Updates - October 5th, 2007

This week has actually been a bit surreal. Not only has the weather been unseasonably warm (still feels like August), we have needed to drop all other plans for a few days to focus on Geneon's departure. Still, chaos is business as usual in the Anime industry, and we've been through stuff like this many times before. As we come up for air we find that time has crept up on us and the holiday shopping season is only a few weeks away, so it's time for us to start getting ready for that as well. Even with some of the Geneon stuff going away, there are still many great titles in the pipeline, and those are what we're going to be focusing on in the coming weeks.

So no news is good news, aye? Baka. -_^

There were a couple of delay announcements this week, all from Bandai:

Galaxy Angel AA, Vol #3 DVD Oct 3rd to Oct 23rd
Eureka Seven, Vol #10 DVD Nov 6th to Nov 13th
Eureka Seven, Vol #10 DVD Limited Edition Nov 6th to Nov 13th

None of them are really a big deal and the delays look routine.

In store news we have finally let go of DHL as an international carrier, which has been a long time coming. I know that we still have a handful of customers who prefer them, but their service has been steadily deteriorating for the past couple of years while their delivery pricing has skyrocketed with higher rates, extra fees, and ridiculous fuel charges exceeding 30% to some destinations. FedEx has proven themselves to provide our customers better express service worldwide at lower shipping rates. And, of course, you will still be able to select regular Airmail or Express Mail services if you prefer economical delivery of your orders by the postal service.

Bosatsu has created another absolutely brilliant set of top banners for us featuring more of the Anime Corner girls engaged in various antics. Look for more of them to appear in our regular rotation over the next few weeks!

Bandai Visual, who sports several excellent (but overpriced) DVD releases, has yet to find a new distribution partner since dissolving their partnership with Geneon last week. So a couple of days ago they announced that their corporate website will become their 'interim' retail channel, meaning that they are self distributing directly to the public until they can find another suitable partner to keep their stuff in the stores. So for now they temporarily are without a warehouse operation and retailers cannot restock their product, at least not directly. This will also probably delay retailer availability of their upcoming titles in the next few weeks. I love most of what Bandai Visual publishes, but I like virtually nothing about the company itself (I've written about their pricing strategy before). From conversations with some high ups at other Anime companies I understand that their retailer and distribution agreement is difficult and highly unprofitable for the company handling their titles, which explains some of why they are looking for a third distribution partner in less than a year. My advice to them is to get a new distribution agreement in place ASAP. I like Tatsunori Konno (the head of BV) as he's a very smart guy, but his attempts to remake the US Anime market into a mirror image of Japan's has no future.

I finally spoke with Jim Yardley out at Geneon this week, and now I feel like I have a much clearer picture of what happened and where we are at going forward, but for now the situation has not changed. We have been absolutely swamped with orders for Geneon products over the past few days and I've been spending a lot of extra time personally arranging product and reviewing customer orders individually to decide what orders will be shipping immediately and which ones need to hold for incoming product so they can ship as complete as possible. A few titles have already stocked out, however, we have one very large final shipment in route from Geneon that is scheduled to arrive on Monday. In fact, we had originally planned to take Monday off (Columbus Day) but in the Anime business chaos reigns. So we'll be working on Monday to keep up with the increased order volume, and to ensure that when our final Geneon shipment arrives any orders we are holding for product will ship right away. If you currently have a Geneon order in with us that has not yet shipped we appreciate your patience, and I want you to know that we will ship your order as soon (and as complete) as possible.

New Arrival Alert! As usual, Ron just peeked in a told me that several new DVD titles just arrived a few minutes ago and are being checked in now, including:

Inu Yasha Movie Collection DVD Boxed Set Limited Edition
Kashimashi Girl Meets, Vol #3 DVD
Prince of Tennis Collection #3 DVD Boxed Set

They will be posted on the site later this evening but we'll be including it in outgoing orders today, as well as processing your pre-orders for them now. And as usual, we've got lots of new stuff (especially DVD's & Manga!) already on the site for you guys to peruse this weekend. Check below for the scoop on everything that's come in, or check our updates page for the complete story!

Volume #17 of the Ai Yori Aoshi manga is now in stock and in it those two finally get it together - and I mean for REAL - so my parting words for you this week are - Kaoru-Sama (you're the man!) If this volume doesn't put a smile on your face, then nothing will! :-) A word of caution though, we haven't received all of our copies from TokyoPop yet, so there are only a few to go around until the next shipment arrives.

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

US Anime Biz Gets Nuked - But Still No News at Eleven...

Halo what? Halo III was setting records all over this week, and many of us Otaku hardly noticed...

So lets talk about Geneon, shall we?

Without a doubt, the thing that is on everyone's mind this week is the sudden announcement Tuesday from Geneon that they will cease DVD sales operations as today (Friday) at 5pm. This comes on the heels of last weeks revelation that their distribution deal with ADV had fallen apart, leaving them no viable distribution channel after the end of this month. While Geneon is exiting the DVD distribution business, they have not revealed any of their other plans going forward - which has created a lot of rampant speculation regarding the future availability of their existing catalog, titles in current release, and future licenses. Let's leave that discussion (and the idol panic) to the Anime forums and blogs and talk about what we do know as of right now:

1) All Geneon DVD's will no longer be available for us to order from them after today. This means that availability of ALL Geneon produced titles will be limited to what is currently in our warehouse and what we have on order or in transit from them as of today. This situation will require a massive update across our entire catalog, so please be patient with us as we update the store site on a daily basis.

2) All Geneon scheduled releases up to Nov 4th will still be pressed and released. That means we do expect to the be able to fill pre-order for these titles:

Tenjho Tenge Complete Collection DVD Set
Fate/Stay Night, Vol #6 DVD Limited Edition
Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Christo Complete DVD Boxed Set
Hakkenden Legend of the Dog Warriors Vol #3 DVD
Hellsing Ultimate, Vol #3 DVD
Hellsing Ultimate, Vol #3 DVD Limited Edition
Kyo Kara Maoh Season 1 Complete Collection DVD Set
Rozen Maiden Traumend, Vol #1, Puppet Show DVD
Story of Saiunkoku, Vol #2 DVD
Zipang, Vol #7 DVD

We have plenty of copies of all of these titles already on advance order with Geneon, however, since we will not be able to go back to Geneon to restock these titles after our initial shipment we will be filling pre-order on a first come, first served basis so I suggest everyone get their orders in now for these titles.

3) We are assuming that all Geneon releases previously solicited for release after November 6th have effectively been canceled. This (unfortunately) will leave several current series unfinished including Hellsing Ultimate, Karin, Kyo Kara Maoh II, Story of Saiunkoku, When They Cry, Law of Ueki, Shonen Onmyoji, etc.

