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This time I talk about the 1989 ova:Blue sonnet. I also talk about cool websites, mangas I have or want. I talk about reaching the higher plains of uber geekdom and all its glory ect ect....
join me and the power of anime love!!!
(to download right click the "here" and click save target as duhh!)
We received some good news from ADV Films late this afternoon. Most of the February releases that had been put on hold have been rescheduled and will ship shortly.
Here is the list of rescheduled titles and dates. Please note that these dates are estimates and we will begin shipping these whenever they actually arrive:
Feb 26, 2008 (Note: due to intershipment time, we are scheduling these as Mar 4th)
I chatted briefly with Mike Baliff at ADV late this afternoon. There are a couple of things I want to point out regarding this announcement:
1) Many of these titles have actually been advanced on the schedule from their original dates. In fact, 'assuming' they have already been pressed, it's possible ADV might ship us all the titles on this most or all of this list all at once, or at least send us most of these titles in short order. It appears to me that ADV is anxious to close the books on their current open business and thus advanced the release date on many of these - possible based on what they already have in their warehouse. ADV has gone several weeks with severely reduced receivables, and by now the business must be absolutely starving for money, so they want to get as much shipped as quickly as possible in order to re-establish their receivables pipeline quickly.
2) Gurren Lagann and future volumes of Devil May Cry (after Vol #1) is not included in this list. Mike could not comment on the status of either, however, he did say that more announcements will be coming shortly.
3) All of the previously released titles that have been on backorder since mid-January will immediately begin shipping again. This will include Devil May Cry DVD #1.
4) The titles scheduled for 2/26 are supposed to be shipping to us today, so obviously they will not actually be streeting on 2/26 and we have set them up as 3/4 on the store site. They will be available as soon as they arrive here at our warehouse. I'm estimating we should see them by Friday of this week.
5) Other than Gurren Lagann, this update covers all the titles that were on the last published release spreadsheet provided to retailers by ADV. In fact, we ran off the end of that schedule this week as Red Garden 4 was the last line item which we were required to pre-book today. We currently have no information for any new releases beyond Red Garden 4. What this means is that this update from ADV covers all the DVD items that retailers had information on to offer for advanced sale to customers, and have already preordered from the company. This closes the books on whatever open orders they currently have (remember, fans are our customers - ADV's customers are retailers - so they handle their business based on retailer requirements). The next thing we need to see from ADV is a revised new release schedule covering previously unsolicited items after Red Garden 4.
So today's announcement solves most of the immediate problem of Feb/Mar new releases as well as all those backordered titles. We should begin getting shipping reports from ADV tomorrow for our stuff, so we will begin pre-processing all the booked backorders and the Feb 26 and Mar 4 preorders once we have that info. That way we can begin shipping these items to you guys the morning they hit the dock.
Hopefully we'll get some more info from ADV by weeks end regarding Gurren Lagann and what the plan is going forward out to April and May. If that happens, then by the end of next week this will all be a bad memory. Stay tuned.
Lightweight posting continues here at LET'S ANIME as we recover from an epic journey across town and complete a few non-blog writing committments and generally goof off. Anyhoo, here to take us on a trip down memory lane are some newsletters produced by local anime clubs in the 80s. That's right, these zines are old enough to drink and vote. Keep in mind that these are by no means the oldest anime fanzines, nor are they the only anime zines being published in the 80s. They just happen to be the ones closest to my scanner at the time. Most of these local zines served as bulletins informing the membership of when and where the next meetings would be held, what was shown at the last meeting and what would be screened at the next meeting, upcoming conventions and activities of note, fan art, fan fiction, translations, synposes, and whatever else would hold still long enough to be xeroxed. In the days before the internets newsletters like this were vital links in the information chain keeping people apprised of the latest episodes of Dirty Pair or Zeta Gundam. Presented here in publication order, I give you Anime Zines Of The Mid To Late 1980s.
The oldest zine here is the journal of the Super Dimensional Space Cavalry Of Eastern Massachusetts. This digest-sized zine appeared in December of 1986 and was mostly Harmony Gold promo pix, mecha details, a quiz, and a list of comic shops in the Eastern Mass area where one could purchase Robotech memorabilia. Its slick design and professional looking graphics put it a notch above other zines of the era. Apparently only one issue was produced, which takes it right back down to a notch BELOW other zines of the era.
Speaking of long running zines, here's the first issue of THE ROSE, the newsletter of the anime club Anime Hasshin, which ran for 64 issues over 14 years. Lorraine Savage spearheaded the club, one of the first independent national anime clubs to spring up out of frustration with those jerks in Texas and California. Over the years Lorraine would feature art and articles from hundreds of fans, connect tape traders to spread the anime wealth, and generally act as a merciless Godfather crushing all who stood in her path of anime domination. Just kidding about that last part. I produced lots of terrible fan art for The Rose.
