Chucks Anime Shrine

The Long Gap, But Not The End

2018-05-01T08:58:00.000-04:00

Hey there,

Been a long time hasn't it? Almost 2 years of nothing?!

My sites, stores and general content has been...let's say nonexistent the past almost 2 years and nothing here on our blog has been updated with much care or order for a while. Well, that is hopefully going to start changing (hopefully not jinxing it).

I'm finally settled enough in my home to begin what I wanted to do in the first place; grow/reboot my online presence, sites, content and business. A ton has happened in the past few years. It was like the life changes that should have happened all combined at once since 2015. I got a very important job role in NYC as a Lead Developer, I got married to Danielle who's been a part of my life since 2002 and my fiancee since late 2007 and I bought our first home! Heck, even just these past few months I became the voice of a famous online pup, Crusoe The Celebrity Dachshund, so my voice acting has been keeping me busy as well. The downturn (and financial issues) my anime figure business suffered by the events of Hurricane Sandy in 2012 are now gone and there is another store site in the works.

The insane number of life changes, 24+ hour project sprints and tasks life threw at me these past few years was beyond tiring so Danielle and I took a week off to Disney in Orlando (the same place we went for our honeymoon). The vacation was exactly what I needed so it's time to get things back on track.

First things first, hopefully more content and to get things going... I'm not going to keep the Anime Figure Bot in it's "in dev state". She will now answer questions and eventually move toward being a dynamic assistant to our anime store's revival.

Also, moving forward we do wish to update the site/blog and all to be out of it's 2009 state as well as phase out Google Adsense as well a number of other Google services being used on this site. Google over the past few years has made their platforms increasingly restrictive on free speech and with ever puritan-like prudish nature. We are not fans of crazy non-related ads, Google's overall actions and honestly not into much advertising in general beyond what we need to keep the site afloat.

Advertising on this site will for a time stay as I am talking to a number of people who wish advertise here (all anime related) so ads in general will change here. Down the road we might just restrict advertising to a single Patreon pledge banner, mention of our anime store items and quick sponsors in online videos / podcasts. This will allow us to keep making content and not worry that attractive, non-pornographic anime art will get flagged by a platform and people who will eventually die out in obscurity by then end of this decade when the next set of outrage culture fiends finds their next mindless topic to waste their efforts on.

Ranting aside, we are not gone and if time stays my friend (and we are not jinxing ourselves yet again) we do have plans for more content and still being a part of the community we've been a part of since 2002.

So About Our Long Blog Post Hiatus...

2016-08-23T14:55:00.002-04:00

Well... it's been some time. Our last blog post (not including the previously sponsored one) was back 9 months ago in November. Simply tons of things have happened in that time and it's about damn time to get this site (and the anime figure store) back in gear. There is just too much going on not to talk about and with a number of anime, gaming and pop culture blogs/sites, most much younger than this site getting too much lime light (and some falling off the deep end of selling out)....I think it's about time we keep our hands game....or am I just talking to myself here?

Where the hell have we been? (wait, didn't I ask this in the last post?!?)

The last post talked about something that finally happened in the 16+ years I've been working a job and something sadly most of us today might never experience... 1) being treated like a human being and equal at the job 2) being in the field / job you wanted to.

To somewhat summarize..I was trying to get out of a dead end "web dev" job. I almost did that with the anime figure business and voice acting when Hurricane Sandy wiped much of that away (well, much of the figure business that is; voice acting helped a bit after). Since the late 90's and after many years of being told of how stupid I was for doing it by "professionals" in Computer Science, I was always looking to be a game / app developer. The forever unfinished game Tenshi-Oni and the characters from it whom are the mascots of this site came from a flash game idea I started in 2003. Then I moved to IOS native and almost got Tenshi-Oni rolling out on IOS in 2012; yet another victim of that storm's aftermath. This later turned to Unity development.

With voice acting picking up and getting the honor to write my own published IOS development book, I somehow broke free from the IT recruiter purgatory and got a Unity developer job in NYC for a major production company. They sadly were wolves in sheep's clothing and I actually flat out quit them for the sake of my sanity and to not give such terribly ran places the satisfaction of having developers at 1/4th the pay and 4x the workload/stress. During that time, my anime figure store's php code got nerfed by some .htaccess hack that I to this day haven't had the chance to undo. (just frontend stuff, nothing else in terms of logins and whatnot)

There was a silver lining in me quitting as within that week I got scooped up by a smaller yet much more awesome group of developers in NYC who were in desperate need for a Unity developer who worked with game and particularly non game work; something I did exclusively for the few months I was with that horrid & vapid production company. Working with non game applications in Unity was (and still kind of is) something almost nobody is doing so I instantly became a need asset for this and other companies. This was ALL without the help from IT recruiters who now more than ever come to me with roles, to which I gladly say, "sorry, I'm taken." It's seriously like relationships...the moment you are taken, people want you.

Speaking of relationships. I started this site only a month before I met my fiancee Danielle in April of 2002 and we got engaged..get this.. Xmas eve 2007. The various trials of life always kept the wedding and a chance to move on in life far away. Thing is, in about 3 weeks, Danielle and I will be finally married...FINALLY! The wedding ceremony was officially signed for back in January....near the beginning of this long blog hiatus.

Up until now, the Unity work was indeed rather grueling with any all nighters and weeks of crazy debugging and fixes. The app was for an awesome famous beer company who made the process much easier to bare (unlike the jewelry client I had the misfortune to work with under that production company).

However, to think I've abandoned this blog, the site, the figure store, Tenshi-Oni and the voice acting you are completely wrong ^_^

This crazy 2016 year:

So... if there aren't many posts after the one.. soon after the wedding on Sept 10th and the much needed 2 week honeymoon vacation, we will be hard at work to get back to regular posts, finally get the store back up, back to Tenshi-Oni work and maybe upgrade the look and feel of our sites as well. (feeling very 2007 around here).

This year has been the most insane, eventful year I have ever witnessed in my almost 33 years alive; not just for me personally but in terms of public news and events.. from the insanity brought on by Pokemon GO last month, to the anime and gaming news, to the wonderful and much needed death of Gawker and to the explosion in new emerging tech. There is just too much to talk about and we should have been talking about more. The internet moves fast and forgets fast but as always, we are still here and will soon catch the next wave back into the fray.

Where Have We Been Since July? Back from the Trial of Fire Known as 2015

2015-12-28T13:07:00.002-05:00

Where Have We Been?

Ok, we have to come clear with some things. It has been months since our last blogs posts. With the prior post about supporting Kenneos on Patreon, we have come back from almost near silence since our last post in July! Ironically, that blog post was about how not to make your job define you yet it was indeed my new job (and book) that caused the "hiatus". It wasn't a true hiatus as I simply didn't have the time to do much of anything these past few months (and I'm actually not out of the woods yet).

So, what have I/we been doing? Where the hell is the anime store? Why are you using a picture of Saitama from One Punch Man as the header?

(update 12/2017: Daisuki is sadly gone now but here are some alternatives: http://ctech.link/daisuki-alternatives. Thanks Sophie ^_^ )

To explain, back in June of this year something finally happened and (I believe) we mentioned in our last post. Basically I got a developer position with a major NYC studio. For years I was working as a very very underpaid web developer for a semi-local camera store...nearly 9 years to the day that I finally left. I used that job's mundane monotony to of course revive the site from stagnation that started in 2004 by starting this blog, running the anime business and beginning my own independent development work with our (seemingly forever unfinished) Tenshi-Oni game. The camera job hardly let me do anything development wise, Hurricane Sandy wiped out my anime figure business's momentum and like Saitama here in episode 1, I was searching for work for a long time, stuck in a sad state of loss and numbness. I had some programming jobs and even some well known game companies turn the other way either due to antiquated code tests or simply because of insane prerequisites. Nearly 5+ years of time wasting, hope raising daily emails from practically useless spam-like IT recruiters did nothing. My success as a business owner and skills in various fields that outdo most college grads meant nothing to them... and for some time, it was killing me.

It was back in April of this year that things started to finally break the status quo. I got an interesting email from the good people over at Packt Publishing. They wanted me to write a programming book centered on IOS game development and in April I began the tough work of writing a programming book. Not too long after that, I was emailed form the co-owner of that studio I mentioned before. They were looking for Unity developers to join their team. Interestingly enough, in November of 2014, shortly after publishing PikiPop, I taught myself Unity development. My past code-centric training that began in 2001 with C++ made knowing Unity a breeze and I was confident I could have been of help to that studio. It was that last blog post in July when I was already in the thick of things, working on projects for things such as The Late Show with Steven Colbert and some big business that oddly wanted boring boardroom garbage in VR apps.

There was a major problem with all of this that I couldn't mention until today...and that was the ridiculous hell that position put me through. Here I was finally leaving that camera store web job, excited about what this could be for my future as a developer and for what the move could be for the site as well...and at the same time I'm writing a 200+ page IOS game dev book. Problem was, this place didn't tell me my salary up front...something very sneaky; even more so when it's a studio with a shit ton of money and celebrity clients. I ignored this red flag due to my years of struggling to get out of my past position and the heart break of what Hurricane Sandy did to the anime business that could have broke me free much sooner. To the dismay of family and friends who warned me of the cryptic salary and expectations, I dove in and started that new position at the very start of June.

It goes without saying that with my book and this new job, my time for what remains of the store and this site was hampered. I was working 5 days a week in NYC from about 9:00am until 6:00pm with a train that takes 2 hours to get to and from NYC. My work day started at 6:45am and didn't end until about 9:00pm...and even then my bosses (all 4 of them) had me do work for them until 1 am from home. Most weekends was me also working all day, doing web tasks that nobody seemed to know how to do with projects that weren't even my own. I traded 1 depressingly computer illiterate boss for 4 horrendously developer illiterate & (mostly) computer illiterate bosses (half of them being bipolar). I was put into a place of great pressure to perform, but at times oddly was given some great tools to work with (ie: they gave my personal Unity account full pro benefits) Every day was both a kiss and a slap in the face. It took almost two weeks in before I found my salary..and it wasn't even close to the ~$60K that junior Unity devs make...it was half. I was making almost exact to the previous camera job. Ok, they did pay for my $400 monthly train ride and paid for lunch... but I always felt like I was being guilt tripped into it; yet people from MTV events and social media people at the place would just leech off the hours and relax while I struggled doing everything from web design to helping other people code their projects. Add this and the fact that they were having an unpaid intern work 30+ hours a week on development projects and at times calling developers "crazy and you can see the motivation to that post I made in July about not making your job your identity. That post was my realization that I jumped into a trap.

