Odd Stuff and Tab Clearing 

  

Last weeks swag promo was a big success, with us giving away more than 150 sweet Anime notebooks, and I thought you guys might be interested in what notebooks people choose the most out of the six we listed. In order of popularity were: 

  

1. Strike Witches 501st 

2. Cat Planet Cuties 

3. High School of the Dead 

4. Samurai Champloo 

5. Tiger and Bunny 

6. One Piece 

  

I had guessed that HOTD would be the most popular, so it just goes to show that you guys and gals never fail to surprise us! We hope everyone enjoys their extra's from that promotion, and I also wanted to say that we really enjoy doing these SWAG offers when we can. They really are great fun for us and we hope you enjoy them too. :-) 

  

Funimation finally released some art for the upcoming Darker Than Black Season 1 Premium boxed set that they are releasing in May: 

 

This set is limited to 5,000 units produced and includes the first season on Blu-ray in special packaging, a 48-page art book, and a display easel. For a short time we will be offering the set in pre-order for a very special price - in fact, it's so low I can't publish it here  so if you jumped the gun and already pre-ordered it from those other guys, cancel that order and get one in with us before this offer is gone!

  

Jerry writes in this week to ask:

  

"I wonder if anyone else noticed that Funi set the street date for "Unbreakable Machine Doll" on the same day as Japan's "Hina no Matsuri"; their "Doll Festival". Coincidence?"  

 

Hmmmm, I'd like to think that the Anime universe works in perfect harmony like that too, but color me skeptical that it was on purpose. What do you think?  

 

Monster Musume has been one of the best selling Manga series here @RACS for some time. It even eclipses main stream titles like Naruto and Titan. As such, we pre-booked a LARGE number of copies of issue #6, and of course, it wasn't enough. After we announced it was in stock, I think just about every order that went out of here for 3 or 4 days straight had a copy on it, and we got wiped out in less than a week. More copies have now arrived, but the fact that this volume has already outsold Vol #5 demonstrates how hard it is sometimes for us to estimate demand for anything around here! 

 

 

As a side note, Facebook sent us a notice after we posted that we had Musume #6 in stock, saying that the cover art did not meet their 'acceptable material standards' due to it being sexually explicit, thus the post would not be propogated out to our audience there:

 

"Your post has been flagged because it violates Facebook's Guidelines by featuring an image containing excessive amounts of skin or suggestive content. Facebook does not allow images that depict people in explicit or suggestive positions, or images that show nudity or cleavage - even if portrayed for artistic or educational reasons."  

 

No kidding. I mean seriously, what do they have against spiders? -_^

   

And, just a reminder that we had to close the warehouse on Thursday of this week due to the big winter storm that came through (THOR I think they called it?). This was for the safety of our employees, but even if not for that, none of the carriers were picking up or dropping off anyway. We're going to get all of your shipments caught up and out the door today. I'm not sure if there will any other delays due to the storm either to inbound or outbound shipments, so I just want to ask everyone to be a little more patient than usual with deliveries - especially if you live in one of the more impacted areas.

  

We'll get your order to you as quickly as possible - count on it! 

  

Delicious Chocolate Courtesy of RACS!

The RACS chocolate coins are back in circulation, and this time around we have an all new color! Want to know what it is? MMMMmmmmmm.... No. You'll just have to place an order to find out, so send us an order and we'll send you some delicious chocolate!

New Licenses

Viz announced this week that they have licensed the Akaza Samamiya's Bloody Mary and Amu Meguro's Honey So Sweet manga under their Shojo Beat imprint  The first volumes are planned for December 2015 and January 2016, respectively.

Yen Press also chimed in this week that they have picked up the manga lincenses for Horimiya, Rose Guns Days Season One, and Final Fantasy Type-0 Side Story: The Reaper of the Icy Blade manga. Final Fantasy Type-0 will begin in July, Horimiya will be coming in October, and Rose Gun Days will release sometime this fall.

And NIS America (apparently) plans to release a My Little Monster premium DVD/BD boxed set later this Spring. We should have some more details on that shortly.

Added - Now Available for Pre-Order!