So we do not expect to be able to fill pre-orders for:

Karin, Vol #4 DVD
Karin, Vol #5 DVD
Kyo Kara Maoh!, Season 2, Vol #7 DVD
Kyo Kara Maoh!, Season 2, Vol #8 DVD
Shonen Onmyoji , Vol #3 DVD
Shonen Onmyoji , Vol #4 DVD
Black Lagoon The Second Barrage, Vol #1 DVD
Elemental Gelade Complete Collection DVD Boxed Set
Law of Ueki, Vol #10 DVD
Law of Ueki, Vol #11 DVD
Paradise Kiss Complete Collection DVD Boxed Set
Saiyuki Reload Gunlock Complete Collection DVD Boxed Set
Story of Saiunkoku, Vol #3 DVD
Story of Saiunkoku, Vol #4 DVD
When They Cry: Higurashi, Vol #4 DVD
Rozen Maiden Traumend, Vol #2, Revival DVD
Rozen Maiden Traumend, Vol 3, The Alice Game DVD

4) Most of Bandai Visual's releases were also distributed by Geneon, and they have announced that until they find another distribution partner they will only be able to sell their titles through their own web store. No shipments to retailers are currently happening. This is not that big a deal as they have very few new titles in the pipeline, so we should be able to get the supply situation on their products worked out with minimal delays. I've already talked to them, so that's my take on it for now.

As of Tuesday we were very well stocked on existing Geneon products, and we have made a huge capital commitment on their titles by placing several very large emergency orders with them prior to the deadline in hopes that we can stock their catalog very deep and keep their titles available at least through the end of the year. That said, we are currently experiencing a huge surge of orders for Geneon products that may require a few days for us to sort out, so please try to be patient with us in regards to this. Even if a title is out of stock we will work as hard as possible to fill your orders as soon as possible, and as completely as possible.

OK, so what are my thoughts? How will this effect us?

Personally, I've been loving Karin, Hellsing Ultimate, When They Cry, and especially Black Lagoon so the news that they will not be finished this year - well, it stinks. I share in every other fan's utter disappointment. Professionally there will certainly be a financial impact to the industry across the board. Geneon makes up a significant portion of retailers Anime sales (they are exactly 16% of ours - a big chunk), so this will certainly dampen our holiday expectations and will hamper our efforts to serve Anime fans with the broadest possible catalog of titles. I do feel that market distribution for Geneon's titles will, one way or another, eventually be worked out. Geneon is not going out of business, they are changing their business model, though the execution is extremely poor. Ultimately they want to become a licensing house and let other companies publish and distribute their titles. Geneon's business problems have been around for some time so this is not entirely a surprise - and they are problems the other studios like Funimation, ADV, Bandai, Viz, and Media Blasters do not have. While this will cause us all some short term pain we can take solace in that there are many other strong companies publishing great Anime titles that we will be able to enjoy going forward.

Until then we'll keep the faith and update you with any new news that comes along. I'm sure there will be plenty...

That's it for now. Have a great weekend everyone.

(10/1) UPDATE:

Dentsu to Post Y5 Billion Loss on Geneon's Downsizing

The Japanese advertising firm Dentsu Inc. announced on September 27 that it will post a 4.7-billion-yen (US$41 million) loss on a consolidated basis and 5.1-billion-yen (about US$44 million) loss on a non-consolidated basis due to the downsizing of its Geneon Entertainment (USA) Inc. anime subsidiary's "scope of business." It will also post a 7.2-billion-yen (US$63 million) loss on its withdrawal from D&T, a joint sales partnership between Dentsu and Tohokushinsha Film Corporation for broadcasting rights in Japan to foreign movies and television programs. Both losses will be reflected in the financial results for the first half of the fiscal year ending March 31, 2008.

Loss due to business downsizing of Geneon Entertainment (USA) Inc.
Dentsu's subsidiary, Geneon Entertainment (USA) Inc., which undertakes animation related business in North America, has decided to downsize its scope of business and increase business efficiency. As a consequence, Dentsu will post extraordinary losses, etc. of 4.7 billion yen on a consolidated basis and 5.1 billion yen on a non-consolidated basis in its financial results for the first half of the fiscal year ending March 31, 2008.

Updates - September 17th, 2007

Arisa joins us in this update as my 'image of the week'. If you think she's as beautiful as I do, you can pre-order her here.

We received word this week that the Spiral Economy Box has now been pushed back from Sept 18th to Oct 23rd. The only Sept 18th release that has not yet arrived (update - it did today) is the Limited version of Black Lagoon Vol #3. There was a delay in production, and Geneon has told us they will be shipping around the 14th (today), so it will be a last minute arrival. We received the regular Black Lagoon 3 DVD about 2 weeks ago, and even though we ordered quite a few copies it promptly sold out (more are coming) as people did not want to wait for the Limited version to ship and just bought the regular DVD instead. It's such a good series I can't say I blame them, I know I ran home that night to watch my copy!

Speaking of Geneon, the transfer of sales management to ADV continues and since all of the inside sales personnel at Geneon have already been let go there will be a sort of 'black hole' for a couple of weeks until ADV assumes full control of those functions starting Oct 1st. I was a little surprised that Geneon decided not to keep their marketing folks on for 3 more weeks until the handover was complete, but many of the things Geneon has done over the last couple of years have been a mystery to me. It was announced this week that Mitsubishi has completely divested itself of it's (large) 34% stake in Geneon leaving Dentsu as the sole Japanese owner, so perhaps I'm not the only one bewildered by how they ran their business. Now that's just water under the bridge. :-)

The folks at ASM and Critical Mass announced this week that they are teaming up to fight illegal download sites and services, with Shawne Klekner making this statement:

"...To add insult to injury, a number of the sites are selling the creative content they have illegally appropriated. The bottom line: When we're not being paid for our content, the Japanese companies and creative teams aren't being paid. In turn, it affects whether or not new anime even gets made... and the Japanese licensors are increasingly vocal about their concerns in this area. Sadly, these site owners are forcing us to go beyond issuing 'cease and desist' orders. They are placing us in a position where our only option is to hire attorneys and pursue legal remedies to this situation..."

That sounds great and we fully support their efforts, but my question is where have they been for the past 3 or 4 years? Cease and desist letters are meaningless without the teeth to resolve some sort of legal action down the road, and while I'm glad they are finally committing to take a stand, I think it would have been better if they had started much earlier with more than just letterhead. We've always taken a stand against bootlegs, illegal imports, and other pirate activity that hurts the otaku community, and we've been campaigning about it in public for years - including spending a lot of marketing dollars to raise fan awareness on these issues. So we'll say 'welcome aboard' to the new comers! -_^ I hope they show the financial resolve to finally get involved with this growing problem.

Witchblade is now in stock and she is ready to kick your ass! Don't believe me? Watch:

Trust me, get this series!

