Wagnaria Premium Edition Restocks Delayed - Now Scheduled for Late May

NIS America has been assuring us - as late as last Friday - that the final pressing of the Wagnaria premium collection would be shipping to retailers on May 11th, so we expected to have it sometime late this week. They even worked in some other restocks to ship on the same date.

We'll, in the typical fashion of only a Japanese run US based studio operation, they informed us today that the final pressing of Wagnaria will be delayed until around the end of May:

"It has come to our attention that there occurred a problem in manufacturing process for WAGNARIA!! Premium Edition 2nd batch. In order for us to build and deliver perfect products to our customers, we have decided to postpone the schedule for a certain period. Current estimate of the dispatch will be the end of May, we will update you once we had a fixed date."

Can you hear me banging my head against my desk? Since we have so many pre-billed back orders and hold tickets currently sitting on the shelf waiting for the set, this is obviously going to cause us about 2,000 headaches and if you listen to the talk around the office this morning you'll know that NIS is not our favorite company at the moment, temporarily replacing Bandai (for a few days at least) as the largest source of angst for us as a retailer of Anime DVD's. I've been e-mailing customers constantly for the last few days assuring them that we would be shipping these sets in a few days, and now, of course, I feel like a complete idiot for trusting in a date given to me by a studio. After about 7,480 missed dates over the years by just about everyone, you'd think I'd know better.

Anyway, if you currently have a multi-item order holding for this set, we are going to modify your ticket today so that we can ship your other items out now, and we will place the Wagnaria set on back order for you and will ship it (at our expense) once they do finally arrive - whenever that is. I also want to apologize to everyone for this. I don't like it when we make a commitment to you and then can't meet it, even if the situation is out of our control. If you have any concerns about your order for Wagnaria, please don't hesitate to drop us a line so we can address it.

Omnibus Editions: A Sign of the Times

In a sign of the times, Del Rey has recently canceled a handful of upcoming manga volumes in favor of Omnibus editions that allow them to incorporate more material together in a lower priced package. Instead of Wallflower 22 and 23, we will now get a Wallflower Omnibus 22-24. Orange Planet 3 has now been replaced with the Orange Planet Omnibus 3-5, and the first volume of Wild@Heart will now be the Wild at Heart Omnibus 1-3.

We've updated the store site to reflect these changes.

The downside of this is that, for finicky collectors that like their manga shelves to be 'just so', the new volumes will be fatter and won't match the old ones they already have. The upside is that instead of paying $10.98 MSRP per volume, we get three volumes for just $21.98 MSRP. Nothing wrong with that!

Update: Seven Seas has announced that it has licensed Yu Aida's Gunslinger Girl action manga and Masayuki Takano's Blood Alone vampire manga. The publisher will release the first six volumes of Gunslinger Girl in two omnibus volumes starting in February of 2011, and then release single volumes starting with volume 7. There are currently 12 volumes in Japan. The first three volumes of Blood Alone will be compiled in one omnibus volume in May of 2011, followed by single volumes for the remaining volumes. There are six volumes in Japan currently. Seven Seas also announced that it will release Strawberry Panic! The Complete Manga Collection, which will contain "both volumes of the manga, plus two all-new previously unreleased chapters," and the first Venus Versus Virus Omnibus book (with three collected volumes) this October. The three-volume Hayate X Blade Omnibus 1 and three-volume Inukami! Omnibus 1 will follow in November.

Kanonon DVD Vol #1 Price Correction

Media Blasters sent us a note today to let us know that the MSRP of $29.98 for the Kanokon: The Girl Who Cried Wolf, Vol #1, Sexy Like a Fox DVD (Eps #1-4) was incorrect - the correct MSRP was actually supposed to be $19.98 - a full ten dollars lower!

We've corrected our every day low pricing on the store site for this volume to $14.98. We will also be sure to automatically adjust any existing pre-orders for this volume to the new lower price.

First Code Geass R2 Bundle is Seven Episodes - Not Nine

Just a quick post to confirm what everyone has been asking all day via e-mail. The first Code Geass R2 bundle is indeed 7 episodes and 175 Minutes, not 9 episodes and 225 minutes as it was originally solicited. They totally slipped this past us under the radar, so I apologize that we did not have the correct stats and episode counts listed on the site until last night.

In response to this discrepancy, Bandai says that the DVD info included in the original solicitation mailer sent out to retailers was incorrect. R2 is going to be released as four parts (probably 7 ,6 ,6, and 6 eps) , not three (9, 8, and 8 eps) as was originally planned. The first DVD bundle contains seven episodes, and the subsequent parts will have six episodes each. Bandai does, however, "apologize for the initial information regarding Part 1 being incorrect in the mailer”, and did make it clear that their solicitation mailers state 'all specifications are subject to change without notice'.

And so they did. They do love surprises over there. :-)

Update: I'd also like to note that the most recent mailer (that Bandai sent us last week) for their October releases indicates that the 2nd Code Geass R2DVD bundle will be 225 minutes (9 eps), however, this is incorrect, it will actually be 6 episodes and 150 minutes.