here along with some of the items that are especially low stock and will be gone soon. If nothing else grab a set of Ergo Proxy (check out the ANN review) because it's one of those series that's you'll regret missing once the DVD's sell out.

The holidays are upon us, and next week we will be celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday with our families. This year the holidays fall a little earlier on the calendar, and you might not have as much time as you think to get those holiday gifts so we've posted our 2007 holiday shipping and delivery schedule to help guide you through the holiday shopping season and make sure your orders arrive on time (because hey, that's what we do!).

Another badly run Anime company bites the dust. This week the folks at Mythwear (the guys that make some of those logo bags and other merchandise) took down their website and disconnected their phones so they have effectively ceased to exist as an operating entity. I understand that they left our friends in Iowa holding the bag (no pun intended) on a lot of customer backorders that they had taken for products that they did not have in stock. We stopped doing business with Myth earlier this year when it become clear they were not delivering orders in a timely fashion, nor were they responsive to customer issues - especially issues of quality on some of the newer releases. So Mythwear fades into history and our stock on their stuff will be limited to whatever we have left on hand - and don't worry - we never take orders for things we don't actually keep in stock. -_^

I caught the first 4 eps of FLAG last weekend, and it's a really good series so far, though it's very different - sort of in the way that Kino's Journey was different from anything else on the scene at the time - and it's certainly not getting the recognition that it deserves. The folks at ANN offer this advice on Flag: "Jaded by all of the cookie-cutter anime series out there (yes)? Want something utterly different (definitely)? Check out this mature, politically charged series about a star photographer embedded in a front- line military unit in a strife- torn Asian country. (OK, I'm sold!)" I also finally got to watch the first DVD of Death Note and it's every bit as good as everyone says it is. It's brilliant, in fact, it may turn out to be one of the best Anime released this year!

After many requests we've extended our 'Gobble Up the Savings' promo for five more days, so you can continue to enjoy the coupon savings through Tuesday, November 20th. Be sure to checkout the coupon section on the stores front page..

Our early bird Figure and Toy sale continues. We've discounted almost every in stock item in the Figure and Toy section an additional 10% to ensure there is plenty of Anime goodness to go under the tree this year. Combine that discount with our current coupon savings and our economy shipping option and you've got your self a real deal. Trust me folks, this gets you down right around cost on many of these items! Quantities are limited to stock on hand, and we've already seen 32 figures disappear from the site in the past 7 days, so don't wait since many more will be going away in the next few days.

Our partner sale with Adult Source Media also continues, so you can still save up to 40% off on all of their titles. We've done a big buy in of extra stock for the sale so the low prices will only be valid while our extra sale stock lasts. Adults only please!

DVD boxed sets have been the name of the game this week. The big news is the excellent Git's 2nd GIG boxed set that we received early. It includes all 7 GITS 2nd GIG DVD's in a great looking art box (much nicer than the original GiTS box), and our pre-order customers are already enjoying their sets this weekend. We also received the 5th Naruto boxed set, which we're making available to fans about 3 weeks before it will be put out on store shelves. The LE version of the Naruto box (which includes the Gamabunta figure) arrived a couple hours ago and is still being checked in (along with Suzuka 5), so they are both available now though they won't be updated on the site until later today. You heard it here first!

The manga companies clearly won't be satisfied until we are reading manga 24 hours a day! :-) This is our third huge manga update in a row, and we're glad of it because this week we got several shipments from TokyoPop that included many much needed restocks. Some of the restocks like iDentity 10 and Rozen Maiden 6 took TokyoPop five full weeks to ship to us, but you all know about my angst with them, and I'm just glad they are here. In addition to 49 new manga arrivals we have more import Anime goodness in the form of new art collections and the latest round of Japanese magazines like Megami. We also have a few of the very scarce and massive Naruto Shadow Box collections which contains the first 27 volumes of Naruto in a special edition wooden collectors case and will be one of those items that don't last long this holiday season!

We did a huge and long overdue character merchandise update this week. We also have many new figures and few figure restocks in this week, but in very limited quantities (some of which have already sold out). There still a couple of the Masane Power Up figures left, and be sure to checkout the new and extremely cool Esther Blanchett figure - she's a keeper! Check below for the scoop on everything that's come in, or check our updates page for the complete story!

My parting words for you this week are - Pretty In Pink!

That's it for this week. Have a great weekend - and ENJOY your Anime! :-)