Not too long after that post, I began my own project...an insanely over exaggerated, rushed timeline app for a major diamond dealer. It was utter hell, given 6 weeks to work on an app solely (well, originally by myself) with ever changing features for a client that didn't even know what an app was, while still being told to assist my coworker 40 hours a week. It was enough to make a person go mad. After the app eventually went past the deadline (was really only given 3 weeks to focus on it) I got some extra time on it, with lovely bipolar scolding about how worthless I am to boot.

Thing is, I was doing stuff with Unity that nobody did before in time frames that would make any legit developer's head spin. In reality, like Saitama here, I went through a trial by fire. Out of it I realized I was indeed a legit programmer; able to solve problems that most programmers would throw the towel in for. I also physically got stronger. Despite the emotional distraught that job did (got nervous breakdowns that I haven't seen since I worked as a manager at Friendly's while in college 10+ years ago), I was physically getting stronger from the walking and train rides to and from NYC. The horrible work environment was uncovering the programmer I truly am and molded my physical body back to my high school age. Emotionally, the work was taking its toll and the client was making me see first hand some of the truth in some preconceived notions I had about NYC and what that city would deem as "successful" in certain "high ranking" individuals. I was seeing NYC through eyes that sees nothing but garbage, stupidity and evil that is the real NYC and the real New York/Long Island workplace.

To the shock of many who didn't know my struggles, I quit that job...with the true colors of my past employer quickly showing in light of me finally standing up for myself. As a business owner, author of a programming book and a fully realized programmer, it was my time to finally end the nearly 20 years of being a door mat by employers. One would think that I would be happy to be free... but it was only a brief time of relief as the realization of the debt I still faced (and still do) was now looking at me straight in the face now. What remains of my anime figure business and this site was not enough to survive. So,in a panic I applied for a retail job at a Costco near my apartment and even managed to begin the training stages of a consultancy job I found through Flexjobs.com. One week out of that last NYC job I was now having to wait for the processes of two jobs to come through and feel the grief of returning the the horrors of retail/food after a decade of being away from it. At the same time we were losing my fiancee's grandmother to the complications of heart disease and age; soon to be the 4th grandparent we've lost since November of 2013. As one can guess, things have not been great up to this point. Yet, despite the despair and fear, I felt a sense of calm and a feeling that all will be ok now that now I'm free from the employers that bound me and hindered me from my goals all these years.... or maybe... I finally cracked. It was what happened next that took me by surprise.

The week after I quit that NYC studio didn't give me time to rest nor did it grant me the ability to grieve over the fact that the woman who gave us an apartment to live in, my fiancee's grandmother, was on her death bed. Recruiters were ruthless now that I came from a developer position. The change to Unity last November was a blessing as it oddly gave me more credibility than my C++ and iOS native coding experience (skills that are more advanced than Unity honestly). IT recruiters were on me like flies on shit and I was on the phone hours on end. I wanted to reboot the store and my own projects but was in the full time job known as ferrying IT recruiters and going through, again, mostly time wasting pre-interviews and questionieers. I was on the verge of getting two low paid jobs (Costco and that social media consultancy) but they too had me wait and go through hoops.

Then, amongst all of the emails, Linkedin posts and calls was one LinkedIn message from a studio in NYC. This wasn't some recruiter but one of the heads of the company. Granted... this was the same scenario as what got me the job at that hellish the studio I quit; a company head messaging me directly on Linkedin. Understandably, I was a bit hesitant at first. I did the routine I have become so accustomed to, scheduling a call and preparing to tell my job situation now with the caveat of the recent Unity dev hell I went through. To my surprise, the manager was really nice and they were a studio really looking for my exact skills, skills I came to learn are almost nowhere to be found...the ability to make non-game features / APIs in Unity (since Unity is a game engine). That development hell made me a rare commodity in the programming world. I found out from this person that I was ranked as the #1 person in the NYC area on LinkedIn for Unity development; my constant phone calls and emails were the result of this. He hired me on the spot, at 2x the pay I was making at that last studio with the ability to work from home some days and via contract. In other words, I'm still my own business owner but get to help a studio, a studio who this past month I've come to see really likes me and is just an amazing group of people to work with. I work with other devs and for the first time in the 17 years I first started working a job, I felt like I am actually appreciated for my work and skills. The hours up until x-mas eve were in some cases (due to the project) even worse than my last studio job... but I didn't care. It makes me tear up in happiness thinking about it. My first job was as a baseball umpire at 15 for my baseball league..I was told I didn't have what it takes. My next job was a toy stocker at Kay Bee Toys during the x-mas of 2000 when the PS2 was launched...I was never told that I was seasonal. The following role was that horrid job at Friendly's in April of 2001, the job that I found first hand how horrible people from my town were. I was call a retard by people, treated like garbage and worked to the bone while in college. In college I was doing computer science mainly with the goal to make videogames...I was told I was an idiot for not wanting to do CS for what it "really is for". The hatred for the job at Friendly's made me join a network marketing group that I worked my ass off...only to come out as the only person willing to put in work and ending up $40,000 in debt. After Friendly's I got a job at Office Max... and was told I was stupid by customers who thought I was "on speed" because I drink one energy drink in the day instead of the 10 cups of coffee most do. I left Office Max to work at an eBay consignment job...that soon went out of business (though it did help the start of the anime store). The next job in the summer of 2006 was that camera store "web dev" job... a job I was told I was useless in as well and got stuck in until June of this year. Then finally that studio in NYC in June... where I was told I was a useless programmer.
As one can see, I've been stepped on for many years and now, now it's finally time I stand amidst the ruins of the past. Not only has this job finally give me a sense of confidence and an eagerness to improve myself, it also helped start something that now finally is happening...the marriage to my other half who's been here since the site started in March/April of 2002. On x-mas eve of 2007 I proposed to her but we stand still not married thanks to the myriad of events that tried to prevent it. Now, we stand here with that date, September 10th, 2016. The papers have been signed and we are getting ready for the wedding that should have happened so long ago. I'm hoping this new studio will last for at least all of next year but even then., I know we will continue to stand stronger than ever before.

With this, it is now time to get back to the anime store, my voice acting and oh yes..the Tenshi-Oni game...

Where is the anime store?

In the middle of my development hell chaos there was a change in security measures for online stores and retail in general in the US. Many of you probably got those surprise credit cards in the mail with the chips on them...yep, that security measure. Well, we had to update the SSL of the site for the additional safety of the customers. Granted, we don't keep any payment information on the store. All of that is done on the site of Paypal, Amazon and Bitpay. So the store was automatically taken down in absence of a new early enforced SSL certificate. We got it back but the database connect is still off. So, as we speak the anime store is still down but once we tidy up the SSL and reconnect the database (something we couldn't even focus on in the few months it's been down), the store will be back up. In the mean time we will soon (I know, it's after x-mas) have a bunch of our new and old stock on the store on our Ebay and Amazon branches in the mean time. The store is not gone and we have a number of really great figures on hand we need to move out before we even think of doing any more preorders, pre-orders going forward that unfortunately will have to have deposits due to a number of customers abusing our generous no-deposit preorders we've been doing since 2007 :-/.

Tenshi-Oni's Status...

It's the game that both won't ever die nor ever seem to come to life in a completed form. It started in 2003 and almost became a full game on iOS back in 2012. So many music artists in particular gave us music to use for the game... a number of people have waited and have gotten nothing in return. I have promised Tenshi-Oni for many years and it is killing me that it keeps being stuck in limbo.

I'll use this to announce that in secret I've been rebuilding Tenshi-Oni in Unity. With a combination of my vastly improved skills as a developer and the tools I have as a Unity pro developer... Tenshi Oni is back in production and it is planned to be greater than it ever was, being a "living AMV" 2.5D-side scrolling slashing bullet hell. If any of you are following our other site, Anime.fm....you will get a hint of what we have on the development block. I know I have sometimes bashed Kickstarter and other crowd funding platforms, but to help make this as close to looking like a AAA title as possible, I will make a prototype/tech demo as soon as possible and that will be used to promote a crowd funding campaign. I want all artists who have helped us thus far (and others we plan to contract along the way) to get compensated in what can be a really great game if my vision is brought to the numerous platforms Unity can export to. AMVs were what got this site on the map back when internet fame wasn't even a thing and it could be AMVs that inspire a major part of the gameplay in this game. After working in production studios as one of the lead developer in numerous current gen projects, I could very well make Tenshi-Oni something far beyond the amateur iOS build it was a few years ago.

I don't want to jinx myself again with that game so we will only post new Tenshi-Oni status when there is more to show...but it is being reworked into Unity. Like Saitama, it was through the pain of extensive training that has brought us back from the brink.

Here's to a bright new future in 2016. It had a long time coming.

Remember What Defines You and Never Let that Be A Job

2015-07-05T16:21:00.001-04:00

Hey everyone, a bit of an odd post (with a tad bit of title porn), but I thought it was a good time to give an update as the site, figure store and blog here probably deserves one.

Remember that rather long term situation I've dealt with? You know, the 8+ years of working at an underpaid web dev job while trying to bring this anime site, the store and indie game development into my main 9-5 workflow? Well, a few months ago that finally changed. Not sure what happened...hell froze over? the Cubs won? there was a glitch in the matrix? Yamcha didn't die in a DBZ fight?

