Do you know of a site that's about to go down? Does it have information that should be preserved on the web? Let us know, and we'll save what we can!

You can also help us out by keeping your eyes open for any anime-related events or articles. Clubs and convention-goers -- don't forget our events calendar page! If your organisation has something up and coming, let us know!

• August 6

  Hope everyone had a good Civic Holiday long weekend! Up with this update are: three new contest entries for the Fan Art Contest. Also up is a first episode review for Angelic Layer the new anime from Clamp which started airing earlier this year. With the review, are also a couple of trivia questions for the sharp-eyed viewers to test their memories. In the Parent's Guide to Anime, there are two new reviews for Jubei-chan and Outlaw Star (edited) while a follow-up review has been posted for Angel Sanctuary.

  Also updated are the monthly picks section, as well as the Upcoming Releases sections for both anime and manga so take a look!





• July 31

  A touch later than expected, but tragedy struck in the real world as we lost our kitty of 17 years. Hopefully he's enjoying terrorising all the mice in Heaven.

  In any case, there are several entries to the Café Fan Art Contest which have now been added to the site for your perusal. Also up is a new review for the first Devil Hunter Yohko OAV as well as a few new trivia questions as well. For those of you who like trivia, take a look and find out just how closely you were watching!





• July 22

  Two more entries have been added to the Fan Art entries page. Also a link has been added to the Main Page for the Café Forum.





• July 21

  Two more follow-up reviews are now up in the Parent's Guide to Anime for: Love Hina and Rurouni Kenshin. As expected Rurouni is causing some problems in the ratings.

  Some people may have noticed that I've been playing with counters and the Chat Room. I've decided to get rid of the Chat Room in favour of a Message Board. Personally I feel that a message board is more practical. The Message Forum consists of a number of boards including space for discussion of: Anime, Manga, Yaoi/Yuri, Parent's Guide reviews, Cafe reviews, Feedback, and a Reviewer's Board. People who wish to use the yaoi/yuri board are required to register on the board (registration is free), and reviewers wishing to use the Reviewer's Board must register and e-mail me (or send a private message on the board) so I can set the necessary permissions. Currently, the link for the Message Board is on the Cafe Latte main page. The board itself is up although the design is a little off. Special thanks go to JayDee of Anime Ai who has unwittingly agreed to help moderate the board, and Michael Stauber of Forumworld for setting things up for me. Take a look and let me know what you think!





• July 19

  Four more reviews are now up in the Parent's Guide to Anime including three new reviews for Samurai: Hunt for the Sword, Angel Sanctuary and Twilight of the Dark Master as well as another follow-up review for Rurouni Kenshin TV series. RK is looking like it's going to be a source of some contention.

  Also up are scans of the prizes which are up to be won for both the regular Cafe Contest as well as the Fan Art contest. We also have another entry in the Fan Art contest so take a look!

  (I did say this was going to be a week of creeping updates...). Lastly, for those people who submitted Parent's Guide reviews more than one and a half months ago and are wondering what happened, please contact me. There's a possibility (if it was written prior to the server move) that it was misfiled or not received depending on when it was sent. Otherwise, I think I'm almost up-to-date on the APGA submissions....





• July 18

  Congratulations Carlos and Christi Ross of THEM Anime! We hope you have a wonderful honeymoon and wish you all the very best for the future!





• July 17

  The problem of the Chat Room sending out spam to users has now been fixed. Our apologies to the two cabbits who were inadvertently spammed by this! The room should be safe to use without any fears of this happening now.

  Otherwise, several new reviews are now up in the Parent's Guide to Anime including new reviews for: CardCaptors (North American edit) and Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer. Follow-up reviews have now been posted for: Generator Gawl, Gundam Wing, Love Hina, MD Geist and Rurouni Kenshin so take a look! There are still a number of APGA reviews to be posted, so be sure to check back often!





• July 16

  Welcome to the week of creeping updates! This week I expect that a number of things will slowly creep along as they get updated. With todays update we have:

  Firstly, a sad announcement. The Casual Otaku has announced that they will be closing their doors. They will be sorely missed!

  A number of new links have been added to the links section. Of particular note are: J-Store, a new e-shop associated with Japanimation.com. Cafe readers can get a 5% discount at the till by entering "animecafe" in the special comments box at the checkout. Also in the links section, as requested we now have a page which will translate Japanese pages roughly into English. Babelfish is one of a few such translation sites out there and it will give you a rough idea of what's happening on the page. Lastly, a link has also been added to review site: Neocybertokyopolis which has a number of intelligently written reviews as well so take a look!

  Also updated are the release dates for Japanese anime and manga through to late / end of August respectively. A number of domestic releases have also been added but I'll have to hunt down more of the domestics still.

  For those people living in Victoria, BC or who are planning on being there in early August, the Victoria Comic Book, Sci-Fi and Fantasy Convention will be taking place August 4-6 and will feature a number of anime theatres. Details can be found at their site!

  Now, updates to the Cafe! We have a new addition to the Anime Words of Wisdom so hopefully this means that I'll also start working on some of the other law submissions which have also been stagnating in my mailbox. Thanks go to Meredith "Sailor Ghost" for sending in this contribution!