Our Fall Kickoff coupon sale has been extremely popular, and I've decided to extend it through Sept 28th, so you'll have two more weeks to take advantage of the coupon savings - and that means all the new stuff coming in this month is even more affordable!

To save 3% off any order over $67, use the following coupon code during checkout: FALLKICKOFFTAKE3

Or, to save 5% off any order over $167, use the following coupon code during checkout: FALLKICKOFFTAKE5

Or, to save 7% off any order over $367, use the following coupon code during checkout: FALLKICKOFFTAKE7

RED ALERT! As is becoming our usual Friday ritual, Ron just came in a told me that several new DVD titles just arrived a few minutes ago and are being checked in now, including:

Black Lagoon, Vol #3 DVD Limited Edition (Wasn't I just Talking About it?)
Eureka Seven, Vol #9 DVD
Eureka Seven, Vol #9 DVD Limited Edition
Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Vol #3 DVD

They will be posted on the site later this afternoon (or Monday morning), but we'll be including it in outgoing orders today, as well as processing your pre-orders for them now. And as usual, we've got lots of new stuff (especially manga!) already on the site for you guys to peruse this weekend. 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 - Masane Amaha!

Updates - September 7th, 2007

As we've been pretty busy this week taking care of your orders we've had to push a few things like posting December pre-order items, working up a new front page (and sleeping) into next week... In fact, I think one of my 'deal of the days' stayed up for 3 or 4 days in row there and became more of a 'deal of the week'. Well, at least it gave everyone a fair shot at it. :-) It certainly did not help matters that the 3rd DragonBall Z boxed set arrived early along with several other heavily pre-ordered DVD's and figures, but somehow we got all those pre-orders out within 24 hours of the product arrivals and hopefully many of you will have your stuff by today or tomorrow (a couple of weeks early!). We'll finally be completely caught up today processing all the orders from over the holiday weekend, and I appreciate everyones patience for letting us take Monday off and then giving us an extra day to get your order processed and shipped out. We'll sleep next week.

Folks have been jumping on anything produced by Central Park Media over the last couple of weeks (we finally sold out of both Lodoss War boxed sets for example, and can't seem to get anymore), and I know the rumor mills online have been grinding out reports of their imminent and final demise. I have no 'official' information in that regards, however, there have been no solicitations for anything new from CPM through their distribution partner WEA for a couple of months, and no new releases or re-releases in their electronic press kits since June. They have also disabled their internal secure online order site. We're not quite ready to 'call it' (time of death) but we're working their titles on an 'in stock' basis with WEA, which means once WEA runs out of something they print we're assuming it will no longer be available. So if there are any Central Park Media DVD or manga releases you've been eyeing up and they are still available, I'd recommend you prioritize them in your purchases accordingly as there is no telling how long they will continue to be available.

Only a couple of date updates I want to mention this week. First, the Deluxe wooden box edition of the Inu Yasha Movie Set has been bumped back to Oct 23rd. It's the one that includes all the soundtracks and will definitely be worth the wait. For those that can't, we have the regular movie box in stock now. The head guys down at Illumitoon are taking their time responding to our e-mails, so the fate of their handful of releases (like BoBoBo and BTX) is still hanging in the wind and I suspect they just don't have any information for us. In better news the guys at Imaginasian said that their 3 classic releases Orguss, Cats Eye, and Remi are going to be shipping next week, so after several delays we should have them in stock shortly.

Checkout some of these publicity photos for the upcoming Live Action Negima series beginning it's run in Japan in October. I like seeing all those pretty gals together! I hope this eventually gets released here in the states. (thanks to Steven DB for this).

The format battle continues over the next generation of DVD's, and just when you though Blue Ray was winning HDDVD is fighting back and studios are even more divided on the issue than ever before. I think this fight will be decided over the holiday season as we see if people buy more HDDVD or BluRay players - if they buy them at all...

Hello Kitty is going back to basics in Japan. I just wish I had been there to see the 'buyo' dance!

Our Fall Kickoff coupon sale continues this weekend and will run through next Thursday, so be sure to take advantage of the coupon savings while they last.

To save 3% off any order over $67, use the following coupon code during checkout:

FALLKICKOFFTAKE3

Or, to save 5% off any order over $167, use the following coupon code during checkout:

FALLKICKOFFTAKE5

Or, to save 7% off any order over $367, use the following coupon code during checkout:

FALLKICKOFFTAKE7

Ron just peeked around the corner and told me that the Hare Guu DVD boxed sets just arrived from Funimation a few minutes ago and are being checked in now. Phew! - I was a little worried the date was going to get pushed again since the street date is next Tuesday. It will be posted on the site later this afternoon, but we'll be including it in outgoing orders today, as well as processing your pre-orders for them now. And as usual, we've got lots of new stuff already on the site for you guys to peruse this weekend. 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 - RIDE em COWGIRL!

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

Updates - August 31st, 2007

Geneon officially announced this week that they are turning their distribution and marketing functions over to ADV. I wrote some of my thoughts on the deal over at the blog earlier this week, and I have since had a chance to talk about the move in depth with Mike Baliff down at ADV Films. The folks at ADV have been working on this deal for a couple of months and have taken great care in planning to see that the transition is as seamless as possible for retailers and transparent to fans. Geneon's entire catalog will remain available to fans through us, and Geneon's announced new release schedule will not be disturbed. In fact, we should continue to get their titles a couple of weeks prior to the street date just as we have in the past, and I think ADV will be able to clear up Geneon's inventory and delivery problems that we have experienced over the past few months.

We'll be working very closely with ADV on this over the coming weeks and I'll keep you all up to date regarding how things are progressing.

Thanks to Jerry for sending over this short YouTube clip that features some fans doing Transformers cos-play where their costumes actually transform while they are in them. One of them even did a Valkyrie from Robotech!

The studios continue to fill out their fall schedules and this week we've posted 22 new DVD releases for pre-order. I also just received Bandai's November list, and we'll be getting those up on the site shortly. We got most of ADV's Oct and Nov catalog up for order now including the next volumes of Ah! My Goddess TV Season 2 , Xenosaga , and Air plus ADV plans to re-release a few collections in Limited Tin Boxed sets for the Holidays like Evangelion and Magical Shopping Arcade. Don't have product deatils on those yet, but we should soon. The most exciting announcements this week are several boxed sets of series that had previously fallen out of print including:

Lost Universe Complete Collection DVD Boxed Set (Thin-Pak)

Nadia Secret of Blue Water DVD Perfect Collection Limited Tin Boxed Set

Princess Tutu DVD Collection (Thin-Pak)

Now if one of the studios will just re-release Nadesico all will be right with the world! -_^

The summer figure sale ends tonight at midnight, so you've only got a few more hours to take advantage of the savings there, but I'll let you in on a little secret - the fall kickoff coupon special overlaps the figures sale for the next 12 hours, so you can almost double your savings if you get your orders in before midnight and use one our fall kickoff coupons!

