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This time around I talk about the anime genie and the glory that is violence jack!!!!!
download the glory of violence HERE
EPISODE#6 The glory that is VIOLENCE JACK!!!!!
powered by ODEO
This time around I talk about the anime genie and the glory that is violence jack!!!!!
download the glory of violence HERE
What's The Heck Is Going On At ADV? Don't Panic.
There has been a lot of rumor milling going on since Friday about a pending disaster taking shape over at ADV, especially since ANN posted the article about certain titles being pulled from ADV's websites.I have been quiet for a couple of days because the folks at ADV have been working on the situation, but we've been absolutely flooded with e-mails yesterday and today from panicked fans looking for any information about the situation - so many that I felt that I needed to post something about it here.
Here is what we know:
1) I appears that ADV is having some unknown trouble with their licensing partners, and that there are a number of releases that are in jeopardy of being suspended, at least for a short time.
2) The executives at ADV are currently working to get these issues resolved, and thus NO FORMAL ANNOUNCEMENTS HAVE BEEN MADE regarding these issues. In fact, as of this writing there is nothing that can be announced since talks are still ongoing.
3) It has the potential to end up being an ugly situation, but as of now we DO NOT KNOW ANYTHING FOR SURE. Ultimately it may turn out to be a non-issue.
4) This is NOT another 'Geneon' situation.
I was not going to make this public, but someone has already posted a copy of this over at AOD so the cat is out of the bag now and I might as well make the following information available to everyone. This article was originally set to be posted to ICV2 yesterday, but it was pulled at the last minute and NOT published because the information it contains is NOT VERIFIED. It does NOT indicate that these titles have, in fact, been canceled. What it does indicate is that there is a serious problem that has developed over at ADV Films that management there is currently working on to try to rectify, and it was for this reason the article did not go live.
Here is the text of the article. Please keep in mind that the letter that is referenced in the article WAS NEVER SENT OUT.
-------------------
ADV Cancels 37 Titles
Anime Offerings on 'Indefinite Hiatus'
January 28, 2008
ARTICLE CANCELED
In a letter to retailers ADV Films has identified 37 anime properties including Devil May Cry, Gurren Lagann, and Pumpkin Scissors that are "on indefinite hiatus, effective immediately." The list includes virtually all of the properties that ADV has announced since its financing deal with the Sojitz Corporation in late June of 2006. The properties that ADV has announced (and released) since then are from a variety of anime studios but they were all licensed through the ARM Corporation, a subsidiary of Japan Contents Investment, an investor group that included the Sojitz Corporation, the Development Bank of Japan and KlockWorx. In its letter to retailers ADV explained: "ADV has suspended certain elements of its former alliance with ARM Corporation, which financed the acquisition of these titles. ADV is working closely with various constituencies with the goal of restoring most if not all of these properties to our release schedule at a later date to the extent possible."
The list includes properties that have already been released in their entirety such as Nerima Daikon Brothers, Guyver, and 009-1, series such as Pumpkin Scissors, Kurau Phantom Memory, and Red Garden that have only been partially released, and eagerly awaited anime such as Devil May Cry, Gurren Lagann and 5 Centimeters per Second that have been announced for later this year. The complete list of ADV anime properties on hiatus is:
009-01
5cm Per Second
Ah! My Goddess: Flights of Fancy
Air Gear
Air Movie
Air TV series
Best Student Council
Blade of the Phantom Master
Comic Party Revolution
Coyote Ragtime
Devil May Cry
Ghost Train
Gurren Lagann
Guyver
Innocent Venus
Jinki: Extend
Kanon TV Series
King of Bandit Jing: 7th Heaven
Kurau Phantom Memory
Le Chevalier D'Eon
Magikano
Moeyo Ken TV Series
Moonlight Mile
Nerima Daikon Brothers
Pani Pani Dash!
Project Blue
Pumpkin Scissors
Red Garden
Synethesia
The Wallflower
Tokyo Majin
UFO Princess Valkyrie - Third and Fourth Seasons
Utawarerumono
Venus vs. Virus
Welcome to the NHK
Xenosaga
Coming on the heels of Geneon's departure the ADV announcement is more bad news for the reeling North American Anime Industry. For the past few years ADV has been the number two anime company in the North America, with a solid 12-13% share of the anime DVD market. Recently though ADV has been showing signs of stress. It has pulled its support from its industry-leading collection of anime clubs and two weeks ago announced that it would cease publication of Newtype USA. The collapse of ADV's deal with ARM does not necessarily mean the end of one of the trailblazing American anime companies, which was founded in 1992. ADV still has an extensive library of titles including the ever-popular Neon Genesis Evangelion. Still the fate of ADV subsidiaries such as The Anime Network, the Newtype successor PiQ, and the ADV manga publishing program that includes the bestselling Yotsuba&! manga remains in the balance as does the future of one of the pioneering powerhouses of the American anime market.
---------------
A reminder to you that THIS ARTICLE WAS CANCELED PRIOR TO PUBLICATION. It is not gospel. ADV HAS NOT provided us with any sort of official notification of what the article states. I have been in touch with management at ADV over the last couple of days and they have indicated to me that they feel the problem is solvable and will be cleared up shortly. They have not offered any comments to the press due to ongoing talks.
I have made mention in the last newsletter of the supply problems we've been having with ADV recently, and I think this goes a long way to explain things. What we need to do now is take a breath, and wait to hear some official comment from ADV. We will not be making any changes to the availablity of these titles, even if they are currently on backorder status, until ADV tells us for sure.
An hopefully NO changes will be necessary.
While we're waiting, I'm going to go have a drink....
UPDATE (1/30): I have heard what I deem as reliable information this morning that ADV is close to a solution to the licensing problems and that there is a very good level of confidence that their existing catalog will remain in-tact with nothing more than a few bumped street dates. I've been doing business with this guy for 10 years and he never bullshits me, so I think this is as good of information as we can get less than an official statement. I have verified this info through a couple other inside industry contacts and it jives. ADV will probably not be able to make any official statement though until everything is wrapped up which could be a few more days.
Smile everyone, I think we will be OK. :-)
Episode #5 Tadao Nagahamas Robot Romance Trilogy
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I talk about the awsome Robot romance trilogy , which had the wicked super robots: Combattler V , Voltus V(5), and my fav Daaaimoss!!!
I also talk about the bullshit North American anime industry , why I love Hong-Kong
and my new Tekkaman bootleg joy!!!!
Download this weeks episode HERE
the secret history of anime parody dubbing
(this article was originally written in the late 90s. Many dramatic changes have taken place in the anime parody world since then, dramatic changes I have not paid the least bit of attention to. Last March it appeared on the Anime Hell blog, and now because things are very busy at Let's Anime Headquarters, I'm re-running it here. Nothing to do with the writer's strike, I swear. Enjoy!)
