Mami Lucky

Funimation January Releases - Now Available for Pre-Order

Funimation has announced their January new release schedule, and it's a good one. The following January DVD releases are now available on the store site for pre-order:

Bamboo Blade TV Series Collection Part #2 DVD Boxed Set (Eps # 13-24)
Black Blood Brothers Complete Collection DVD Boxed Set (Viridian Collection)
Case Closed Movie #5 Countdown to Heaven DVD
D.Gray-man Season #2 Part #2 DVD Boxed Set (Eps #40-51)
D.Gray-man Season #1 Part #1 DVD Boxed Set (Eps #1-13) (BLURAY)
Heroic Age Complete Collection DVD Boxed Set (Eps #1-26) (BLURAY)
Linebarrels of Iron Collection #1 DVD Boxed Set (Eps #1-12)
One Piece Season 2 Part 5 DVD Boxed Set (Eps #105-116) (Uncut)
Rin: Daughter of Mnemosyne DVD Complete Series DVD Boxed Set (Eps 1-6)
Sands of Destruction DVD Complete Series DVD Boxed Set (Eps #1-13)
Sgt Frog (Keroro Gunso) Season 2 Part 1 DVD Boxed Set (Eps #25-35)
Tsubasa RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE Complete Collection DVD Box Set (Seasons 1-2 + Movie)
Xenosaga Complete Collection DVD Boxed Set (Eps #1-12) (Viridian Collection)

New Series Synopsis:

Linebarrels of Iron (Kurogane no Linebarrels)
An artificial satellite falls to Earth in 2013, seriously injuring Hayase Kouichi. He awakens six months later with strange powers. Three years later, a giant robot called Linebarrel appears and Kouichi joins him to fight for Juda, the largest medical equipment supplier in the world.

RIN: Daughters of Mnemosyne (Mnemosyne no Musume-tachi)
Rin Asogi may look like an ordinary office lady on the outside but she is actually a private investigator taking on any jobs, from finding a stray cat to infiltrating a high-security corporate lab. What's more, she appears literally indestructible, supernaturally healing any injuries and mutilations. Together with her partner Mimi, Rin delves into the darkest secrets of the society but the ones she hides herself are by far more sinister...

Sands of Destruction (Sekai Bokumetsu no Rokunin)
In a world where humans serve as livestock for the ruling beastman, and where sand fills the roles of water and fire. Kyrie is recruited by the "World Destruction Committee" to assist in putting an end to their world. Kyrie alone holds the power needed to do it. In a world where humans serve as livestock for the ruling beastman, and where sand fills the roles of water and fire. Morte Ashela , A member (or the only member) of the so called World Destruction Committee is wanted and hiding. She goes to a beastman bar to eat lunch where she meets Kyrie , A young human boy working at a beastman bar concealing his true identity as a human. When her enemies The World Salvation Committee found her she used Kyrie as a hostage only to know that he's a human , disposable to the enemy , together they run from the WSC to complete their goal of destroying the world to save humans from slavery. Kyrie ends up traveling with her and unwillingly joins the committee. Little does Morte know that Kyrie is the key to their goal.

The Transition to A 'Rare Book Model' as a Manga Dealer

This may be happening under the radar for many of you, but the US manga market is quickly transitioning into a 'rare' books model similar to what regular US Comic book dealers have been for decades. Hundreds of older manga issues have already gone out of print, and this year the process has been accelerated by a truly awful consumer economy. And a lot of this has been happening under the radar because past print runs were too large and the overhang of book inventory has remained in the supply chain for a long time, even after the decision as been made not to re-print them, at least until now. We, on the other hand, see the process in real time as every week manga volumes sell down and when we go to re-order some copies, that might have been available last week, are now sold out and listed as no longer in print. The manga publishers, for the most part, don't usually give us official lists of what's going 'out of print' either, they just decide not to reprint and once existing stocks dry up the books are no longer available for 're-order'. Tough luck Mr. Retailer if you didn't buy enough copies to begin with. Tough luck Mr. Customer if you didn't buy it when it first came out.