What ever it was, a few months ago I got an interesting message from a site I all but thrown out as anything to care about, LinkedIn. Despite getting some success with voice acting, publishing the PikiPop game, getting into podcasting, Let's Playing and returning to the forever forgotten project, Tenshi-Oni...I've basically thrown out any seriousness I took from recruiters and contacts from job/ project sites. After dealing with IT recruiters for so long I learned quickly how much of a waste of time they are. They come at you with arms flailing, saying you'd be the "perfect fit", waste your time and phone minutes doing an "interview" while never letting you talk to their client's (the job potentially at hand) and simply forgetting you exist after they take your email and phone for their quotas. Even after I mention this interesting news....any of you going through the trials of IT/programmer recruiters...due take note of the scam artists many of them are. Just build your own projects first and don't let them waste time you could be using to complete such projects.

Anyways, a few months ago I got an amazing email from a publisher in the UK. The offer to author an IOS game development book. For the past few months I've been working on that book. More on it in a future post as I'm now half way done with that...but it's partially why we've been a bit weak with the updates and figure listing posts around here. A little over a month ago, as said before I got what I never thought I'd see from LinkedIn, an interview invite. Not some recruiter, not some test of a test of a test to have an interview. A flat out, "hey, we think you could be a fit, come to the office for an interview."

With in a few weeks, here I am now working as a developer in NYC for that said company. The underpaid camera store web dev job is over! I'm now a full fledged pro Unity dev and am working with some cool stuff for some big clients...mainly in the realm of non-game VR experiences. Stuff I'm still trying to get better at as I'm more of a game dev in the traditional coding sense and Unity is also still a newer platform for me.

So, does this mean this is the end of the anime site, the anime figure store and Tenshi-Oni or my own game dev projects? Quite the opposite. First off, the reason why I submitted my ego to the 9-5 job (when I'm obviously more fit for just running my own ship), is because sadly, past events outside of my control ruined my original run to have that life people like YouTube celebs, indie game devs and anime hobbyists have where their online sites/stores/activities pay for their lives. I almost did it but (as seen in a past post, a certain "Sandy" storm ruined that). I don't come from wealth like some of those people do whom can stand on such a platform and just grow it...so, like the rest of us I have to work a crap job that pays the bills; hence the camera store "web dev" job I had for all this time.

This new position is very great, I do like it and I even got to see some celebrities we get to work with in NYC. My long train ride is taken care of and I get to eat some good sushi during lunch. But... I came to know something about myself and I'm certain some of you might have gone through the same. As great as this job is, as much as I've fought to get it and as much I've dealt with in the past, I wasn't prepared for the shell shock coming out of my comfort zone was. In some ways I reverted back to my personality of my high school years (mind you I graduated high school in 2002, so it's been some time). Much of the professionalism, personality fixes and all got reverted back to the subservient mentality that honestly doesn't help me in the new job or anywhere else in general.

I do love the job, I have awesome new coworkers and all but I can not forget my goal of this, to utilize the job as a stepping stone for my true goals and dreams. The shock of a new work environment is finally starting to fade away and as soon as I finish the game dev book, we shall be back to normal here. Actually, I hope to bring things back to pre Hurricane Sandy times as I realized that it is indeed anime, video games, game dev and this site (and the sister sites) that I love. I probably won't be truly happy until my fiancee and I are married, living in our own home (not an apartment) and we are surrounded by these hobbies and the work we can and have done in them.

The past job was not helping that overall goal and this one hopefully will. It will still be a challenge until that day of true freedom comes but be it a great new job or an old job...don't let that position make you forget who you are and the hobbies you love. Sometimes the work obligations and such live changes in general could make us almost forget or feel guilty for liking our hobbies...but don't do that. Don't let a job (good or bad) change who you are. Always make sure your goal is to do what you love ALL days so that you'd never work a day in your life. There's still some work for me to do but now I believe I have a better vehicle with the new job to do that.

After this busy month, there should be some new stuff on the horizon here and in general for the site. No matter what life throws at us, we won't forget who we are..and hell, there's new Dragon Ball episodes, news Sailor Moon and Final Fantasy VII is getting a damn remake!

There's so much to miss by forgetting who you are and what you love, so, we are still here ^_^.

April 2015 Anime Figure Preorders and Anime Figure News

2015-04-20T12:55:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone. Pardon the long gap in seeing new figure pre-orders in our store ^^;; No worries though as a fresh batch of anime figure pre-orders are now up for the taking...but remember, there's only a limited time to reserve yours and that time is marked on the product listing pages.

In this batch of figures you'll find some really awesome ones like:

KILL LA KILL: RYUKO MATOI SENKETSU KISARAGI VER. By Good Smile Company
DURARARA!! X2: Nendoroid CELTY
T2 ART GIRLS: VALHELLIO - IRIS HARTLEY (For Collectors 18+ Only)
and more ^_^

Check out the full list here

As for important figure news for both new and past customers, we wanted to let you all know that as of a little over a month ago, the west coast port labor dispute that was causing anime products (and products from practically every industry) to be delayed by up to 3 months has been over and thus for the most part, business is back to normal. One of our main wholesalers, Ultra Tokyo Japan, also moved their location which also explains why some of you have been waiting for some pre-orders longer than usual. Just want to let you all know that we still have your pre-orders on file and once we hear they are finally enroute, we will be emailing you asap.

If you have any questions or concerns, you can always email us at orders@chucksanimeshrine.com.

Our Trip To NYC and Channel Frederator

2015-04-19T17:21:00.004-04:00

On Friday we had the honor of meeting our friends over at Channel Frederator / Cartoon Hangover (@channelfred /@cartoonhangover) My fiancee Danielle has been a member of their awesome network and for a number of months, I've became friends with Nicky from Cartoon Hangover and particularly when he by chance was stocking up on Nendoroids and other figures for the ToyPizza show ^_^ Danielle and I had the honor of meeting up & having lunch with Nicky, Cade and other wonderful people at the Channel Frederator office. It really was like all of us were friends for much longer as we love talking about the same topics, be it anime, figures, video games and the Cartoon Hangover shows like Adventure Time, Bee & Puppycat & Steven Universe.

If you guys are reading this blog, we want to thank you all again ^_^ Was a great day in NYC.

Here's some images from out trip and when Danielle an I went to visit Nintendo World later in the day:

Here's the Frederator Office ^^

PuppyCat in Lego form

More of that awesome Lego table

Me and Nicky when Danielle, me , Cade and others had some lunch at the office.

(Danielle being silly with the Instagram effects)

Some pics from after our meetup, as we walked to Nintendo World and then Central Park

(CatBug joining the adventure ^^)

@ Nintendo World ^^

Danielle playing some Smash Bros on the Wii U

Danielle Playing some DBZ Xenoverse later on over at Toys R US

Over at Central Park

CatBug enjoying the weather ^^

CatBug watching me write my IOS Game Dev book on the train home (more on that in a future post ^_^)

Home and having some Pizza with CatBug

Was such a great time and hope to visit our friends at Frederator / Cartoon Hangover again soon ^_^

Check out Nicky And Cade's Cartoon Hangover updates

and the Toy Pizza Show

We Are Supporting Artists On Patreon! ^_^

2015-04-19T09:31:00.000-04:00

For years we here at Chuck's Anime Shrine have been supportive of artists big and small behind our favorite media. We create content online as well and we know how hard it can be to do what we love while the daily struggles of life (mundane/underpaying 9-5 jobs...or lack thereof, etc) can derail the dreams and goals of artists, voice actors, video editors, game devs and other creative people. Like us, many of the artists and content creators out there have a simple dream...to do what we love for a living; making creations that can financially free us from the confines of the average daily life. If you don't come from wealth jobs or personal situations tend to never be what we want to do nor actually accomplish anything beyond running in circles for somebody else's dreams/goals. Thanks to the internet, some crowdfunding services have come up in recent years to help all of us break free from that endless loop; adding to the already established platforms like Newgrounds, Youtube, deviantart, Pixiv and other staples of internet content submission.

From the artists Kenneos and Eefi whom helped build the image of our mascots to other fan artists we try to promote here, we do what we can to show that we are here with you in this quest. (Also want to note that every day that our flagship game, Tenshi-Oni, isn't published... I feel a bit ashamed as I know so many talented music artists have granted us the rights to use their amazing music for free ^^;;)

One of the recent platforms for content creators to come up in recent years is the site, Patreon. Now, I'll admit, in roughly the past year I've been rather critical of crowd funding...moreso how some people have warped these services into some sort of welfare system just for existing and using false victimhood to get said funds. I've seen people use Patreon, GoFundMe and Kickstarter literally saying "help me pay for my bills because I'm 'so-and-so' ...I have nothing to give..but just pay me". Adding insult to injury, the people who tend to do this usually are those who already come from wealth/free-time/opportunity and thus bastardize the main goals of these platforms and the many people who work hard for their fans, whom are grateful that they are at or on their way to reaching that wonderful dream of doing what you want to do for a living.

Anyways...politics and semantics aside, on to why we have this post in the first place...

We are proud to say that we are now officially Patrons to two wonderful artists on Patreon... Zeronis (https://www.patreon.com/Zeronis) and Sakimichan (https://www.patreon.com/sakimichan) ^_^

Please do check out their work. As our anime business rebounds and our own game dev work progresses we will do what we can to add to this list. Sakimichan and Zeronis are rather well known and albeit, rather well funded creators now but they, like many of us started from the ground up and got where they are because of their skill and hard work. They are also very humble and great people who do indeed care about their fans. That's one thing we're liking about Patreon, is that the funding for the creators is based on them actually creating something for their backers/patrons. (Also want to note, outside of Patreon, we are currently commissioning a sprite artist who's working hard on making cool animations of our main mascot Fumi and her forms ^^)

So, what about Chuck's Anime Shrine and Patreon? Well, yes, we do have a Patreon account and we are in the process of building it up correctly for any of you who wish to be our patrons. You can check out our Patreon page here:

https://www.patreon.com/animeshrine

Granted, as of the writing of this post, the page is in dire need of editing and some palatable creations on there...pretty much just slapped stuff together initially and learning the platform ^^;; From me being a game dev, video editor, Let's Player, animator, voice actor, web dev and even recently a bit of a music composer to Danielle being an animator with Channel Frederator...we should soon be able to give people a reason to be our patrons. If we can achieve that dream...something we almost had with this anime site a few years prior, it will only mean more content here on the site..more figures in the store, more games (particularly the almost eternally delayed Tenshi-Oni project) and more artists/content creators we will support ^_^. I know for a fact that if I didn't have to work my current, mundane, underpaying 9-5 web-dev "company's computer guy" job that I oddly still have despite the anime figure business...I'd be working so many hours to make this site and our creations be the worth viewing / playing.