One of the craziest things Japanese anime fans do - besides spend thousands of dollars on cartoons that are in a language they don't understand - is parody dubbing. Like making your own music videos, dubbing your own voice over somebody else's video is an idea that sort of comes naturally to the hard-core anime person. You've got two VCRs, you're pretty well versed in the process of hooking them up to make copies, and sooner or later you're going to look at that "audio input" jack and start thinking to yourself, "Hey, that could be my voice coming out of that little TV speaker, making Rick Hunter say silly things!"
In fact, if you get two or three overstimulated teenagers and make them watch some untranslated anime, it won't be ten minutes before the quips and gags start flying. It's only a matter of time before somebody digs up a microphone, somebody else cannibalizes their stereo, and there you are making your own parody dub. This is nothing new - none less than Woody Allen employed the exact same technique for the re-dubbed feature film What's Up Tiger Lily? - but it took anime fandom and A/V nerd know-how to take it from the pro studios and put it in our own living rooms.
Who started this wacky sub-sub-subculture? Well, the earliest evidence of parody dubbing is a legendary treasure known as "You Say Yamato". It's an episode of Star Blazers dubbed wacky, and while it undoubtedly is the granddaddy of them all, whether or not it can be called 'influential' is debatable because nobody had a copy of the damn thing, and if you didn't live in New York or New England you didn't even get to SEE it. I myself was begging for a copy as early as 1985, and even my desperate pleas went ignored, because, you know, if they copied it they might get in trouble with the copyright holders. Well, that was the excuse I was given, anyway. Having since obtained a copy, I find the legend of "You Say Yamato" looms large because of its early entry into the field and its relative obscurity, rather than because of its comedy value.
Anyway, the one that was both very early and very influential was a little thing that really had no title, but became known as "Dirty Pair Does Dishes" by a Southern California group known as Pinesalad Productions.. Pinesalad had dubbed some Robotech episodes ("How Drugs Won The War" and "Why Don't You Come Over For A Sip Of Sherry, Slut."), but it was their Dirty Pair that really brought down the house. The voices were goofy, yet fitting - Kei sounds like Der Arnold and Yuri's voice is strictly Valley Girl. The soundtrack was pure 80's New Wave, and the dialog was silly and suggestive enough to make even the most sour-faced anime fan laugh.
What's more, this one showed up just as anime tape trading was getting into high gear. DPDD was copied and re-copied and re-copied to such an extent that just about everybody involved in anime fandom from 1988-1992 had seen the darn thing so many times that it wasn't even funny. Pinesalad would go on to dub three more Dirty Pair episodes before extricating themselves from the anime parody community.
Alan from the Pinesalad crew had this to say: Just to clarify there were actually three RoboTech's (dubbed between 1986 and 1987):
1. How Drugs Won The War
2. You Lying Hussy! I thought you were a Man!
3. So Glad You Could Stop by for a Sip of Sherry Slut.
They were mostly done with an off the air recording of RoboTech, a microphone (well, you couldn't call it that for the first episode), and the audio dub button on a VCR (something that was fairly common on VCR's of the time).
Scenes were dubbed "live" and hence the numerous glitches in the tapes.
For the DP's there were four episodes (dubbed between 1987 and 1990):
1. Dirty Pair Duz Dishes
2. Revenge of BD
3. Fistfull of Pasta
4. Viva La Dirty Pair
I remastered those to S-VHS with Laserdisc source in 1991 and seems to be what's floating around out there.
And technically there is a 5th Dirty Pair that was never finished. It has been worked on from time to time over the years but it's a dead project at this point (it had a killer sound track though).
Kurt Heiden from Pinesalad would love to get in touch with his fellow Pinesalad Producers, so if you fit that category please email him at kheiden @ mac.com (remove the spaces, guys.) Maybe if everybody is nice, someday soon I'll reprint the Pam Buck interview from the first (and only?) issue of "Lemonmag".
Around the same time Pinesalad was mangling the Dirty Pair, two guys in Atlanta were doing the same thing to Star Blazers, AKA Space Cruiser Yamato. They called themselves Corn Pone Flicks, and their film would be re-christened Star Dipwads. Corn Pone wasn't content to just take an episode -they took the entire film Arrivederci Space Cruiser Yamato and re-dubbed it. What set CPF's approach apart from the others was the simple yet effective tactic of editing. While other parody film producers were content to just let the video run unmolested, Star Dipwads would use the magic of editing to make the Star Force destroy their own headquarters, warp whenever the heck they felt like it, and shoot themselves in the main bridge. The Comet Empire was explained away as a giant orbiting swarm of copulating sheep, and Prince Zordar was clearly insane, asking his subordinates repeatedly to explain the existence of goats.
The non-sequitur comedy of "Star Dipwads" entertained con audiences for years until CPF got tired of showing it all the damn time. CPF would later produce the live-action mockumentary "Making Of Star Dipwads", the half-live, half-parody prequel "A Star Dipwads Christmas", the parody subtitled "Grandizer VS Great Mazinger" and "Mazinger Z VS Devilman", and lots of straight fan subtitled videos, not to mention many short comedic films including "Corn Dog Seven" and "The Phone." The last installment in the Dipwads saga -1997's "The Return Of Star Dipwads II -The Metal Years" - continued the "mockumentary" theme as an intro to one wild thirty minutes of parody dubbing in which the Star Force spends three years fiddling with the thermostat and Captain Avatar's psychic powers are growing stronger by the minute. There was even a Star Dipwads comic!
As the 90s bloomed so did fan dubbing. Sherbert Productions produced their own Dirty Pair parody and moved on to Ranma 1/2 and Gatchaman. Some guy down in Florida did an episode of Tekkaman where the plot concerned hair care products. Seishun Shitamasu dubbed Gunbuster into a fake Robotech. Magnum Opus Productions did their own version of "1982- Grafitti of Otaku Generation" and turned it into "Fanboy Generation", complete with fake "interviews." They just completed a smutty version of Speed Racer. A Great Lakes outfit known as "G.R.A.A.C." released their own take on Evangelion, only this one has a pronounced Hibernian accent. Yes, it's "Bad Scottish Dubbing," complete with a fair Sean Connery impression. And Birmingham's Video Mare Jigoku produced not one, not two, but three in the live-action-clips-versus-animated-clips "X-23" series. The second installment (produced in conjunction with Corn Pone Flicks) is 150 minutes long and violates literally hundreds of copyrights and 'fair-use' agreements. Guess what? Nobody cares.
Video Mare Jigoku also did a video in which the Enterprise battles Captain Harlock, inspired by seeing CPFs video where Captain Harlock battles Han Solo, which was inspired by seeing a very very early homemade video possibly by Texas fan Jeff Blend, in which the Enterprise battled the Yamato (the Yamato won). CPF later did a video where Captain Harlock single-handedly destroyed the Empire from Star Wars. Did Lucas sue? Not yet.