To save 3% off any order over $67, use the following coupon code during checkout:
FALLKICKOFFTAKE3

Or, to save 5% off any order over $167, use the following coupon code during checkout:
FALLKICKOFFTAKE5

Or, to save 7% off any order over $367, use the following coupon code during checkout:
FALLKICKOFFTAKE7

Ron just peeked around the corner and told me a few more new titles just got unloaded and are now being checked in, including Black Lagoon Vol 3, Karin Vol 3, Full Moon Vol 6, and Shonen Onmyouji Vol 2. And I thought we were going to get out of here early! They'll be updated on the site later this afternoon, but we'll be including these in outgoing orders today, as well as processing your pre-orders for them now.


And as usual, we've got lots of new stuff already on the site for you guys to peruse this weekend. 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 - Ekodona Black Armor!

That's it for now. Have a wonderful holiday weekend - and ENJOY your Anime! :-)

Geneon Taps Out

Anyone who follows Anime industry news has already read the press release from Friday about Geneon throwing in the towel and hiring ADV to do their retailer distribution and handle their sales channel.

...ADV will take over sales, marketing, and distribution functions for all Geneon titles effective October 1st. Geneon will continue to license and produce anime content for the North American market; the changes will affect only how the products reach the market. The notice that went out to retailers made the point. "This change will in no way impact the availability of current or future Geneon titles 'in the pipeline,'" it said.

We are still gathering information on the details. It appears a lot of the fine print has yet to be finalized, but that ADV is already starting to run the show behind the scenes. That's fine, since we have a great relationship with ADV, and they should be able to service the product very well.

ADV will benefit from this. In fact, they need the expanded sales opportunities Geneon's catalog will bring to the table to compete with Funimation. But, regardless of how the 'suits' try to spin this in the media (they will talk endlessly of BS Synergies and Strategics), it clearly does not bode well for Geneon. Outsourcing retailer distribution is not unusual in the Anime industry, but outsourcing control of your sales channel is something a company does as a last resort. It's what happens when you throw your hands up and decide that you no longer understand your market and want to wash your hands of the responsibility of making your company work within that market. Granted ADV will have much better resources for bringing Geneon's product to market. The real red flag is that they are doing this in the forth quarter before the holidays, which is generally a period (for better or worse) when you don't want to make any major changes that will disturb your sales channel - and that they are turning over control of their product line to a competitor. Remember a couple of years ago when Central Park Media, finding itself between a rock and hard place financially, did the same thing by outsourcing their sales channel and distribution to WEA (a 'music' distributor no less). I remember thinking that John O'Donnell must have been suffering from temporary insanity when he made that decision. Later, as CPM has virtually ceased to exist as an operating Anime Studio, we find out that he probably didn't have too much choice.

In the Anime world there is a very simple 3 step business plan that everyone follows:

1) Collect Underpants
2) ?
3) Profit

It's that pesky step #2 that seems to trip everyone up.

The truth (that no one in the biz seems to want to admit) is that the mass market portion of the Anime business that studios have developed over in the last 3-4 years and built a large part of their businesses around has been a disaster this year. Sales volumes are way off. Licensing and royalty fees from deals made in the go-go period of 2004-06 remain very high, forcing the studios to generate revenue from these titles any way possible. Fan's DVD & Manga shelves are getting full. Even with the cut backs in new releases over the last few months there are still too many titles (or should I say, 'too many marginal titles and re-releases') getting stuffed into the sales channel. Economic factors are creating more pricing pressures than ever before. Marginal fans have too many options for their limited entertainment budgets, and Anime is just not as 'cool' for them as it used to be. Many core Anime fans are turning back to downloads and fansubs more frequently to get access to the really good shows they want to see, but don't want to wait to be commercially released (if they ever are).

Mass market retail chains and book sellers are questioning shelf space allocations to Anime/Manga for the first time in years, causing the studios to make knee jerk reactions, like re-re-re-re-re-releasing old stale titles at rock bottom prices or quadrupling the number of serial manga issues released in a quarter in an attempt to spur interest and "keep up the appearance of demand". After all, if we stuff even more products into the sales channel, that will surely keep the home fires burning, right?

This year many of the older core fans have started to drift away from the genre, partly because there are far fewer quality releases to choose from than in the past, and partly because as they get older priorities begin to change. As these fans move away from the genre, they are replaced by younger fans that have been exposed to Anime in a totally different way than their predecessors, so many of them don't have the same enthusiasm for building huge (and expensive) video and book libraries, nor do they have the same sort of entertainment budgets that the older fans had.

Bottom line? Everyone is getting squeezed in one way or another.

Under all these conditions some consolidation will need to take place, both at the studio and retail levels. I feel like there are too many Anime retailers out there right now, and many are holding on by their fingernails either by subsidizing their margins with bootlegs or making the payroll this week by liquidating Anime at close to cost pricing just to keep the volumes up. Many retailers are relying more and more on sales gimmicks to keep customers coming back. The situation reminds me of the scene from 'A Bridge too Far' when, after holding the bridge at Arnhem by his fingernails for 9 days, British LC John Frost finally gets MG Roy Urquhart on the radio and asks when he can expect relief. Urquhart, taking terrible losses himself, tells him "I'm sorry Johnny, I'm not sure it's a matter of us coming for you, or you coming for us.", and then in classic British understatement Frost says "very well, we'll just wait for XXX Corps then." The last radio message broadcast from the bridge was - "out of ammo, God save the King".

Indeed (but I digress).

As one of the oldest US Anime companies, Geneon finds itself in the position of having as huge back catalog of titles to maintain in a sales environment increasingly dominated by new releases. Not quite knowing what to do with these, Geneon has had terrible problems in execution. I blame Geneon's Japanese management for that - they just don't seem to 'get' the US market, and in fact they have gradually become a rather unfriendly company for retailers to do business with since the change over from Pioneer.

Bad licensing decisions along with a bad marketing organization has caused Geneon to fall into a distant 3rd place in the US Anime industry. After years of maintaining excellent business relations with Pioneer USA, the management at Geneon has become increasingly out of touch with both the fan base and retailer channel, and I have frequently made mention of some of these problems in our weekly newsletters. Their distribution deal with Ditan earlier this year was an attempt to cut costs, and has been a disaster with them frequently having incorrect inventory numbers or not being able to fill re-orders for titles that have only been on the street for a few weeks. I remarked earlier this year to our inside rep at Geneon that it was getting harder and harder to maneuver the product line under these conditions, and whoever made the decision to hire Ditan to do their fulfillment should have been fired.

I now looks that will probably happen...

