HamsterCorp's Thing and the Polymer Chaos webcomic

ABANDON SHIP...ER, BLOG!

2011-12-07T19:49:00.001-05:00

So yeah, I'm abandoning this Blogspot blog in favor of a Wordpress blog. Works much nicer and does what I want it to much better. Also, not completely ugly!

hamstercorp.wordpress.com

There likely won't be any further posts here. I think anyone happening to be using a "Feedburner" should have already automatically been pointed in the other direction. I don't think anyone was actually using Feedburner, though. The other three of you following this blog will have to manually move your links or whatever. Guy that always comes here by Googling my name, I'm not sure what you're going to be able to do, since it'll probably take a while for the Wordpress to bump the Blogspot from the #1 search position.

New Arrival: Nendoroid Alphard

2011-10-19T21:29:00.001-04:00

She's the world's most adorable terrorist!

Nendoroid Alphard, from the pseudo Type-Moon series Canaan. Type-Moon should just buy out the rights to Canaan or something so they can stick her in Carnival Phantasm and let the characters cameo in the fighting games.

Alphard was purchased from Mandarake, where she was listed as being opened with "box little damaged", yet the one I got was clearly unopened and undamaged, unless someone's really good at re-sealing Nendo boxes. So that's cool. I've kinda wanted Alphard for a while now, mainly just to go with my Figma Canaan. I never felt this way when it was first released, because back then I still had a bit of hope that Max Factory would release a Figma Alphard not too long after getting Canaan. THAT TURNED OUT WELL.

Knowing my luck, she'll finally get a Figma when those compilation movies come out.

I kinda stopped doing these posts, but I decided to relent some and see what people thought. Hardly anyone said anything, so this will probably be limited. Also, I tried asking the Twitter about which figures I should do posts for (since I got Alphard at the same time as Figma MISAKA and Figma Madoka), but no one replied to that. So, since Twitter failed me, I decided to do the figure that probably has the least amount of exposure out there.

Not terribly much on the accessories side of things, but then Alphard is a few years old now, and back then a lot of Nendoroids were like this. Ridiculous amounts of awesome accessories seems to be a more recent thing. She's got the nominal three faces, a bent leg, two right arms, three left arms, a pistol, a pair of splayed hands, and a pair of fist hands that can also hold the pistol/other Nendo accessories.

First and default face is a kind of smug smile. You might even say she's...a smug snake (doh hoh hoh hoh hoh). One of her extra left arms is interesting, as instead of having a hand attachment point, it just has a part of a hand as part of the sculpt, allowing Alphard to look as if she has a hand in a pocket.

For some reason, the neck joint socket on the body my Alphard is fairly loose and lets the head spin around easily. Nothing too terrible, though, and I can probably tighten it up with ease.

Next is a frown face. Because she is an international terrorists and they are not happy people! Also Canaan is probably doing something to upset her. The other extra left arm is just a generic bent arm, more or less. Since Alphard isn't wearing some kind of dress, she's actually got a little bit of a range of motion on her legs.

Last face is a yelling face for action! Her extra right arm is extended outwards for shootan poses. The bent leg is for action poses, I guess. Those action poses that Nendoroids are so famous for. Her face here really makes her look like Touru from A Channel.

Back view. Her ponytail is a seperate piece and can be rotated.

Seems to be pretty well compatible with other Nendo faces.

"Finish your dinner, young lady, or I won't let you go play with Maria."

Hey guys, check out my custom Epilogue Alphard Nendoroid!

While on the subject of Nendoroids (and since I doubt I'll get another any time soon), while at a Office Something recently, I discovered a brand of plastic containers called "Really Useful Box(es)". They're, well, pretty useful. They make one size in particular that's perfect for storing Nendoroid accessories, something I rather needed. I ended up getting one for every Nendoroid I have, and Yoshika is the only one whose accessories don't all go in perfectly, mostly because her hat is so huge.

So, Nendo Alphard. Seems kind of odd that she even got a Nendoroid at all, and not a Figma, but I suspect Canaan was at the beginning of the push to move anime back to relying on merchandising to be profitable instead of DVD/BD sales. Guess it didn't go too well for the series, since there was a bunch of figures announced right at the series started, but then...nothing. Personally, I think they should have tried to get a Figma Alphard to go with Canaan, and instead of a Nendoroid Alphard, they could have made a Nendoroid Maria/SUGOI SUGOI to go with the Nendoroid Canaan. But maybe the future will be kind and I will be able to give Canaan her goofy love triangle after all.

New Arrival: Nendoroid Kuroneko

2011-08-16T21:39:00.001-04:00

Wasn't too sure about what to do for a top picture for this one. I still don't have any Gothic architecture, so I had to make do with the next closest thing I had: SPACE MARINES!
Though, not really sure what I'm doing with that text there.

Nendoroid KURONEKO, from that series with a name that is shortened down to "OreImo", which I picked up back at Otakon.

I've still only watched the first three episodes of OreImo before aborting, but I've always like Kuroneko's character design. In fact, the whole series is kinda interesting to observe from a figure-collecting stand point. A lot of the figures made for the series so far seem just plain fun, especially the Figmas and Nendoroids. I could easily see getting the three Figmas and being able to have a grand old ball with them alone.

So for some reason I decided to get the Nendoroid Kuroneko instead of the Figma, which has far more accessories...sadly, it released a day or two before Otakon started. If I had seen the Figma there, I probably would have gotten it instead.

But still, I think the Nendoroid will be pretty fun.

Box is unusually pastel. I guess that's more of a thing with the overall series, rather than trying to make it themed to the character.

Accessories and stuff. Fairly typical for a Nendoroid, I guess! But no chair or tea set or bag like the Figma. Her default face is a pretty blank expression, which actually seems a bit nice to have compared to the usual Nendoroid Default Smile face almost every damn Nendoroid has.

Kuroneko's second face seems to be a sort of "ha ha what a loser" type of face. An optional left arm allows her to point at things, and she's got a right arm to put a hand to her hip for maximum point-at-you-and-laugh action!

She also comes with two arms that have an extra cut joint at the elbows, allowing you to get a good amount of posability out of them. Here, she is also holding her Blu-ray case to extoll the virtues of the under-lying lesbian themes of the anime. Or something.

They give you a few different stickers to customize the Blu-ray case with. I went with the Black Rock Shooter one since it'll have the greatest future application. It's nice of them to do that, but honestly I wish they'd just include two more little tabs of plastic so I can just have all three without having to try and hunt down my own scraps of plastic or whatever. They don't even give you anything to put the doujin stickers (or whatever they are) on! Maybe I can find some plastic of the same thickness at a craft store or something.

The cutest accessories are her cat bits, since Kuroneko and all. She's even got a pair of hands for cat-paw gestures!

However, the ears are actually a second headband, which slots into the front hair piece. Since it's like that, you can't use the ears on other Nendoroids.

Hard to see, but. Kuroneko's tail goes on by replacing a ribbon bow she has on the back, under the hair. Like the headband, there's simply two copies of the bow, one with the tail and one without.

She also has a pair of bent legs, which I suppose are for the cat posing. Never really liked alternate legs on Nendoroids, since they often barely can do anything with the stands.
But, I did find a ~~good~~ ~~terrible~~ interesting use for them...

Final face is some kind of smug/DEAL WITH IT face, with which the posable arms and flat hands work pretty well with.

However, I can't help but interpret the face as a kind of "Ahhhhnnn~" face. The kind of face Kuroneko might make when she was doing things like, say, enjoying her porn.

Or perhaps having an orgasm. See how I put the bent legs to use?

And now I've taken a picture of a tentacle monster raping a Nendoroid. I live a rich and fulfilling life.

New Arrival: S.H. Figuarts Ankh Stand Set

2011-08-08T22:46:00.002-04:00

YOU COUNT ZA MEDALS!
ONE MEDAL!
TWO MEDALS!
THREE MEDALS!

I haven't even started taking pictures of my other two Otakon figures, but this came a few days ago and I figured I'd just go ahead with it since it'd be pretty quick, easy, and topical!

This is the Figuarts "Ankh Stand Set" from Kamen Rider OOO, and perhaps one of the strangest action figures ever.

Because it's just an arm.

I ordered from HLJ, but I suspect trying to find it now, after release, might be nigh impossible, with the way Kamen Rider Figuarts tend to sell out. I actually pre-ordered Ankh on a sort of highly-educated impulse. I hadn't started watching Kamen Rider OOO yet, but Ankh looked like he'd be fun. He also looked like he'd sell out quickly (he did) so I fired off the pre-order and held no regrets.

The box is actually smaller than I thought it would be.

And had more in it than I thought! Ankh comes with a Tamashii Stage Act 4 (well, without any of the clamps and whatnot they have), five different hands, two piles of Cell Medals, and a few bits for the base of the stand. More than I had expected since the promotional shots never showed the Cell Medal piles or one of the hands, at least in none of the pictures I saw. The hands are a hand doing Ankh's trademark gesture, grabbing kind of pose, holding some popsicles, holding OOO's three main Core Medals (the small colored sections of which are actually translucent!), and a fist.

For articulation...

...he's an arm. Ankh has one whole point of articulation at his wrist. It's also easy to swap his hands.

The two piles of Cell Medals are made to peg into the stand. Unfortunately, this means you can't just have them lying around level otherwise, unless you chop off the pegs, which I am sort of considering since I don't want to always have to stick them on the base.

Since there's not much articulation to show off, right on to the random pictures!
This here is currently the entirety of my Kamen Rider and Figuarts collections. Probably won't grow much anytime soon.

*coin insert*

Since Danboard is powered by money, I wonder what powers Core Medals would give her.
Actually, why the Hell isn't Danboard already in OOO to begin with?!

An OOO/Yotsuba crossover would just work too well!

Ankh actually has a mouth-like thing on his palm that he uses to suck up/eat Cell Medals...

Perhaps you noticed something in that last picture. This could be the beginning of a great and profitable relationship!

The peg hole for the stand on Ankh also makes him rather compatible with other figure lines! Such as Revoltechs!

And Figmas!

And more Revoltechs!

He ain't no Kamen Rider till he rides him some bikes!

I should finish watching OOO sometime, since I got distracted by other stuff forever part-way in.

Otakon 2011 Post: I AM NOW SAD

2011-07-31T23:46:00.001-04:00

Otakon is over once again, and I am now back at my home.

Alone. FOREVER

I was quite pleased with my Otakon experience this year. Actually went to all three days this time, and even spent very little time sitting around doing nothing! Although, I somehow managed to not go to the Artist Alley at all, probably to the relief of my wallet. Still, planning and doing is improving. Social skills are still not improving, but being unsociable in a crowd of approximately 30,000 other otaku is better than being just plain unsociable.

So, order of events! Barely made it into the panel in which Nobuo Uematsu answered some questions. This actually turned out to sorta be to my detriment, as they set the panel and subsequent autograph session up oddly and things weren't communicated well and going to the panel resulted in not being able to get into the autograph session. So...FISSION MAILED. Oh well, I got to hear Uematsu talk and look at him.

Then watched the "premiere" of the subs of the first three episodes of the Blu-ray version of Madoka, on a nice big screen. Quite awesome, hopefully they won't take long releasing them here, because I will buy them.

The first concert was a duo called Chemistry. Apparently they've been around for ten years and are kinda famous maybe? They did some music for some Gundams and some little thing that no one's ever heard of called the World Cup. Wikipedia says their genre is J-Pop/R&B which sounds about right. It was J-Something, but enjoyable none-the-less. Also, I was quite impressed with their choreographed dance moves.

The Game Room was splendid. I wish I had some of those arcade machines, especially the Dance Dance Revolution X2. It had "only my railgun", even though it was easy but my potential AA got screwed up by some guy having to do something to the machine while we were playing and distracted me! I want one now, I think I could afford it.

Watched the dub "premiere" of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (happy, Twardz? The whole thing, dubbed). I guess the dub wasn't terrible, but I'll still take the sub. I had forgotten how long it was, too.

Second concert was some girl named Kylee, with the power to speak both English and Japanese fluently. Her music was also nice. Interestingly, she also did a song for Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, just like Chemistry. What with all the Bandai stuff this year (they handle Haruhi in the US, and they're going to be handling Madoka, too), it probably wasn't too much of a coincidence.

HOW ABOUT SOME RANDOM PICTURES
Or what I could salvage from them, anyways. Turns out I am pretty much incapable of taking pictures of things that actually move without the assistance of a SLR. Also, I am so non-confrontational that I won't even ask a cosplayer to stop moving long enough for me to take a good picture. Also, I can't take pictures of people. Also, point-and-shoot cameras don't really work too well at distances in large spaces.

I apologize to anyone that I took a photo of. I'm sorry.

Snapped a quick pic with Takoluka while waiting in line for the Dealer Room to open on the first day. Despite having Takoluka with me the whole time, I didn't bother taking any pics with it.

A blurry Kyubey.

Bluefin had this bitchin' Unicorn display at their booth. I want one!

They also had a lot of figures on display. I guess they don't like Decade.

Some Puella Magi at the Bandai booth.

The blurry grey-haired dude there in the back-center is Nobuo Uematsu!

Random mob. I think those were Hetalia cosplayers.

Random shot of the main area where cosplayers gathered.

I snuck a photo of Aya!

There were a lot of contracted magical girls there.

Deadpool vs Deadpool.

Another random shot. Surprisingly few Final Fantasy people this year!

That is someone cosplaying the Movie version of the Transformer Ravage.

A Sister of Battle, with a bad case of blur.

Random shot.

SNAKE! YOU'LL CREATE A TIME PARADOX!

Lots of Panties and Stockings around.

Some ICE CAR

Touhous playing vidya.

I think there might be a few assassins hiding out down there.

God. Damned. CREEPERS.

I think this was the most clever cosplay I saw - a 2D 16-bit Samus. I think the person was wearing a screen of some sort, too.

But those are just random pictures! Let's get on to the important part, THE LOOT.

TOYS! Before going, I was pretty much thinking, "I'll get Robot Damashii Avalanche Exia from the Bluefin booth". And so I did. Decided to grab the Cure MOOOOOOOOOOONLIGHTO gashapon sorta-randomly since she's the coolest Pretty Cure ever and I don't know how I feel about the Figuarts yet. Tandem Twin Dog Girl Alma is covered in spikes but she still looks awesome and most importantly getting her means I've finished my Tandem Twin set yay! Nendoroid Kuroneko because I wanted to buy a Nendoroid for some reason and no one had Alphard and I kinda wanted her anyways. Guess I'll finish watching Oreimo now. Picspams of this stuff will hopefully be coming over the next week or so.

MUSIC! As I found their music to be good, and their dancing impressive, I wanted to give Chemistry some money. The doujin booth (if you spend time in anime convention dealer rooms, you probably know who they are) also sells a bunch of Touhou stuff, so I looked through their CDs some and saw one from Cool and Create that also had nice art of Aya so I thought "why not?" Random CD that is a big mix of a bunch of game music from some DJ guy, a bunch of them were dumped on the DDR X2 machine so went ahead and took one, doesn't seem so bad so far. Would have also bought some Kylee music, but I had run out of the cash so I'll just buy some online.

SHIRTS! Random Portal 2-themed shirt using that British WW2 propaganda poster as a theme, which seems to be popular lately. Otakon's 2011 shirt, and Otakon's charity shirt. I actually hadn't bought Otakon shirts in quite a few years. I think last year I was stopped because their shirt was a kind of horrible baby blue color.

ARTY THINGS! Charity Madoka poster that Otakon was selling, and a Madoka postcard someone gave me at the Bandai booth. The Bandai booth was also giving away fuckhuge Lucky Star posters so I helped myself to one. My selected artbook for the con was an Asobi ni Iku yo! artbook I found, which is entirely art from the light novels, I guess, and none of the anime stuff.

PORN! Persona 3 Portable yuri in which FeMC dominates all the other girls, pretty much. Randomly-selected book about that succubus girl that's from that card game or whatever, Astarotte? The Aya book has Aya getting raped by Reimu. /u/'s been talking about Escalation a bit lately, so I was thinking of ordering it, but conveniently the doujin booth was selling it for the same price the people releasing the game for here are.

ALL HAIL IKEA! Uh...I stopped by Ikea on the way home to return some stuff and grab a couple more of their LACK tables. I also ate a cinnamon bun from their cafe thing.

AND BEFORE I FORGET LIKE I JUST DID
One of the most interesting things at the con...as it's the middle of summer, there are naturally plenty of people with coolers gathered around the convention center entrance hawking water.

One man, however, stands above them all. I won't try to explain him. I'll just link these videos I found.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE29x2iV63Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuQMCZaCFs0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9zowP0tM-E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhQC4UX6LJ0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjX8h35P8vk
Surely, you will agree with me that this Water Guy is only the greatest water guy ever.
He shall become a legend, and I will have to remember to video him next year.

Hopefully Otakon will be just as interesting next year. Maybe I will be more sociable. Maybe I will take better pictures. Who knows!

But I am quite seriously considering the idea of cosplaying as a male Reisen. I've already got a suit jacket that'd probably work, would just need some appropriately-colored pants, bunny ears, and a light pink wig.

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG

New Arrivals: Nendoroid Petit Saten and Kiyama

2011-07-10T15:08:00.000-04:00

This will be a bit different from my usual posts concerning new content, I think. No fancy image, but I still want to go over these since they seemed to release to little fanfare, and have a curious existence.

So, Nendoroid Petit Ruiko Saten and Harumi Kiyama, made by Sega as prize figures. These two were purchased from Otacute. Saten and Kiyama are both characters that only appear in the Index spinoff of Railgun, which is part of why Railgun is the vastly superior series.

The existence of these things is quite interesting. For whatever reason, Goodsmile lets other companies produce Nendoroids from time to time (such as Phat! doing the Strike Witches Nendoroids). So for whatever reason they're letting Sega make a line of them as prize figures, covering the Toaru Majitsu no Index and Toaru Kagaku no Railgun series. And for whatever reason, they don't seem to be well known.

Also, I've taken all these pictures with a new point-and-shoot camera I decided to pick up, a Canon Powershot A2200. Leagues better than the crappy Nikon Coolpix S220 I had been using as my point-and-shoot. I haven't put together a good lighting set up at my new place yet, though, but random ambient light and my Ott-lite did well enough, I think.

Getting them out of their little boxes, the first thing that is pretty apparent is the quality of the figures. While I don't have any bootleg Petits, I suspect these are kinda close to what they're like, or at least they're below the average quality of the normal blind-boxed Petit sets. Saten has it particularly rough, as her face has a more bootlegish quality to it, especially the eyes, which seem to be painted in a way that makes them more reflective than typical Petit eyes.

One nice thing is that the stands actually peg into the backs of the figures rather than on the hair, as is the case with some other Petits that have long hair. It's done in a way that doesn't limit (the already limited) movement much, and makes them less obvious. Unfortunately, you can see more of the lack of quality on the back, with Saten's hair having that unfinished look to it.

Like other Petits, they have very basic articulation, and can move their arms, so Saten can be less excited and Kiyama can take her hands out of her pockets.

One odd curiousity, which I suspect has to do with design reasons, parts of Saten's hair is actually a part of her face.

The two can still swap faces, though.

Unfortunately, they can't swap faces with Takoluka or any other standardized Petit. The face sockets for Saten and Kiyama are smaller than a normal Petit's, just enough so that other faces can't be stuck on and the faces from Saten and Kiyama can't be stuck onto other Petits. Don't know if that was a deliberate design choice or just another quality issue. I am quite saddened that I couldn't swap the faces with Takoluka!

Might as well, though more appropriately these two would simply be part of Misaka's lesbian harem.

Since I don't have Kiyama's Cool Car, the Halo Warthog I also got recently can suffice.

I'm a bit curious as to how Sega managed to get the go ahead for these Raildex Petits. Seems like it would have been a good thing to make some normal Petit blind-box sets out of. But then, for whatever reason putting GSC and Raildex together results in some of the most retarded stupid to ever derp. I've got one more of these on order, of a Sister, so we'll see how that one turns out. I expect more of the same, but hopefully her face will be compatible with Saten and Kiyama, at least.

On a different note, I also recently went to Ikea and spent lots of money on much-needed furnitures, although sadly the infamous Detolf is still removed from the market (though I did get what I think will be a suitable replacement). One of the odder things I did grab while there was a small sheepskin carpet thing. It feels really nice, but I grabbed it because I think I could put it to use in some pictures, as Menace happily demonstrates.

New Arrival: S.H. Figuarts Kamen Rider Skull Crystal

2011-06-19T10:36:00.000-04:00

Oh look, using that Ott-lite again. And filters! Lots of filters.

Recently got a hold of Figuarts Skull Crystal, another damn annoying Tamashii Web exclusive middlemanned to me by Yokatta. And so ends an annoyingly long wait for Skull! The original version of the figure was solely responsible for me even bothering to look into Kamen Rider and the Figuarts line (and possibly by extension, Pretty Cure), but since that was also an exclusive I wasn't able to get it at the time. But then Bandai kindly announced this upgraded re-release and the pre-order was committed with no hesitation.

Skull is specifically from the series Kamen Rider W/Double, and more specifically from the assorted W movies. I'm not too sure what the "Crystal" part is about yet, but I assume it has something to do with a more movie involving Skull that I haven't seen yet. Although both this figure and the newer movie were made pretty much just because Skull was that damn popular, which makes him yet another really strange exclusive, since he is so popular.

Continues after the cutting! But I don't know how informative this might be. It's not my first Figuarts, either, but I didn't do this kind of post for LunaTrigger.

Before I get into the figure, let's take a quick look at Skull's box, which is the standard Figuarts box. Let's also look at a Figma box.

HMM.

Accessories! Skull has two scarves (one flat, the other blowing in the wind), two hats (one has a small cut in it, representing the hat after a certain point. But it also seems like they give you two hats because it's such an awesome hat), his gun, the Skull Magnum, an alternate "cracked" head, and five sets of hands. Hands are fists, trigger fingers for the gun, and three sets of varying levels of splayed. One curious thing about the Figuarts line is that most of them don't come with stands, so if you want stands you have to buy your own, which Bandai provides in the Tamashii Stages. The stands are cheap, but it would still be nice to get a stand with these figures, especially since the Precure Figuarts all seem to always come with their own stands (which are variants of the Tamashii Stages).

Skull also comes with two small plastic...skull caps that are meant to be put in between his head and the hats. Apparently, the original version of Skull had problems with the hat rubbing paint off the head or something like that, but I'm not sure of the specifics and I haven't seen it happen to mine yet. However, a lot of people are also saying the skull caps are worthless, as they make it so that the hat falls off entirely too easy.

I fail at making Moonwalk poses. He may not come with a stand, but one nice thing about these Figuarts is that they have die-cast metal feet, which makes it really easy to get them to stand up on their own without assistance. I've seen plenty of pictures where people have balanced their Figuarts on one foot/toe, which the heavier feet help with. Although apparently they've been changing the foot design with some of the newer Figuarts, and they lack the metal feet. Seems kinda odd, since this design works pretty damn well.

While Skull uses the same body as the rest of the W forms, Skull feels a lot better made than my LunaTrigger does. At least, he's a lot easier to work with. Most importantly, Skull's hands are actually easy to put on, being made of a softer material, where as putting hands on my LunaTrigger is a damn nightmare and usually involves hot water. The variety of hands lend a lot of character, too. If you haven't watched W, you should know that it involves a lot of hand-gesturing, so all these hands are practically essential!

The main Skull Crystal head has a slight translucent effect going on, which makes it look pretty neat. And like other Kamen Riders, he does have the compound eyes effect, although it is hard to see with the eyes being so dark.

The alternate head. Or really, the head from the original figure. Also, the wind-blown scarf, which looks pretty nice. Both scarves have some tabs on them that help keep them in place and not float around while worn. Also, the underside of both scarves is painted a darker color than the rest, which actually works pretty well to give it a shaded effect.

Can't have no Kamen Riders without riding any kamens!
Actually bought this Maisto bike long before I knew Skull existed, but it's quite nice that it's basically perfect for him. Also, you may be wondering how he is able to not lose his hat while driving a motorcycle. Well, he's just that awesome.

SHOTARO, GRIT THOSE TEETH!

Attempting to recreate a particularly awesome piece of fanart.

I think I'm going to be able to have a lot of fun sticking these hats on other figures.

Dinobot, Private Detective.

Menace looks particularly nice. She's ready to plunder her own tombs!

Can't forget Takoluka!

Don't worry, Skull Paper, you'll always have a special place in my heart.

Figuarts are pretty nice figures. But I don't know how many more I might get. I watched all of Kamen Rider W, but I managed to resist the temptation to buy a bunch of W's forms or Accel. And so far I've only watched twelve episodes of Kamen Rider OOO and none of the suits really interest me enough to want a figure, though I do have Ankh on pre-order. Probably better that this collection stays small, it seems like everyone else that likes these figures has a bunch of them and practically nobody has just a couple. As of now, the only other Figuarts I want is a Figuarts Infinite Silhouette Precure, but naturally one hasn't been announced yet and it'll probably be a year before they do.

New Arrivals: Figma KOS-MOS and NECA Duke Nukem

2011-06-04T22:12:00.000-04:00

Recently acquired Figma KOS-MOS ver.4 from Amiami. Although it is a bit funny how I went about getting her. I had preordered her long ago alongside Black Gold Saw. But determining that I was getting too many Figmas, I cancelled both. Later, I bought BGS on impulse. A few months after that, people started getting their KOS-MOSes and posting pictures of just how great she was, and for a bit I lamented my cancelled preorder. But then I saw that Amiami had a restock, and immediately ordered.

Getting NECA's Duke Nukem was slightly less onerous. Just had to visit a Toys-R-Us a few times. And wait fourteen years.

Rest after the cut!

For those not in the know, KOS-MOS is from a game series called Xenosaga. Unfortunately, Xenosaga didn't become the next Final Fantasy as its creators hoped, and now the series is dead and no one cares about it. KOS-MOS, however, remained popular enough to make cameos in further Namco games and to continue getting merchandise. Basically, she's Namco's equivalent of Capcom's Morrigan. Although Darkstalkers at least still has people that care about it.

Accessories! Lots of accessories that are big. For once, the figure actually needed the larger Figma box. They even had to use a small second tray under the first. I don't know the proper names of most of the weapons, or if they even have them, but I was able to look up some names! KOS-MOS also has two faces and five sets of hands. The hand sets are trigger fingers (which do not have wrist joints, and for good reason), standard fists, standard splayed, standard holding-things, and a pair that look like they're in a kind of neutral/relaxed pose. I didn't bother cutting out her di:stage cover, because it's just a rather plain design with the Xenosaga Ep. 3 logo in the middle which would just get filled with holes. Oddly, KOS-MOS didn't include the angle adapter bit for the stand, which I was beginning to think was standard-issue, so the one I use in a number of these pictures is from another Figma.

KOS-MOS's articulation is pretty much what you'd expect from a Figma, though she has a few bits worth pointing out. Her hair is in two segments in the back with each segment on a joint the same way they were on Black Gold Saw. She's also got thigh swivels, and the two things on the sides of her hips are each connected by a single hinge. It looks like she doesn't have much of ankles, but they're actually there and on normal Figma joints. I picked up a protip from bd77 who picked it up from Plastic Parfait of pulling the ankles out slightly to give them more movement.

Also notable is that the peg hole for the stand is on KOS-MOS's lower back instead of the upper back, where it usually is on Figmas. This might be in part because of how tall KOS-MOS is, but whatever the reason, I like that positioning much better. Makes it a lot easier to pose her when I don't have to worry about lining up hips, waist, and torso joints any time I move something.

I'll just go ahead and go through the accessories now! First, the pistol. Not a bad looking pistol, and it doesn't look undersized like pistols on some action figures tend to. Also, it reminds me of Varista.

Some sort of sword-arm thing! I guess she can be a pirate like this. And it really is a sword-arm, as you have to remove a elbow-lower arm section to stick it on. Reminds me of T-1000.

Next is the Dragon Tooth (I knew that one!), which apparently is competing with King Saw for Biggest Damn Sword. The "blade" section is removable and the weapon itself can be switched to a closed form.

And then there were the Triple Gatling guns. Apparently someone decided that giving KOS-MOS a gatling gun wouldn't be ENUF DAKKA. So they made a gatling gun that was made up of three gatling guns. And then they gave KOS-MOS two of them. They come with little support pegs since they are pretty heavy.

The gatlings come with firing effect bits. It is possible for KOS-MOS to hold up the guns without supports, but it feels dangerous and I suspect trying to leave them unsupported would result in eventual damage. So I enlisted some Revocontainers for this picture.

KOS-MOS's alternate face is her "more human-like mode" face with the blue eyes instead of red, which Wiki tells me means she's in Mary Magdalene mode. The eyes are looking off to one side, and there is a slight smile instead of the no emotion of the other face. It's sorta hard to swap her faces around, too. The things on the side of her head make it impossible to simply pull the face straight out, instead you're supposed to pull the top of the face forward to angle it and then pull it out at that angle...a bit annoying.

The secondary visor apparently is for something called "Fatimas Gras Mode". It also makes her look a bit like a pirate. The visor isn't part of her front hair fringe. It's actually a seperate piece, also seperate from the face, that is switched by taking off the front hair piece.

Final accessory is a secondary chest plate for her X-Buster attack. That's the one where KOS-MOS undoes her bra and shoots a laser from her cleavage. Yeah. The chest swapping works pretty much the same as it does on the Figma Kanu Uncho, just pull one straight off and slide the other one in place.

And since I have it, KOS-MOS alongside an old gashapon figure of Ep.2 Shion that I have. Certainly not the same scale (I think they're supposed to be pretty close in height to each other), but at least it's close and I can have KOS-MOS sex up her lover.

The gatlings happen to also look good with a certain other female robot.

I HOPE YOU ARE ENJOYING EVERYTHING.

You might have noticed that every picture of KOS-MOS looks kinda odd. If you have not figured out the reason, you might need to stare at some of them more.

And on to Duke. FORE-*shot*

Made by NECA, this Duke Nukem is based on the upcoming Duke Nukem Forever. Which is actually coming out in like a week oh my god what the hell is goingaodigfaosugaisurbhfigahkfsuhkzj

Articulation is fairly decent, and similar to NECA's other fully-articulated figures, such as the Street Fighter figures they did and some of the Bioshock ones. His main failing in the articulation is his shoulders, which are really, really weird and I don't know how to explain them. Basically, he can't put his arms at rest at his side. But it's not too bad, as it doesn't really interfere with the kind of poses he should be in, that being doing MANLY things.

He doesn't come with much for accessories, just a little pistol and a cigar. Duke feels a bit lacking not coming with any nice, big guns. But that cigar does give him a ton of character, and is quite a nice touch.

So since he lacks weapons, we must simply find more! Rather conveniently, NECA Duke can actually hold all of the weapons that came with the original Duke action figure, although they do require stretching out his hand.

And speaking of Old Duke, NECA Duke is a significant improvement in everything. Except the guns thing.

In fact, unlike Old Duke, NECA Duke can sit! And fits quite nicely in the little chair I picked up in Hawai'i.

Where he can enjoy some bitches.

He's even just the right size for my Banpresto Menace!

Cowboy Bebop at his computer.

No, not even Duke Nukem will be exempt.

I was also planning on talking a bit about a recent Transformer purchase, the Human Alliance Thunderhead from the new movie line. It's a neat figure, changes from robot to spider tank to mech suit and has a little dude. But I don't really care enough. I kinda feel like I've lost most my interest in Transformers outside a select few, in part because the Nippon invaders are pretty good at trumping the Transformers at characterization, which means the Transformers show up less in the comics...also doesn't help that I never saw a few of the newer Transformers I wanted in stores.

Well, just makes it a bit easier to reduce the growth of my collection.

New Arrival: Revoltech Jehuty

2011-05-08T22:27:00.001-04:00

That song's name is a fine example of Engrish. I wonder what it's supposed to mean.

Got my Revoltech Jehuty in last week from HLJ, and finally got around to finishing up taking a bunch of pictures. I ended up taking a lot, because Jehuty's got a lot of things going on that are fairly different from the norm, or at least the norm I'm used to with my non-Queen's Blade Revoltechs. All four of them.

I have to show ZOE some love. I rather enjoyed playing through Hideo Kojima’s take on Gundam and the Giant Robot genre. Zone of the Enders was also actually one of my first real exposures to Giant Robots. Before then, it had only really been a bit of the Transformers and Voltron cartoons from my early childhood, and maybe some Power Rangers. I need to find some time sometime to get my PS2 hooked back up to something (damn you Sony, yes I would like to have my PS3 be backwards-compatible with the PS2) and play through the original ZOE again. I think I still have a copy, and maybe even save data!

I guess I'll start with a straight-out-of-the-box picture. I'm pretty happy that the paint turned out so close to all the promo pics that were shown. They always had this odd quality to them that made me think some random photoshopping had been in play, but real pictures cropped up and then I got the real thing and Jehuty really does look like it did. The figure does have a very slight sticky or mold lubricant feel to it, though, but I suppose a few rinses and time will take care of that.

Accessories. Three pairs of hands, one extra special-purpose hand, two forms of the sword (retracted and extended), dash/flight effect parts, the "ENEMY" ring, a slash effect part, alternate joints for the elbows, alternate "feet" parts, a variety of stand parts, and a typical Revochip (I'm two away from ten!) and Revocontainer, though the container is a different color. The hand pairs are open, fists, and straight, and they all annoy me slightly because Jehuty's hands are all symmetrical, so now I don't know which ones are the left hands and which are the right hands, though I suppose it doesn't matter much since they're symmetrical. The remaining hand has a peg on it that's about the right size for Revolver joint peg holes.

Jehuty's got plenty of articulation like any other Revoltech, however most of the joints have something odd about them, so I'll just cover them all from top to bottom. First up, the neck, which is double-jointed in the same manner as Revoltech Iron Man was. Just like with Iron Man, it's designed to allow Jehuty to look upwards or forwards for flight mode poses. Unlike Iron Man, which used two Revolver joints, only the top joint of the neck is a Revolver on Jehuty. The bottom joint is actually a typical hinge using a peg that runs between the shoulder sockets. It works just as well, though.

On Jehuty's back, the wings are connected by the 6mm Revolver joints. They can open to allow the flight effect parts to be stuck in, and oddly use the tiny 4mm joints to do this instead of using hinges or something. Also, the wings look like the heads of birds like vultures or something. The three bits around his waist are also connected with 4mm joints.

The shoulders is where things start getting funny. The main joint is a Revolver joint, but the peg goes into the torso at angle downwards towards to where the torso joint is, so the movement takes a little getting used to. The arms are then connected to the shoulders by a single cut joint, which is also angled so it doesn't quite act like a typical bicep joint.

The elbows and wrists are normal, so there's nothing to say about them. Though there are alternate double joints for the elbows, I haven't really seen a use for them yet. Jehuty's shield piece is connected by a standard peg, so it can be rotated around and pulled off.

The torso joint allows only a bit of forward movement.

It does have much more of a backwards range, allowing Jehuty to take even more erotic poses.

The most important thing to note about the torso joint is that the top peg isn't aligned perfectly vertically. It's actually angled towards the front of the chest, so that instead of normal torso rotation, twisting the torso results in this. It's odd, but it seems to be perfectly fine and actually kinda useful for making dynamic poses.

The cockpit is on a hinge like the lower neck joint was. Which is a bit disappointing, I was hoping it would be on a Revolver joint so I could take it off and put other figure's heads there or something. Would have been great for SCIENCE!!

The hips use Revolver joints, unlike Iron Man did. Fairly normal, except that again, the pegs don't point towards each other, but towards the cockpit. Makes moving them around a bit tricky, since the axis of rotation is not what one would expect it to be, but it doesn't get in the way of things.

Since the pilots are called "Runners"...

The knees are the final oddity. No Revolver joints at all, the knees are hinged for bending, but also have a rotation point at the top of the knee. The knee-thrusters are connected with typical pegs like the shield part is, so they can also be rotated and removed. In fact, both had fallen out in the packaging and I had to put them back on when I first opened Jehuty. I also keep accidently rotating them when posing Jehuty and not noticing until after I've taken a picture.

On to accessories. The flight/dash effect parts look pretty nice. They use mirrored sculpts so that they're not just two of the exact same piece.

The Enemy Ring, which is definately one of the cooler things. One of the things that helped take Jehuty from "well, it's pretty cool looking, I'll think about it" to "it has the enemy ring?! PREORDERED". Jehuty comes with extra stand parts specifically for using the ring, though it can easily be attached to other things or stands to be used with other figures. It's sort of a pain to pose with, unfortunately. The ring keeps getting in the way of the wings and other parts of Jehuty, or maybe I'm just doing it wrong.

The three bits on the waist can be removed and stuck on the ring like so, allowing you to replicate something from the game I don't even remember at all.

Slash effect and extended sword. The slash seems to be a bit hard to work with, as well. It's made to be attached to the Enemy Ring, and I wasn't having much luck getting it to look like it was in a proper position. If it didn't use the tiny 4mm joint to connect, I'd just use another stand for it or something.

The special-use hand allows Jehuty to do things like hold his box, similar to how he held things in the game.

Or he can be gay with Iron Man.

Finally, a pair of extended feet/landing gear/whatever, which work pretty well at letting Jehuty stand on a surface.

Poor Revoltech Gunbuster, unable to do a signature pose while so many others can do it better.

I love my Ott-lite too much.

Egypt finally got a Strike Witch!

"Why do I have such fabulous legs?!"
Due to the angled peg holes, Menace's legs don't quite go on so well.

"I guess there was no helping it, with such amazing legs."

ENEMY

What's this?

ENEMY
Well, not quite a "Raptor", but close!

I already posted that everywhere else, might as well post again!

Quite enjoying Jehuty. He was certainly a good purchase. It'll be neat if Kaiyodo makes more ZOE mechs, but if they do make another one it'll probably be Anubis, and Anubis would probably need to do at least as good as Jehuty has for them to continue the series further. Personally, I want Neith. Giant mecha with a giant penis and a pair of tits! What the hell, Kojima. What. The. Hell.

Although now I get to be tormented by pictures of Figma KOS-MOS. Because I had cancelled my preorder. I make such bad decisions.

So now I've currently got four Revoltechs on my desk, and only one Figma. I wouldn't have expected that to happen.

New Arrival: Figma Aya Shameimaru

2011-04-20T20:42:00.001-04:00

I feel like I haven't taken any decent pictures lately. Or ever.

Got Aya a week ago, actually, so I've had a little bit of time to mess with her. Although I was also experiencing a collapse of my health at the same time, so not much really got done. Ordered her through Yokatta's middleman service, and apparently I managed to stick an order in about a week before she was sold out at Nico Nico's web shop thing.

But this is still going to probably be a pretty lacking post.

I may need to apologize in advance for the lighting and coloring of these pictures. I bought myself a new monitor and naturally, the colors are all different and I'm still trying to work out the balance. But it's better than my old monitor was, at least. Lovely, wonderful, minimal heat-producing LEDs!

Accessories! Aya has her wings, her bird, three total faces, her fan, five total pairs of hands, bits for the bird to attach to the stand, support bits for her geta, and then the usual Figma stuff. The hands are kind of interesting since she doesn't have quite as many of the typical Figma hands. Aya's got a splayed pair, fist pair, newer/open grip hands, a single older/closed grip hand for the right hand, and specific hands for her pen, camera, and notebook (the notebook is also the only removable one). I'm not entirely sure why she has the lone grip hand, unless it's meant for the fan. It's at about the same angle as the other two grip hands.

I rather like the design of the di:stage cover.

Aya's wings connect to her back in the same style as they did on Hayate Yagami, except it works a lot better here because the attachment piece is thinner, so more of the peg can actually go in. The wings are also tougher than Hayate's. And they look very nice.

We gave your Figma shoes for her shoes so she can stand without her stand! They work quite well, too. Though I don't know how much I'll actually use them, since Aya feels the same way my Revoltech Nanaels do, in that I'm naturally inclined to put them in floaty poses.

An earlier attempt at what I was trying to do with the first image.

Aya's a Figma like any other, so there's really not too much to talk about in terms of articulation. The bottom of her shirt, where it overlaps the skirt, is made of soft plastic so it doesn't impede the waist so much. The shoulders of the shirt are also made of soft plastic and are floating to stay out of the way of shoulder movement. That skirt is still hard plastic, however, so the hips are still limited there, but at least it's a short skirt in a 'dynamic' sculpt.

*dun-nun*

*Jaws theme*

And I broke one of Reimu's neck joints trying to set this picture up. Still haven't gotten it fixed right, Goodsmile and Max Factory need to start selling packs of spare joints like Kaiyodo does with the Revolver joints. If I ever see some ultra-cheap Nendoroids again I'll have to consider getting one to cannabalize.

Getting all the hot details from another Aya! And having two different characters named "Aya" is causing me problems with my file names.

Have to get those all-important pictures somehow.

Might as well headswap the two Ayas. Too bad I don't have a little mirror.

Getting good pictures of wild Takolukas can be difficult!

And now for some assorted pictures.

Grabbed a few pictures of Reimu outside since today was a nice day and I was not being couped up in my damn cubicle.

I need a small Japanese garden or something like that.

Also recently picked up the pink female Halo: Reach Spartan. The paint is sloppy as hell. Hopefully, this will be the last McFarlane Spartan I'll want to get, though I still want to get one of the Play Arts ones.

Girls kissing girls.

And I managed to get my Wonfes consolation prize stand from the photo contest. I just don't have anything to use it with except Petit Nendos at the moment.

Now, back to waiting for Jehuty! And work on comics, I suppose. At least I have ideas!

BRAINS

2011-04-13T21:34:00.000-04:00

I've just today discovered that it's actually pretty terrifying when half your body stops working correctly and the Internet starts telling you it's a symptom of a stroke or mini-stroke/TIA.

Luckily, the hospital said it was just an atypical migraine, which is much better than thinking OH MY GOD I MIGHT JUST DROP DEAD ANY MOMENT NOW

My very first CAT scan! Also, I get to follow up with a neurologist because this kinda came out of nowhere.

But hey, my Figma Aya Shameimaru came today!

New Arrival: Figma Black Gold Saw

2011-04-10T00:26:00.001-04:00

Well, I don't really know how this is going to go, so let's see what happens. Probably just going to be rambling and what not.

Figma ~~Sillyname McBustersword~~ Black Gold Saw, purchased from HLJ in the short window when they had some in stock after the release. This is the first Black Rock Shooter series figure I've gotten, so now I guess I'm part of the problem. Though I haven't seen many BGS pictures yet, so maybe she's not as stupidly popular as BRS was.

Not all that much going on with the accessories. Three faces, four pairs of hands, the King Saw, and the standard Figma stand, plastic bag, stand peg angled adapter thing, and di:stage cut-out. The three faces are a neutral expression, "I'm going to rape you" expression, and an expression I can best described as 'stoned' or maybe 'hasn't had her coffee yet'. The hand pairs are splayed, kinda closing/neutral state, hands specifically for holding King Saw, and fists that can also hold standard Figma accessories. The hands are rather interesting in that they don't use the typical Figma hand articulation. Instead, the pegs are on tiny ball joints where they plug into the hand, and thus have a much more limited movement range than other Figmas. The two King Saw hands don't even have that ball joint and are completely unarticulated (aside from the wrist rotation). Also, the pegs are thicker than they are on normal Figmas, meaning you can't stick BGS' hands on other Figmas.

BGS is very nice looking. I haven't noticed any paint errors yet (not that there's much to mess up, really), and the gradients used on her hair and horns are quite nice. In her construction, she's covered in soft plastic for her jacket vest section, parts of her shorts, the bits of hair that come down in the front, and sections of her hair in the back that cover the two joints the rest of her long hair is connected to.

Apparently, a number of people have been having problems with the King Saw hands staying in, especially when holding King Saw. The hands on mine have been able to not fall out so far, but I can see it becoming an issue with time and the pegs are shallower than they probably should be. Not something that would be hard to fix, though, as one of Mika-tan's recent entries kindly points out. The rest of the joints seem to be fine for the most part, however, the chest joint on mine is a bit loose. Actually rather similar to my Subaru, and I believe they're the only two Figmas I have that share this kind of design. Tightening that joint is not quite something I'm willing to try out just yet, as trying to get that joint apart is rather risky.

Her knee spikes are floating, so you can move them a bit to make the knee joint appear more seamless when bent.

Crazy lady is a bit hard to frame, between the length of her sword and her height.

It's like she's really a Final Fantasy character!

At some point I decided I should characterize my BGS as really loving cute things, in a non-violent way that involves a lot of SQUEE~ and what not.

Enjoying cute things like so!

Bitch needs to stay a while and listen.

Black Coffee Drinker (I really wanted to be able to use her actual hands for this...).

Now to continue waiting on my Aya Shamamenimauraurmeimaimn, while Jehuty seems to have been delayed to later this month since Revoltechs release at the beginning of a month, as far as I know. And to stop buying so much junk BLEGH.

A whole lot of gay

2011-04-04T19:00:00.000-04:00

I typed up a bunch of words over on DA, but I didn't want them to suffer alone! But I'll add some pictures to make this hurt less.

Saki is an interesting show. Even though I'm a year or two late, but only with the anime, as the manga is currently on-going! I'd seen it described as "lesbians playing mahjong", and, well, lesbians playing mahjong. I don't even know anything about the game itself; the only "mahjong" I know is an old single-player PC game involving matching tile pairs.

Still, lesbians playing mahjong. Lesbians playing mahjong with MAHJONG SUPERPOWERS. Most of which would normally be called cheating. Especially Momoko. The way the series goes completely over-the-top and super-serious over mahjong reminds me of other similar things, like Yu-gi-oh, but is very entertaining. Also, almost everyone is a lesbian. Now I get to read a bunch of yuri doujins. Ume Aoki even did one!

An infestation of some sort of small insect has broken out in a small hall area near my cubicle at work. I think I'm the only one that's noticed so far since they blend in with the generic office carpet so well. They stay on the carpet and haven't penetrated into my cubicle or threatened my Pop-Tarts, so I have been so far content to simply watch them mill about and get stepped on by passing traffic.

Pokemon Black/White is really curious. I wonder if it was meant to be a 3DS game, as it probably should have been anyways, but got kicked out early to be the last breath of the DS. They've made countless small improvements everywhere, in places you wouldn't even think to look, but there's a number of omissions that are really glaring; namely the loss of the 'L = A' control option, loss of Auto-run, and that they still haven't brought back the Poketch from Diamond/Pearl. The C-Gear is a neat idea, basically mimicking some of the 'social' functions of the 3DS, except it's also one of those things that you can really only take advantage of by living in Japan. Like the 3DS's social functions or Monster Hunter's multiplayer.

I like a bunch of the new Pokes, though. They've actually managed to finally break Psychic's dominance, too, at least until they let you import old Pokes, by giving pretty everything an anti-Psychic attack or four. The plot of the game is a lot better than previous games, with the gym leaders actually being pretty active and doing more than being holed up in their gyms being a cool thing. Also, so far the information the game is presenting is staying with my theory that the Pokemon World is actually a mostly-recovered post-apocalyptic Earth.

B/W are also easily the gayest Pokemon games ever. Yuri Goggles are finding things everywhere! Though, sadly, the game has exited Autumn, which means my FeMC can't go on ferris wheel dates with Waitress Aurora anymore.

Suite Precure doesn't have the strong plot or good fight scenes that Heartcatch did, but dear God it is so full of yuri. It was particularly amusing to watch Siren catch the gay in the most recent episode, too.

Also I just preordered an action figure of a character from a show I haven't yet watched. An action figure of an arm.

More pictures after the cut!

Apparently I decided one night that Kamen Rider was murdered.

This was fun to mess with.

Spurred on by a post and enabled by Ambien!

MEANWHILE

Have you licked your Pomock today?

New Arrival: Haruhi Composite Ver.Ka

2011-03-12T22:29:00.002-05:00

Or more accurately, General-purpose Humanoid type Decisive Battle Exoskeleton PRODUCTION MODEL SOS-1 HARUHI ROBO.
The name is very long and completely unnecessary and totally what Haruhi would call the thing.

I'll just stick with "Composite Haruhi".

The third and final item of the stuff I got a week ago. This one was purchased from HLJ, which seems to have survived the earthquakes, the tsunamis, the fires, and the meltdowns. "Wanting to live in Japan" doesn't seem such a great idea whenever the planet reminds everyone that RING OF FIRE. At least Japan is probably the best-prepared country in the world for that sort of disaster.

That's depressing. Unfortunately, this picspam isn't going to be much happier, because while Composite Haruhi seems like a very cool idea and all, I've been rather disappointed.

I feel like I should mention I really have no idea what I'm doing with this post. Composite Haruhi is very conflicting.

Well, let's get right to it. Haruhi and her mech do look pretty good, at least. But pulling them out of the box left me underwhelmed. This is the first Composite Ver.Ka figure I've gotten my hands on, so that might play into my opinions here, as I didn't really have any idea of what I should be expecting of Composite figures. In a way, this is essentially two seperate figures, though the main point here is to put the two figures together. I found it pretty interesting to see a lot of people mention getting this for the Haruhi alone, presumably because it was going to be Figma-sized and maybe a bit better than the Fraulein Bunny Haruhi. For me, I was mainly interested in the actual combo, and if this Bunny Haruhi was better than my Fraulein, that would be a nice bonus.

First, accessories. Besides the mech, you get two faces, two front hairpieces (one normal and one with the green glasses), an extra back hairpiece, the mech's BFG, a handle for the BFG, a stand, and a total of six pairs of hands. The extra back hair piece is odd, as it doesn't have the bunny ears, and I'm not really sure there are that many people that would want a Bunny Haruhi without the bunny ears. Also, Haruhi's ribbons are seperate pieces, so they have to be switched between the back hair pieces, along with the neck joint. The handle for the BFG is a seperate piece to allow you to choose where you put it; it can be stuck on either side of the gun in a few different positions. The stand looks nice, but the arm is pretty worthless. Luckily, the whole thing is Tamashii Stage compatible, along with the figure, so you can just use an arm from Act 4 or 5. The hand pairs are flat, pointing, peace signs, fists, hands for the gun, and a pair that seems to be made to hold accessories. Which this Haruhi doesn't come with, and the holes in the hands are smaller than the Figma standard. The hands are done in the same kind of style as the Figuarts line, though thankfully they are very easy to get on and off (without falling off), unlike my LunaTrigger.

So, the Bunny Haruhi. Basically, it wants to be a Figma. Same general size, same joint layout, same styled joints. Except it didn't quite make it all the way. Haruhi feels like a cheap, lower-quality Figma. The joints seem to lack uniformity in how sturdy they are, and the ankles don't feel designed as well as Figma ankles. There is also one rather large problem with Haruhi, at least mine...

I haven't read but a few other impressions of the figure, so I don't know how widespread this is, but the chest joint socket is far too shallow, allowing the joint to pop out of place pretty easily. Like "any time trying to pose the figure" easy.

And then I tried to pull the head off the body, and ended up pulling the joint apart instead. There's really nothing holding the joint together other than friction.

And then I took a closer look at what happened to the joint when I did that. Well shit. Hopefully the drop of super glue I put on the crack will hold it in place. Provided I didn't break the glue bond trying to put the neck joint back together and in the body.

But hey! The joints are nearly the same size as Figma joints! Now if only I had a junker Figma that I could salvage the joints out of and do a full joint swap with this Haruhi's joints...

Putting on the glasses and alternate face. The glasses seem to be much darker than the promotional pictures. It's still clear, but hard to see anything through.

Moving on to the mech. This thing is made out of joints, apparently. They're everywhere, even on the ears. And most of them are ball joints, so it's rather flexible. The mech is also very fiddly and it is rather difficult to pose something without having to re-pose something else. Curiously, the mech is very light. I suppose that's good for putting it on a stand in the air, since the stand would also need to support the weight of the figure in the mech. But I would have liked for it to have a bit more weight, as it doesn't feel very sturdy. Something like metal feet (like most Figuarts have) would also be nice to help keep it balanced.

For some reason, mine was covered in a ton of mold lubricant, and I had to give it a good rinsing, though there's still some crap on there.

It wouldn't be Ver.Ka without a bunch of decals and lettering! Haruhi got Katoki'ed.

A figure is held in the mech by sticking their feet into the boots of the mech, which open up at the back to accomidate this. There's also a small clamp thing at the waist level, but it's more for looks than holding something in place.

The BFG connects to the mech in multiple places, so you can pick and choose where it's coming from. There are peg holes under each of the mecha-ribbons and on each of the hip-plates, under some removable plug-thingies. The arm of the BFG is also filled with joints, so it can be moved around pretty well.

The peg holes also fit Revolver joints. The ribbon holes aren't that deep, though.

Other figures can be stuck in the mech, but you'll be largely limited by whatever has small enough feet and doesn't have big hair.

And back to combined mode. Ultimately, this figure wasn't as good as I was hoping, with the best-case scenario being that I wouldn't need my Fraulein anymore. As it is, I'll be keeping the Fraulein, the Composite will mostly be sitting around as a display piece, and I won't be getting the Yuki that's been shown, despite giant fists and a mecha witch hat. Trying to play with this thing pretty much sucks, but at least it still does look good. And the problems aren't enough that they will prevent the figure from being used in one of my SECRET PLANS, like what happened with Big Boss' Big.

If you plan to get Composite Haruhi just for the Haruhi, I would recommend thinking it over carefully. Or at least read a bunch of reviews to see if my problems were just a fluke. Even then, the Fraulein still beats this Haruhi in all of the other accessories it has (even without the four busts) if you're going to be discounting the mech anyways.

New Arrival: Sci-fi Revoltech Iron Man Mk.VI

2011-03-09T10:34:00.001-05:00

Hooray for Paintshop filters! It almost looks like Marvel vs Capcom 3! (no not really)

I changed the colors of the blog. I don't know if it's really any better or worse than before. I have no idea what I'm really doing and no one says anything about it! One of these days, I'm going to sit down and make a new header that isn't so lame and shitty. Also, page breaks were finally researched. I suck at websites!

And to think, I used to make forum signatures rather frequently.

So next up is Sci-fi Revoltech Iron Man, which came to me in the same shipment from Amiami as Ymir. Kaiyodo's getting a bit crazy with all these Revoltech sub-lines.

Something I wanted to mention in the Ymir post, but forgot: I think I'm tsundere for Revoltech. I'm still not completely satisfied with the Revolver joints, and a number of their figures that I've owned have been kinda annoying. But dammit, they did Yotsuba, and then they got Queen's Blade, and now they're making marked improvements while giving me an Iron Man and Jehuty. WHY CAN'T I QUIT YOU, REVOLTECH?
At least I haven't really fallen for Figuarts, Robot Damashii has stabilized, and I'm mostly burnt out on Nendoroids. Being heavily into Figma and Revoltech is enough for me.

Before I start talking about Iron Man, a story!

"And now, Menace dance!"

"God dammit Stark! Stay out of this, you ruin everything!"

"REGISTER."

"Huh? Nothing happ-"

"WHAT THE HELL?!"

"OH MY GOD WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?!"

"It won't stop spreading! IT WON'T STOP SPREADING!"

"NOOOOOoooooo..."

"..."

"Registration complete."

Iron Man's box is a bit nicer than the standard Revoltech box, as it has a door, the backside of which is covered in a wall of moonrunes that I guess summarizes the plot of the two Iron Man movies. Out of the box, Tony looks pretty damn good. Basically as good as he does in all the promo shots. For accessories, he has a pair of fists, pair of splayed hands, pair of repulsor blast-pose hands, pair of repulsor blast-effect hands, a thrust effect piece/stand, name plate, and typical Revocontainer and Revochip. This is the first "Sci-fi" Revoltech I have, so I don't know if not having a normal stand is normal for the sub-line or not. I also don't really know what to do with the name plate, it has a peg hole as if it is meant to be put on something, but Iron Man doesn't come with anything to put it on. I'm guessing it's something else that has to do with the Sci-fi series.

Need to focus on these hands for a moment. The three normal pairs of hands, the ones that are not used with the repulsor blast effects, fit onto the tiny wrist joints. The wrist guard plate on the top is also hinged, though more with some kind of plastic crimp instead of a real hinge, so I'm a bit worried about the durability there. The effect-part hands, however, are completely unarticulated. They even have a solid fake joint scultped onto them, so they aren't attached to the normal wrist joints, and the guard plate is sculpted in a raised position. The normal hand is on the left in that picture, with the effect hand on the right, and you can see that the effect parts are also removable.

Overall construction is nice. There are some things worth pointing out! The neck has two joints and a lot of room to move around, enabling Iron Man to look up or forward for flying poses. The pauldrons are on tiny joints of their own, so they can move around pretty well and easily be popped back into place if you manage to force one off. The abdomen plate is on a weird hinge like the hands have. It's kinda odd at first, since it pushes in when you move the chest forward, so if you try to grab the figure there you end up pushing the plate in a bunch. The hips don't use Revolver joints at all, and probably for the better. They're more akin to Figma hips, and there are little armor plates on the hips that can be rotated. The knees are the only double-joints on the figure, and the knee pads are attached by tiny joints like the shoulder pads. Though, kinda oddly, the knee pads are attached to the thighs instead of the shins or the knee joints themselves.

Now, if I were a good reviewer, I'd post a bunch of pictures showing the whole range of articulation and whatnot, but I'm not a good reviewer, and just look at that picture. Revoltech Iron Man can do his iconic pose (it's even what they used for the big picture on the front of the box)! Though I think I don't have it quite perfect here, but it was rather easy to get him into that pose, much easier than I imagined.

The various effect parts are mostly there to put him in flight poses. The base even has two joints itself, so the puffs to the sides can be moved around.

Unfortunately, Kaiyodo didn't provide a flight stand for Iron Man, so if you want to have him flying in any way other than straight from the ground, you'll have to have some other stand (using a Tamashii Stage Act 4 here).

Other figures can use the thrust effect, at least!

Since the neck is made to accomidate flight poses, it can do some interesting things.

Of course, the repulsor blasts can be used for attack poses!

This is one of those "I don't know" pictures.

Now Yotsuba can play, too!

A lot of people have wanted to know how this Revoltech Iron Man compares to the 6" Hasbro Iron Man figures. In this picture, the Hasbro RDJ Mark IV is on the left, Revoltech in the center, and Marvel Universe (the 1/18th-ish line) Classic Iron Man on the right. The Revoltech is just slightly shorter than the Hasrbo one.

The size difference isn't enough to make the Revo incompatible with the Hasbro figures, I think. A little clever manipulation of angles and stances can easily even out height differences.

So, between the Revoltech and the Hasbro, which is better?

Well, I dunno. The Revoltech certainly has better articulation and a better paint job. I personally find the sculpt and proportions of the Revo to also be better. But the Revoltech has one major strike against it: no hands that can hold things. Which means the Revoltech can't hold his precious alcohol, while the Hasbro ones can, since they have holding-things hands. The Hasbro figures are also much cheaper at retail and available in a variety of forms and characters, that I know of Mk. IV, Mk. V, Mk. VI, War Machine, and Titanium Man are all available from Hasbro with optional hands. Revoltech only has the Mk. VI for now, but an exclusive Mk. IV is being released, and there may be more in the future. At this time, Hasbro Iron Man is also the only one that has a RDJ head.

So, ultimately, it comes down to preferences. Or you can be like me and just have both! I think I have as many versions of Iron Man as I do Haruhi...

But hey, now I have an Iron Man head compatible with my Figmas!

Now just to do pictures for Composite Haruhi...which I sorta don't have much motivation to do. My initial impression of the figure has been kinda disappointing.

New Arrival: Revoltech Queen's Blade Ymir

2011-03-05T17:26:00.002-05:00

Unfortunately I haven't actually played Dwarf Fortress. But now I want a Ymir skin for Minecraft (anyone know of one?).

Got Revoltech Queen's Blade Ymir in the same shipment as Revoltech Iron Man, procured from Amiami. I had been quite eagerly awaiting her, because awesome angry loli/dwarf, and I think everything has gone as well as expected. So, let's get star-

VERY DANGEROUS OVER SHORT DISTANCES

Okay, I think that's out of my system.

First impression of Ymir out of the box is that wait a minute something is not right here! For a dwarf, Ymir sure is not very dwarf-like. While most of the other QB Revos are kinda maybe in scale with each other, Ymir quite obviously throws that aside. Of course, after the issues involving the other loli-type character, Aldra, I'm not too surprised Kaiyodo decided to do this. I can't help but agree with them, too. I'd rather have Ymir be an oversized, but good figure instead of smaller and being a pile of crap.

Odd sizes aside, Ymir still looks pretty good. Her paint job is a tad messy in some places, mostly of the "not quite inside the lines" variety so it's not glaring.

Wonderfully, Kaiyodo managed to actually improve the joints being used. Ymir has the smaller Revolver joints in use on her neck, shoulders, right wrist, left elbow, hips, and ankles. Unlike the older QB's and most other older Revoltechs, the smaller joints actually aren't crappy! Not only are they not floppy on Ymir, but the ratcheting aspect seems to have been lessened for smoother movement.

HEY GUESS WHO CAN HOLD HER OVERSIZED WEAPON UP? HINT: NOT ALDRA.
Yeah, I'll gladly take a bigger Ymir in order to not have the tiny wrist joints being used for elbows. Also, Ymir's axe is actually surprisingly light-weight, despite the size.

All of the accessories. Four faces total, two left hands, her axe, "M-mode" clothing, and the standard Revochip, Revocontainer, and stand. The stand, unsurprisingly, is still crappy, but I've managed to do most of my posing of Ymir without it. She seems a bit lacking in the hands, but at least she doesn't need any optional right hands.

That being because each finger of her gauntlet has its own joint at the base. Each finger appears to be a unique sculpt, too. This is easily one of the best features about this Ymir, as the gauntlet works very well indeed. That little hole there is for Ymir's axe, which has a matching peg to stick in there to help her hold the axe securely.

Each of her six hair drills is also on their own joints. Because of the shape of the drills, and how close they are to each other, you can't really get all six drills to be going down at the same time. Ymir's hair has to be messed with for a few moments when posing because of this, but it's not something I found to be an issue.

On to those faces! I guess this is the main M-mode face, or something. It's either a "how silly of me, tee hee!" expression or an orgasm face. It's strangely similar to one of Figma Billy Herrington's faces...

Next face is the taking damage/"don't get it in my eye!" face.

And then what is supposed to be the angry face. Thanks to the hair, it ends up looking less angry and more smug or something. But that doesn't make it any less awesome.

I'm finding Ymir to really lend herself to macros pretty well.

M-mode torn clothing. Getting it all on and off is about the same level of complexity as the average Queen's Blade figure. Changing out the top and dress frill pieces requires removing the head and the chest. Removing the normal panties requires the legs to be taken off, but the M-mode panties can be put on and off without first taking off the legs.

Because the panties aren't ripped, but just simply untied. Fabulous, low-cut ribbony dwarf panties!

I think I wasn't expecting the whole dress to be able to be cast-offable, so it's pretty neat that it can all come off. Unfortunately, there's slight paint error on my Ymir's DFC, the paint for her tits are slightly off the mark, but not by much to really matter. Better than Elina's unpainted tits, at least.

Splendid dwarf ass!

As we all know, dwarves sure love their ale!

"You humans don't know drunk about getting shit!"

This earth marble is the best under-used prop I have.

This almost worked as good as I hoped it would. Unfortunately Nanael's chest is just a bit too big to squeeze into Ymir's dress.

WE ARE THE FISTER SISTERS!

Confound this infernal machine.

Ymir's head on Yotsuba's body doesn't work all that well.

I'm going to need some more Revoltechs that I can stick this arm on, I think.

At least Ymir will have some protection!

I was thinking that Ymir might end up being one of the better, if not best, Queen's Blade Revoltechs, and in my opinion I think she actually is. She may not have the curves and ease of stripping that Menace has, but damn, they improved a number of things and her fist of doom is a lot of fun. I am quite pleased with my angry dwarf princess!

Now just to get back to work on Revoltech Iron Man. And Composite Haruhi, eventually. Next time I have multiple packages shipping in the same time frame, I'm alternating shipping methods so I don't get them all at once.

New Arrival: Figma Teana Lanster

2011-02-26T22:58:00.003-05:00

Finally got around to getting the Figma of Ms. Low Self-Esteem. She was on sale (again), so I decided I might as well get her now before she's not available anymore. Ordered her from HLJ (hopefully my box didn't include any plague...), where she's still in stock but no longer on sale. I'm pretty late to the Teana party so I don't think this will be much of a review or anything like that. But I can assure you I won't just post a video of ten minutes of talking while not moving the figure!

A box. A grossly over-sized box. I'm starting to get annoyed with these larger Figma boxes, since almost every Figma that comes in one could just have easily gone in the normal-sized boxes if only Max Factory would adopt more efficient packing.

Teana looks pretty nice out of the box. Her jacket/vest/whatever and both sections of her skirt are made of the soft plastic material, which is a welcome change from the Nanoha Figmas usually having a giant skirt made of the hard plastic. I actually would have expected the outer, white section to be hard plastic, so I was pleasantly surprised. Her X-Men souvenir belt is still made of the hard plastic, but it's not actually attached to Teana anywhere, meaning it won't really get in the way of posing.

Fair bit of accessories, but not enough to justify the box, in my opinion. She's got five versions of her two Cross Mirage pistols, a variety of effect parts for the pistols, two faces total, secondary front and back hair pieces, an angled adapter for her stand, and five sets of hands (splayed, fists, holding things, Cross Mirage trigger fingers, and dagger-mode trigger fingers). The second back hair piece even has its own neck joint, so not only do you not have to worry about switching it every time you want to change the hair, but it also means there's enough head parts to have two Teanas. The two front hair pieces are almost the same, though, the second one is supposed to be wind-swept I suppose, but its hard to tell. I also would have liked it if they had included a third face, maybe one of her tsundere expressions or something. Two faces just isn't cutting it anymore, and with the upcoming Revoltech Queen's Blade Annalotte coming with five faces, I think Max Factory needs to start stepping it up. And not make us have to buy another figure to get more faces, fucking Lucky Star summer uniforms.

Cross Mirage in John Woo mode. The firing effect parts can only go on those two pistols, and not the dagger forms or the big attack form.

Same with the little blades, they won't go on the other versions of Cross Mirage.

Dagger mode. The hands for this mode are angled, so Teana can hold them pretty competently. And they do look pretty damn cool like this.

Last form of Cross Mirage. Doesn't have any effect parts, sadly. And hair down part! A lot of people seem to really like Teana with her hair down, but I kinda like the pigtails better.

This is the same pose as the previous picture, but it doesn't really show the gun that well so I took the other one.

Speaking of those pigtails, they seem to be better attached than the pigtails of Kagami or Fate. They don't feel like they're going to break or anything, and I'm not even sure they're all that removable. However, they can only rotate and don't have any of the slight extra range that the ball-jointed ones on Kagami and Fate have.

A final note, it is possible to remove the jacket, but doesn't really seem to be useful, since removing the jacket leaves the shoulder joints horribly exposed. I only did this since I needed to make the peg hole for the stand in her back bigger, as it didn't want to go in past the jacket at all.

Suddenly, a wild Subaru appears!

TEANA GET! But where is Subaru going with her?!

Oh, that's where.

And the morning after. When your girlfriend is a magic-powered combat cyborg designed to beat the crap out of people, I guess it's kinda hard to say "no".

I also recently picked up Mcfarlane's Kat from Halo: Reach because I want a female Spartan and I don't want to wait until the fall for the pink one (which I'll probably get as well). I've been contemplating getting one of the Play Arts Halo figures, now that I've had a chance to see one in person and mess around with it, but I don't know yet since it'd ultimately be a display piece and not really something I could use much, as Big Boss has taught me. But the Play Arts is definately a thousand times better in quality than Mcfarlane's crap.

"Please to be waitink, I am Twitterink."
A lot of people have described Kat's paint as "Twitter blue". Because of this, I think I should make her a mascot for Twittering.

Yo cat, we heard you like Kat, so we gave your cat a Kat so you can play with Kat while you play with your cat!

Random pictures time.

I wanted a quick picture comparing the sizes of Play Arts Kai to the Mcfarlane Reach figures. Instead I got a picture of Noble Six trying not to stare at Big Boss' package.

Another day, another weird fabulous pose for Ultra Magnus.

Face-swapping with Takoluka is fun for the whole family!

And while Takoluka had Nanoha's face...

...why am I so frightened now?!

