The time has come for the New York Anime Festival! All weekend I'm broadcasting picture tweets from my iPhone with some descriptions on what's going down. Check out what's live below:

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After the weekend, expect some sort of recap on the convention.

Going to be at NY Anime Fest? Tweet me (@princetrunks) and I'll try to fit your news into the feed as well or hey, even meet up ^^ My fiancée will be cosplaying as Tifa, so you'll get a hint on where to find us.

Many sites have this, the ability to post their feeds with thumbnail photos, but my God is it a pain to find out HOW to do it, even for a programmer, like me. Even more of a trouble is that my blogs are all run from my own server/sites; so, despite this being a "blogger" blog, I get no customization love from Google being that this isn't a .blogspot blog or Wordpress blog -_-

Having thumbnail recent posts and label posts looks far better than the regular text feeds we commonly see with RSS feed aggregation. Thanks to a new reworking on the feed2js by engadgeteer.com's Bryan (who btw is also an anime fan), I was able to finally automate, thumbnailed posts for my blog and their labels. Of course, I'd like to have the code be local to my own site for SEO and security purposes, but this will do for now till I work a deal with them.

Check out some of the areas I've added recent posts to, like the front page (at the bottom), here (check below), and even on sections like anime figures, cosplay and anime music. Now with this, I can bring back old sections of the site like say Final Fantasy VII Tifa's section and have all posts about Tifa show under her gallery of photos automatically. This will then be integraded with the Member's Blog for more exposure to your posts.

Speaking of the member's blog, um, some of you signed up to blog and possibly win Nendoroid Kureha but haven't posted a single post -_- You have to be in it to win it guys, and being in the contest means posting on the Member's Blog .

Thanks again engadgeteer.com and their developer, Bryan for this much needed feature.

This poster was at the Kotobukiya booth over at SDCC 09 about a month and a half back. just wanted to pay homage to Shunya Yamashita and his amazing work so far with Marvel. The Rogue figure recently arrived and it looks great. (kept one for myself ^^) Of course the news that happened earlier this week was that Marvel was bought out by, of all companies, Disney 0-O. As long as Disney keeps everything basically the way they were, Marvel will do just fine. Hopefully things don't go down the watered down kiddy route for Marvel. If that happens, chances are Yamashita won't be designing Bishoujo too much longer :-( It's very obvious that Yamashita with Kotobukiya (and sculptor Koei Matsumoto) make very gorgeous versions of American comic book girls. Sadly, the comic book girl figures developed here in the US tend to look like, well...very manly women 0_O, so please Disney...don't drop the deal with Yamashita and Kotobukiya.

Being a long time anime fan, figure collector and anime store owner has it's perks but there are times when being a fan of what you sell is a major weakness. This figure, Orchid Seed's recently announced Chaos;HEAd Seira Orgel 1/7 Scale Figure brings out that weakness and I'm bound to keep one for myself. Set to come out at the end of the year in Japan (probably late Jan, Feb 2010 here in the states -_-), Seira Orgel from the series Chaos;HEAd and Blood Tunes the Animation, looks great. This is an ecchi figure and is meant for older collectors, but despite her being a castoff anime figure, it's not a nude figure. I know, some of you are probably upset at that but I'm perfectly fine with the way this one looks. As long as Orchid Seed makes the final product look exact to this prototype, this figure is a true work of art and I can't wait to get one too ^^

Check out more at Neko Magic

(a great site to see new figures even before even I am authorized to pre-order them for my store ^^;;)

To my wonderful surprise, the Eureka Seven Movie is coming to the US soon and is also going to be in some theaters ^_^. Make that 438 theaters. Yep, the English dub of "Eureka Seven - Good Night, Sleep Tight, Young Lovers" will be out in select US theaters on September 24th, just before our arrival to the New York Anime Fest. Check out the trailer below:



More news as per Anime News Network. I'd say they are buds but I'm still wondering why the ANN head retweeted me on Twitter but added "I'm a big baby" at the end of my message -_-

Of course I make sure to talk about Mio but let not forget Nendoroid Yui. Recently she became available for us USA anime retailers to pre-order...sadly though, looks as if her official US release won't be until Feb 2010 o_0. Darn it! Like anything K-On, we here in the West are getting the scraps...or of course using the power of the internet to bypass silly delays and red tape. As Sony just found out with the spike in sales of the PS3 Slim, you gotta just listen to the fans and customers. Hopefully Studio Blue gets that about the K-On! popularity here in the states -_-

Alter's Mio Akiyama figure has already been on the top of the pre-order list for many people for the past week and a half or so. I of course had to make her available for pre-order here in my shop. Alter's craftsmanship is stellar as they tend to be and like other Alter figures, expect the prototype to look practically identical to the final product. She's on my list to keep for myself as well ^o^...her official US release doesn't seem to be until January 2010 though -_-