In the end, the move to ADV should be pretty good for us. One less vendor to work with, one less set of hassles to overcome. It may even cure a few headaches I've had to contend with. After all, it's all about the underpants - so we'll see how it pans out. -_^

Updates - August 24th, 2007

Can you believe it?? - no delays or pushes this week! :-) Even Geneon is getting back on track as they shipped the Popotan DVD box to us after it was delayed by their inventory. The studios and manufacturers are finally starting to fill out their fall schedules, and it seems like we've been working around the clock this week getting everything posted (and we still have a ways to go). This week we posted 25 new DVD releases for pre-order including Funimation's and Media Blaster's Oct/Nov schedule. As expected, we're seeing a lot of re-releases and re prices coming down the pike this fall including an Ah My Goddess season 1 economy box, the 2nd season of Slayers, and a Trinity Blood complete box. There are also some very cool new titles coming like Simoun and Step Up Love Story (aka Futari Ecchi), which I know will definitely become a major guilty pleasure in my entertainment center... :-)

One of the upcoming titles I've been keeping an eye on is the release of the first (of four) Rebuild of Evangelion Movie in Japan next weekend.

As an ardent Eva fan (having watched the original series at least 50 times) I have to admit, I was skeptical when they decided to rework the Evangelion series into 4 new movies, but after seeing the new trailers I've been made into a believer. The animation and character designs look amazing! Reportedly the content is quite different from the original TV series, though the time base of the story is the same. The new project is characterized as a remake, however, it is not a re-creation but a "new work" and there will apparently be a large amount of new material. It's sure to be some time before we see these released in English, but I think it will be worth the wait. Here are a few trailers and video shorts for you to sample to see for yourself:

Rebuild of Evangelion - Trailer 1
Rebuild of Evangelion - Trailer 2
Rebuild of Evangelion - Utada Hikaru - Beautiful World

Oh, I wanted to mention that Utada Hikaru's excellent CD single of Beautiful World (the Eva Rebuild theme song) is streeting next week in Japan and we have a bunch of copies on order that should arrive from Tokyo mid-September. Sorry, but the first copy is mine!

Be sure to check the 'deal of the day' rotation on our front page. Each day we'll be offering something cool to you at 50% off the retail price (and that we actually have in stock...). -_^ Also, the summer figure sale will (definitely) officially end next Thursday, so you've got one more week to take advantage of the savings there. We already price our figures at a discount to MSRP (I know many stores actually mark their figures UP from the retail price) so the extra 10% makes for some great deals off our already low prices.

Ron just peeked around the corner and told me a few more new titles just got unloaded and are now being checked in, including Tide Line Blue 3, My-Otome 2, and the 4th Voltron Tin box. They'll be updated on the site later this afternoon, but we'll be including these in outgoing orders today, as well as processing your pre-orders for them now. And as usual, we've got lots of new stuff already on the site for you guys to peruse this weekend. 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 - KOS MOS!

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

New Items Added for Pre-Order

I know I know, I haven't posted for some time. Jamie and I have been enjoying summer activities (as time permits) for the past 3 months (Anime, Boating, Bike Riding, New Kittens - more on all that later...), and working our butts off when not.

After a bit of a summer lull in new releases the studios and manufacturers are finally starting to fill out their fall schedules so we are getting a lot of upcoming product solicitations dumped on us all at once. Here's the list of new DVD's and figures that we've made available for pre-order over the last couple of weeks:





DVD Pre-Orders Added 8-/10 to 8/21:

Kurau Phantom Memory, Vol #4 DVD
Blue Seed Mitama Collection Boxed Set (Thin-Pak)
Air TV Series, Vol #3 DVD
Black Lagoon The Second Barrage, Vol #1 DVD w/ Limited Art Box
Black Lagoon The Second Barrage, Vol #2 DVD
009-1, Vol #3 DVD
Le Chevalier D'Eon, Vol #5 DVD
Air Gear, Vol #5 DVD
Welcome to NHK , Vol #1, 1st Conspiracy DVD
Pumpkin Scissors , Vol #1, Honor & Blood DVD
Pani Poni Dash!, Vol #6 DVD
Slayers OVA DVD Collection (Thin-Pak)
Yugo the Negotiator Complete Collection DVD Boxed Set (Thin-Pak)
Fighting Spirit (Hajime No Ippo) DVD Collection 1 Boxed Set
Fighting Spirit (Hajime No Ippo) DVD Collection 2 Boxed Set
Zegapain, Vol #1 DVD
Zegapain, Vol #1 DVD w/ Limited Art Box
hack//Roots, Vol #4 DVD
Rescue Me; Mave-Chan DVD
When They Cry: Higurashi, Vol #5 DVD
Peach Girl, Vol #5 DVD
Hare+Guu DVD Boxed Set
Tsubasa, Vol #5 DVD
Dragon Ball Z: Broly Double Feature DVD [BLURAY]
Dragonball GT DVD Collectors Boxed Set #4 (The Lost Episodes)
Mushishi, Vol #4 DVD
Suzuka, Vol #5 DVD
Yu-Gi-Oh Dawn of the Duel, Vol #1, Part 2 (Eps 528-539)
Slayers NEXT TV Season 2 Complete Collection DVD Boxed Set (Eps #27-52)
BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad, Vol #4 DVD
BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad, Vol #5 DVD
Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles Movie Special Edition DVD
Case Closed the 14th Target Movie DVD
Glass Fleet , Vol #2 DVD
Fullmetal Alchemist DVD Boxed Set #2 (Vol #5-7)
Gunslinger Girl Economy DVD Boxed Set
School Rumble, Vol #3 DVD
Trinity Blood Complete Collection DVD Boxed Set
Witchblade, Vol #2 DVD
Witchblade, Vol #3 DVD
Ramen Fighter Miki , Vol #2, Tonkatsu Tactics DVD
Ah! My Goddess TV Season 1 Economy DVD Boxed Set
Shura no Toki Economy DVD Boxed Set (Thin-Pak)
Golden Boy DVD
Simoun , Vol #1, Choir of Pairs DVD
Step Up Love Story DVD

Figure Pre-Orders Added 8-/10 to 8/21:

