Hi everyone! Very sorry for the delay in my blog postings. I'll use this post to explain a bit why. As you might have heard and have probably gotten sick of by now, the US economy is in a slump thanks to greedy mortgage brokers, banks and good old fashion over spending. This of course is making everyone who wast.... I mean spent tens of thousands of dollars to get a high paying jobs in college to start sweating since they won't need their well thought out price tag.....I mean resume to wave at people at Walmart or flip burgers after the pink slips fly out. Here at Chuck's Anime Shrine, we are not feeling any bit of this. Us otaku are a crazy bunch. Sales for the first year as a business in 2007 was around $40K, not too shabby for a first year anime business. Already in January anime sales for the company has reached a new high of $5K with about $3K expected by Feb 4th. The outlook for the site and store as a whole is very good. We are also making a deal with Kumon Publishing to stock their first line of manga based on American classical stories in the spring.

Obviously this is a very different type of posting then I've done in the past ^_^;; The reason for you to care is that you all will see more contests soon (yes that page needs to be fixed and since one person brought in a video, she won by default) and the expansion I have dreamed of for this site and have forever boosted about will now begin. The 9-5 job is still there but its going out like a bad habit, or if my boss reads my computer screen right now, lol.

Anyways my message is that the store and the site will really be The anime source this year and all the fans of this site will see what I planned on making for this site way back in 2002 when I was just a senior in high school. Send any suggestions of additions, series and cool stuff you would like in the store and the site.

Some interesting news from Japan. As of a few days ago, SciencePortal.jp, a top scientific website run by the Japan Science and Technology Agency released a report showing the cost if the military was to actually make a real 59 foot tall functioning gundam. Based on their reports its about 79.5 billion yen or roughly $730 million dollars. Check out the full story and a great chart of the costs at animenewsnetwork.com Well, I guess a just better become a multi billionaire and I'll be set. ^_^;

Great news from CES. Both Star Wars Fans and Soul Calibur fans have got to be excited by this bit of news. LucasArts and Namco just announced that they will include Darth Vader and Yoda as playable fighters in Soul Calibur 4. This was announced just recently at the 2008 CES in Vegas with a bunch of storm trooper cosplaying going on during the event. If you get the xbox 360 version of the game you can play as Yoda and if you get the PS3 version you get to play as Vader. Which one would you prefer to play? Check the special trailer with them here if you can't view it below. More info and images at gamedaily.com.

What a way to start the new year with some really good videogame news. Sony's CES 2008 promo site is showing off that soon you can be able to use the mostly free phone service of Skype on your PSP. This will simply be a great add-on to the PSP. Maybe it'll be out by March when Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core comes to the states so you can call a fellow gamer and boost how you just fully completed the game (after 60+ hours).

Compliments of engadget.