Over in my home town of Atlanta we had a local chapter of the C/FO, the "Cartoon Fantasy Organization", which today sounds like some kind of pervert club but at the time was the de facto leader among national anime clubs. Our local chapter started in 1985 and immediately began printing newsletters, some of which were clumsy punk rock affairs and others, such as this one, which had great graphic design and a swell cover by Marilyn Morey which I stil have the original artwork to for some reason.
Across the country out west in Phoenix the local anime club had its own newsletter, full of synopses of Crusher Joe and Maison Ikkoku and a list of what's going to be shown at the upcoming Leprecon and the upcoming club meeting - Dirty Pair, Fist Of The North Star, The Humanoid, Famous Detective Holmes, The Guyver, Giant Gorg, Urusei Yatsura (listed as "Those Obnoxious Aliens") and Leda, The Fantastic Adventure Of Yoko. A well-balanced anime diet!
And on the other end of the continent in Baltimore the JASFA newsletter was going strong. JASFA stood for Japanese Animation Science Fiction Association, and their newsletter ran for something like ten years, listing when and where the next meeting would be held, etc. JASFA ran a lot of episode title translations, which I found very handy later, as well as the occasional comedy bits. Fun fact: one JASFA member once posed as an FBI agent to phone-prank a member of Atlanta fandom. Oh the fun we had breaking federal laws.
As the 90s loomed the C/FO imploded and local clubs assumed more importance as the anime convention came into its own in Dallas and San Francisco. The desktop publishing revolution meant that newsletter copy would no longer have to be printed on tractor-feed dot-matrix printers, but could be laid out professionally and laser-printed to crisp perfection. A new era of zines loomed in the 90s, led modestly by myself and my zine LET'S ANIME, which this blog is named after!
Actually, I did as little graphic design as I possibly could, composited everything using glue-stick and scissors, and resisted the demon computer as long as I could. And now I write about this online and my readership has increased a thousandfold without me killing even ONE tree. The future is now!! More zines to come!!
Today I talk about one of my all time favs Iczer one, I also talk on ebay , and how im five years behind on video games. (to download show right click on the "here" and click save target as)
Snow and Ice again - we had to close the warehouse again today (Friday 2/22) due to the winter storm that is moving through (nothing but ice and sleet in our area). Seems like well spend the month of February playing catchup from these weather events. We'll reopen and start shipping orders again first thing on Monday.
I suppose maybe we can use the extra time to get the stores front page updated... -_^
We were very happy to discover this week that the Anime Corner Store was voted one of the top 25 most popular Anime sites on web in Active Anime's most recent poll! What's even better is that, since we had no idea we were even in the running, we did not actively try to send viewers over the the site to vote for us like other sites did, so our inclusion and placement on the list is strictly due to fans voting their conscience. In addition to the great ranking, the Active Anime staff also gave us this glowing review:
"Established in 1997 originally as a fan site, the Anime Corner quickly grew into one of the finest and largest online retailers of anime and manga related products. The Anime Corner Store® is now recognized worldwide as a leading, customer friendly, Anime retailer - a place that fans can obtain the latest Anime and Manga products at the most competitive prices, and still be backed up by the fastest delivery and best customer service in the industry."
Wow! I don't think I could have written it better myself. :-) Thanks to the folks at Active Anime for giving us the opportunity to be on the list this year, and for all you who voted for us!
Drumroll please... I have one date change for you this week. The release date for the upcoming Boys Be DVD boxed set has been moved back from Feb 26 to Mar 11. Looks like even the folks out in Iowa can't keep to their schedule these days. There are also a couple of March titles Media Blasters said they may have to ship late (due to their replicator), but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.
I was hoping to have an update for you on the status of ADV Films this week, but I do not. The situation is unchanged and we have heard nothing new out of Houston - which is in itself vexing to say the least. There was one interesting development though at the magazine division. Gary Steinman, the long time editor and chief of Newtype, and the man set to be the same for the PiQ publication, turned in his resignation last Friday and will be leaving the company. He's moving back to the Bay area, and while he said his departure was for 'personal reasons' (don't they always say that?) it was later revealed that he left ADV to take a new position at Playstation Official magazine. What this says about the future of PiQ magazine (or ADV Films) is anyone's guess, but Gary would be in a position to know more than we do about ADV's future prospects.
Last week I said we'd know the winner of the HD wars within the next 3 months, but it only took Toshiba about 3 minutes to run up the white flag on the HDDVD format after Walmart (we call the stores Wally World in these parts) chose to back BLURAY. So Sony's BLURAY is the official winner and Toshiba will stop manufacturing new HDDVD players in short order. But what does this mean for Anime you ask? Everything and not much. Everything in that now that there is a clear format winner, any studio hesitation to press titles in HD format can be set aside and we will probably start seeing more BLURAY Anime DVD releases as early as this spring. Not much in that the only Anime titles currently in release here in the US is Freedom, and Bandai Visual has already announced that they will complete the release of the series in the combo DVD / HDDVD format over the next few months. Kudos to them for not leaving existing viewers out in the cold half way through the release.