(Please note: we will be backing these two artists for at least the next month or two...we will try to do so longer... but due to financial restrictions there might be a future date that we have to pause said backing. Again, the goal will be to add to the list of artists we support)

A Note About the Heartbleed Bug

2014-04-11T11:41:00.000-04:00

Wanted to make a quick note of assurance to those that might be worried about the Heartbleed bug and it's possible effect on our site, or particularly, your data in our store.

The good news is...you are all safe here ^_^

Here at chucksanimeshrine.com, our webhost is, and has been since 2004, globat.com. Since the store was created in 2007, we've used their SSL service to keep your data safe so we don't use OpenSSL for our store's encryption. Instead, we use RapidSSL.

Also, when the store recently was upgraded and ported to the /shop/ address, I took extra measures in security to make sure the HTML coding and the PHP backend code in the store's Oscommerce engine was the very newest version (at the time of this writing ver 2.3.3.4) and that the encryption passed Google Chrome's strenuous SSL test. Any of you using Chrome will see in the store's cart page the green lock icon showing it's safety.

It's always good to be more safe than sorry and even if our site is safe from the bug, your login info elsewhere on the internet might not be...and if you use the same login credentials across the internet, a hacker could use that to login to your account anywhere.

To help stop the automation of such an act, I've also recently added reCapcha requirements for account creation and password changes on the store... this way, bots potentially using your info stolen from other sites affected by Heartbleed... won't get far here.

So, if you feel you need to change your info nonetheless, go right ahead. All customers of the old store design can log in like they did before the store upgrade; same username and all. Oh, and use the store's own password reset. Like any good secured site, neither me or anybody else has a plain text copy of your credentials.

Here's a list of site affected by the bug... keep safe and watch your personal data.

(PS: Anime.fm and TenshiOni.com do in fact use GoDaddy (a host effected by this bug) as their webhosts but currently there's no customer credentials there, so those are unaffected by this bug as well)

(IMAGE: MASHABLE COMPOSITE. ISTOCKPHOTO, SOBERP)

Tenshi-Oni Officially Copyrighted

2014-04-02T18:16:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone. Wanted to get people up to date about my long running video game project, "Tenshi-Oni" This project is almost as old as this site and though having a very long and drawn out development cycle, hindered by negative life & work events, it's been on the move and only positive life/work events seem to be keeping the release info and development slow now. That's a good thing though as there's been lots of great things happening this year both with the game and with other aspects of this site (...and even my voice acting career.)

Ok, so.. here's the deal. The game, site mascots, story originally dubbed "Project Fumi" in 2003 and later named "Tenshi-Oni" is now officially a licensed/copyrighted property. Granted, they technically have been since 2003 as the mascots, Fumi and Lily have been here on the site since the beginning with Yumi coming in around 2007 with the creation of the anime store section.

Since then there's been some art contests and such with the characters and, though not truly known as more newer mascots, like my friend Danny Choo's Mirai and co... they still are somewhat known...or, once the game comes out, will definitely be.

As of this week, the IP of "Tenshi-Oni", the characters, story about a blue-haired Japanese school girl named Fumi who can transform into an angel or demon and the game's code has been officially copyrighted on paper.

Why did I doing this? A few reasons:

1) These characters have been around since 2003, so I have to protect them from people who will think I took them from something or simply claim ownership over them when or before the game goes public. There hasn't been any cases of this but it's a good CYA (Cover Your Ass) method in squashing Copyright Trolls. Copyright Trolls (a company claiming people's work or a basic phase, like "Candy" and then suing everybody who "violate" that is a major, major issue nowadays. One example being YouTube's abysmal Content ID system

2) The game will be on iPhone to start. If successful I'll be able to work full time on it for even greater versions/upgrades of the game, more games and on more devices/systems. With that comes the inevitability of copycats. Look at FlappyBird for example. My goodness did the copycats came along during and after it' eventual takedown by it's creator. I'm not against people emulating what I'm doing with the game..I mean, my game takes bits and piece of game play style from a few things, particularly 2D side shooters...but then it opens the door for a Candy Crush-like situation. What do I mean by a Candy Crush situation? To put it briefly, in 2010 an indie game dev made a game very similar to Candy Crush... before the game even came out. The devs at King basically copied this game to create Candy Crush. The most damning issue wasn't so much that the game emulated CandySwipe almost to the tee...it was that King went and sued the creator of CandySwipe after their copycat game got big. Yet another incarnation of a Copyright Troll. If Tenshi-Oni becomes even semi-popular and worth copying..it'll inevitably happen. I can't stop that, in some cases I'll welcome it if I'm the head of the pack/the real macoy... but I want to squash the Trolls using the system itself before they come after me; even after the fact the game's been an IP since 2003.

3) To protect the fans from Copyright Trolls. One thing I want to make certain about my legally binding the name "Tenshi-Oni", "Project Fumi", etc... I do NOT want to steal a fan's ability to showcase, fanfic, etc this work. Problem is, as we see with YouTube's terrible Content ID system... a fan of Tenshi-Oni could say, show a Let's Play of it, draw fanart, make a music video of it, and do what us here at CAS and other fans have one for years with anime/game IP we love..simply share their love for it. Copyright Trolls have gotten so bad that ha I not do this, a fan could make an AMV of the game, post it on youtube (and I' be 1000% OK with that).but a copyright troll could claim it and pull down the video under my name...when it wasn't actually me. This happens DAILY on Youtube since they "updated" their Content ID system. If Tenshi-Oni becomes loved enough to be worthy of AMVs, Let's Plays, fan art, etc...I want to be on the front lines to make sure you fans can do so without ANY slack from a Copyright Troll claiming my work as theirs.

tl;dr:

Tenshi-Oni and the characters are now truly copyrighted material
please by all means, make parodies, more fan art of the mascots, AMVs, what have you before during or after the game's release and anything tied to the Tenshi-Oni story. I will not be angry and take down your work for the sake of "protecting" Tenshi-Oni... I, more than anybody else know that anime fandom's sharing HELPS an IP, not hurts it.
The best way to fight copyright trolls who'll go after me or the fans here...is to use the system they game to fight them back... and that's what I did.

Anime Store Redesign Pending

2014-02-11T23:23:00.001-05:00

(Update: Still working on the brand new anime store section... but I was able to fix the old store that kinda got fudged in my creation of the new store. So you can still visit and log into the old store as I roll out the new store any day now ^^. Oh, and all 800+ of you will be able to log in to the new store..no needing to resign up with the new store is launched.)

Pardon the look of the anime store at the moment... ^^;;

Actually today I was going to announce the first figure to go on pre-order after more than a year of recovering from the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy... but the store's engine (OSCommerce) was using a version and code that dates back to 2005. As we speak (and with tons of coffee thanks to MySQL databases such a pain to deal with), I'm adding a brand new store in every way; will be CSS3, HTML5 , Responsive Design. You'll be able to buy anime products on your phone too...oh, and I also plan on adding Bitcoin as a payment option. At the moment it seems everyone (all 800+ of you) who are registered customers to my store might have to reinput your login info / addresses again...but I'm seeing if I can merge old data with the new (again... lots of coffee over this)... so if in the end I can't, my sincere apologies. The goal is to truly bring back my anime store and prove that we are right on par with the likes of Crunchy Roll, Hobby Search, Hobby Stock, etc. Then again, CAS has been around since 2002, had the store added in 2007, is a Good Smile Company Partner Store. So yeah, I think I should show the others whose boss :p

My New Bio / Voice Acting Bio Site

2013-12-30T00:29:00.000-05:00

In addition to the new blogs...I went and updated the rather neglected CharlesGaffney.com to show a bio of my my various work and to be a platform for my voice acting work as well (in addition to my voices.com profile of course ^^;;)

What this has to do with this site is that well, the rest of the site is next in line to get an HTML5/CSS3/W3C upgrade ^^, same thing with the Tenshi-Oni site. Actually speaking of Tenshi-Oni, expect some new screens and hopefully a trailer soon ^^

...now, on to some needed rest... been coding like a mad man @_@

New Kawaii Blog Site

2013-12-29T11:33:00.000-05:00

First this blog, Anime.fm and now the Kawaii blog. I've gone and fully redesigned the page's code, look and feel. The template I used as a skeleton for the design was actually distributed by a fellow anime fan... http://www.softwanime.com/.

The Kawaii Blog as we call it is my fiancee Danielle's own blog. She talks about anime, animation and other topics there, so check it out ^_^

The New Chuck's Anime Shrine Blog

2013-12-10T12:14:00.000-05:00

Notice the big difference today with the blog? My push for improvements across the board for all my sites, stores and blogs continues today with the reveal of this new look and feel to the blog. It's all HTML5/CSS3/~~W3C compliant~~*, mobile and tablet friendly and a big improvement from the older blog that was having some growing pains from the advent of social media's boom since the blog's last update back in ~2009.

(* sadly Twitter Cards and Open Graph meta tags are so new they aren't really w3c compliant yet and Blogger's custom b: XHTML namespace isn't also w3c/HTML5 compliant I found out -_-...going to work more on that aspect as I learn to again recode these "errors" not in my control. My goal is to eventually get the whole site w3c complaint and 100% HTML5 compliant... the latter more true than the prior though)

Due to the nature of Blogger's widgets and XHTML setup, I unfortunately can't do a 100% pure turnover and so... don't mind me as I fix up the place a bit more and iron out some CSS bugs & discrepancies. I still have to reinstall the disqus comment system as I don't want to again have everyone's comments be lost to another update..though the template I used to get things started does wonderful comment formatting. Also, I plan to put back the rotating fan banner since I simply love the banners you all made of our mascots over the years and want to keep them posted (and you all can submit more if you like :3)... as well as the blogroll that I welcome any anime and game-related blog/site/deviantart/pixiv site, etc to join.