Viz and Discotek/Eastern Star have send over more upcoming release information, and we've now got them up on the store site for pre-order! Here's what's coming:

Viz

Ranma 1/2 DVD Set #6 (Eps #116-138) - Jun 2
Ranma 1/2 BLURAY Set #6 (Eps #116-138) - Jun 2
Bleach DVD Collection #25 Boxed Set (Eps 343-354) (Uncut) - Jun 23

  

Discotek / Eastern Star

Bokurano TV Series Complete Collection DVD - Mar 24
Chi's Sweet Home Season 1 Complete Collection DVD (Eps #1-104) - Mar 31
Lovely Complex (Love*Com) Complete Collection DVD Set (Thin-Pak) - Mar 31
Free! Iwatobi Swim Club Season 1 Complete Collection DVD (Eps #1-12) - Apr 28
Legendary Armor Samurai Troopers TV Series Complete Collection DVD - Apr 28
Lupin the 3rd: The Castle of Cagliostro BLURAY - Apr 28
Samurai Pizza Cats Complete Collection DVD Set (Eps #1-52) (Re-Issue) - Apr 28

Couple of notes. Discotek's releases of Lovely Complex and Samurai Pizza cats are re-issues of the previous editions at slightly lower MSRP. Season 1 of Free! Iwatobi Swim Club (which should perhaps be better named 'the fabulous abs club') will be sub only (you can actually thank Crunchyroll for that), and Chi's Sweet Home includes 104 episodes at about 3 minutes each.

  

Delays / Cancelations

I know this is older news, but I can't remember if I previously mentioned it and it came up this week, so I wanted to make sure everyone knows that Kodansha announced a few weeks ago that they have canceled the 6th volume of the Vinland Saga manga and have suspended future volumes of the series until further notice.

I was certainly sorry to hear this, because I've been following and enjoying this manga myself. They were releasing it in a lovely hard cover omnibus format so each volume actually equaled about two volumes of the original series. It's a beautifully illustrated, historical Viking story involving fierce warriors and family legacies and brave women holding down the home front - in other words, right up my alley. They didn't cite a reason for the cancelation, but I suspect low sales, so let's hope that more people discover the series in the meantime and raise demand for it.

MadMan Puts Sailor Moon on Hold

A lot of folks have been asking about why we don't have a date yet for the next Sailor Moon BluRay set from Viz. Generally, Viz doesn't let an ongoing release come and go without giving us release details for the next volume. I think Neon Alley is currently streaming up into the 80's episode wise, so I figured we'd have a release date for the next set of eps on DVD/BD at least by the time the Part #2 set streeted last month. So everyone is asking me - what's the hold up?

Now Madman Entertainment (Australia's largest Anime publisher) has announced that they will be delaying their Australian release of 'Sailor Moon Part One' -  due to 'undisclosed' issues. Madman had previously announced back in January they were not going to use Viz's masters for their SM release. But on Feb 27th, MadMan made this announcement:

"We regret to inform that due to circumstances beyond our control, our upcoming release of Sailor Moon Part 1 will be delayed until further notice. Whilst we understand many of you will be disappointed by this news, be assured that this is not a decision made lightly and with the end goal to deliver fans a great product, first and foremost. Thanks for your patience and understanding, and stay tuned for a revised date in the near future."

I imagine when they announced they were going to release the show back in November, they were counting on using Viz's remaster of the series, and I figure they decided to put the kibosh on it after the dust up here regarding the video quality of the Viz release. They may have determined that remastering the series themselves from scratch would be too expensive for their market, at least for now.

What does one have to do with the other you ask? Well, to get a sense of some of the fan complaints regarding the Viz release, a particularly poignant review of the first BD set said:

"Sailor Moon was originally done on film, but unfortunately those film elements are no longer available, so all releases have to be taken from SD DVD masters. One can just barely make out the filmic quality of the series, but that is the least of the worries with this AVC 1080p transfer from Viz. While colors are certainly bold and bright, perhaps even too much so, the image is plagued with motion artifacts, aliasing, and ghosting. Some may not be able to pick out this latter issue while playing back in full motion, but for those sensitive ones, it will become a nuisance. It certainly did seem strange, but tolerable to me while watching the episodes, but during the screen cap process, the ghost images left over in frames was very obvious."