Ikki Tousen: Sonsaku (Fighting) 1/7 Scale PVC Figure
My Otome: Akane Version 1/7 Scale PVC Figure
My Otome: Akira (Damaged) 1/7 Scale PVC Figure
Oneechanbara Aya 1/8 Scale PVC Figure
Queen's Blade Tomoe PVC Figure
Queen's Blade Elina PVC Figure
Samurai Spirits: Iroha 1/6 Scale PVC Figure [GRIFFON]
Samurai Spirits: Iroha "Player 2" Pink Version 1/6 Scale PVC Figure
Samurai Spirits: Iroha 1/5 Scale PVC Figure
Sengoku Ace Episode III Mizuka 1/6 Scale PVC Figure
Bome: Yano Takumi's Akira PVC Figure Vol 26
Bome: Mitsumi Misato's "Lucia" PVC Figure Vol. 25
Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 Ayane 1/6 Scale PVC Figure
Fate/Hollow Ataraxia: Sakura Matou Swimsuit w/ Towel 1/7 Scale PVC Figure
Fate/Zero: Saber/Zero 1/8 Scale PVC Figure
http://www.animecornerstore.com/pedesebscpvc.html
Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya: Ryoko Asakura 1/8 Scale PVC Figure
Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya: Tsuruya Maid Version 1/8 Scale Figure
Witchblade Masane Amaha 1/8 Scale PVC Figure [Organic]
Witchblade: Maria 1/6 Scale PVC Figure
Witchblade: Masane Amaha 1/6 Scale PVC Figure [Kotobukiya]
Witchblade: Masane Amaha 'Power Up' Version 1/8 Scale PVC Figure
Kamichu Yurie Hitotsubashi 1/8 Scale PVC Figure
Art of Shunya Yamashita CoCoNa 1/7 Scale PVC Figure
Chobits: Chii "Maid Alice" 1/7 Scale PVC Figure
Chocotto Sister Black Cat Version 1/8 Scale PVC Figure
Death Note: Misa Amane MoeArt 1/6 Scale PVC Figure
Fate/Hollow Ataraxia Caren 1/7 Scale PVC Figure
Gun X Sword: Fasalina 1/8 Scale PVC Figure
Idolmaster Xenoglossia Iori Minase 1/8 Scale PVC Figure
To Heart 2 Another Days Chie Yoshioka PVC Figure
Utawarerumono Urutori 1/7 Scale Figure
Rozen Maiden Traumend SRDX Hinaichigo PVC Figure
Yakitate Tsukino Azusagawa Swimsuit Version 1/8 Scale PVC Figure
Yatake Yoshinori's "El" 1/8 Scale PVC Figure
Evangelion Sequel to Angel Chromosome-XX Series 3: A-04 Shamshel-XX Figure
Xenosaga: Kos-mos EPIII Version 4 1/8 Scale PVC Figure [Happinet]
Xenosaga: Kos-mos EPIII Version 4 1/8 Scale PVC Figure [ALTER]

It makes for a quick post to get the ball rolling again. :-)

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.

Bandai Visual's Pricing Policy DOA

During a routine panel at Sakura-Con last weekend, Tatsunori Konno, who is the head of Bandai Visual USA, got in a little hot water with fans who openly questioned him about Bandai Visual's new pricing and release policy. In a nutshell, Bandai Visual is attempting to do something no other company has ever done - to release their titles like 'Freedom' simultaneously on DVD in the US and Japan.

This has created a number of problems:

First, since the US releases will not see the usual lead time to market, they can only be made available initially in subtitled versions. This is a rather desperate response to the piracy and downloading that is killing the industry, as fans simply refuse to wait for properly licensed titles to become available on DVD.

(For an example, just look at how many people have illegally downloaded episodes of Haruhi Suzumiya prior to the upcoming DVD release. There are already more series reviews out on in the blogosphere than you can shake a stick at from folks that have downloaded fansubs and already seen all the eps. The number of these people that will actually buy the series on DVD is questionable.)

The second, and most relevant problem facing Bandai Visual is with the DVD pricing. The Japanese DVD market is vastly different from the US market, however, since the simultaneous release means that the R1 US DVD's will potentially compete (theoretically) with the R2 Japanese DVD's, thus the US DVD's need to carry a similar price point as their Japanese counterparts. That means the most of the R1 DVD's will have 2 episodes and retail for around $40 MSRP ($50 in the case of Galaxy Angel Rune).

The business practices at work here taken as a whole are sound, yet terribly flawed. The Japanese are doing their best to exploit the US Anime market, which they are finally taking seriously, and are also desperately trying to address the piracy issue but without do anything to threaten their core market in Japan, which is still an order of power larger than in the US.

The lessons of the US market have already been learned, yet these types of mistakes continue to be repeated. Think back recently to when ADV got crucified for trying to release the first season of Gantz as two eps per disk for $18 MSRP. We just rolled our eyes when they announced that move, and the blow back among fans was so acute that the folks in Houston quickly reversed the policy in subsequent DVD volumes. Still, the damage had been done and the lower sales of the single DVD's caused ADV to advance the release of the less expensive series thin-paks, decreasing their overall potential economic return on the license. Not to mention their loss of credibility (face) with the fan base.

In the US subtitled releases will mostly sell only into the hard core fan base, which is fine with us, and do allow the domestic release of some titles that may otherwise be marginalized by economic necessities. But Bandai Visual's new formula seems destined for failure as far fewer US fans, even hard core Anime fans, can afford to pay $40 or $50 for 45-60 minutes of Anime. Granted, we'll do our part to make these releases more affordable, but the pricing issues effect us as well, limiting the potential sell through for us on some of the best new titles booked to be released later this year. Bandai Visual is determined to carry through this new release strategy, even to the consternation of the fan base and their retail partners, so we'll just have to wait and see if we, as fans, can embrace these 'early releases at a price' or if we'll have to send Bandai Visual back to school to learn about how Anime fans do business here in North America.

My estimate from experience is that it will be the latter...

Updates - April 9th, 2007

I've found myself quite busy lately here at Anime Corner World Headquarters, with little time for diversions, and there is a stack of DVD's the size of Everest on top of my entertainment center. I did some catching up on some good old wholesome Anime viewing over the holiday weekend and finally started the Basilisk series. I have to say...so far so good!


Boxed sets have been replacing previous Anime DVD releases, and as the older single volumes sell out we've been taking them down off the store. This past week we've cleaned up and updated about 165 pages on the site, mostly consolidating older single dvd releases into boxed sets pages. Since the Anime Corner Store site is some 7,760 pages it's a constant process of additions, updates, and subtractions. While you may not realize it, the store gets updated on a daily basis 7 days a week (and yes, the weekend duty falls to me quite often), so while the front page might only change every week or two, there are updates going on somewhere on the store every day. All new arrivals are consolidated on the store updates page, and this is the place to go for the latest info about what's new (and hopefully improved!):

As the genre has expanded over the last few years, Anime prices have come down rapidly. Even though lots of people still say Anime prices are too high, let me give you an example to put this into perspective. Back in 1999 the few anime titles that were available on VHS cost around $8-$12 per episode for the dubbed version, and around $12-$15 per episode for the subtitled version. The original release of Evangelion from ADV was on 13 VHS tapes, and the Subtitled videos were $30 per tape (2 eps per tape), or about $15 per episode in only one language and few or no extras. Back then, if you wanted the series in both languages you had to buy 26 video tapes at a cost of around $650.00, or about $25 per episode. The original tapes ADV produced were fairly low quality in terms of materials, and the transfer for the VHS version was shaky and rather poorly done. Theb kicker is that hard core Anime fans lined up to pay those prices back then. I know I did! Now you could not imagine paying that kind of price for one series, but back then we sold hundreds of those $350 Eva VHS bundles.b Today you can buy the whole Evangelion series in a premium Thin-Pak DVD boxed set from us for $67.98 (remastered) which comes in both languages and has tons of extra's. That's a cost of about $2.60 per episode, about 1/10th the cost it was 7 years ago. Just a little food for thought. -_^

I have no date bumps or delays to report this week (can you believe it!). We did get a grocery list of 196 mostly older items that are being discontinued by Bandai, and I'm glad for it. Most of these titles are just older versions of stuff that's been re-released under the Anime Legends label, but included some series we've been wondering about like Pilot Candidate. We're sorting through the list now and I'll let you guys know next week if there is anything else of interest that's going away.