And because so many of you have been asking, we've created a subsection tab on the store where you can find all the current Anime titles in HD release. All eight of them. :-)
I'm very excited to hear that Funimation has licensed the Claymore anime. We've been waiting eagerly for that announcement, and I look forward to the release later this year. I'm also glad that it was acquired by a studio that is financially stable!
(Note: Now that's what I'm talkin about! Oh, and I LOVE Hoverphonic too...)
Bandai announced the release of Lucky Star this week, and we've already posted the first volumes for pre-order. It appears they are going to follow a similar release pattern as they did with Haruhi last year. Speaking of that, we'll also have Code Geass up for pre-order shortly. Also, it may interest you to know that Media Blasters has not renewed the license for Invader Zim, and the DVD's are now officially out of print. We still have a few of the boxed sets in stock for anyone that wants to pick one up before they are gone.
Despite the bad weather we managed to complete the shipping of all the Bandai replacement DVD's this week. Some customers have already received them and so far have reported that they play perfectly. Phew! We had done a few in house tests prior to sending them out, but you never know and I'm glad the new disks appear to be 100%. If you have not received your new disk(s) expect them to arrive shortly.
Another week has passed with no new shipments from ADV, so that left Funimation to fill the void with the arrival of Hell Girl, Vol #4 DVD, Mushishi, Vol #6 DVD, and the new
Viridian version of Galaxy Railways. Shuffle, Vol #1 DVD and the new DragonBall Z boxed set continue to sell extremely well and we have already had to go back to Funimation twice for more copies (no worries, we have plenty in stock). We also received the next volume of Simoun from Media Blasters and Naruto from Viz about 2 weeks ahead of their scheduled release dates.
Most of the latest manga arrivals came in from Viz and this weeks update features new volumes from my favorites Hayate the Combat Butler, Eiken, and of course Inubaka Crazy for Dogs which I can't get enough of even though it's more or less a girls title!
Finally we have a couple new figure arrivals which include the new Revoltech version of Rei Ayanami (which you can position just about any way you want) and the absolutely gorgeous (and huge) 1/6 scale Mai Shiranui. This is the most beautiful version of Mai I've ever seen, and not only is she almost 12" tall, she is sculpted perfectly and has everything going on in all the right places. :-) I know she's a bit pricey, but she's just too gorgeous to miss out on!
Have a great weekend, stay warm, and enjoy your Anime!
IM redoing my look on Locke the superman so thats the reason this episodes is no longer up.... The better and brand new look at locke will be on the way soon!
It's still hectic and crazy here at Let's Anime World Information Network Cohesive Dissemination & Fabrication Division, so to tide you over until I can get everything hooked back together, here's a post that is just to point you to another website that has some cool new old stuff.
Tim Eldred has been busting his hump over at starblazers.com trying to create and maintain the web portal presence of the American version of one of Japan's anime classics, AND bring together a vast, scattered denomination of information about the movies, TV shows, videos, DVDs, comics, books, magazines, LPs and CDs, model kits, fanzines, toys, doujinshi, and assorted strangeness devoted to that red and blue space battleship. There are literally dozens of fascinating articles at the site that make for hours of entertaining reading for anyone interested in Star Blazers, including never-before-translated Japanese articles, brand new features on the American Star Blazers comics of the 80s and 90s, Japanese Space Battleship Yamato doujinshi, the galaxy of Yamato model kits... more byzantine pop culture trivia than you can fire a wave-motion gun at.
ANYWAY, one of the cooler things up at the site is a translation of "Eternal Story Of Jura"", one of Leiji Matsumoto's Space Battleship Yamato manga stories from the gory glory days of the 1970s. Three different outfits had the manga rights to Yamato, so at one point you had three different versions of the Yamato blasting its way to three different versions of Iscandar. Because Japanese cartoon continuity wasn't confusing enough, right? Those of us nutty enough to buy comics in languages we can't read feverishly purchased the SF COMICS editions of Matsumoto's Yamato manga when we could find them at comic shows or Japanese grocery stores. And while there are a few slight deviations from the TV storyline, it mostly made sense.
Except, of course, for one story about mysterious big-eared space women using telepathic powers to mess with the minds of the Yamato crew. So the anime fans of the 80s were mightily confused. Confused, that is, until now, because the entire story is now translated and online for your reading pleasure at starblazers.com!!
So quit listening to me and go read a classic Matsumoto Yamato manga story and spend a few hours immersed in the trivia of Space Battleship Yamato. You'll be glad you did.
Also, if you're like the guy who spoke to me at AWA last year wanting to know where he could get Star Blazers - well, you can order the DVDs right from the site. That's where you gets yer Star Blazers, pal. All of it.