Now before you manga collectors out there start going crazy over this, let me remind you that there have probably been around 8,000 or 9,000 manga volumes published in the US over the last 10 years, and those back issues could not stay in print forever, so it was inevitable that the manga companies would eventually reach a point where they just start letting series go off the market en-mass as their sales cycles wind down. The process has really accelerated in 2009 though, and I'd guess that by years end there will probably be at least 1,500 older manga volumes that are no longer in print, and I would estimate by the end of 2010 fully half of the previously released catalog of English language manga will be out of print. Think most anything TokyoPop pressed before 2007, or anything published by DMP that is older than 8 or 9 months, for example. To complicate matters further, many of the smaller manga publishers are responding to current economic conditions by doing very short print runs of new releases and then not reprinting volumes that didn't sell very well to begin with. This is creating a 'shorter window of opportunity' situation for marginal titles (and that category is growing) in which any particular new volume may only be available on the market now for a few months before it's out of print forever. This goes for ongoing series as well and answers the frequent question we get via e-mail asking (for example) how vol #15 of a particular series is not longer available when Vol #17 just came out this month. Well, Vol #15 is the one where X,Y, and Z finally got naked together and sold out really quick. Hey, it's a rich tapestry. -_^

To counter these supply problems, we've setup an extensive network of manga vendors and distributors over and above the publishers themselves so we can check stock at multiple vendors for a particular volume before finally resigning ourselves that we can no longer get 'that one' anymore, and this is a process that we are now going through daily. We check all these retailer sources each time we need restocks on any particular issue, and for some niche titles (good examples would be certain issues of Basara or Red River or Let Dai or....etc. etc.) we even are going into the rare book market in an attempt to keep certain out of print volumes in stock for as long as possible - though once we do this the prices usually start to escalate as the rare book dealers might make us pay $20 or $30 or $40 or more for a particular issue and we have to price those accordingly on the store site. In fact, we've seen a disturbing trend this year of people doing a lot of 'fishing' for our inventory of rarer volumes. Some of these folks are clearly running a little side business trying to pickup out of print volumes we still have in stock at retail and arbitrage them into rare book circles (even on E-Bay) for 10x the original price. I have to admit, I've declined filling a few of those orders this past year so that we can keep these books in stock longer at the regular price for our regular customers. It's a bit disconcerting, but we remain vigilant.

This is all prompting the joke around the office that we are rapidly transitioning from a premier manga dealer to a 'rare books' model, but if that's what it takes for us to keep as many manga issues as possible in stock for as long as possible, that's fine with me. :-)

RACS 2009 FALL SALES EVENT! - EXTENDED (BUMP)

OK, an awful lot of you wrote in about the big fall sale telling me that while you think the discounts are great, a lot of people aren't prepared to come up with any serious Anime scratch with just one weeks notice and that the coupon period was way too short. OK, I hear you, so I'm extending the fall sale coupons for two more weeks - all the way out until Oct 15th. That should give everyone a chance to get in on the savings. Hey, I really do read those e-mails you folks send in! :-)

It's that time of year, and we've decided to run our fall sales event a little early this year! From now until midnight (EST) on Thursday, October 1st you can save up to an additional 10% off any combination of items listed on the store - including in stock and pre-order items!

To save 5% off any order totally over $100 just use the following coupon during checkout:
FALLSALE09-SAVE5

To save 10% off any order totally over $250 just use the following coupon during checkout:
FALLSALE09-SAVE10

Be sure to take advantage of this great opportunity to load up on some of the Anime stuff you've been wanting! US customers can combine this offer with our super saver shipping option to save even more scratch on your favorite in stock Anime series, Manga, Figure, or Character Items!

Note: Valid for new orders only. Coupon code expires at midnight EST on October 1st so get your orders in today!

2010 Japanese Anime Calendars - Now Available for Pre-Order!

I've finally decided which 2010 Japanese Import Anime Calendars that we'll be carrying this year, and we've just completed adding them to the store site for pre-order.

These calendars will be delivered either with our mid-November or mid-December shipments from Tokyo, and of course, there will be the inevitable handful that are published late and will not be in our hands until early January. We never know exactly when these are coming until they are ready to ship to us, so keep this in mind before ordering one to be given as a holiday gift (we may or may not be have it in time). OK, nuff said, here's what we've got for you: