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Once again, we apologize for being so late (and this time more than ever). This issue was announcing itself as an easy one, but it seems that fate can be very creative when putting pitfalls on our way: we had many conventions to attend (some were horribly disappointing), some computer crashes (despite a new OS I once lost five days worth of layout), some changes & adjustments on the color section and we had to take care of the anime & manga imports (many disappointments there too). I often spent half the day just checking the mail, answering the phone or other necessary administrative tasks. And some parts of the magazine can be surprisingly time-consuming to produce: the news section can take over a week to prepare (just the Japan LD releases can take several days to track down and translate each title) and we have to watch all those videos to review them (which meant for this issue alone nearly fifty hours of screening!). Finally, I must admit that we did not worked as much as we used to on this issue (I was successively cold-sick, flu-sick, lovesick and depressed -- when things were not going as well or as fast as I wanted). I realize that I am now in the middle of my life-expectancy (so many white hair already!) and I cannot simply pack in a day as many hours of work as before. Sigh. And some readers write us to say they envy us because it must be fun and easy to make the magazine!
However, despite all those odds (and excuses some might say), we have produced another great issue, but only because of your support. We want to thank you all for your patience, your words of encouragement and, in some cases, your contribution. The following issues will each offers at least one contributed article that will help ease our work load and catch up on our delay. We are still far from a monthly schedule and that's why we still need more contributors.
As you have probably noticed, this issue is about X THE MOVIE (7 pages), reviews (lots of them: 36 anime titles, J-Pop, models, and manga!), live-action movies (Fant-Asia festival, plus a new review section dedicated to Hong-Kong action movies, Samurai Cinema & Asia art movies) and conventions. We are not covering all the conventions we have attended, simply because many of them are not really worth talking about. First, Miyako went to Anime Expo in Los Angeles (see her report and many anecdotes on pages 41-46). Then, a week later, Martin & I went to Anime Convention in Toronto (quite an original name, isn't it?). It was claiming to be the first Canadian anime convention but was nothing more than a two-day club meeting. 
Luckily, Toronto Trek XI was running at the same time and we were able to get a last-minute table in the dealers' room. We did pretty well and had lots of fun (I even met BABYLON 5's Claudia Christian only to learn that she had just been fired from the show!). I have spend several days each week, for about a month, attending the Fant-Asia movie Festival (see our reviews on pages 18-21) and then I went back to Toronto for Anime North (see page 47), the first REAL Canadian anime convention and it was a blast. We will be back for sure next summer. The next two conventions, in Montreal, were quite disappointing. Con-Cept (Montreal's main sci-fi convention, held at the end of September) was well organized, but the dealers' room was an horror story (small, water leaks, lost in a corner of the hotel). As Claude Lalumière from Nebula Library has put it: "It was fairly disastrous, but not too bad". We had spend at least two weeks preparing our booth, ordering & pricing products, etc., and we barely covered our expenses. On November 2nd, ComicFest (which is usually a good one-day trade-show) was also surprisingly unsuccessful. I guess that, next summer, I'll bet on Toronto's conventions since Montreal does not seems to be a good ground to sell anime products...
This issue (which, exceptionally, has 64 pages) also features TWO anime stories (on FIDDLER OF HAMELIN and PERFECT BLUE) and 13-page of news! It offers an incredible amount of material (no wonder it took so long!) and a variety of subjects that should please to everybody. Enjoy!
Claude J. Pelletier