Some of these parodies are funny - some are tedious - some are downright abusive. But the important thing is, the kids aren't just sitting back and couch-potatoing like zombies. They're taking what they see and using it as fodder for their own creativity, and that can't help but be cool.
The technology has come a long way, too - gone are the days when you had to record your dialog onto an audio cassette (the same cassette deck that was providing many of your sound effects!) and play it back into the video. Even back then some VCRs had "audio-dub" switches - keep the video, but record new audio - that music video creators were already using to good advantage. These days the kids can mix the audio on their desktop super computers, combine it with video either out to a S-VHS or again, right on the desktop, and there you go. Titles are child's play.
The best of the parody-dubbed films these days rival even professional TV shows, at least in appearance. Seamless edits and fancy titles abound. The actual writing is still sometimes stuck in the goofy-sit-around-and-make-fun-of-the-cartoons league, but even that has its own D.I.Y. charm. This is comedy without focus groups, editorial boards, sponsors or producers - this is total artistic freedom. So what if dick jokes abound? It's FREEDOM, man. Go out there and get some!
One of the craziest things Japanese anime fans do - besides spend thousands of dollars on cartoons that are in a language they don't understand - is parody dubbing. Like making your own music videos, dubbing your own voice over somebody else's video is an idea that sort of comes naturally to the hard-core anime person. You've got two VCRs, you're pretty well versed in the process of hooking them up to make copies, and sooner or later you're going to look at that "audio input" jack and start thinking to yourself, "Hey, that could be my voice coming out of that little TV speaker, making Rick Hunter say silly things!"
In fact, if you get two or three overstimulated teenagers and make them watch some untranslated anime, it won't be ten minutes before the quips and gags start flying. It's only a matter of time before somebody digs up a microphone, somebody else cannibalizes their stereo, and there you are making your own parody dub. This is nothing new - none less than Woody Allen employed the exact same technique for the re-dubbed feature film What's Up Tiger Lily? - but it took anime fandom and A/V nerd know-how to take it from the pro studios and put it in our own living rooms.
Who started this wacky sub-sub-subculture? Well, the earliest evidence of parody dubbing is a legendary treasure known as "You Say Yamato". It's an episode of Star Blazers dubbed wacky, and while it undoubtedly is the granddaddy of them all, whether or not it can be called 'influential' is debatable because nobody had a copy of the damn thing, and if you didn't live in New York or New England you didn't even get to SEE it. I myself was begging for a copy as early as 1985, and even my desperate pleas went ignored, because, you know, if they copied it they might get in trouble with the copyright holders. Well, that was the excuse I was given, anyway. Having since obtained a copy, I find the legend of "You Say Yamato" looms large because of its early entry into the field and its relative obscurity, rather than because of its comedy value.
Anyway, the one that was both very early and very influential was a little thing that really had no title, but became known as "Dirty Pair Does Dishes" by a Southern California group known as Pinesalad Productions.. Pinesalad had dubbed some Robotech episodes ("How Drugs Won The War" and "Why Don't You Come Over For A Sip Of Sherry, Slut."), but it was their Dirty Pair that really brought down the house. The voices were goofy, yet fitting - Kei sounds like Der Arnold and Yuri's voice is strictly Valley Girl. The soundtrack was pure 80's New Wave, and the dialog was silly and suggestive enough to make even the most sour-faced anime fan laugh.
What's more, this one showed up just as anime tape trading was getting into high gear. DPDD was copied and re-copied and re-copied to such an extent that just about everybody involved in anime fandom from 1988-1992 had seen the darn thing so many times that it wasn't even funny. Pinesalad would go on to dub three more Dirty Pair episodes before extricating themselves from the anime parody community.
Alan from the Pinesalad crew had this to say: Just to clarify there were actually three RoboTech's (dubbed between 1986 and 1987):
1. How Drugs Won The War
2. You Lying Hussy! I thought you were a Man!
3. So Glad You Could Stop by for a Sip of Sherry Slut.
They were mostly done with an off the air recording of RoboTech, a microphone (well, you couldn't call it that for the first episode), and the audio dub button on a VCR (something that was fairly common on VCR's of the time).
Scenes were dubbed "live" and hence the numerous glitches in the tapes.
For the DP's there were four episodes (dubbed between 1987 and 1990):
1. Dirty Pair Duz Dishes
2. Revenge of BD
3. Fistfull of Pasta
4. Viva La Dirty Pair
I remastered those to S-VHS with Laserdisc source in 1991 and seems to be what's floating around out there.
And technically there is a 5th Dirty Pair that was never finished. It has been worked on from time to time over the years but it's a dead project at this point (it had a killer sound track though).
Kurt Heiden from Pinesalad would love to get in touch with his fellow Pinesalad Producers, so if you fit that category please email him at kheiden @ mac.com (remove the spaces, guys.) Maybe if everybody is nice, someday soon I'll reprint the Pam Buck interview from the first (and only?) issue of "Lemonmag".
Around the same time Pinesalad was mangling the Dirty Pair, two guys in Atlanta were doing the same thing to Star Blazers, AKA Space Cruiser Yamato. They called themselves Corn Pone Flicks, and their film would be re-christened Star Dipwads. Corn Pone wasn't content to just take an episode -they took the entire film Arrivederci Space Cruiser Yamato and re-dubbed it. What set CPF's approach apart from the others was the simple yet effective tactic of editing. While other parody film producers were content to just let the video run unmolested, Star Dipwads would use the magic of editing to make the Star Force destroy their own headquarters, warp whenever the heck they felt like it, and shoot themselves in the main bridge. The Comet Empire was explained away as a giant orbiting swarm of copulating sheep, and Prince Zordar was clearly insane, asking his subordinates repeatedly to explain the existence of goats.
The non-sequitur comedy of "Star Dipwads" entertained con audiences for years until CPF got tired of showing it all the damn time. CPF would later produce the live-action mockumentary "Making Of Star Dipwads", the half-live, half-parody prequel "A Star Dipwads Christmas", the parody subtitled "Grandizer VS Great Mazinger" and "Mazinger Z VS Devilman", and lots of straight fan subtitled videos, not to mention many short comedic films including "Corn Dog Seven" and "The Phone." The last installment in the Dipwads saga -1997's "The Return Of Star Dipwads II -The Metal Years" - continued the "mockumentary" theme as an intro to one wild thirty minutes of parody dubbing in which the Star Force spends three years fiddling with the thermostat and Captain Avatar's psychic powers are growing stronger by the minute. There was even a Star Dipwads comic!