Wonfes and a mild picspam

2011-02-05T22:02:00.002-05:00

So Miku Append is Figma #100. I like her design until I get to her feet, unfortunately. And it seems they decided to close the shirt. Meanwhile, Nendoroids of Etna and Flonne and Figma and Petit Nendo Madoka. This is going to get tough. I'm rather curious as to what Max Factory is planning by doing ROBOCOP. Going straight up against SciFi Revoltechs? This will get interesting. Figma Strength looks better than the last time there were pics, think it was still unpainted then. I guess I need to wait for more pictures before deciding on the Figma or the Nendoroid of her, because now the Nendo doesn't look as good as it did at first... White Rock Shooter looks rather insane, God damn.

Someone pointed out that the Cirno Nendoroid is the 9th Touhou Nendo. Awesome. But I want moon people.

Some line I've never heard of before, called Riobot, seems to be trying to make a name for itself. Jehuty, Anubis, ZOE Vic Viper, and the Transformers versions of Panty and Stocking. Have to keep an eye on that. And speaking of Panty and Stocking, figures of them in their angelic pole dance forms. That can go together on the same pole dance stand, it seems. That's going to be rather tempting.

Freeing's making a figure of Makoto. More BlazBlue is welcomed, but their Rachel isn't that great looking...

So much stuff that I probably can't have! Seems there's still some news and pics to wait for, too. But it looks like all the GSC has been covered so far. None of the stuff I was rather hoping for, like Hidamari Sketch stuff or a GSC Saber Extra in the style of their other stupid awesome Sabers.

Something I've been thinking about doing, since starting this inane blog and even more when I started screwing around with the myfigurecollection thing, is whether I should occasionally dig up something older and take a bunch of pictures of it, particularly if it's something I don't already have a bunch of pictures of. I also keep thinking that a lot of my older "New Arrival" posts are actually really shitty and I should replace/remake those with better posts that have more talking and much, much more pictures.

Maybe I could start some demented project to try and "review" my entire collection, bit by bit.

Or I can drive myself to the edge of sanity and try to do one hundred picture challenges for every thing like I did with Diablo.

So I ended up taking a few pictures of a Morrigan figure I have, and ended up thinking of these things, so I figured I'd take a few extra pictures and maybe blab a bit.

Althought unfortunately I decided to press forward with using my Coolpix for the pictures, and the Coolpix is a piece of trash.

The Morrigan in question is just Banpresto's prize figure. It's pretty alright, but does have a few quirks. I'm starting to think Banpresto likes odd arm positions, as Morrigan is doing who-knows-what with her arms, kinda like how Menace was also doing something that couldn't really be identified. The oddest thing about the figure, though, is the rest of her pose. She's leaning heavily to the side for some reason, a stance that a normal human probably couldn't hold for more than a second without falling over. It does seem to emphasize her delicious curves, but it also makes Morrigan look like she has a terrible case of the Leans. Which, thankfully, she actually doesn't. My other main annoyance with the figure is her wings. They kinda get in the way and have a tendency to get knocked off. I thought about gluing them in place, but being able to remove them seems to useful. I think I would have liked it if they were spread a bit more, instead of sorta curling around her legs.

I do rather like how it looks like her boobs are in the process of spilling out of her clothing. Too bad the figure isn't of this pose "a few moments later after a clothing failure".

Hmm. I guess those previous two photos are pretty much the same thing. These close-ups really make the seam lines on her stand out more, sadly.

I thought this was a neat angle with her face.

Did I mention the curves? Because they are curved.

Nyoro~n

Gets in Morrigan's face rather nicely. The way her mouth is shaped is rather inviting for errant things.

I think we're safe this time, Admiral. Possibly.

edit:

Good job, MFC!

Puella Magi EPISODE FOUR

2011-01-28T11:00:00.000-05:00

PROBABLE SPOILERS AHOY!

I currently have two main theories about what the hell is going on.

Theory the first: the wishes, without fail, end up backfiring on the person that made the wish, or otherwise go horribly wrong. Mami (apparently) wished to survive the car accident she was in, and was left with a lonely, empty life completely consumed by the witch hunts. Sayaka has (apparently) wish for that Kyousuke guy to be healed, but her statements at the beginning of the fourth episode suggest things go bad. I'm guessing Kyousuke ends up hating and despising Sayaka before he ultimately dies horribly. We still don't know what Homura's wish was, but we do know that she's apparently dedicated herself to "saving" other people from making contracts with Kyubey. I think Homura might have some sort of power that lets her see the future, in part. This new Kyouka doesn't exactly seem like a nice person, either. Likely caused by some terrible trauma of her own.

Theory the second, which is now going into crazy person land: the real final villian of the series will be Kyubey. Whatever it is, it's creating the Puella Magi and causing and/or creating the Witches in order to further some own goal of its own. Kyubey is also fucking creepy as hell. Although some of the edge is taken off because I know it's voiced by Kagamin~, which is conjuring some odd imagery.

I have a feeling this will lead to Modoka shouldering the responsibility of what to do about the whole situation, with everything hinging on the wish she ends up making.

Normal ending: Modoka manages to dismantle the whole system and possibly destroy Kyubey, possibly using the wish as a weapon against itself (not unlike the ending of Inuyasha).
Best ending: Modoka manages to dismantle the whole system and destroy Kyubey, and all of the damage done by the conflict is undone (Mami brought back, etc.)
Bad ending: Modoka fails to end the cycle, everyone else close to her (Sayaka, Homura, her family) all die.

Also, when the unnamed Witch in episode four (assuming it was a Witch and not just a familiar, though there was no indication of a Grief Seed) attacked Modoka and started putting her through her own personal Hell, the art shift she went through seemed similar to the way "Charlotte" looked in episode three. I wonder, then, if that's how Witches get made, and if Modoka was actually on verge of being turned into a Witch herself.

Worst ending: Modoka becomes a Witch, kills everyone close to her herself, destroys the world.

I wouldn't leave it out of the realm of possibility.

God damn this show is crazy and awesome.

I also started watching Amagami SS finally, as I normally don't watch harem shows. But hey, at least that means I can start from the beginning with the Blu-ray rips!

SHI SHI SHI SHI

SHAFT confirmed for "We're not kidding around" tier

2011-01-20T21:20:00.000-05:00

"Man, Mami is pretty cool, what with her Unlimited Flintlock Works and smooth moves. That final attack of hers is also pretty-"

Episode 3

"WHAT THE SHIT"

And Kyubey is starting to become the creepiest cute mascot animal thing EVER.

Also I didn't notice until the second episode that the OP shows a transformation sequence that involves symmetrical docking. That's probably not actually going to show up in the series, as nice as it is.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica

2011-01-08T13:21:00.000-05:00

Well that was unexpected.

Having "Ume Aoki" and "magical girls" in the same sentence would usually suggest that the series was going to be more MOEVERLOAD.

Apparently I forgot to notice that having Yuki Kajiura doing the music was a hint at the show's true nature, given that she's known for her darker-styled sounds.

SHAFT, meanwhile, continues being itself, so there's not too much surprising there. I'm wondering how much of the show's concept is a result of SHAFT deciding to offer up some competition to Black Rock Shooter. Except PMMM(?) actually appears to have a story and will probably make more sense! Maybe it'll force BRS Project to step up their game and be a bit more cohesive with the rest of the series.

Hmm...now that I think about it, BRS seemed kinda SHAFTy. And now SHAFT has responded in kind.

Still, I like what I've seen so far. It's moe~, yet SERIOUS at the same time! Lunacy!

And it seems I was right about the show being full of gay. Within five minutes one girl was demanding to be another girl's wife.

New Arrival: Figma Yoshika Miyafuji

2011-01-04T23:13:00.000-05:00

Tried to make some kind of recruitment poster-looking thing. Ehhhhh.

Anyways, got my Figma Yoshika now. This won't be as in-depth as the Sinanju picspam, I think, due to the nature of Figmas. But there are pictures!

First impression right out of the box is that HOLY SHIT SHE CAN LOOK UP. I hope Max Factory continues trying to do this whenever possible, though I realize that most characters with hair longer than "short" probably won't be able to.

Putting stuff on. As Yoshika is a Figma, there really isn't much that everyone isn't already familiar with, besides being able to look up. Yoshika is a pretty fine example of a Figma's articulation, though, as she has no skirt or really bulky clothes to get in the way.

I noticed that none of the offical pictures on the box show the shoulder strap for the gun...I think I know why. The strap itself feels like it's almost made out of paper, as if it will possibly tear easy if you tried. It's thinner and more flexible than the straps used with Azusa, so having a strap made out of a ribbon instead of the rubbery plastic doesn't seem so bad. The gun is pretty nice, too, and the crosshairs can even be folded down.

Obviously, being able to look up is more there so she can look forward while flying. Works pretty well! I am kinda surprised Max Factory didn't include an extended stand or di:stage outright, it would make it a bit easier to get good flying poses.

The backside is pretty nice to look at. The swimsuit is made of the softer material common to Figma panties, so they don't hinder the hips. However, the hole for Yoshika's tail is on them, and on mine the tail doesn't really want to go in very well and falls out easily. I can't tell if the hole is just a bit small, I can't get it in all the way because her butt caves in (hah...), or both.

One of Yoshika's main features is having a swappable waist/hips area, similar to Cute's alternate body. I was worried pulling her apart would involve a lot of "OH GOD PLEASE DON'T BREAK", but the peg was rather smartly designed so that you can easily pull her lower body right off. Although I think normally the ball joint end is supposed to stay in.

And then you just slide the other rear end into place! While it looks nice and works rather well, I have to admit that I'm not really sold on the gimmick. If I really wanted a finely sculpted Yoshika ass, I'd just get a statue. I get action figures because I want those joints! They could have also included some other accessories instead of the second butt, too, like her hat (that she never wears in the anime), her little dog (which doesn't appear to exist in the anime), or maybe some thing neat like the "Fuso Doll" from the first season.

The static buttocks can also be used with regular legs instead of the Striker Unit, but it looks kinda weird...

Raep face and raep hands!

Speaking of hands, here her full loadout. Standard splayed hands, standard fists, standard newer holding things hands, a pair of trigger hands, the raep hands, and an extra left hand that I think is meant to be used for holding her gun. HER HANDS USE THE NEW PEGS

Another miscellaneous picture of the Striker Unit assembly. The unit connects to a leg by the long peg on the inside, which is hinged, somewhat oddly. Putting it on requires removing Yoshika's (or any other Figma's) knee joints on down. There's three option parts for the Striker, the unactivated mode black spacer thing, regular prop, and prop that looks like it is spinning. A word of caution; be careful with those props. I already broke one and since the plastic warped it still looks kind funny glued back together.

Gee, I hope this doesn't say anything important! After spending time with Yoshika, I think I know what it says, now! "Warning! The Striker will scuff the shit out of your figures!" which it did. At least at first, the black sections at the top of the Strikers were leaving a lot of marks on Yoshika's legs. It can be cleaned off, at least, and seems to be happening less now, so I guess it's not so bad. But I've still got a few other problems with the Strikers, namely that they really look like they could use some panel lining (which I may still do) and they needed some way to make the lower fin piece only able to go on at one angle. As it is, you can rotate the lower fin all you want, leaving you wondering where it was actually supposed to go.

STRIKERS GONNA STRIKE
I think I once saw a Yoshika cosplayer that actually had the Striker Unit. That's dedication!

Yoshika is a bit smaller scaled than the Sega prize figures, which really isn't all that bad and well within compatible range!

Yoshika is smaller than the usual Figma (outside of the Striker Unit), but she still stands above midgets like A's Fate.

reactionimage.jpg
I'm thinking maybe "Well fuck your shit"

Gotta grope somebody!

I need to find a way to get the Striker Unit, or at least half of it, on Takoluka.

And now it's "put the Striker Unit on other figures!" time!!

She's an aerial menace!

Nanoha StrikerS!
(doing this one, and then undoing it, was rather hard, stupid solid piece skirt)

Almost undistinguishable from a Strike Witches character!

Light Music Witches!

Hells yeah.

Flying Miku of doom.

ENJOY EVERYTHING

I don't know how much of this I'll actually do, though. Pulling legs off some of those Figmas was scary. I wanted to put Saber in them, too, but her pantaloons won't fit in the Striker Unit, so her thighs would have to be swapped for that.

Now I have to decide what the hell to do with my Yoshika Nendoroid.

I also need to decide what to do with this Nodoka. Anyone have a Saber Extra they'd be willing to trade?

Takoluka's Big Island Adventure

2011-01-02T00:19:00.000-05:00

As part of the family trip to Hawai'i, we went to the actual island of Hawai'i (aka the Big Island) for a day. I decided to take Takoluka along with me (Diablo would be too cumbersome) to do one of those things that people do where they take a bunch of pictures of a figure doing something.

Two things, though. First, I didn't have a tripod with me so a lot of these pictures suck. Second, the camera I was using was my Nikon Coolpix S220, which is a piece of junk, so most of these pictures suck.

I wasn't able to get a picture while on the short plane ride over from Oahu, so this will start with...the rental car! A brand-spanking-new Kia Soul. Not a terribly bad car for a box.

Waiting around at the place in Hilo where we would join the vanbus tour we were going to be doing. I like that a lot of buildings in Hawai'i simply don't have actual windows. Just shutters or whatever.

Sitting in a small portion of the greater mass of a Banyan tree. They had a road lined with the things in Hilo.

First stop of the tour was at the Lili'uokalani Gardens in Hilo. Supposedly, it is a "Japanese" garden. Here, Takoluka sits in some random plant!

There were a few stone lanterns in the garden. I'm sure it says something like "no pictures allowed you baka gaijin".

Then we moved on to Rainbow Falls. Not a particularly big one, but it was rather nice looking.

Rainbow Falls again, since I couldn't decide which of the two pictures I liked better.

After that we headed up Kilauea and had lunch at some forgettable place. I'm not Danny Choo, so I didn't take any pictures of my generic sandwich and fries.