  Also up in the Latte section is a log-in to a chat room for the Cafe. It's a *lot* rough (in fact it looks downright ugly right now) but hopefully I'll be able to get something a little more appropriate up soon. (I did say this was going to be a week of creeping updates...).

  The Cafe mailbag has also been updated with a couple more e-mails from June / July. Yes, I'm really terrible at replying to e-mails... -_- And the last of the administrative announcements includes the first entry to the Cafe Fan Art Contest. Entries will be listed in the contest section under the Fan Art Contest page so take a look!

  Reviews! There is now a new review up on the Cafe for the Aa! Megamisama! movie which was recently released to video and was chosen as the Cafe's top vid pick for the month of June. This is a really sweet movie much in keeping with the feel of the final OAV story. The movie is to be released by Pioneer LDC. Lastly, the APGA updates are being put off until tomorrow. Apologies to all those who have contributed. @_@;;

  Almost forgot! I never gave the location for the Fruit Basket screensaver download. Search details can be found on Hakusensha's website. Look for the link to the "Furu Ba" website for details. (If you like Fruit Basket manga, it's a cute websaver). And since I did mention shoujo manga stuffs, it's only fair that I also mention that there is also a screen saver available for download for Inu Yasha from Shogakukan's Shounen Sunday website. If you were wondering how Babelfish works, this might make for an interesting trial at things! Cheers!





• July 11

  Yes, I'm exceedingly behind this month. A couple of personal asides first (to skip this just jump to the next paragraph). The server move and looking through all those search scripts took more out of my webminded head than I thought, so I've been taking a bit of a break over the double long weekend we enjoy with the Stampede. Otherwise, real life raised its head such that I managed to break a tooth on the weekend. That's now been fixed so I can finally eat again! ^_^ Lastly, as long as temperatures here remain in the high 20s to low 30s, I'm sorry, updates are going to take a backburner as I stay very far away from my laptop.

  But enough of that, on to site information. We've been honoured this month with the receipt of two awards to the Cafe from Anime Hanger and Bulezau. The awards have been added to the awards page on the Cafe. The encyclopaedia search engine is still down and won't be up until either the server installs PERL or... I may have to find a script which will run off another server but doesn't have too many advertisements?? We'll see how that hunt goes and I'll give my server's folks a query later this week. In the meantime, I seem to have climbed on the soapbox again in this month's editorial which looks at translations in anime. There is also a new set of monthly picks for the month of June. Congratulations goes to Katie Cordes of Eaghan, MN who is this month's contest winner of Card Captor Sakura Illustration Book 1.

  The Anime Cafe is pleased to announce its first Cafe Fan Art Contest Take a look for rules and details! Otherwise, the prize includes the following:

  • How to Draw Manga: Vol 1, Compiling Characters book
  • Escaflowne: The Movie Soundtrack CD
  • Meitantei Conan Part 5 Vol 9 VHS

  Last contest, I asked for people to submit review requests and comments to which a number of people responded. Enough so that, there is a variety of titles for me to choose from. This is good, because there's nothing worse than trying to review a title you're not interested in watching that day. (You don't want to watch Grave of the Fireflies when all you want to do is see something like Slayers!) However, this also means that titles will not be reviewed in the order that the request was received. Also, there will be reviews which were not requested but which I just want to do simply because it really caught my interest at the time of viewing, like the current review which is in the works for Aa! Megamisama! The Movie.

  One of the most common comments was a request for manga reviews. I have been playing with this idea for quite some time now, but am not sure if/when this will ever be implemented, partially bacause I tend to read primarily shoujo / jousei titles. In the meantime, some people may be interested in the following little goodies I've spotted on the 'net. Fruit Basket, the new anime series directed by Daichi Akitarou (Ima Sokoniiru Boku, Kodomo no Omocha, Jubei-chan etc.) based on the manga by Takaya Natsuki has a screen saver available for download. You have to do a four site hunt and need to be able to read and write Japanese script however to collect the information needed to access the screensaver. The folks from Sho-comi in the meantime have a download special with a number of wallpapers and a screensaver available for download. Needless to say, I probably will not be reporting this type of information too much unless it's anime related rather than manga.

  Lastly, a review has been posted in the Parent's Guide to Anime for Berserk. There are a lot of reviews which have become backlogged over the time from server move to now, and I hope to post another update in the next few days for the APGA and clear most of the backlog, post the latest Cafe review as well as update the releases calendar.





• June 25

  Reviews have now been posted on the main Cafe site for: Gasaraki Episode 1, Inu Yasha Episode 1, as well as YuYu Hakusho the Movie. Also up are reviews in the Parent's Guide to Anime for: Cyber City Oedo 808, Fight! Spirit of the Sword, Gundam Wing Endless Waltz, Kareshi Kanojo no Jijo, Neon Genesis Evangelion: End of Evangelion, Outlaw Star (unedited), Street Fighter Alpha, and Vandread, so take a look!

  Also up are now some pics of upcoming releases from the folks at MediaBlasters (AnimeWorks) in the New Releases section. The mailbag has also now been updated. The search engine for the encyclopaedia is still not functioning and will be down until further notice (perl needs to be added to the server...).