Wow.

It's amazing how things can get thrown completely out of whack. A lot of the stuff you'll be seeing in this issue was originally scheduled for a December release. But as tends to happen in this world, something happened in November to mess that date up. My lack of "real" work for the last year and a half and the subsequent lack of funds nearly killed the magazine and everything else that resides on the server that @anime! is located on. As November progressed and the lack of money in the bank accounts continued its trend, we here at @anime! HQ braced for the worst, knowing that unless a miracle happened, the site would be down before our release date of December 1st. As a publisher, I had to drop everything that I had been doing and I had to go into "hunt down fundage" mode. The December issue's production was halted and the seach for a way to keep the server alive started.

As I look back now, I can't for the life of me remember how we ended up avoiding the disaster. The server never ended up going down, but that scrambling time majorly threw my scheduling off. December 1st came and I was able to get some contract work, which ended up sucking away most of my free time, which is where the magazine production time comes from. Then as December became January, time was being sucked away even faster...

And now it's April. I'm trying to figure out where all the time went, but it's probably something I'll never figure out, so I should probably just let it go. Though, the contract work ended this last week, so the potential for needing another miracle could be just around the bend... I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we won't though.

As can happen at times with publishing, there are times when there are some serious ups and downs. Heaven knows that we've had our share of them here, but that's never going to stop us from continuing and pressing forward to share what we love with our readers.

But, all that rambling aside, welcome back! Yes, the last few months have been rough, but we have a good set of stuff set for you all this month. We've also gotten the layout of the site settled down to something that will help speed up the production time of the graphics and will allow us to spend more time getting cool articles and features written for your reading enjoyment. You'll also note that we've added a few new things to the set this time around. James, Ben and Mikel will be presenting a new area called Sector 7C, a look into the world of toys and the anime scene. You'll learn about some of the hottest toys and figures from both sides of the Pacific. You'll get info on the latest toy releases in Super News and you can see the guys discuss the trends, happenings and some idle chatter in ToyChat.

Next month we have some great stuff coming. As a follow up to this month's Final Fantasy feature, we'll bring you part two where we take a look at Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and the new Final Fantasy XI Online. Then we'll serve you up a helping of the oldest active anime company, AnimEigo and a review of their first anime title ever, Madox-01, plus much, much more!

Until next time...