Illumitoon announced this week that they are finally getting with the program and getting out of 'dubtitling' their DVD's. In fact, fan feedback has been so adamant that they have decided to offer an exchange program for their current DVD's in circulation. Anyone who bought BoBoBo-Bo, Beet, or B'tX can now have their 'dubtitled' DVD's exchanged for properly 'subtitled' disks. Thank goodness!

More info can be found on Illumitoon's exchange page.

I talk about logistics alot here, and I often wonder how many times a new figure or toy ultimately gets cancelled because of some accident, like a container full of figures washing overboard during a storm. Accidents in transit happen more often than you might think, as these incredible pictures demonstrate.

We have an excellent batch of new arrivals for you this week in just about every category. We have new DVD's like Hack/Roots 1, Elemental Gelade 6, Solty Rei 3, and Nerima Daikon 3 just hit the dock and will begin shipping today. We have 36 new manga volumes, including some of those late Del Rey titles like Genshiken 8 and School Rumble 5. We have a new CD shipment in from Tokyo which includes some great new arrivals like all 3 Basilisk soundtracks, and the gorgeous new 9 disk sound box from Kingdom Hearts that was just released in Japan a few days ago! We have two new figures from Disgaea that came in from Enterbrain, and the latest Bome girl which is a beautiful version of Kasumi from Dead or Alive. She's only $26.98, so I doubt she'll last very long.


We have some new DVD bundles from Geneon that are so cheap, they're wholesale, if you get my meaning. While they last, you can pickup Ai Yori Aoshi, Gatekeepers, Cardcaptors, or Heat Guy J for up to 80% off the MSRP. Check below for details.


And finally I've setup a great Easter sale for you! The savings will last all week, but the big savings is here for the weekend only. Saving this big across the store are rare, so take some time over the holiday and grab some of that Anime stuff you've been wanting!

From now until Thursday, April 12th you can save up to 7% off every product on the store. Coupons can be applied to any items on the store, including pre-order and sale items. The more you order, the more you can save. US customers can combine this offer with our free super saver shipping option to save even more!

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

EGGSTRASAVINGS3

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

EGGSTRASAVINGS5

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

EGGSTRASAVINGS7

Coupons are valid ONLY for NEW orders, and are good through Thursday, April 12th only.

Updates - March 25th, 2007

Welcome spring at last!

The first day of spring was a couple of days ago, and I for one am glad to see it - except that I can already tell the pollen is starting to come out. I'm like a human barometer for that every year. :-)

On Blogging:

I'm sorry I have not posted much here over the last few weeks. I've been incredibly busy with regular store business. For folks that blog several times a week, or even several times a day, my question is - how the heck do you guys have the time? I always think of Glen Reynolds over at Instapundit. He posts maybe 10-20 times a day all day long, and I figure whatever else he does, his entire life must revolve around his blog. When he's not blogging, he's thinking about blogging, or looking for things to blog about, or conversing with people that write in about the blog. I seem to always have something else to do that needs to be done NOW. Anyway, my goal here is going to be to post at least once a week, so we'll see how that turns out.

On Business:

It has been another exciting week here at Anime Corner world headquarters, and I have several items to share with you:

Ergo Proxy 3 arrived on Friday - we had it air freighted in from Geneon so we could start shipping orders as early as possible. We're shipping it now and all of your pre-orders were filled by close of business on Friday March 23rd. Oh yeah, all of our copies of Ergo 3 in this shipment have the limited pencil board - we'll be shipping those first until they run out.

I spend a lot of my time here on 'logistics' - you know, figuring out where and when and how stuffis coming, and there certainly has been a lot of activity in that dept this week. We got a slew of new solicitations over that last couple of weeks for June and July titles and we'll have them all up on the site shortly. A couple of the new titles include Galaxy Angel AA and MAR which are already posted. Also, Geneon will be re-releasing Ikki Tousen in a Thin-Pak (same price, same bat channel) in June and won't be repressing the old box, so it will probably be unavailable for a short time until the new boxes come out. Finally, we now have the last volume of Inu Yasha up for pre-order - volume #55! Wow - 4 years to get a series released, it reminds me if Urusei Yatsura or DBZ. Now when are the rest of those IY boxed sets coming??.... -_^

We have a couple more date changes this week - in fact there have been so many lately they are getting hard to keep up with. Tactics 4 was pushed from 3-20 to 3-27, but became moot as it has already arrived. The new company Illumitoon pushed the BoBoBoBo 2 DVD from 4-6 to 5-1. They also announced that the Beet 2 DVD and the BT'X 2 DVD have been pulled entirely from the release schedule and will be re-announced at a later date. Since these titles have sold moderately well, one can only speculate at this point as to what their plans are, but we'll keep on top of things and let you know. Geneon cancelled the Paradise Kiss 3 Special Edition DVD, but the regular edition is still set to street on April 17th.

I know I've done a lot of talking about the upcoming Melancholy limited edition boxes. Sam, the product manager at Bandai, told me this week that they are producing exactly 20,000 boxed sets for the North American release, and they were surprised by the massive amount of retailer pre-orders for them that have already been placed. The boxes are made overseas and the order has been placed by Bandai, so Sam says quote "once they are gone there is no more - period". I can almost guarantee you that this box is now, or almost is, sold out in pre-release and will be allocated to retailers by Bandai. Sam said that retailers who order early will be more likely to get the product that they ordered. That's good news as we got our order in on the first day, so our units are right at the front of the line and we will be able to guarantee delivery of boxes up to about the first 500 pre-ordered (we're 82% of the way there now as of 3/23), and I will probably close the pre-order window once we hit the 500 mark.