Want to thank the people over at http://www.bloggertipsandtricks.net/ for the awesome template that saved me a bunch of time in setting this up. Gotta run, still got some work to do on this and next up, Anime.fm, tenshi-oni.com and my own personal blog.

Chuck's Anime Shrine on Tumblr

2013-12-06T13:18:00.004-05:00

Beginning a big push to bring my sites back to life, implementing current social media, RSS, CSS3, HTML5 paradigms and basically programming everything to work seamlessly across all that this site and my other site are located and can be in today's socially driven internet. Basically creating Chuck's Anime Shrine v5.0. This blog here is still in dire needs of some cosmetic updating but in addition to putting Anime.fm on G+, I reactivated the long dormant Tumblr page. Should be synced to this blog and more so that way, those of you who use tumblr, can also be plugged into anime news, game reviews, anime pics, anime figure listings and more as I continue to build things up.

Nothing much on tumblr yet, but the goal is to make it just as vibrant as it can be.

The Return of My Anime Figure Store

2013-12-02T17:40:00.001-05:00

Back in 2007, I added the anime figure store to the then 5 year old site and it got off to a great start. It was just when popular (and sadly highly bootlegged) Nendoroid figures, Alter statues & Kotobukiya Bishoujo figures got their beginnings. The store was loved by fans of dannychoo.com...slowly creeping up the popularity list of anime stores with the likes of hobbystock, Amiami, and others. The store even got a nod in BusinessWeek and I have always been so humbled by the kind comments people made on myfigurecollection.com and figure.fm. I have to say, the anime community has some of the best customers and it was sad to see things fall to pieces when Hurricane Sandy hit (details in this previous post).

Life has been hard this past year with things even recently adding insult to injury (ie: our apartment getting flooded this Thanksgiving break)..it's been a slow and arduous step out of the financial and emotional rubble. With what I had and what I almost accomplished (fully automated store using Fulfilment by Amazon) and now seeing everyone and their dog selling what used to be a more niche product line... link many things in my life, I feel I got there too late or fell off the race tracks due to events out of my control, while I not only fall back in line in said race, but there's now more "racers" amplifying my obscurity & track to regain.

Back in September, a glimmer of hope came in the form of voice acting work. As of today I got 4 voice jobs with 3 different and large companies; Jack & Jones, World Vision & a hiking shoe company I can't exactly name yet. Even more recent, I got invited to an anime game audition & got a few roles in an independent anime RPG game. This success in what at times still seems to be a sea of chaos, dysfunction, bad luck & calamity has kept me going and I'm thankful to say that the gears of possible change have started moving. Today, Cyber Monday 2013, I announce that my anime store is in fact "back". It never really left but it was in such shambles that it was better no sales really happened in the interm. Pre-orders might still have to wait; I know I missed out in providing all of you some amazing figures like the Attack On Titan figures, the Necomimi, mind-activated Cat ears, and the fully replicated Sailor Moon wand... just to name a few. For now, the inventory in my store will be the older stock that I've had and either couldn't or didn't have the time to list. As of right now, my ebay store and the main store here reflect what I actually have in stock and can ship out to anyone who wants them. Granted, at the time of this post, the figures "featured" on the main store's banner are long gone, but if you see a figure in actual store part of the site (and somebody didn't just a few moments ago buy it), it's there.

There's a bunch more to post and I will throughout the x-mas season and beyond continue to list what I have and make offers if I can on the older stock. Once these items are cleared out, I expect to be back in gear with taking pre-orders. Thanks to new partnerships with Diamond Comics, YesAnime & Bluefin Distributions, I can provide some really great figures in the future...and hopefully...one day, be back on AAAanime.com's good side. Anyone from that distributor reading this....I apologize for the pre-orders that were left in limbo; Hurricane Sandy messed things up bad and I want you guys to return with me as I pick up the pieces.

So, welcome anyone who's new and who has been here for a long while. I plan on updating the look & feel of the store, this blog and the site in general so the goal is to also post all the content I should have been; I do wish to return to getting games to review, anime to discuss in the podcasts and all the other things that either forgot I was here or simply thought I left. I'm not gone, and neither is the Tenshi-Oni game nor anime.fm. I have a rocking Facebook page with over 6K followers and we are only getting started. Posted some videos onto Youtube with more planned that don't just include cute animals and what might be considered "extended Vies" of daily life.

Heck, even while writing this, I got the first order on the site in the longest time.

So, I wish everyone a happy holidays and it's time to get to work...there's so much to do and I won't let life kick me down, no matter how many times it tries to ^_~

One Year After Hurricane Sandy, My Struggles and the Rebuilding of My Anime Figure Store

2013-10-25T14:56:00.000-04:00

I have to come clean about what has been up with my anime figure store this past year. As many of you probably know, Hurricane Sandy devastated my area here on Long Island one year ago. It wasn't just that storm that caused so much struggle for me..it was only the start of a chain of events that made me hate living on this overpriced island even more...

Back in 2006/2007, I brought this site back to life after I sort of kept it too quiet here. My work schedule with my manager job at Friendly's, my Amway distributorship and college really made life a living hell from the trifecta of being a busy slave. Heck, that terrible schedule was what got me kidney stones at age 22 back then and subsequently, I had to quit college shortly after getting my Associates in Computer Science. This site, though mostly with no updates, was still enjoyed by fans...mainly due to our AMVs we made that were a hit on Newgrounds.

I felt it was my calling to bring this site up to speed and continue where I left off in 2004 with it. I soon did a complete site makeover, created the blog, even got sponsored to do game reviews, be part of anime podcasts and in that time, created my anime figure business. My goal, as it was and still is today, is to be my own boss. I'm not and never will be complacent with taking orders from somebody else nor being told when and where I have to be on a daily basis like some wage slave.

For the past few years, I was so very close to that goal. There was a point where I was making more money than my job. Had it not been for the enormous debt I got around the time of my college/past business fallout..I would have quit my job and just ran the anime figure business and this here site. Heck..actually, there was a post I made back when I did put in my two weeks; I shortly retracted my resignation and still at the point of writing this...still work for that company. It's a far better job than the hell Friendly's or later Office Max was; I sit in front of a desk and so some web dev for a camera store...mostly computer bitch work but it's better than serving retards who clammer for ice cream in the dead of winter back in my hometown of Selden. Problem with this job is that, not only do I wish to not work for a boss, but also, the pay has been $15/hr for the entire 7 years here & I have to drive 70 miles round trip each day to do work I can easily do from home. My schedule involves being a prisoner out in Amityville from 9-7/8 most of the work week. I get Tuesdays off but it usually becomes a day of catchup and doing errands for others who think I'm taking a day off when in reality I'm trying to build our future.

Before Hurricane Sandy and the events after, Tuesdays were days I'd be spending most of the day shipping anime figures orders...and to survive on overpriced/mediocre/bad climate Long Island... I needed to be making 2-3x what my job pays me to truly be able to be free. That, as any business owner will know, involves not just selling more but stocking more. So, what I did was boost the pre-order quantities in my anime figure business by telling my suppliers, that I needed more stock. There was demand for them though, I went based on customer requests and added a bit more. As some of you might remember, I'd post only the quantities of figures I had set for pre-order...and not just put up items and wait for people to pre-order before I tell my suppliers what quantity to get. So, my stock grew...and so did the bills. Again, nothing of an issue...except, logistics. I was living at the time half of the time at my fiancee's and half the time at my parent's house. My figure stock was all stored in the secondary room of my parent's basement and as the business grew, the space got less, the amount of time to ship increased and thus were I thought I could use the newly started at the time.. Amazon fulfillment. Thing was, it took sadly until this year where Fulfillment by Amazon made shipping items overseas a possibility..great if Hurricane Sandy didn't hit...but was no help to me when I needed it for my business.

Reason I mention the logistics of my anime figure business is because Hurricane Sandy wasn't the first storm to mess things up. In 2011, Long Island got hit with the worst flooding they have seen in years. For the first time in my almost 30 years alive and coincidentally the time when the basement was so important... it got flooded. Thankfully it was only one batch of figures, but financially, it was a bit of a blow. Nothing too bad but the enormous amount of figure pre-orders pending loomed over my head. It wasn't where I could sell the items, but if my supplier would be loyal to the quantities. In most cases they were but there were times where I would not get figures promised and got stuck buying them from other retailers at or above SRP.

Then, fast forward a few months, Long Island gets hit with it's first Hurricane to directly hit it since Gloria in 1985...no, not Sandy, Hurricane Irene. I since then elevated my figure boxes and kept them safe from the, you guessed it, second time in 30 years that my basement coincidentally flooded. That wasn't the issue though..Irene, like Gloria caused mass power outages with my house without power for nearly two weeks after the storm...making my finances a bit strained and to not be a priority retailer with my supplier due to the understandably tough was to pay early..you know, because of a fucking Hurricane.

Fast forward to the ever end of 2011. Continuing mindless family drama on my fiancee's end made it where she had to be booted out of the house...not because my fiancee was the issue. No, the nut job in the home was a younger sister who probably shouldn't even have been left out of the nut house when she did. It wasn't even her either, though it made our life hell to be involved in a household where ant hills where treated like mountains with people who were already emotionally unstable enough once stupid monr crap was blown out of proportion. It was the equally crazy, typical Selden resident aunt and her baggage as to why my fiancee and I had to be booted out of her house. Her aunt was being foreclosed on after years of no pay to her home and we were getting the boot. Thankfully, my fiancee's grandmother offered us to rent out her beautiful, fully furnished basement apartment so that we wouldn't be out in the street. As one might expect, our cost of living went up, but at the time my fiancee that summer got a second job watching a kid with CP and so the split rent wasn't going to be much and we were actually on track to clear my old debts and finally, finally have our wedding...since you know, we've been dating since 2002 & engaged since 2007. Shipping for my anime business got a bit tougher as I would then had to ship back at my old home and then drive back to my current home..but with my fiancee now making about the same as I do in my camera web dev job...it was still tough but was going to be manageable.