Kentai, who does ADR work for DiscoTek and others, went into a lot more detail here . Viz has maintained that their new re-mastered version is the best possible they could produce based on the production materials they had to work with, but many fans have expressed disappointment with the quality. Of course, you have to take reviews like the one above with a grain of salt, as the author also didn't care for the dub - which I personally think is VERY well produced and is certainly head and shoulders above any previous versions. The BD quality, while not perfect, is the best version of the show my untrained eye has ever seen. Anyway, ignorance is bliss I suppose, and I didn't come here to debate the quality of the release. I just have a few fears that these issues have effected overall sales of the sets enough to make Viz rethink their release schedule for the series. Viz has stated publicly that the series is doing very well, but we noticed a lot of price cutting and heavy promotion of the sets at other retailers over the holidays. Just a marketing push or too much inventory overhang in distribution? Let's hope the later isn't the case and we will be hearing details from Viz shortly on set #3.

And Charlene - if you'd like to weigh in on the issue, PM me and I'll publish it next week.

This Weekend Only - Save 20% off Our Dog Days: Ricotta Elmar Nendoroid Figure!!

We seem to have a few extra of the excellent  Dog Days: Ricotta Elmar Nendoroid Action Figure laying around this week, and that means we've got another great figurine deal to offer all of our newsletter readers!

This weekend only you can take an additional $20 off her regular price, which gets her down to only $34.98! Just use the coupon code RICOTTA when you checkout to get the additional discount! Offer expires on Monday, so if you want her, grab one now!

  

RACS Customer Corner

This week Austin writes in regarding his last order:

"I always get my anime from you guys and it is affordable, great variety, always arrives on time and the contents seem well cared for. Thank you for your work which connects me with more anime joy. Keep up the good work!"

Long time RACS fans Jason also writes in (and we're always happy to hear from him):

"This is the best anime store online. I've been using them for over 10 years and I don't plan on stopping any time soon. Great selection. Great staff. Very fast order processing. You couldn't find a better store to do business with."

Kristopher let us know what he thought after getting his last order:

"If I could give higher than fives I would! It is always a joy and always so easy to order. Prices are very competitive and it is not hard to find items you can not find any where else. Been doing business for years. I might not buy the most but I am always treated like I have!"

And finally, Joe writes in that he firmly approves of our recent weekend figure sales:

"Just wanted to shoot out another short email just to mention how much I'm really enjoying the figure deals you've put in the last couple news letters! As we all know our anime habits don't tend to be cheap, so just these cool little weekend deals have been really refreshing. It so happened that I had been wanted to get the Ichika Takatsuki nendoroid for some time so it was a great surpise, I love getting the chance to support a business that a really seems to value my business and that I always walk away from satisfied. And although my anime habit will never be cheap, these weekly weekend sales have always been fun to check out . As always keep up the great work and I'll look forward to my next purchase, I sense lots of manga in my future lol"

If you would like to view Joe's unboxing of his spanking new Nendoroid, you can check it out here. Thanks to Austin, Jason, Kristopher, Joe, and everyone else who wrote in this week. We appreciate it very much!

And Finally - Fraud Talk and Security Screening

One of the things we take very seriously here is credit card fraud, and you can can bet that if you place your first order with us with mis-matching info, request overnight shipping, and no signature, we're going to reach out to you to have a little bit of discussion before we go about filling that order. While I won't disclose any of the details, but we use a lot of screening tools to ensure that fraudsters can't pass bogus orders here. It's not just about stopping fraud, it really pisses me off when people try to use other peoples credit cards to buy Anime, so we always make a point of turning any illicit activity that comes across here over to our processor and to law enforcement. I bring this up because, if you ever had us request any additional information from you after your first order, I want to apologize for the extra hassle. I know a lot of other stores don't do this, but we want to make sure those guys boosting credit card numbers never get a chance to use them here.

Robert's Random Thoughts