As the 90s bloomed so did fan dubbing. Sherbert Productions produced their own Dirty Pair parody and moved on to Ranma 1/2 and Gatchaman. Some guy down in Florida did an episode of Tekkaman where the plot concerned hair care products. Seishun Shitamasu dubbed Gunbuster into a fake Robotech. Magnum Opus Productions did their own version of "1982- Grafitti of Otaku Generation" and turned it into "Fanboy Generation", complete with fake "interviews." They just completed a smutty version of Speed Racer. A Great Lakes outfit known as "G.R.A.A.C." released their own take on Evangelion, only this one has a pronounced Hibernian accent. Yes, it's "Bad Scottish Dubbing," complete with a fair Sean Connery impression. And Birmingham's Video Mare Jigoku produced not one, not two, but three in the live-action-clips-versus-animated-clips "X-23" series. The second installment (produced in conjunction with Corn Pone Flicks) is 150 minutes long and violates literally hundreds of copyrights and 'fair-use' agreements. Guess what? Nobody cares.
Video Mare Jigoku also did a video in which the Enterprise battles Captain Harlock, inspired by seeing CPFs video where Captain Harlock battles Han Solo, which was inspired by seeing a very very early homemade video possibly by Texas fan Jeff Blend, in which the Enterprise battled the Yamato (the Yamato won). CPF later did a video where Captain Harlock single-handedly destroyed the Empire from Star Wars. Did Lucas sue? Not yet.
Some of these parodies are funny - some are tedious - some are downright abusive. But the important thing is, the kids aren't just sitting back and couch-potatoing like zombies. They're taking what they see and using it as fodder for their own creativity, and that can't help but be cool.
The technology has come a long way, too - gone are the days when you had to record your dialog onto an audio cassette (the same cassette deck that was providing many of your sound effects!) and play it back into the video. Even back then some VCRs had "audio-dub" switches - keep the video, but record new audio - that music video creators were already using to good advantage. These days the kids can mix the audio on their desktop super computers, combine it with video either out to a S-VHS or again, right on the desktop, and there you go. Titles are child's play.
The best of the parody-dubbed films these days rival even professional TV shows, at least in appearance. Seamless edits and fancy titles abound. The actual writing is still sometimes stuck in the goofy-sit-around-and-make-fun-of-the-cartoons league, but even that has its own D.I.Y. charm. This is comedy without focus groups, editorial boards, sponsors or producers - this is total artistic freedom. So what if dick jokes abound? It's FREEDOM, man. Go out there and get some!
ALI PROJECT - Soubikakei (2007)
Ali Project
Japanese band with a strong Japanese Aristocrat-style image, consisting of Arika Takarano (宝野アリカ, Takarano Arika?) (vocals & lyrics) and Mikiya Katakura (片倉三起也, Katakura Mikiya?) (music & arrangement).In the band's earlier days, their musical style tended towards light, cheerful and/or refreshing songs. However, the sound has changed in recent times to take on a darker and more mysterious tone. Takarano Arika, lead singer/lyricist, has termed this change as a transition from White Alice (白アリ, Shiro Ari?) to Black Alice (黒アリ, Kuro Ari?)[citation needed]. Though there has been a general shift towards performing songs in the "Black Alice" phase, Ali Project has occasionally sung in the White Alice style as well.
They made their indie debut in the charts in 1988 as Ari (Ant) Project (蟻プロジェクト, Ari Purojekuto?) with their album Fantastic Garden (幻想庭園, Gensō Teien?). The album was later included in Tatsumi Takayuki's book Philosophy of Progressive Rock (プログレッシヴ・ロックの哲学, Philosophy of Progressive Rock?), which led to the band being classified under the progressive rock genre.
Four years later in 1992 they changed their name and made their major debut with their single Fall in love, maiden (恋せよ乙女, Koi-seyo otome?).
Most of their records are released by Toshiba-EMI, Victor Entertainment and Tokuma Japan. The band is notable in the anime community for having their songs featured in several anime opening and ending sequences, most notably in the series Noir, Rozen Maiden, and Code Geass.
Menko Part Two: The Quickening
As we remember from our last episode, Mark Time and his rockey-jocket sidekick Bob have... wait, wrong part two. We were talking about menko cards and how they're thick little cardboard slabs decorated with off-register printing of things 9-year old Japanese boys think are cool. Here are some more!
Ambassador Magma is of course the Tezuka manga turned into the live-action television show produced in 1966 by "P Productions" and released in America some years later as "Space Giants"where it rocked our world. This card is a recolored photo of guys in rubber suits pretending to be space creatures, and if that doesn't appeal to 9-year olds everywhere, then something is terribly wrong. The next card is a different look at the same show...
Manga-style Maguma menko! Marvelous! Note the evil, scheming visage of the devil Goa, an outer space mastermind known in the United States as... RODAK!!
Next up is the faded and slightly off-model menko for a show that was instrumental in warping my young brain towards them there Japa-heeno cartoons..
Usei Shonen Papi, or Prince Planet as he was known to American International Pictures, is the story of a young boy sent to Earth and given super powers in order to defeat crime and injustice. With his friends Diana, Aji Baba, and Dan Dynamo, Prince Planet fights evil! The show was originally in black and white which meant Americans were spared the amazingly garish red and green color scheme somebody at "Shonen Magazine" forced upon the character.
This card stars Rainbow Sentai Robin, a team of super androids battling aliens and crime in the future! Created by Shotaro "Cyborg 009" Ishinomori, the menko card for this early B&W Toei series features metallic silver inks for Robin's outfit, which is kinda cool.
One of Tatsunoko's earliest shows, Space Ace came within a hair's whisker of being shown in the United States. It was actually shown in Australia, which got other anime shows the US didn't get like Ken The Wolf Boy. Lucky cobbers. Chubbier than Astro Boy, not quite as colorful as Marine Boy, and with powers far beyond those of mortal men, Space Ace here looks surprised as a rocket-straddling elf blasts through his personal space.
Next up.. Ultraman!
Not normally green, Ultraman is of course the live-action giant hero star of the 1966 Tsuburaya Productions television series of the same name. From the galaxy M78 he's come to Earth to battle monsters, including Godzilla!! Okay, he never actually battled Godzilla, but baby, menko cards don't care. Ultraman was a spinoff from an earlier SF/monster "Outer Limits" type show entitled "Ultra Q".
Because sometimes, sometimes giant spiders attack and you have to look on in horror while wearing your red suit with white polka dots.
Ambassador Magma is of course the Tezuka manga turned into the live-action television show produced in 1966 by "P Productions" and released in America some years later as "Space Giants"where it rocked our world. This card is a recolored photo of guys in rubber suits pretending to be space creatures, and if that doesn't appeal to 9-year olds everywhere, then something is terribly wrong. The next card is a different look at the same show...
