Okay, it's 8:09pm on a Friday, and we're out of anime. No unopened boxed sets, no unwatched fansubs. Nothing. Now, I spotted this problem on Tuesday and took some quick steps to rectify the situation. A quick stop at some DVD discount website, a little cheap two-day shipping, and a couple hundred dollars later and some fresh anime was on its way with an ETA of today! Unfortunately, today is a very long time, and while that anime has been on the delivery truck since 6:16am, it has not yet found its way to our residence. If I finish this column before it arrives, I may have to take my wife out somewhere. Like, to see a movie or something. Do they still make movies in this country? Or maybe we'll go to a bar. Do they show anime in bars? I hope so.

1. This Week. We're a little top-heavy on the Final Fantasy art this week, so we'll start things off with our two non-FF submissions. Our first piece this week is a lovely Grandia-themed work by Sakura Orwin starring Feena and Leen. And of course we have our weekly Xenosaga piece by shojokakumeii00, and isn't MOMO just a cutie! We have eight Final Fantasy submissions this week, but oddly enough each one is from a different game, so we'll do this chronologically ... er, wait, I forget when Tactics came out ... so we'll do this alphabetically ... but do numbers count as letter or Roman numerals ... Random order it is! HokutenKnight sends in another fantastic Viera work, but I think that might be the last one! Nooooooo! They were getting sexier each time! But that's okay, because we've still got some gorgeous Celes artwork courtesy of Nathan R Rork, not to mention an adorable Rinoa collage by White Aeris. We have a terrific Agrias by an artist whose name kinda sorta rhymes with Agrias--Daniela Farias. Kenton Alkemi sends in a handsome drawing of himself as a black mage, while Tito Lorda is all about the awesome assassin. Suu sends in an Aerith in a really interesting medium--the entire piece was created using just make-up and highlighter! Closing things out this week is another beautiful redesign by Yaoi Huntress Earth, this time of Yuna.


2. OmniArt Preliminaries Close Monday. If you want a crack at the big jackpot for the OmniArt 2005 contest, your entry for Round Six must be in by the end of the day Monday (Pacific Time). We cannot take late submissions for any reason, and I'll try to acknowledge receipt of entries as they come in. We'll announce the winners of Round Six next update, and the Wildcard picks will be announced in a special update the following week. The first round of OmniArt 2005's Finals will start the following Saturday, and I'll be getting in touch with the finalists very soon to make sure you're all still around.


3. Otakon. The Otakon Fan Art panel was a resounding success as we had nearly 300 people in attendance. Once more, a special thanks to my fellow panelists, Onezumi and Shadoboxxer. I also had the wonderful honor of meeting several of RPGamer's artists at Otakon this year including some of the OmniArtists like Lauren Nicolo and Guillaume Chartier. There was a lot of fantastic RPG fan art in the Art Show this year, including Lauren's "The Silver Maiden" you may remember from OmniArt Round Four and an Advent Children Cloud piece that sold at auction for a whopping $800!


4. Fan Animation. I'll make the official announcement about this in a few weeks when contest stuff isn't at the forefront, but we'll be adding a new component to RPGamer's Fan Art section devoted to fan animations. Details will be revealed when the official announcement is made, but if you have a Flash animation whose subject is one or more of the RPGs we cover, you can send it in just as you would any regular Fan Art submission. Sorry, but we're only planning to accept Flash animations at this time, so only SWF files (or links pointing to them) will be accepted for now. If you'd like more details before the announcement is made, please feel free to drop me a line.

Yay! The anime has arrived! But now Tegan wants to play some Smash Brothers. I swear, married life can be so ... full of videogames and anime. Wait, that's good!