Well, as the theme seems to be with my fiancee and I...we aren't allowed a bit of happiness without some equal or greater unhappiness. Once the word came in that her aunt was moving in and that we were to move into the new apartment...my fiancee lost her second, more profitable job watching that kid; her other job is a very low paying clothing retail job...and like most of those silly jobs, they aren't ones you can rely on for help. She got fired for simply calling out sick one day. The parents of that kid were nice at first but I found that they were part of a very strict and of course assbackwards-to-all-logic Christ cult calibur church...the types that force people into their religion and make it some sort of mission to bring others into the cult. So, it was ok she was away from that environment but the finances weren't of help and I was stuck to pay for most of the rent..slowing our ability to move forward since most of my money was stuck in the pre-orders.

Almost up to Hurricane Sandy but the shit spiral got a nice little push in August of 2012. You see, my rating as an anime retailer was/is actually really good. I was happy to told I was being spoken of very kindly on myanimelist and myfigurecollection. My bending over backwards for my fellow anime fans and customers showed in my ratings on ebay, amazon and elsewhere. Well, in August I got in a few Sonic The Hedgehog Nendoroid figures. They were tough figures to get and sold very quickly. I had about 2 left one night and I woke up to 3 orders split on ebay and amazon. I had no choice but to cancel the order for the third person, who was a customer on Amazon. I usually, and to the detriment of my finances, would buy the extra figure from another retailer and have it sent their way when I oversell. I couldn't for this one case since the figures were all gone elsewhere but through me. Amazon actually doesn't charge the customer until I as the seller mark it as "shipped". So, with my cancelation of that person's order, they lucky never actually paid for it. Problem was, I go and look at my feedback on amazon and there without warning, without any prior message to me was a 1 out of 5 rating with the words "customer service" The customer, without talking to me or even paying for the item...was able to sneak a bad feedback on my then flawless amazon seller account. People of course didn't see the hundreds of positive perfect feedbacks prior to this one...and so my sales on Amazon tanked for a bit; doing ok on ebay and the site here but now hindered a bit because of a vague and misguided negative. To add insult to injury..even before I talk about Sandy... the sudden drop of sales then kept me out of selling for the x-mas season on amazon since amazon needed a number of prerequisites to do so, prerequisites I passed for every year prior to that negative. Now, roughly a year ago today, here comes the second storm to hit Long Island in only two years, Hurricane Sandy.

When I was in grade school and even a bit into college, I had a fascination with meteorology. This storm was something you never ever see. It was basically like the so-called "Perfect Storm" that stayed mostly off the coast back in the late 90's...of which that movie was based off of. This one, though still considered weak compared to storms that hit the gulf and Florida often... was moving in and at the worst angle a storm can for the tri-state area and was the latest a Hurricane could really be here..thus has properties of both a nor'easter & hurricane.

So, like Irene, we lost lots of trees and had even worse coastal flooding than before. People here on Long Island don't know when to stay the fuck home, be it because of their idiot jobs or ADD, so there was more damage and issues than there should have been in the first day or so. No power for a about 8 days for us but surprisingly...power returned after only one day at my parent's house; unlike the 14 days it did during Irene. New Jersey and the coast got hit worse so for us in central/eastern Long Island, the storm wasn't really much different than Irene...it was what happened after that made things far worse and the reason for my posting this and why my anime figure business was basically decimated...

Go back to roughly a day or so after the storm hit...residents here on Long Island get the news that oil/gas supplies were cut off for all of us.... thus, there was a mad dash to the gs stations. Trees down, power out for most and here we started to see society break down because of the fear of a gas shortage. Don't get me wrong, there was indeed a gas shortage but the panic here by the idiots who live on this sand barge made things 10x worse. For over two months after the storm, gas was rationed at stations. If you remember, I worked 40 minutes away (needlessly) in Amityville...so if anyone needed gas, it was me... yet I didn't run to the stations like a mad man. There were cases where people would just go to fill there tank up $1 just because they can; yeah, that kind of stupid I live with here on Long Island.

As people could guess, I couldn't go to work, couldn't ship or receive anime figures for my business and was stuck just reading how to code C# in the dark. why was I reading about C#. Well, since 2011, as you all know, as one of the many plans I have to try to be my own boss and run the helm,and just to fulfill a childhood dream and 10 year old promise on this site... I was coding my IOS game, Tenshi-Oni. One of my good customers a few weeks before the storm wanted to help me get out of my stupid underpaying web dev job but possibly getting me in as a game dev with him over at Arkadium Games in NYC. Very awesome, would be a dream come true to at least work in a place that caters to my goals as a programmer...and if you ever seen their facebook posts.. it's a fun really work environment; a damn dream job, even for someone like me who wants to be their own boss (ie: profit share in games you make with them). For the past few years I've been in IOS development, but they were to be the first company making games for Windows 8 and thus, I had to teach myself C# / Windows game dev. With his help, I revamped my resume, held my production of Tenshi-Oni back a bit and tried to get myself ready to put my best foot forward...well, about 5 days after my resume was sent to their HR department, you guessed it, that's when Hurricane Sandy hit. Also, to make it worse, their offices in NYC were part of the area that was flooded and without power. It wasn't until December, when some other crap happened, that they then basically forgot about me as they went to more super senior game devs...and not somebody like me who's been trying to crawl out of my underpaid job hell thus having not "true" experience other than what I'm able to to in my little free time.

So, for two weeks, because of Sandy, I couldn't go to work...I couldn't ship anime figures, I couldn't even receive anime figures not just because of the pay..but because the UPS trucks couldn't even get here. Then, my boss, a man who cried for Hurricane Sandy donations all because his food went bad in the fridges of his two mansions, kept the hours at my job lean. For the month of November 2012, I basically lost an entire month's pay. So, where was the money going to come from to pay for the bills and old debt I just barely could pay for without a hurricane causing man-made armageddon? Yep, I had to cannibalize my anime business. That involved selling things off quick on ebay; ebay auctions being then and now the worst way to sell anime figures since most are completely underpriced final auction prices...due to bootleg figures on ebay being dressed as real, but really being fake and for Buy-It-Now prices that are below what us legit anime figure retailers buy this stuff from from our suppliers. Speaking of suppliers, Hurricane Sandy kept me out of communication from AAAanime for a few weeks. In that time they supposedly had a new and big batch of pre-order figures that were waiting for me to pay them for. Tough thing to do with what just happened on this side of the states...they were living fine in California while people were stabbing each other here for a $1 worth of gas. I do a few weeks later pay for the pre-order to them, thanks in part to underpriced ebay auctions that should have sold for 2-3x more. Then, I look and some figures were missing. I was suppose to get a number of figures, most of them were for customers who not only were waiting, but paid me in advance for them. The other figures that actually did come, had to then be sold off on ebay in the same, sad way where the buyers on ebay didn't get that the $20 final auction was actually for $115 1/7th scale figures...yes, KaKa anime from Hong Kong was selling the figures for $40...but people still didn't realize those were bootlegs and mine weren't. So into December, I go and try to sell down my stock and buy back figures that AAAanime didn't get to me because I wa later told I didn't pay in time..again, ignoring that my part of the earth was ruined by a Hurricane.

Think that's bad enough? Wait, there's more. One week after the storm hit, my fiancee's mother and grandmother separately fell. Her mother fell outside and broke her wrist and her grandmother, our landlord, fell inside before dinner and broke her hip. Then, in December... with Sandy's damage still prevalent (hell, parts of the island STILL haven't been helped a year later) we get hit with the biggest blizzard in the 30 years I've been alive. It was a bad storm, but, the salt in the wound was that my town, Lake Grove, got hit with 37 inches of snow that night while the rest of the area only had about 15 inches of snow. Yep, those pictures of cars abandoned in the highway that were i newspapers all over the world and on reddit...were only a few blocks from me. Can't find the exact image right now, will probably make it the title image of this wall of text, but that was right at the intersection at 347 near the Smith Haven Mall , Lowes and the then empty Borders Books location; actually the same spot where my old job at Office Max was. It's since became a Staples. This lead to more delays in my anime business and more financial heartache; making my new debt almost mimic the life destroying old debt I got from my stupid dealings when my amway business was growing. Since then I've been job hunting but like with Arkadium, I've gotten nothing but rejections, unanswered resume submissions and even promised positions that then get retracted. No help whatsoever no matter how hard I fight the universe back. At one point, I was actually suicidal. It was brief and maybe only spanned about a week in the middle of 2012, but I had it. I'm the type that fights back when life pisses on me but every person I guess has their limits of how much shit they can take. Don't worry, though things are still kind of shitty, I'm back to laughing at life as it piles the shit on..waiting for my moment to punch it in the face and show it who's boss.

The past year has been me paying back customers who per-ordered (and paid) me in advance. As of this post, I still owe 3 people their figures. So...this is why since then, there really hasn't been any new anime figures on the figure post and why for a while, I didn't blog anything. I felt my "empire", my life's work crumble. The awesome notion of being an anime retailer then became a painful thing to think of. Heck, I nearly lost faith in all anime as since this issue, there's now 100's of anime retailer on ebay and amazon and the processes that gave me so much trouble then...are now all too late in being finally convenient.

Despite all of this, I did finally get some glimmer of hope. There's still Tenshi-Oni to finish and get out into the market before another 5 different iPhones and IOS updates are announced, our Facebook page has grown immensely, I feel I now have the fandom and more that we had in the past. This only then opens me up to have an audition for this blog again, future youtube content and more. And...as you guys might have heard, I've finally became a voice actor. I have two recurring commercial voice roles for two big companies...I'll leave the details in another post but I feel that it has given me hope for the future. I'm a bit cautious to be too happy as you can see (and with now 200+ "failed" auditions since getting these roles for other places), it was such a wonderful feeling to get these roles.

Also, as of yesterday, I got a job offer from EA, yep Electronic Arts... to be a senior game developer with IOS. The only bit of studying I need to do is to just get back to making Tenshi-Oni ^_^ It can be an even greater job offer than what Arkadium Games was. Yes, I know many gamers and anime fans alike have their qualms with EA; trust me, I've posted my opinions with some of the business decisions...but this might be a new page in my life. If I get it, I'd have to move to Salt Lake City, Utah; which would also get me closer to voice acting opportunities since NYC isn't the place for animation voice over work anymore.