Onward onto the main feature of the tour, Volcanoes National Park. Here Takoluka sits on the edge of the Kilauea Iki Crater, which apparently was a lake of lava a few decades ago. The cliff just past the barrier was easily a sheer drop of a few hundred feet. The smoke plume from the active Halema'uma'u Crater can be seen in the background.

Looking into some of the jungle along one of the hiking paths all over the park. It's rather interesting that such dense jungle stuff will be just a short distance of a place incapable of supporting life.

Inside the Thurston Lava Tube, which was pretty cool. This is in one segment that had no natural light and no artificial light installed in it, so you better have had a good flashlight or else you'd be tripping over a lot of rocks or smacking your head on the ceiling.

Some more jungle. All this jungling made me think of Metal Gear Solid 3.

Back around the crater rim, we stopped at some steam vents. Luckily, the steam vents spew out only water vapour (and sadly, not digitally distributed video games!), unlike other places where very deadly sulfur dioxide comes out. Unfortunately, steam does not like to be photographed.

Still at the steam vents, but no steam for a clear shot with the Kilauea Caldera and Halema'uma'u Crater in the background.

Moving on to the Jaggar Museum at the park, which has an even better view of the Halema'uma'u Crater. It's pretty awesome being able to see and walk around on top of the most active volcano in the world. That plume of smoke maybe a mile or away could kill me.

A USGS benchmark at the Jagger Museum! It's always cool to find these things. This is actually the second one I found in the park, but I neglected to take a picture of Takoluka with the first one. I bought a replica of this one at the museum.

After that, the tour headed back down the mountain. We went to a village called Kaimu. Or maybe Kalapana. Google Maps isn't being very specific. The big thing at Kaimu was that it had some beautiful black sand beaches. However, in 1990 a lava flow came by and covered up the beaches while pushing the shoreline out half a mile. So to get to the new black sand beach, you have to trudge across half a mile of lava flats, which has got to be one of the coolest places I've been. Just a vast expanse of nothing but black rock with plants sticking out of it here and there.

The black sand beach, while much smaller than the original version, was still very cool. A moment after I picked Takoluka back up after finishing this shot, a wave came by and washed up over the little rock and where I was just standing.

While there, I decided to make a little video, since the waves were pretty cool.

Since it was finally dark, we went to the last stop of the tour, the lava viewing area near Kaimu. Not being that close to the lava and my crappy camera meant I couldn't get really good pictures or really see all that much, but it was still cool.

Another attempt of a picture of one of the other visible lava flows. It's great to be able to see the primal forces of the Earth at work.

With the tour over, we got back in our Soul and headed to where we would be spending the night, a place called Kilauea Military Camp, back near the rim of the Kilauea Caldera. It was a much nicer place than I was expecting, and having the knowledge that I would be sleeping on an active volcano didn't bother me at all!

Thanks to a Walmart in Hilo, Takoluka also got to meet a new friend. Ackbar is confirming that the random seed pod thing she's holding is, in fact, not a trap!

The next morning we headed back down to Hilo. Another shot of riding in the Soul, which was kinda weird in that all of the console lighting, including the stereo system, was all red. I drove it for a bit, and discovered it had a pretty bad blind spot in an area where I normally look while driving my Scion.

Heading back to Hilo, we stopped at the Mauna Loa Macadamia plantation/factory. I don't eat nuts.

Sitting on a bench at the Farmer's Market in Hilo. Wasn't really all that different from the Swap Meet at the Aloha Stadium we had gone to earlier on the trip.

A statue of King Kamehameha. His power level is over 9000. (Yes, I know Kamehameha is pronounced differently than the better known pronounciation, but still!)

Having nothing to do for a bit of time, we went back to the Lili'uokalani Gardens.

Takoluka tried to make some friends with some little black crabs that were all over the rocks there, but they always ran away when something tried to come close!

Overlooking the lobby of Hilo "International" Airport. Was unusually nice for an airport lobby, actually.

In the airport again.

Finally, sitting through the plane ride back to Honolulu!

Okay, well maybe that was interesting. I'm planning on making some other post about the whole trip later, maybe once this cold goes away a bit and I have some energy back.

New Arrival: Robot Damashii Sinanju

2010-12-05T01:38:00.000-05:00

Actually tried out some "levels" and did a few other adjustments for this particular image. I normally don't care for doing stuff in Paintshop, but I suppose I should at least mess with some of that stuff from time to time to see what it can do. So I just messed with some stuff until I thought it looked nice enough to use as a desktop.

The more I look back at my older "New Arrival" posts, the less happy I am with them. So for this one, and perhaps any future ones, I want to make them as informative and useful as possible. Please bear with me or tell me to stop it if necessary. The lighting in these might suck, though, as I was doing silly stuff again. Though, I at least checked these all on my more color-neutral laptop first.

So, Robot Damashii Sinanju from Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, purchased from Amiami this time. This is the mecha piloted by Full Frontal, who may or may not be Char (though I already spoiled myself the answer to that!). Unfortunately, I don't have any real experience with the MG or HG versions of Sinanju, so I can't compare them and anyone that already has them will probably already know all this stuff.

Immediately, I saw that Sinanju was both big and came with a ton of stuff. His box was bigger than any other RD I've gotten so far, and he has so much stuff they had to stick a small second tray underneath the main one.

Sinanju, with his bits attached and proudly displaying all of his junk (ha ha full frontal).

The detail on Sinanju is quite pleasing. Everything looks so wonderful! The paint is well done, and there are only a few minor places where it didn't get put on quite right.

The Zeon-trademark mono eye is there, although it is pretty tiny and a bit tricky to get it to catch light.

Now, let's move on to a bunch of pictures of articulation!

Sinanju has a double-jointed neck and can look down pretty well, but can't really look all that far upwards.

At the waist, he can bend forward a bit and bend backwards...pretty much not at all.

The main thrusters are on joints that allow them to sweep back and forth pretty well and up and down slightly. A neat thing I want to point out, opening the thruster casings like that pushes the actual thruster out, which is cool. Kinda like that "automorph" stuff some Transformers have. The fuel tanks are attached by ball joints, so they can be moved around a bit. Rather important, as where those tanks are can have a big effect on the figure's balance. I am slightly concerned that one day I'm going to do something and snap one of those tanks off from the joint.

Arms! The elbows are double jointed, so pretty much the norm for Robot Damashiis. The lower (closer to the wrist) part of the joint seems to have a single locking point for some reason. The wrists aren't anything fancy with the hands attached to a peg with ball joints at both ends, but because of the suit's design and short length of the pegs they can only move so much. I'm kinda surprised they didn't stick some hidden joints into the "sleeves" like they did on the Geara Zulu, but considering the way the arms are and another feature, it makes some sense not to have done so.

The shoulders are able to swing around all over the place fairly freely thanks to ball joints and the joint itself being able to swing outwards. The upper arm armor plates with the spikes (sharp, hard plastic spikes...) is connected to the shoulder pads using a hinge, so they can be moved in accordance to whatever you're doing with the arm.

Of course, the important thing is that the arm articulation is enough for Sinanju to convincingly do The Pose.

The hips and the skirt plates are pretty much standard RD fare. Those tubes, however...while the top tube that goes around the waist doesn't cause any problems (it isn't even connected to anything, it just sits there loose), the second, lower set, connects to the front and back skirt plates through tiny ball joints. Unfortunately, one of the ends of one of the tubes has already popped out on mine, and I can't really get it to go all the way back in, but at least it mostly stays in place. I can't really tell if they used a dab of glue on the ends or not, but I'm starting to consider it. Those tubes also prevent the front and back plates from going as far as they might on other RD's.

Sinanju can at least do this, though.

Knees are double jointed as usual. The two parts of the knee pads are on two seperate sections of the joints, so when you bend the knees the pads move apart.

He can indeed stand on one leg!

The ankles are pretty loaded with articulation, with ankle rockers and ball joints in there somewhere and heel joints. Can only go so far due to the suit's design. The little thrusters on the back of the legs can be swung outwards some. The thrusters on the sides of the legs are on a ball joint that's on a joint that pulls out from the leg, so there's nothing stopping them from going in any direction.

Finally, on to accessories. For hands, Sinanju has a pair of closed fists, a pair of open/splayed hands, a pair of hilt holding hands, and a single gun holding hand for the right side. So he can only hold his huge beam rifle in the right hand.

A tiny tiny hinge lets the scope go into stereoscopic mode or whatever it is it does. He can see things in THREE-DEE! As long as he has those glasses with him.

The rifle can be stowed away on his back, though the grenade launcher portion has to be removed to do so. Conveniently, the grenade launcher portion can be stored on the back of Sinanju's shield, which I suppose means he can still shoot people with it.

And speaking of that shield! There are two ways the shield can be connected. The normal way involves a little peg that attaches to the underside of the spiked arm plates. Putting the shield on that way has a problem, though. The peg doesn't really lock in to the arm plate and falls out pretty easily. Of course, it goes in easily, and it's enough that it'll stay in place, but it doesn't take many bumps before you have to put it back in.

The other way to hold the shield is to swap out the lower arm armor with one that has a peg on it for the shield to attach to. It seems kinda odd at first, but there's a reason for it! On the back side of the shield is Sinanju's two beam axes in a deactivated form. The axes can be removed and flipped around for...

...the mighty BEAM SHIELD! It's pretty crazy, but also pretty cool. It basically gives Sinanju a giant forearm-claw-thingy. Of death.

Then we have beam sabers. Not too exciting, though these are all jaggedey instead of the usual smoothness other beam sabers have, so they do look pretty cool.

Plus, the forearm plates can be swapped with a second set that has the internal beam sabers deployed, similar to the ones Unicorn Destroy has. I guess it's extreme or Wolveriney or something.

There are two beam axes. Both forms of the axes can have both forms of the blade effect parts attached to them. Sinanju has enough axes to fit right in with the Horde.

To make things even better, the axes can be combined for a Darth Maul mode!

Finally, Sinanju comes with a bit to connect him to the end of a Tamashii Stage stand. Though, my Act 4's barely hold up his weight and the instructions seem to indicate that Act 5's should be used.

A simple size comparison with the Robot Damashii Unicorn Gundam. Sinanju is huge.

SINANJU KICK!

Skilled Pilot with 3x Speed Modifier vs Total Noob with Psycho Hax!

For the glory of Neo Zeon! I rather like this picture.

Glorp.

"Oh God dammit. GUYS! WE NEED TO START OVER, HE WON'T STAY AWAY FROM LITTLE GIRLS!"

Photographic Experimentation Picspam

2010-11-20T22:34:00.001-05:00

There are going to be a lot of pictures! Hold on to your various articles of clothing!

I decided recently that I should try out some stuff concerning taking "nice" photos of things, particularly unarticulated things. So I went and got a piece of black posterboard and stuck it to my wall. To test out using it, I took a bunch of pictures of a couple of figures that I recently moved out of their boxes and onto my "display" shelf thing.

One of those being "Image Girl Himekuri". I've only taken a few pictures of her, so more should be better!

Lighting for most of these consists of a floor lamp off to the left and my ceiling fan's three lights, all of which are daylight bulbs. If I could ever be bothered to build a lightbox, it might provide some benefit.

"Where are you looking?"
Wanted to try and make a more "framed" image.

Using my single Grono lamp this time. I thought I was going to be done with yellow lights forever, but the Grono does make it work nicely.

Christmas Lightning Bases!

I couldn't decide which of the two I liked better, so I uploaded both. CycloneTrigger!

I think this picture is very cute.

Takoluka takes the invitation!

Also did a bunch of my Sango. Stupidly, I've taken a bunch of pictures of her but only ever posted one that I can find. I could just, you know, post those other pictures, but I made a bunch of new ones instead.

The mirrored base is kinda brilliant, I think. Besides providing...a better view, it also helps light up the figure. Keeping the base nice and clean and shiny is quite an issue, though.

Demonstrating the lighting differences when the base is not used!

Really neat.

I suspect the one un-booted foot is mainly to provide some appeal for various people. I don't think it's actually visible in the original art.

In case you wonder why those cat paw things are always there.

And then I swapped to the burst-open top and started taking a bunch of pictures that would have to be STARKBLOCKED.

And then I decided that Sango actually looks rather good in the softer light of the Grono lamp.

I decided not to take any pics with the skirt off, since it leaves an odd gap that's visible at the angles I wanted to do. The gap is only not visible when viewed from the front, more or less.

I like this angle.

And then Takoluka showed up again, d'awwww.

Naughty Takoluka is fun.

But wait, there's more! In my quest to find evermore ways to light my shit up, I found a blackllght. First time I've ever had one, actually. Quite interesting things, visibly they give off a purple light, but it shows up blue in pictures. Unfortunately, it seems that white plastics and paints don't quite react to the light the way white cloth or paper does. Also, having that thing as the only light source really screwed with my head. I think just looking at the pictures is screwing with my head.

While it didn't quite do much for Aegis in that first picture, it did make her eyes stand out nicely, so I tried combining the blacklight with some regular light and got this!

LunaTrigger yielded interesting results. Apparently the main blue used for most of his left side is in two different forms, as some of it showed up light blue while some was dark. It's clearest between the abdomen and the chest.

For the most part, Nanoha might as well have just been lit by the blue Lightning Base.

Same with Magnus, except the eyes. That's pretty cool.

Not much result from Menace, either.

All the pink on Momo gave a good reaction, though it is similar to what the blue Lightning Base did, as well. Still, apparently now her crotch glows with a mighty power!

This is where I started figuring the type of plastic made a difference. Nanael's white joints are highlighted quite well. Also, this looked way cooler in reality, since the light was all purple instead of blue. I want a purple Lightning Base now.

Meanwhile, practically nothing on the 2P Nanael. Which was unexpected, since she's got a lot of pink like Momo does.

But suddenly, the Stormtrooper was super bright! More pointing to differences in plastics.

Altrene lit up rather nicely, too. This is sorta what I was hoping to see in the first place, some parts all neon while other parts not.

And some assorted pictures of non-mindscrewing variety. Successfully performed a mod on one of Aegis' "holding stuff" hands so she could hold Raising Heart.