Manga-style Maguma menko! Marvelous! Note the evil, scheming visage of the devil Goa, an outer space mastermind known in the United States as... RODAK!!
Next up is the faded and slightly off-model menko for a show that was instrumental in warping my young brain towards them there Japa-heeno cartoons..
Usei Shonen Papi, or Prince Planet as he was known to American International Pictures, is the story of a young boy sent to Earth and given super powers in order to defeat crime and injustice. With his friends Diana, Aji Baba, and Dan Dynamo, Prince Planet fights evil! The show was originally in black and white which meant Americans were spared the amazingly garish red and green color scheme somebody at "Shonen Magazine" forced upon the character.
This card stars Rainbow Sentai Robin, a team of super androids battling aliens and crime in the future! Created by Shotaro "Cyborg 009" Ishinomori, the menko card for this early B&W Toei series features metallic silver inks for Robin's outfit, which is kinda cool.
One of Tatsunoko's earliest shows, Space Ace came within a hair's whisker of being shown in the United States. It was actually shown in Australia, which got other anime shows the US didn't get like Ken The Wolf Boy. Lucky cobbers. Chubbier than Astro Boy, not quite as colorful as Marine Boy, and with powers far beyond those of mortal men, Space Ace here looks surprised as a rocket-straddling elf blasts through his personal space.
Next up.. Ultraman!
Not normally green, Ultraman is of course the live-action giant hero star of the 1966 Tsuburaya Productions television series of the same name. From the galaxy M78 he's come to Earth to battle monsters, including Godzilla!! Okay, he never actually battled Godzilla, but baby, menko cards don't care. Ultraman was a spinoff from an earlier SF/monster "Outer Limits" type show entitled "Ultra Q".
Because sometimes, sometimes giant spiders attack and you have to look on in horror while wearing your red suit with white polka dots.
Episode #4: My slack ass look at Plawres Sanshiro
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Download Plawres goodness here
Gold lightans still in the mail folks!!!!
This week I talk about the 1983 anime Plawres Sanshiro ,fansubs, Goldlightan and bootlegs....I was kind of slack this week so sorry.
menko the gathering
I'm too young to have experienced this first hand, but kids in the 40s and 50s and 60s engaged in a game called 'card flipping' whereby Kid A would put a baseball card on the ground and Kid B would in some fashion hurl a baseball card of his own at the first baseball card on the ground in an attempt to flip the first card over and thereby "win". This is what we did before video games, apparently.
At any rate Japanese kids did the same thing with cards known as "menko cards". Squatter and heavier than American baseball cards, menko cards were imprinted with a bewildering variety of subject matter - ballplayers, wrestlers, judo champions, horses, rockets, spacemen, and - oh yeah, Japanese animation characters. They would hurl these cardboard squares at each other, not realizing that forty years later some goof with a blog would post pictures of them. The fools!
I bought these cards years ago at an Atlanta Fantasy Fair from Flaming Carrot cartoonist Bob Burden, who, when not drawing the looped-out adventures of the Strangest Man Alive, would man a dealers room table crammed with amazing stuff he'd culled from attics, junk stores, and yard sales across the nation. When I grow up I want to be Bob Burden. Anyway, here they are!
Alakazam The Great battles a giant scorpion in his quest to Journey To The West in this still from the 1960 Toei film of the same name, which of course was called Saiyuki in Japanese, is based on an ancient Chinese fairy tale about the Monkey King, and was the basis for anime as widely varied as Dragonball, Midnight Eye Goku, and SF Saiyuki Starzinger. Alakazam was voiced by Peter "Speed Racer" Fernandez in this film, which was released letterboxed on laserdisc by Orion Pictures, before they vanished.
Meanwhile, the Tezuka manga character-turned-anime Cyborg Big X looks on with trepadation as bands of Scotch tape wrap around the midsection of his menko card. One assumes this card saw lots of action in the streetcorner battlefields of the Menko Wars.
Cyborg 009 and the curious 60s toddler-style Cyborg 007 are on the retreat from both a giant spider robot and their miscolored uniforms on this kinda neat looking card. Menko cards are not known for their printing excellence or their attention to the finer points of character design. Personally, I love the fuzzy off-register printing.
Here Kimba The White Lion bites what appears to be a very skinny hyena as legions of jungle animals charge towards the scene. I get the feeling this card was more or less traced from the opening credits of Jungle Emperor. Oh, like you've never done this.
More cards to follow in Menko, Part Two!
At any rate Japanese kids did the same thing with cards known as "menko cards". Squatter and heavier than American baseball cards, menko cards were imprinted with a bewildering variety of subject matter - ballplayers, wrestlers, judo champions, horses, rockets, spacemen, and - oh yeah, Japanese animation characters. They would hurl these cardboard squares at each other, not realizing that forty years later some goof with a blog would post pictures of them. The fools!
I bought these cards years ago at an Atlanta Fantasy Fair from Flaming Carrot cartoonist Bob Burden, who, when not drawing the looped-out adventures of the Strangest Man Alive, would man a dealers room table crammed with amazing stuff he'd culled from attics, junk stores, and yard sales across the nation. When I grow up I want to be Bob Burden. Anyway, here they are!
Alakazam The Great battles a giant scorpion in his quest to Journey To The West in this still from the 1960 Toei film of the same name, which of course was called Saiyuki in Japanese, is based on an ancient Chinese fairy tale about the Monkey King, and was the basis for anime as widely varied as Dragonball, Midnight Eye Goku, and SF Saiyuki Starzinger. Alakazam was voiced by Peter "Speed Racer" Fernandez in this film, which was released letterboxed on laserdisc by Orion Pictures, before they vanished.
Meanwhile, the Tezuka manga character-turned-anime Cyborg Big X looks on with trepadation as bands of Scotch tape wrap around the midsection of his menko card. One assumes this card saw lots of action in the streetcorner battlefields of the Menko Wars.
Cyborg 009 and the curious 60s toddler-style Cyborg 007 are on the retreat from both a giant spider robot and their miscolored uniforms on this kinda neat looking card. Menko cards are not known for their printing excellence or their attention to the finer points of character design. Personally, I love the fuzzy off-register printing.
Here Kimba The White Lion bites what appears to be a very skinny hyena as legions of jungle animals charge towards the scene. I get the feeling this card was more or less traced from the opening credits of Jungle Emperor. Oh, like you've never done this.
More cards to follow in Menko, Part Two!
Hate Valentine Day Countdown Clock
Hate Valentine Day Countdown Clock
Cute Ulquiorra Schiffer. A hate valentine day countdown clock for all anime lovers. We got the idea from others who told us that they were afraid to celebrate Vday as they are singles. Thank youTorrirawr for letting us use this picture. Click "Read More" to get the codes.