Who knows what will happen with EA, but here's what I plan for my future and the future of this site...

As you see, I'm back to blogging. Blogging is not only something I like doing for this site, it also paid some bills at it's height an I'll bring it back to that and better.
Tenshi-Oni. The game is moving forward; recently I fixed it to work well in IOS 7 and for iPhone 5 and above devices....and I even got a new music artist on board; Steven Lu.
Site redesign. I have in the works an HTML5 / CSS3 version of the site and blog.
Anime.fm. I really need to also make that site worth going to; once situated, I will make it worth the name.
Return of the store. Soon I'll close down the store for inventory and redesign. Oddly, Google is removing their Checkout option so I'll be down a payment method...I'm going to replace it with Bitcoin payment option. The store will have what I have in stock, will showcase the Cafepress products more and eventually, I plan to put anime figure pre-orders up. Sadly, AAAanime.com dropped my account with them after the Hurricane Sandy fallout..but I now work closer with an even biger (and closer) distributor...the ones who help me get great access to the anime and comic cons... Diamond Comics. Since this whole mess happened with me, they because Good Smile Company wholesalers and so, I can return to Nendoroids and more once the customers patiently waiting get their figures and my finances are more stabilized.

Pardon this wall of text. I wanted to let everyone know what has been happening and to see the full picture. I'd like to say I guess, like I've said in my number of hiatuses...that... I'm back ^_^

(title image source: Long Island Press)

...
(edit: Like some unfair game…a few days ago, the night I wrote this, my family's dog Lucky, a loving Dalmation I have owned since the 7th grade back in 1997…passed away suddenly. We knew it was going to happen soon but like some sort of mathematical insult the universe wants to pull on me…I wasn't allowed to be given an inkling of hope and happiness before being shot down again. I'll be fine but I'm making the point that it seems that it's been nothing but unlucky for us this whole year since Hurricane Sandy.)

Tenshi-Oni Intro GUI

2013-09-13T14:09:00.001-04:00

Hey guys... I sure as heck need to get back to blogging on here ^^;; Anyways... been having some good things happening. People who follow me on Facebook and twitter know of the recent news n the voice acting front, I'll make a full post about that when everything comes together. As for why else I've not been around (nor updating the blog and store like I should ^^;) is because I've been hard at work preparing Tenshi-Oni for release. It's only a matter of time and I thought I post even newer images of the intro that I posted on G+ and FB recently. I think this time I got the balance of text and imagery going. If I can, I'll make a .gif of it as these two images don't give it justice.

I'm basically at the point of the "meat and potatoes" of the game. Where I focus all of my time on the enemies, bosses and levels that Fumi will transverse now that most of her attacks, transformations, etc are done. Once part is done, I'll have the first releasable build of the game! From then on I'll continue adding levels, a Story Mode, an Android port and more to updated versions....with the aim for the DLC to be free updates for those who buy the paid version of the game. I'm, well, not into the whole micro transaction / trivial DLC purchase bit that other game devs and studios like to ~~milk~~ promote to gamers.

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Did somebody say "potatoes"?

The "Soul" of Fumi

2013-08-19T18:48:00.001-04:00

Programming in Objective-C/C++ has been the name of the game the past two weeks. Every spare second of free time I can muster during the week; time (mostly and sadly) stolen by the day job or driving to the day job, has been on my video game, Tenshi-Oni. Almost a month ago I past a major hurdle in the development by eradicating game crashing memory allocations and by plugging every memory leak up to this point in the development. There's still more ways I can optimize memory allocation but my goodness am I glad that was done and as a bonus...doing so helped improve the game's framerate.

That was earlier in the month...what about now? If anyone looks at the game compared to months ago one might say... "yeah, sure, you have done 'so much more' to the game" </sarcasm>. Externally, the game is almost the same sans a few new slashing and particle effects, but internally.. the game is now vastly different and it's starting to look like it was done by an actual programmer instead of somebody who was piggybacking on premade code.

When I first started developing the game in late 2011, I was new to Objective-C/Objective-C++. Sadly, my Computer Science knowledge from my HS & college years in the early 2000s was waning. My current job as a "web designer" for a pro camera store is anything but web design and leagues away from computer programming. Never again did I think I would see class declarations, subclassing, instance variables, etc again with the way my work pattern has become in the past few years. Since 2006 my days at work have been nothing but mindless intern-level computer errand dribble. Work that mainly involves updating prices on a crappy MiVa powered web cart where the owner doesn't like or want the internet to play a role. I'm lucky if I can even put any basic HTML code in anything. Every moment I'm not checking the prices of B&H Camera compared to us... I then become just the "company's computer guy"; the person everyone cries to when critical thinking and using Google is too hard of a task. Since last month though, I've put my nose to the grindstone, regained my lost CS knowledge and got to work with the next large task for the game, and the purpose of this post/update... modularizing the code.

To recap, Tenshi-Oni uses the Space Game Starter Kit 2D shooter engine by iOS dev and teacher, Ray Wenderlich. For a long while now, I've greatly expanded the code started by Ray adding dynamically loading levels, the various "soul types" of player, a slew of moves, a combo system, voice acting, sprites that split in half & pieces, and more. The problem that I knew I had to address was how all of this code, like Ray's original engine had, was being run in the main "actionLayer" class. I did make and imported some separate classes to work with actionLayer...but for the sake of getting the code to work right...almost everything pertaining to the player (the character Fumi), Lily and even other options were all being done in actionLayer. Before a few days ago, the actionLayer implementation file ( an obj-c++ .mm file), had a massive 12k+ lines of code! Any other programmers reading this would of course know that that had to be changed, especially if I was to expand the game. It HAD to be modularized.

It was a bit scary. Here's my code, albeit bloated in one file, running smoothly and ready for more features and polishing and now I had to tear it apart and reassemble it into separate classes. Backups ready...I dove in and it was rough. I hardly got any sleep since my last blog post and been using Sublime Text to "cheat" or more accurately, blind code outside the XCode IDE during the work day when I'm stuck in front of the XP powered PC at work; sneaking in some code during downtime.

Amazingly, I was able to do it. Last night all but one error was fixed and now, in a sense, Fumi has a "soul"; a separate class dedicated to her in the code. It wasn't just Fumi though...Lily's AI is all done separate from actionLayer as well as Fumi's voice acting (added into a category of Fumi), enemies, the new Options menu I created, the credits and even a parent class to be used for all boss characters. The only bug I can't fix at the moment is Fumi's HP/SP bar not showing up; something I can probably fix with a little more investigation. Everything else, even when it comes to memory allocation and leaks, are perfect. What was once a 12k+ line file is now dropped to about 7K. I can safely say now that the game's code is now more mine than anyone else's. With Fumi and other aspects of the game having their own file, their own "soul", now it's just expanding the game further.

As people might know about me...I'm not the religious type; odd for me to mention Fumi's "soul" outside of her soul type functionality in the game. In the end, we are all not far off from a computer program as logic runs our world too.. not just a video game world. Making Fumi's own class in a way has given her a solid personality, you can call it a "soul", "brain", etc. To me, as the programmer, I made her more "real". Thus why above I posted an image Fumi in front of her code.

You all can view some of the code if you'd like. I posted it here. I'm still trying to show this world and the job market that I am indeed a game programmer. Not saying my code is perfect; I'd imagine you guys can find lots of ways to make it better; I know I will. What it's there for as well, is to show that I'm far better than this petty "company computer guy" job I currently have, more than qualified for the jobs since Hurricane Sandy that erroneously stated I wasn't good enough, and to for something else.... If Tenshi-Oni does become big, or at least big enough to end my need to have a boss/day job. I want every place that has told me I'm not good enough to regret their decision not to add me to their team. I want it to fester in their minds that a game that became a hit is nowhere in their grasp nor the developer in charge of it...all because they didn't give somebody a chance and asked fro too much up front. If anything these past few weeks have taught me, it's that any programmer can improve themself; even when they thought they were washed up, rusty or "not good enough". There's a pool of talented people with and without all the right degrees just sitting and waiting to bloom as experts in their field. I've seen it with myself and everyone who's helped me with this game. The current job market's expectations for those to be experts without experience and/or having experience without work is a grave mistake. Eventually, we are all going to make our creative dreams come true...even if we do it ourselves.

Current Status of Tenshi-Oni

2013-08-08T15:17:00.001-04:00

Again, really sorry about having yet another hiatus here on the site. Been busy with a number of tasks like coding a newer / better blog here at CAS, finally getting something viable for Anime.fm, doing voice acting auditions over at voices.com, fixes/some important changes for the anime figure store and, most of all...work on my game, Tenshi-Oni. The game has sure become somewhat like Phil Fish's FEZ, nothing but talk, talk, and more talk about it's development with little gains over the past 2+ years. Well, like FEZ's development, the game is being made by mostly me and like Phil... life & the disappointments it can bring got in the way numerous times throughout development.

Actually, FEZ has nothing on me in terms of delay. If any of you have been here with the site since the beginning, you'd know the game and the character of Fumi with her angel/demon transformations were first thought up in 2003 & I began a very early alpha build in Flash in '04. So.. this game is really something that has been 10 years in the making...that's Duke Nukem Forever territory! Hopefully, unlike Duke Nukem Forever, this won't be a complete disappointment. Being that it's based on original characters and starting on IOS...don't expect a game like Last Of Us but at the same time, I hope to bring the same fun, polish and hopefully the engagement/fandom seen in something like Angry Birds (oh just a fraction of that and I'd be a free man from the day job forever).

So, what's actually new about Tenshi-Oni beyond my typical "it's coming out eventually"? Well, a few things...and no... no amount of fan bitching (if this ever gets popular enough for it) will deter me from game development like the bitching & downright pettiness of some fans did to Mr. Fish and his now cancelled FEZ 2 game.

Here's where Tenshi-Oni stands, and it's some good news...