We have posted quite a few new announcements for pre-order, some of the more notable include Wings of Rean, the 4th Naruto Uncut Box, the 2nd Prince of Tennis Box, the 2nd Ranma 1/2 Thin-Pak, and the first Freedom DVD (HDDVD/DVD) which will be the very first HD-DVD Anime release here in North America. I was wondering when that was going to happen. :-)

A lot of people have been asking us recently what we plan to do about the postal rate increase coming next month. Admittedly shipping charges have been a point of consternation for us as we try to offer you a great deal of choices, excellent delivery time and quality, and still offer shipping at a reasonable price. We have not increased our shipping prices in 3 years even though all of the carriers have increased their rates to us several times during this period. As shipping has become the 'condiment' of the internet shopping world (you know, serve a lower quality hot-dog but give the mustard away for free), it's become very challenging for us to try to put together a new shipping program that covers our actual freight costs but that fits the requirements of all of your diverse needs. We are currently working on a new shipping program that is similar to what we offer now, with our usual diverse selection or types, carriers, and quality of delivery, but that will also offer more choices for budget minded customers. We'll be integrating the new program into the new order checkout manager, and we would greatly appreciate any input on this subject that you guys have for us. Your comments help us better tailor our program to fit your specific needs, and that's what it's all about.

After many requests, we've expanded our trade in program to include video games, even really old ones. Check our trade in FAQ for details.

I have two great sales for you this week, one is a newsletter exclusive set of coupons that you canuse across the store, and the other is a nice set of overstocked figure discounts (up to 35% off) that we need to move out to make room for new arrivals. Newsletter subscribers can combine the two offers to save even more! See below for all the info.

To save 3% off any order over $75, use the following coupon code during checkout:

spring75

Or to save 5% off any order over $150, use the following coupon code during checkout:

spring150

Coupons are valid ONLY for NEW orders, and are good through Thursday, March 29th only.

You can combine the two offers to save even more!

We have some great new stuff for this week in just about every category from DVD's to Manga to Figures to Statues, and even some cool new character merchandise including new scrolls and a couple of rare Anime themed bath towels that arrived from Japan. Be sure to take a look at the excellent new Sana Horiuchi figure from Pia Carrot and the very large Tamaki Kousaka from To Heart as they are two of my favorites. Also, we have a few of both of the new Tandem Twins girls left over after filling your pre-orders - including the much sought after 'option' parts that bring the figures, well, to their full potential. :-)

Finally, we received a special shipment of art books that I was able to coax away from one of our vendors in Tokyo. Many of these gorgeous art books have been out of print for more than 5 years and since they are extremely rare we might only have as little as 2 or 3 copies of each.

This little shipment was a long time in the making, and I hope we are able to help you fill some of the holes in your collection. I know it certainly helped mine. :-)

Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Limited Edition Box - Available for Pre-Order!

Bandai has finally announcd the first DVD that will be available for the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya series, and they have done it right offering not only the first disk, but a beautiful limited edition collectors box to go along with it!

This lavish limited collectors edition will include DVD Vol #1 (episodes #1-4) and a gorgeous collectors art box (complete with a storage drawer for your extras!) that will hold all the individual DVD's once released. It also includes the original soundtrack, Cosplay Hair Ribbon, Pencil Board, and an exclusive Iron on!

This is going to one of the most important releases of 2007, and we are asking customers to please order now to reserve your copy as this box may sell out in pre-order and not be available after the release date. We have gone very heavy on these and have already placed our initial order with Bandai, however, because they are limited production and will be in such high demand there is a high probability that they will either sell out in pre-order, or they may become allocated which means they might become over ordered and Bandai may only be able to fill part of each retailers initial order.

Our customers have already started to pre-book this box very heavily, and we will be working very closely with Bandai to ensure our quantities so that we can guarantee availability for those customers that order with us early.

Series Synopsys:

On the first day of school a beautiful girl named Haruhi introduces herself as having "no interest in ordinary humans"...

She asks for any aliens, time travelers, sliders or espers to join her. Watching her weird behaviour is Kyon a boy who sits in front of Haruhi and is the only person who talks to her. Commenting on Haruhi's joining every club in school and then quitting Kyon unwittingly gives Haruhi an idea to start her own after school club which will become known as the Spreading Excitement All Over the World with Haruhi Suzumiya Brigade (the S.O.S. Brigade for short)!

Bandai's Announcement regarding the Limited Edition Episode Ordering

Bandai Entertainment has announced that they will include the broadcast order version of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya with the special edition DVDs. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya was originally broadcast on Japanese TV in a non-chronological order, however the DVDs were released in chronological order. Bandai Entertainment had announced that the North American DVDs would also be broadcast order, however with this new announcement, the series will be available in both versions. Broadcast order DVDs were never released in Japan, they will be unique to the North American market at the time of their release. The broadcast order DVDs will be included with the special edition releases, starting with volume 2, and will not include the English dub, they will be in Japanese only with English subtitles.

The asosbriogade.com website has a page with further details about the ordering of the series.

Bandi Press Release on General Release

THE MELANCHOLY OF HARUHI SUZUMIYA REGULAR EDITION SPECS ANNOUNCED; BROADCAST ORDER AND CD UPDATE!

February 27th, 2007 (Cypress, CA) – Kadokawa Pictures USA, Inc. and Bandai Entertainment Inc., made a new announcement today regarding the specs for the Regular Edition Vol. 1 DVD of the upcoming hit Japanese anime series, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.

“After announcing the Special Edition specs at this past weekend's New York Comic Con, we wanted to get the word out on the great features in the Vol. 1 Regular Edition,” said Robert Napton, Director of Sales and Marketing at Bandai Entertainment.

In addition to having the first four episodes in chronological order both English-language dubbed in Dolby 5.1 and subtitled with the original Japanese audio, the Regular Edition of Vol. 1 will include TV Broadcast Previews, Making Of… Clip #01, Making Of… Clip #02, TV Commercial #1, TV Commercial #2, Texless Ep.00 Opening, Textless Ep.00 Ending, and three episodes of The Adventures of the ASOS Brigade. Regular Edition Volume 1 will be released on May 29th and retail for $29.98.

In addition, up to six CDs are planned for release, with more being discussed, but will NOT be released on the same day as the regular and special editions on May 29th as reported by some news outlets. These will be released sometime later.

“Also, a lot of fans at New York Comic Con asked about TV Broadcast Order DVDs. As Mr. Takashi Sakuda from Kadokawa Pictures USA explained, Kadokawa Japan originally didn't want us to release Broadcast Order DVDs at all. Even though we requested it knowing many fans preferred that sequence, the first answer was no,” clarified Napton.

Takashi Sakuda, Senior Vice President of Distribution and Licensing for Kadokawa Pictures USA, explained the rest at New York Comic Con, “Because I knew you [U.S. fans] wanted Broadcast Order so much, I was able to convince Japan.” The compromise was to release Broadcast Order bonus DVDs in the Special Editions. Because they are bonus DVDs, they will be subtitled only with the original Japanese audio

Each Regular edition of the four English-language The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya DVDs will also contain many extras with details to come later.