Please comment.Feel free to use the flash clock, just remember to link back to Anime Widget. You can copy the link at the sidebar.
Happy Valentine Day Countdown Clock
Happy Valentine Day Countdown Clock
A valentine clock for all anime lovers, featuring Sakura and Syaoran. We think they are a very sweet couple. We wish everyone a very Happy Valentine Day. Click "Read More" to get the codes.
Please comment.Feel free to use the flash clock, just remember to link back to Anime Widget.
Bandai Recalls DVD's / Allows Us To Handle Customer Exchanges
In yet another new update today, Bandai did a 180 degree turn on how they want to handle exchanges for the defective DVD's out of their Jan 8th release batch.
Originally Bandai had wanted customers who already had a defective DVD to contact them and they would handle the exchanges, but the problems are far to widespread for that. Since many customers have expressed their desire for us to handle the exchanges directly, I have been strenuously arguing with Bandai for a full recall that would give us the ability to exchange these DVD's directly for our customers, not to mention preventing more bad DVD's getting put into new customers hands.
I think Bandai management was initially resistant to do this for two reasons:
-They would have to admit the full scope of the problems.
-Many other retailers, seeing the scope of the issues, wanted to pass the buck onto Bandai and not incur the extra cost associated with handling exchanges in house.
We'll, I didn't let the issue go and today Bandai relented and formally announced a full recall of all retailer stock on the effected DVD's and a replacement program that will be put into effect shortly.
Here is a summary of what's going to happen:
1) As of 4PM today we have suspended shipments and pulled ALL inventory on the following effected DVD's:
Eureka Seven, Vol #11 DVD
Flag, Vol #2 DVD
My-Otome, Vol #4 DVD
Gundam Seed Destiny, Vol #12 DVD
Gundam Seed Destiny, Vol #12 DVD Limited Edition
Bandai will be replacing these DVD's with fixed disks that are expected to ship to us sometime around the end of January. We are putting these DVD's back on pre-order status and I'll probably set a new street date for the corrected disks around February 5th. If we get them in sooner then all the better.
2) You have two choices for replacement of your defective DVD's:
Originally Bandai had wanted customers who already had a defective DVD to contact them and they would handle the exchanges, but the problems are far to widespread for that. Since many customers have expressed their desire for us to handle the exchanges directly, I have been strenuously arguing with Bandai for a full recall that would give us the ability to exchange these DVD's directly for our customers, not to mention preventing more bad DVD's getting put into new customers hands.
I think Bandai management was initially resistant to do this for two reasons:
-They would have to admit the full scope of the problems.
-Many other retailers, seeing the scope of the issues, wanted to pass the buck onto Bandai and not incur the extra cost associated with handling exchanges in house.
We'll, I didn't let the issue go and today Bandai relented and formally announced a full recall of all retailer stock on the effected DVD's and a replacement program that will be put into effect shortly.
Here is a summary of what's going to happen:
1) As of 4PM today we have suspended shipments and pulled ALL inventory on the following effected DVD's:
Eureka Seven, Vol #11 DVD
Flag, Vol #2 DVD
My-Otome, Vol #4 DVD
Gundam Seed Destiny, Vol #12 DVD
Gundam Seed Destiny, Vol #12 DVD Limited Edition
Bandai will be replacing these DVD's with fixed disks that are expected to ship to us sometime around the end of January. We are putting these DVD's back on pre-order status and I'll probably set a new street date for the corrected disks around February 5th. If we get them in sooner then all the better.
2) You have two choices for replacement of your defective DVD's:
- RACS Direct: If you purchased your DVD from us, you can have us replace your bad disks directly. Just let us know and we will setup an in house replacement ticket that will be held pending new good stock from Bandai. Do not return the DVD's to us, we will provide a postage pre-paid mailer for you to return your bad disks to us in the package that contains your replacement disk. All existing replacement tickets that have already been setup will remain in force unless you tell us differently.
- From Bandai: If you would prefer to deal directly with Bandai, they will be setting up a special exchange request page out at the Bandai Entertainment site that you use to request replacements for your bad disks. This page will be setup and available to customers by January 17th. I have no idea why it will take that long for them to set it up, so don't ask me.
If you do want to deal with Bandai directly on these and already have a replacement ticket setup with us, just let us know and we'll cancel it. Otherwise, we're going to assume that you want us to handle the replacements for you directly. If you've been fence sitting and need us to setup a replacement ticket for you, just e-mail me directly and I'll take care of it for you.
I'm very happy about this because it will allow us to take care of our customers directly as soon as good disks are available and you will not have to wait weeks to get your disks exchanged with Bandai. Thanks to everyone who wrote in and pressed this issue, I forwarded several of your e-mails to Bandai to help drive the point home.
Bandai's official press release regarding the recall can be found here.
Bandai to Handle Exchanges Directly for Defective DVD's
In a further update to the problems with the last batch of DVD's from Bandai, they have informed us today that (as expected) they would like to handle the customer exchanges.
If you are a US or Canadian customer and are experiencing play problems with one of the following:
Eureka Seven, Vol #11 DVD
Flag, Vol #2 DVD
My-Otome, Vol #4 DVD
Gundam Seed Destiny, Vol #12 DVD
Gundam Seed Destiny, Vol #12 DVD Limited Edition
Please contact Bandai directly using their customer service form here for an exchange of the defective DVD(s).
If you had already setup a replacement ticket with us, Bandai requests that you still go ahead and contact them directly for the exchange.
If you are an international customer then please sit tight and we'll handle the replacement for you directly. We ask your patience in this matter as we are going to have to wait for a new batch of disks from Bandai and we will need to test them inhouse before doing any overseas exchanges. I imagine this will take a few weeks.
For the record, no, I'm not too happy with this. I know they will be slow in taking care of these exchanges. Also, Bandai wants us to continue to ship these DVD's to customers, and then handle any issues directly on a case by case basis. I would have preferred that the DVD's all get recalled and new (corrected) DVD's issued out to retailers, but that's not what they wanted to do and the powers that be have spoken.
Due to the high defect rate reported in GSD #12 we are going to continue to hold new shipments of the individual version until we are at least able to get a new (and hopefully corrected) batch of the discs from Bandai.
If you are a US or Canadian customer and are experiencing play problems with one of the following:
Eureka Seven, Vol #11 DVD
Flag, Vol #2 DVD
My-Otome, Vol #4 DVD
Gundam Seed Destiny, Vol #12 DVD
Gundam Seed Destiny, Vol #12 DVD Limited Edition
Please contact Bandai directly using their customer service form here for an exchange of the defective DVD(s).
If you had already setup a replacement ticket with us, Bandai requests that you still go ahead and contact them directly for the exchange.