Second to life's crazy challenges causing my game dev to be delayed was some very dire fixes needed for the game. First, the game was allocating way too much memory and it continued to do so until the game would blow up like a balloon and well... pop.. or well, crash since the iPhone has safeguards from extreme memory usage. The game does have full length songs in it, a healthy amount of particle effects and pre-rendered graphics but it's no Infinity Blade 2. There's no reason why a 2D side scrolling shooter with anime sprites should be causing my iPhone 4s to have lag and blow up the ram when the player restarts a stage. I was sort of dealing with the same issues the devs of Skyrim dealt with with the PS3...but with a much simpler game. So, I needed to know my code inside-out AND become a better programmer.

Despite being kept with only a few hours with work and all to do this, I did it...I fixed the memory problem. When a player changes to a new stage or the title screen, the game allocates & deallocates like it's suppose to. With the help of the sometimes confusing mac Instruments app, I not only found the source of the game's ballooning allocation, but I even was able to fix ALL of the memory leaks. In doing so the game become noticeably faster. It was a thing of beauty to see it finally do not only what I programmed it to do, but to do it with almost no lag.

Another fix I did thanks to this was the "Lily bug". The Lily bug was a game crashing bug when the player summoned Lily. It was the first major bug I had and until now wasn't fixed since it would happen randomly. I won't go into the details on what caused it but in short...you should never have an NPC run actions before it exists.

With these major fixes completed, I soon got back to actually building the game. Though a bit of a learning curve (and with recent updates to the APIs), I've installed Facebook and Twitter functionality in it and two nights ago.. I surprised myself by completely coding from scratch fairly polished scrolling credits that read image urls and various text straight from a .txt file. In short, I feel I'm becoming a true programmer. There's still many flaws in the way I code, like one of my .mm, where all the action happens, being 12,000 lines long instead of being modularized. Yet, I feel I've regained the ground that I lost when I began working at my webdev job. A dayjob that sadly has me doing everything but real web dev.

So what's left for the first release of TenshiOni? I still need to add some game options, control instructions (but not the kind that holds your hand), fix up the Final Attacks, add some more enemies and add that fan art gallery I promised. For the sake of getting the game out sooner, I'm NOT going to have the Story Mode available for the initial release. Trust me, it's a goal, but something I'd imagine I could flesh out a lot better and make much more enjoyable for the player if the game becomes my main source of income. I'll instead put in a Time Challenge Mode with various challenges to complete the stage. Any smart phone game is great when you can play a stage or two while waiting in line or in other situations where you need to just kill off small chunks of time. Also, the game is almost set up for me to make this kind of mode anyways. A Story Mode is meant for those who want to be more involved with the (minor) lure I'm trying to create with this game and I hope once it's made, that I can create an oldschool gaming experience.

As stated before, the game will be available in both a Free version and a Paid version (for $.99). Both the paid and free version will have the Survival Mode and Time Challenge Mode stated and of course and both will have most if not all current and future play mechanics. The free version won't have as many stages/challenges as the paid version though and will have some ads (I promise to keep the ads from being too intrusive). The paid version will of course have no ads, more stages, more challenges, the full Story Mode (once made). Also, I plan to create a secret mode in the game after the release... let's just say you get to play as some rather grumpy individuals if you make a certain score out of 10.

That last bit is up in the air but I know if I make that mode (and do it right), the game would skyrocket in popularity on the web...thus I'll more than likely have that mode unlockable in both versions for all you gamers out there. Before the game is released, I plan to do one more video preview oh, and make sure those in the Beta can play it early too.

..now, back to my coding.

Anime Fans Against CISPA

2013-04-11T11:05:00.001-04:00

Not entirely anime related but I know the otaku community is very much a part of the fight for Internet rights. From 4Chan to Reddit to Anonymous & other venues, since the early 2000s, the anime/gamer/otaku community created the foundations of the internet, it's memes and it's overall direction.

We have been the ones who taught and/or inspired the computer illiterate masses to "get" the internet and for the past decade, made the internet the place it is today where you can anonymously or publicly have your voice heard, your ideas shared and engage in a community of your peers. In a way, the internet is becoming a global republic.

So, who are the enemies of this republic? Well, those in governments across the world; from China's Great Firewall, to North Korea's propaganda machine, to the US's DHS, SOPA, PIPA, CISPA, to Iran & Syria's military regimes and others.

The problem is, the internet is a threat to the business models and governments of old.

Over a year ago we saw that when the US proposed the terrible laws of SOPA & PIPA, that would cripple your rights as a "netizen" Like many of these terrible laws, they are under the guise of "internet security" when in actuality, it's control of a system they don't get and fear and backed with tons of money by businesses of old who want to control the free flow of information and whom want to arrest individuals who might use the internet to whislelblow the illegal/heinous acts of said companies.

Because the masses came together, SOPA and PIPA were squashed. Yet, as we all are very aware of, similar laws try to creep their ugly heads up. The latest and most prominent being CISPA (it was even given an Executive Order by Obama to be pushed through a few months back) . As of the past day or so.. it has passed committee and is about to be voted on in Congress.

Here's a video by Reddit's co-founder Alexis Ohanian explaining a bit of the fight and why it's important.

http://www.saveyourprivacypolicy.org/

I run my own website / web store and of course this blog and I have NO right to give out people's personal information to government officials without due cause and without a warrant. Same thing should be true about Facebook, Google, Twitter and every place on the internet.

As of me posting this, Facebook actually backed down from their support of CISPA... so, it's working... and we need to keep pushing forward.

Also, here's a CNET article about what was added (and omitted) last minute in the committee and it's pretty damning to everyone's rights on the internet.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57579012-38/privacy-protections-booted-from-cispa-data-sharing-bill/

Again, pardon this rather "out of right field" post... I'll return to our regularly posted anime memes and Tenshi-Oni / CAS news.

Facebook Page Popularity

2013-03-07T12:10:00.002-05:00

My goodness, I didn't think this was possible but check out what is going on over at our Facebook page o_o.

Just this time last week, the page, which understandably was created rather late in Social Media terms (something like August of last year) was only at 50 Likes / Followers to now almost 6000 followers.

It's not a bustling community with a group of new awesome anime fans to join in the ranks of fans to this site. Chuck's Anime Shrine has been around since 2002 and has had it's share of ups and downs in popularity but I just want to say how honored I am to see people coming back to us as an anime fan site ^_^

My anime store has been a focus over the past few years but I always want to make this site more than a store (besides, the store was added later on anyways)

With this new surge of fans, it's given me the motivation to get things in gear and get some new content and reasons to visit the site ^^

Again, thank you everyone and welcome ^_^

Anime Valentines Day 2013 - Anime Girl Kiss

2013-02-14T18:32:00.002-05:00

Happy Valentines Day everyone ^_^. Here's cute anime girl chocolate kiss image. If you know the anime series and/or the artist of this piece leave, a note in the comments.

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Pardon the lack of updates the past month... ever since CES 2013, my day job as the web-dev/web-bitch at that certain Long Island camera store has been utter hell. Add that to the fact that I'm from the part of Long Island that got 35+ inches of snow in one night from the Blizzard of 2013, aka "Nemo"

Here's what it looked like on Saturday (yes that's me running around in my pjs ^^'')...

More anime figures, anime news, voice acting, Tenshi-Oni and Flash animation posts soon . Finally dug out of this mess...both the snow and ~~crap~~ work at the job.

Pikalove Plays Short Animation - FFVII... Is it 8?

2013-01-17T18:31:00.001-05:00

Here's our second new original animation. It's a quick cartoon with audio taken from our PikaLove Plays series of Let's Play videos. Danielle (dressed as Tifa) isn't so great with Roman numerals and tries to tell me that VII means 8.

Here's the video on youtube...nothing yet for Newgrounds but it should be there any day as well:

Here's the video this audio was taken from

Game Grumps Animated - You Mean It?

2013-01-17T13:25:00.000-05:00

December 2003, I submitted a Flash animation called Sephiroth vs. Mogs to Newgrounds..it was the latest from a list of flash submissions I did at the time. Most of the submissions were Flash ports of our popular pre-youtube AMVs...but they caught fire on NG and until middle of last year...all but Sephiroth vs. Mogs (and a crappy first flash submission) got erased. Sadly, due to my involvement in a marketing company in 2004...a long hiatus began that some of you might have remembered. I never got to create the next episode of that animation...leaving many wondering what the hell happened.

Well, thanks to my urge to get back to this after almost 10 years, programming my game (still in production -_-) Tenshi-Oni and some inspiration from people like flash artist, Egoraptor and video game reviewer JonTron.... I'm back into Flash animation! This time around, I'm even better at animating (been on a crash course the past few days). To start off, Danielle and I are working together where she creates the drawings and I simply animated/edited around them. Nothing too elaborate...but tedious at the same time.

So, for my first animation back...we created a Game Grumps animated clip ^^

Here's the video on youtube:

(pardon those who've seen me FB, tweet, reddit, etc this all of yesterday ^^;;)

Check it out on Newgrounds here and please vote for it if you can.

As I speak, we have another animation already scheduled for airing on Youtube and for the future, I have plans on making more of my own parodies... like the long delayed episode 2 of Sephiroth vs. Mogs, my Farkly's series (based on my terrible past job at Friendly's Ice Cream), Tenshi-Oni shorts (maybe) and what ever crazy-ass thing comes to mind.

Oh and be sure to visit the Game Grumps.

(Feels good to be a Flash animator again ^_^)

PikaLove Plays: Final Fantasy VII #1

2013-01-11T13:34:00.000-05:00

Danielle and I have begun doing some original gaming videos thanks to my x-mas present...the Elgato Game Capture HD. We are continuing to add content to her gaming account, PikaLove415. Today's featured gameplay is our first video of us playing through of Final Fantasy VII. Well, Danielle's playing it...I'm just there in the background ^^;) As stated in the last post about this, we got inspired by Gamegrumps and others to do these kinds of videos.

This video is special though, not just because it's the beginning of us playing through the game sorta responsible for this site, but because this is the first video I'm testing out my new video editing skills. Hope you all like it. I plan on putting up more videos on my own Youtube page... including a return to Flash animations and more..but if you can, do subscribe to PikaLove415. Oh and we've been posting our Kirby's Epic Yarn playthrough almost daily too. There's lots of videos for me to go through and edit...so more to come ^_^

List of links:

PikaLove Plays: Kirby's Epic Yarn #9 - Toy Tracks