If you are an international customer then please sit tight and we'll handle the replacement for you directly. We ask your patience in this matter as we are going to have to wait for a new batch of disks from Bandai and we will need to test them inhouse before doing any overseas exchanges. I imagine this will take a few weeks.
For the record, no, I'm not too happy with this. I know they will be slow in taking care of these exchanges. Also, Bandai wants us to continue to ship these DVD's to customers, and then handle any issues directly on a case by case basis. I would have preferred that the DVD's all get recalled and new (corrected) DVD's issued out to retailers, but that's not what they wanted to do and the powers that be have spoken.
Due to the high defect rate reported in GSD #12 we are going to continue to hold new shipments of the individual version until we are at least able to get a new (and hopefully corrected) batch of the discs from Bandai.
The hot new entertainment trend for 1977 - "Anime"!
J'ever notice the continual parade of new anime fans who have the idea that Japanese cartoons are some brand new thing that only recently impacted American pop culture? Because if THEY just found out about it, it HAS to be some hot new trend! Right? Wrong. As evidence to the contrary allow me to present... Cool Robot Toys of The 1970's, namely, Shogun Warriors.
In the post-Star Wars toy world everybody scrambled to find science-fictiony properties for America's toy-hungry children. Some bright executive at Mattel must have, I dunno, gone to Japan or something, because the mid 1970s reaped a bountiful harvest of brightly colored metal and plastic spaceships, heroes, robots, vehicles, and unidentifiable THINGS to amuse Japanese children. The idea of shipping these things across the ocean for American kids is not a complex one; Japan had been supplying toys and cutesy ceramics for years (not to mention radios, motorbikes, cars, etc) to their roundeyed cousins.
As one of those American 70s kids, I found the impact of Shogun Warriors to be swift and powerful. We couldn't tell Great Mazinger from the Great Pumpkin, but boy, we knew cool toys when we saw them. The giant two-foot plastic robots shot their fists across the room, the smaller diecast robots shot their fists and transformed and raised a big bruise if you hit somebody with them, and all of these toys simply looked fantastic - this was a level of creativity and design in children's toys not seen since the mid 60s, if even then.
Most of the toys came from various Toei robot anime series - Getta Robo G, Raideen, Great Mazinger, Danguard Ace, Gaiking, Daimos. Some toys were culled from the outlandish vehicles seen in Toei's live-action "sentai" programs like Gorangers or Message From Space. But we didn't care then. We would care later. Later Jim Terry would use the popularity of Shogun Warriors as an impetus to produce a package of episodes of 5 different Toei animated SF series under the title "Force Five". Showtime cable would air compilation films and they just cut to the chase and titled them "Shogun Warriors." I bet Mattel was pissed.
Plenty of ancillary merchandise like coloring books and puzzles produced a Shogun Warriors experience un-marred by any actual context. Mattel took the Japan theme one step further by producing giant plastic fist-shooting toys of Godzilla and Rodan just for the American market. Marvel Comics even produced a licensed title based on some of the robot designs, treating Americans to the spectacle of Herb Trimpe illustrating robots originally drawn by Leiji Matsumoto and Yoshikazu Yasuhiko.
Nowadays Japanese robot toys are valuable collectors items. The reissues of the giant two-foot fist-shooting robot are much too expensive to allow seven-year-olds to have their way with them, and toys that shoot tiny missiles might as well have giant labels that say WILL POKE YOUR EYES OUT. But for a brief shining moment in the mid 70s, American and Japanese children were united in brightly colored die-cast plastic Japanese cartoon play-value.
In the post-Star Wars toy world everybody scrambled to find science-fictiony properties for America's toy-hungry children. Some bright executive at Mattel must have, I dunno, gone to Japan or something, because the mid 1970s reaped a bountiful harvest of brightly colored metal and plastic spaceships, heroes, robots, vehicles, and unidentifiable THINGS to amuse Japanese children. The idea of shipping these things across the ocean for American kids is not a complex one; Japan had been supplying toys and cutesy ceramics for years (not to mention radios, motorbikes, cars, etc) to their roundeyed cousins.
As one of those American 70s kids, I found the impact of Shogun Warriors to be swift and powerful. We couldn't tell Great Mazinger from the Great Pumpkin, but boy, we knew cool toys when we saw them. The giant two-foot plastic robots shot their fists across the room, the smaller diecast robots shot their fists and transformed and raised a big bruise if you hit somebody with them, and all of these toys simply looked fantastic - this was a level of creativity and design in children's toys not seen since the mid 60s, if even then.
Most of the toys came from various Toei robot anime series - Getta Robo G, Raideen, Great Mazinger, Danguard Ace, Gaiking, Daimos. Some toys were culled from the outlandish vehicles seen in Toei's live-action "sentai" programs like Gorangers or Message From Space. But we didn't care then. We would care later. Later Jim Terry would use the popularity of Shogun Warriors as an impetus to produce a package of episodes of 5 different Toei animated SF series under the title "Force Five". Showtime cable would air compilation films and they just cut to the chase and titled them "Shogun Warriors." I bet Mattel was pissed.
Plenty of ancillary merchandise like coloring books and puzzles produced a Shogun Warriors experience un-marred by any actual context. Mattel took the Japan theme one step further by producing giant plastic fist-shooting toys of Godzilla and Rodan just for the American market. Marvel Comics even produced a licensed title based on some of the robot designs, treating Americans to the spectacle of Herb Trimpe illustrating robots originally drawn by Leiji Matsumoto and Yoshikazu Yasuhiko.
Nowadays Japanese robot toys are valuable collectors items. The reissues of the giant two-foot fist-shooting robot are much too expensive to allow seven-year-olds to have their way with them, and toys that shoot tiny missiles might as well have giant labels that say WILL POKE YOUR EYES OUT. But for a brief shining moment in the mid 70s, American and Japanese children were united in brightly colored die-cast plastic Japanese cartoon play-value.
More Bad from Bandai
There has been a lot of forum discussion over the long weekend regarding playback problems in the last batch of Bandai releases. I'm sorry to say that it's just about all true, and we came back from the holiday weekend today to deal with an inbox full of defective DVD reports, and since we were able to ship these titles a couple weeks prior to the street date, we're one of the first retailers to see and have to deal with the unhappy fans who have bad disks.
So here's what we know so far and see from our customer report data:
Disks effected:
Flag, Vol #2 DVD (some reports)
My-Otome, Vol #4 DVD (few reports)
Gundam Seed Destiny, Vol #12 DVD (many reports)
Gundam Seed Destiny, Vol #12 DVD Limited Edition (many reports)
We've already shipped approx 700 of these DVD's combined, the majority being GSD #12. We've received reports of various payback issues with My Otome #4. In the instances of problems with the Flag #2 the disk typically will not play at all (unreadable). For GSD #12 (the regular and limited version come with the same DVD), most customers are reporting that Eps #50 will not play, and in some cases the extra's will not play either.
The problems seem to be with the disk encoding. The problems are widespread (over 20% of total) but do not effect all the disks and, in fact, just as many customers have reported that their disks are playing perfectly, so perhaps the issues are systemic of certain types of players. Of the approx 700 disks we've shipped and have been out for at least a week we've received approx 80 complaints of play problems so far, and most of those are being reported by either Flag or GSD 12 customers. From this data I'm gathering that the defects are being experienced in 10-25% of the discs in each lot, and are concentrated in the GSD 12 DVD's.
Bandai has not yet made any official statements regarding this yet, but out the backdoor they have told me that they are still gathering data and will not make any announcements regarding these problems until at least January 8th which is the official street dates of all these DVD's.
The problems are widespread enough that it's likely Bandai will put forward a direct replacement program. Since the problems are only effecting a portion of the DVD's, we are still shipping these titles (as of today), however, we are not going to ship out anymore replacement disks until we hear the official word from Bandai next week.
For US customers you are still OK to order these, the chances are in your favor that the disks you receive will play fine. If they don't, just contact us and we'll setup a replacement ticket and hold it until we hear from Bandai as to what their procedure will be. We'll make sure one way or another that customers that are having trouble get good disks. I recommend International customers hold off ordering these for a couple of weeks until we know more about the issues. If you are an overseas customer and already have a bad disk just let us know and we'll act as your agent to get you replacement DVD's.
For the record, this will be the third GSD DVD of the twelve that has come from Bandai with some sort of encoding problem in the first batch. It really is time for Bandai to fire their replicator and hire a contractor that has some decent quality control. These types of problems are getting too common in their releases, and if they continue fans will become more reluctant to buy their DVD's - and then we'll have another 'Geneon' fiasco on our hands...
As always, E-Mail me with questions.
UPDATE (1/7/08): Our defective reported ratios for the GSD 12 DVD's has reached 50%, so we are suspending shipments of the individual DVD until we can get replacement stock from Bandai. All new orders will be placed on back order until we have good stock. Thank you in advance for your patience regarding this.
So here's what we know so far and see from our customer report data:
Disks effected:
Flag, Vol #2 DVD (some reports)
My-Otome, Vol #4 DVD (few reports)
Gundam Seed Destiny, Vol #12 DVD (many reports)
Gundam Seed Destiny, Vol #12 DVD Limited Edition (many reports)
We've already shipped approx 700 of these DVD's combined, the majority being GSD #12. We've received reports of various payback issues with My Otome #4. In the instances of problems with the Flag #2 the disk typically will not play at all (unreadable). For GSD #12 (the regular and limited version come with the same DVD), most customers are reporting that Eps #50 will not play, and in some cases the extra's will not play either.
The problems seem to be with the disk encoding. The problems are widespread (over 20% of total) but do not effect all the disks and, in fact, just as many customers have reported that their disks are playing perfectly, so perhaps the issues are systemic of certain types of players. Of the approx 700 disks we've shipped and have been out for at least a week we've received approx 80 complaints of play problems so far, and most of those are being reported by either Flag or GSD 12 customers. From this data I'm gathering that the defects are being experienced in 10-25% of the discs in each lot, and are concentrated in the GSD 12 DVD's.
Bandai has not yet made any official statements regarding this yet, but out the backdoor they have told me that they are still gathering data and will not make any announcements regarding these problems until at least January 8th which is the official street dates of all these DVD's.
The problems are widespread enough that it's likely Bandai will put forward a direct replacement program. Since the problems are only effecting a portion of the DVD's, we are still shipping these titles (as of today), however, we are not going to ship out anymore replacement disks until we hear the official word from Bandai next week.
For US customers you are still OK to order these, the chances are in your favor that the disks you receive will play fine. If they don't, just contact us and we'll setup a replacement ticket and hold it until we hear from Bandai as to what their procedure will be. We'll make sure one way or another that customers that are having trouble get good disks. I recommend International customers hold off ordering these for a couple of weeks until we know more about the issues. If you are an overseas customer and already have a bad disk just let us know and we'll act as your agent to get you replacement DVD's.
For the record, this will be the third GSD DVD of the twelve that has come from Bandai with some sort of encoding problem in the first batch. It really is time for Bandai to fire their replicator and hire a contractor that has some decent quality control. These types of problems are getting too common in their releases, and if they continue fans will become more reluctant to buy their DVD's - and then we'll have another 'Geneon' fiasco on our hands...
As always, E-Mail me with questions.
UPDATE (1/7/08): Our defective reported ratios for the GSD 12 DVD's has reached 50%, so we are suspending shipments of the individual DVD until we can get replacement stock from Bandai. All new orders will be placed on back order until we have good stock. Thank you in advance for your patience regarding this.
Bleach Flash Game - Dress up Ichigo
You can change the background music by clicking button 1, 2, 3. To find out more, try playing the game. You can even print screen and show us your Ichigo picture. We would definitely love to see how you dress up Ichigo.
Saw this awesome game from yoshimotoeugene and i immediately asked for his permission to put the game here.
Ichigo Dress up game
Click HERE if you want to play the bigger version
Click "Read More" to find out more about the game
Click HERE if you want to play the bigger version
Click "Read More" to find out more about the game
Saw this awesome game from yoshimotoeugene and i immediately asked for his permission to put the game here.
Happy New Year!
We find ourselves passing our 10th year serving Anime fans and entering our 11th. Wow! Who would have thought in 1997 we'd be running one of the largest online Anime stores in the country.As we enter 2008, Downloading and bootlegging continues to destroy the industry as studios are forced to downsize or close, and the best creative talent is lost to more profitable and rewarding endeavours. How's the US Anime industry doing right now? About 'Average'. That is to say that today is worse than yesterday, but probably better than tomorrow, at least short term.
I'm satisfied with our results for the past year, even though the fourth quarter was weaker than we had expected, mostly due to the loss of Geneon's entire product line. We have not seen the sort of massive sales shortfalls that the mass market retailers have reported, but that's because we have always catered to the core Anime fan whos interest remains strong. We've never really cared much what box movers like Best Buy does, but sales shortfalls in those areas do effect the studios that have come to rely on those tenuous sales channels far too heavily. 2007 was a very challenging year for the Anime industry as a whole, and we'll continue to change and adapt as necessary in the coming months. You might see new product lines become available on the store while other lines may be reduced or phased out. We're also deciding if it's finally time to change the Store around and add more 'commercial' style elements and features to the shopping experience. I'm still not a big fan of that, but ultimately it will depend on what you guys tell us you want.
Whatever happens, we'll be here for another year continuing to help all of you enjoy the Genre as much as we do. As Farragut said - "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!"
Here's to a prosperous 2008 for all of us. Happy New Year everyone!
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