BWAAAAAAAA

Jedi Sparkle Master Stormtrooper!

PROGRESS

2010-11-18T18:35:00.000-05:00

(picture being an example of the new STARKBLOCK capabilities mentioned a bit into the post!)

I'm making fairly steady progress uploading all of my pictures that involve weeaboo figures onto my MFC account. I recently finally made it out of the "a"'s and through the significantly smaller amount of "b"'s, and have started on "c". I'm still not sure what I should try to do about pictures of stuff that isn't listable on MFC. I've heard they're frowned upon, but generally left alone if it's just a picture you've uploaded and not a database entry. But I do rather like that I can associate pictures with the figures that are in them. I need to figure how exactly to search my own pictures for specific figures, assuming that is possible.

I also ran into another issue while dumping stuff. There were a number of pictures that contained nudity, but I had not made STARKBLOCKED versions of them, so I didn't want to upload them. I kinda wanted to get away from using photoshopped STARKBLOCKS, since they kinda looked rather messy than more natural STARKBLOCKS where Tony wasn't photoshopped in. Also, STARKBLOCKING with photoshops sorta completely ruins a few pictures that rely heavily on lighting conditions and such. HOWEVER, the researchers at Stark Technologies have been quite diligent, and recently a new version of the photoshopped STARKBLOCK was developed! The new version quite reduces image ruination while still providing the essential aspects of a STARKBLOCK. They've even added a few new templates, with more possible in future patches! So now I've been able to go back and create STARKBLOCKED versions of images that I previously would not upload, and make them available. And as always, one may still REGISTER in order to be able to remove any STARKBLOCKS (except for one picture, I think, which doesn't have an unSTARKBLOCKED version) (and by REGISTERING I mean 'asking nicely', more or less).

For some reason, the picture of Big Boss using a particular cardboard box seems to be the most popular picture I've stuck on MFC so far.

There is also Etrian Odyssey PROGRESS (I really wish I had thought of the Twitter playthrough idea before starting! But I'll definately remember it for the next one)! I have slain the first true boss monster of the game, The Devil's Own Quagsire, a horrible mud fish that KNEW EARTHQUAKE. I slew the Fuzzy That Would Not Die, only to find that it doesn't drop anything except a bunch of XP! I encountered a different version of the Fuzzy That Would Not Die, lower in the labyrinth! It's name was the same, but its sprite was slightly different. Also, instead of running away, it blew itself up (and dropped nothing). I have penetrated down into the Second Stratum, where I am now being attacked by Carnivorous Coral, Assorted Horrible Fish, Elemental Ugly Walruses, and new FOEs that the game itself named "Abyssmal Death". Turns out Abyssmal Death was actually quite fitting for an Mega Alligator that spammed AoE attacks and chases on the map.

I almost feel bad playing Morrowind and knowing all the really simple and quick ways to get awesome equipment and lots of money early in. But it's still fun. I'm doing a Nerevarine character, but I think I might load up my one character I made where I trained everything up to 100, did all the main quests, and as soon as the main quests were done, I proceeded to kill every NPC in the game, except like two. There's a console command that resets every NPC, I think...I could kill everyone again!

I've been shortlisting stuff for another purge. Hopefully I'll get around to it at some point. Probably not until I've gotten my satisfaction from Morrowind again.

Nekocon after-action

2010-11-07T16:49:00.002-05:00

Nekocon was...meh. I have a feeling these smaller cons are a lot better if you actually know people or are at least somewhat sociable. So basically, not me. But, it's local, and one of my few friends wanted to go, so...dunno what'll happen next year, though.

One interesting thing that I did notice about the con, though, was that there wasn't a glut of cosplayers from one particular series. Of course, that's probably more down to there being much fewer people than Otakon. But it was kinda nice to see only a few Narutos or Bleaches running around. Only a few Touhous, K-ON! girls, and Haruhis, too. Was pleasantly surprised to see a few Narumis and a Shoutaru/Phillip pair from Kamen Rider Double. Another con, another reminder to myself to say to myself, "next con, I will finally cosplay!" only to never go through with it. Only have a few feasible options anyways.

One of the other funner things was the game room. They had a machine set up running Pop'n Music, so I got to play that for the first time a bit. And be completely confused by the menus. EVERYTHING IS SO BRIGHT AND CHEERFUL

Dealer's Room wasn't much, either. Mainly a few of the convention regulars (like the woefully over-priced Anime Sekai) and some localish shops. I was able to easily get what I had hoped to get, at least, but I was hoping there might be some good deals hidden around, but none were to be found. There also weren't any of the better bookstores that bring lots-o art books with them, which I kinda like picking up one per con, and the one pretty good import game vendor was MIA. I was tempted to get a few other things, because they were there and I could actually see them instead of being a picture on a website, but the prices easily held me off, so no Revoltech Alice or Woody for now. So let's have some pictures of the loot! And some other random toy pictures!

First up, Banpresto's Queen's Blade Menace prize figure. No cast-off, sadly (but to be expected, I suppose), but I am quite loving this figure. It's not exactly perfect - the paint is a bit sloppy, there's flashing on the mold, her head crest is slightly deformed, and I have no idea what she's doing with her hands. But I find the sculpt and the shading on the skin to be marvelous. I think it's a nice alternative to spending much more on one of the full Menace figurines that I'd like to have.

I would have preferred if she was looking more upwards instead of downwards, but it still works. I was able to see all four of these figures in a line up at one booth, and I think Menace is probably the best-looking of them.

Edit: turns out the angle at which Menace is looking down makes it so that when I put her on the top shelf of my desk, above my monitor, she is perfectly staring directly at me. I may have to move her.

Delicious.

As I mentioned, I have no idea what her hands are supposed to be doing. My best guess is "pole dancing" which I guess is okay! However, I did figure out a way for her to hold Setora from her Revoltech counterpart.

Now neither of them will be- oh, who am I kidding. There's no way Menace is a virgin.

Takoluka time!

GOING FOR THE GOAL!

Second, Sega's Minna-Dietlinde Wilcke from Strike Witches. Basically the same as the first set Sega released in terms of quality. At least this time I got both legs instead of two left legs like my Mio ended up with.

I'm not so sure about the pose she's in, yet, mainly the legs. She's got them pretty close together, and it seems a slight bit odd for someone flying through the air with her legs shoved in a pair of engines.

I was kinda interested in getting Erica from the set instead, but I decided to go with Minna to compliment Mio. Unfortunately, they don't really look like they were put in poses that would look good if you were to do something like collect them all and line them all up.

As a yuri fanboy, I am prone to shipping, and...well...I tried.

Final figure was Petit Nendoroid Arf, from the Nanoha Movie the 1st set. Sadly, I couldn't really get Fate to hold her, so I had to cheat a bit and Arf has an aggressive face so I couldn't get the "NUZZLE NUZZLE NUZZLE NUZZLE" look I wanted.

Double Arf!

I also bought some Pocky, because why the hell not. And some of it was MEN'S POCKY. So now if someone questions my manliness, I can eat some MEN'S POCKY in their face and they'll be like "aw snap!"

During some night I decided to try to do some silhouette pictures of my Momo. Momo is taller than the lamp I was using for this, but I think I was able to work with it fairly well.

Stuff like this.

Not a silhouette, but I liked the contrasts.

I can't remember the last time I posed Magnus in an action pose instead of a girly/sexy pose.

I actually made this back on Election Day.

OH YEAH I started watching Shinryaku! Ika Musume, having dropped Ore no Imouto, and now I'm all DE GESO
I hope Squid Girl gets a cool figure, she would be welcome and among allies in my collection de geso.

The Pilgrim's Path; WARNING! HUGE BLOG AHEAD!

2010-10-28T21:06:00.000-04:00

Lots of pictures. Lots of text. Let's start.

Finally got my LunaTrigger, my very first Kamen Rider and Figuarts. Of course, one of the reasons I selected him over others (except Skull) is that his color scheme is nearly the same as Lord Vivec from Morrowind. This had to be exploited, so I made a set of images using LunaTrigger doing the deeds of Vivec listed in The Pilgrim's Path.

Of course, only people who played Morrowind enough will probably be the only ones not going "huh".

More detailed notes for each of the seven pictures can be found on the linked DA pages. All of the Pilgrim's Path text belongs to Bethesda Softworks, of course.

The Fields of Kummu: Shrine of Humility
Here Lord Vivec met a poor farmer whose guar had died. The farmer could not harvest his muck without his guar, and he could not provide for his family or his village. So the Lord Vivec removed his fine clothes and toiled in the fields like a beast of burden until the crop was harvested. It is at the Fields of Kummu we go to pray for the same humility Lord Vivec showed on that day.

To Stop the Moon: The Shrine of Daring
When Sheogorath rebelled against the Tribunal, he tricked the moon Baar Dau into forsaking its appointed path through Oblivion. The Mad Star inspired the moon to hurl itself upon Vivec's new city, which Sheogorath claimed was built in mockery of the heavens. When Vivec learned of Sheogorath's scheme, he froze the rogue moon in the sky with a single gesture and the grace of his countenance. Overwhelmed by the courage and daring of Vivec, the moon Baar Dau swore itself to eternal service of the Tribunal and all its works. Thus the moon now stands guard over the palace, and serves as a citadel for the Temple's Ordinators.

The Palace: Shrine of Generosity
Long after Lord Nerevar and the Tribunal triumphed over Dagoth Ur, the people wished to build a monument to the heroes of that war. Vivec thanked them, but said that it would be better to dedicate a monument not only to the glorious heroes, but to all people, great and small, who suffered and died in the war. It became the custom to make offerings here, either in thanks of our good fortune, or for those less fortunate.

The Puzzle Canal: The Shrine of Courtesy
In a battle with Mehrunes Dagon, Vivec gave his own silver longsword to the Daedra Lord rather than dishonor himself by fighting an unarmed foe. This so impressed the Dremora, the most honorable and chivalrous of Mehrunes Dagon's Daedric servants, that they now share a bond of respect and courtesy with the followers of the Tribunal, though we must never forget that they are our enemies.

The Mask of Vivec: Shrine of Justice
Near the altar is Vivec's Ash Mask. In the Days of Fire when Dagoth Ur first crept back into Red Mountain and awakened it, Vivec led refugees here as they fled the ash and blight. Weary, they rested here a while. When Vivec awoke, he found himself and all his followers encased in casts of grey ash. Frozen like a sleeping statue and unable to free himself or help his people, Vivec was filled with despair. Vivec's tears weakened his ash cast. He tore the ash from his perished followers, breathed life into their lungs, and cured them of the blight. This is Vivec's heroism -- his tender heart provides strength when his might fails.

Koal Cave: The Shrine of Valor
Within the Koal Cave, Vivec fought a battle with Ruddy Man, the father of the Dreugh. When he defeated Ruddy Man, Vivec spared his life, on the condition that Ruddy Man and his children would give up their tough hides to serve as armor for the Dunmer.

The Ghostfence: The Shrine of Pride
The Ghostfence is a lasting symbol of the indomitable will and power of ALMSIVI, and a monument to Dunmer pride in overcoming its enemies.

So there's that. Next will be a wall of text, followed by more pictures!

I have Rock Band 3 now (for PS3)! Apparently, I am holding the keytar wrong, or I am so very pathetically out of shape that playing a keytar is making my arm hurt. God damn I am a loser. My PSN ID is, of course, hamstercorp, and since it's the PS3 I can actually play with other people over the internets!

I think I need to just dive in to the "Pro" mode. I want the full keyboard, not just five buttons. I almost immediately jumped to "hard" mode, too, but I've only had the time to play a few songs so far. Also, I am rather confident I can recreate Sawa-chan in the game's character creator, and have already done so part way. I think I'm going to have to go pick up a basic guitar controller, too, since a lot of songs don't have keyboard parts. And, you know, just in case some one other than me happens to be where me and my PS3 are and we both want to play Rock Band at the same time.

Meanwhile, in Etrian Odyssey 3 (creating a Twitter account to document a playthrough of this, or any other, game has so far been the best reason to get a Twitter I can think of), I have begun explorations into the fourth level! My party is getting stronger, and able to not get killed by things, and thus I have slain more monsters like Horrible God-Birds of Doom, Hippopotamuses Made of Rage, and Giant Flying Pirhanas of Hate. I also happened upon a random chance encounter in the game, entering the first floor once to find a yellow FOE marker moving around on the map. Once I caught up to it, I discovered it was a Fuzzy. The Fuzzy does not really do that much damage. However, it is the Fuzzy That Will Not Die. I couldn't do much damage to it, and every time it would get below a certain amount of life, it would automatically flee from battle, at which point it would re-appear on the map and go back to full health. I spent a while chasing it and trying to kill it (made slightly harder since it could move through walls), but since I don't yet have a way to keep things from running away, I had to give up. Perhaps once I've got anti-runner capabilities I will see it again and kill it.

A man in the game's bar told me of how his party was torn apart by a particular FOE on the fourth floor. He described the beast as a deer with a dreadful cry that caused the party to become confused. That's a perfect description of the Ragelope, the first FOE you encounter in the original Etrian Odyssey. The Satanic Demon God King of Deer has returned for his revenge. I am worried about this.

I have a notebook I keep in my manpurse that I usually equip, most of what I've put in it so far have been scripts for comics. But I am thinking, whenever I am thinking about my Arrynvia stuff, maybe I should at least make notes in the notebook. Maybe those notes can then be transformed into more competent writings. I am also thinking I should try putting doodles into it instead of tiny sticky-notes like I have been at work on the rare occasions when I decide to doodle at work.

Heartcatch Precure is interesting. THAT ENDING THEME DANCE

I'm making wonderfully slow progress dumping every picture I can on my myfigurecollection thing. My pictures folder is organized by filename, and I only recently finished the "aegis" section. But then I have a lot of pictures of Aegis. Too bad I can't really put most of my Iron Man pics on there (whenever I get to the I's, anyways).

So here are some of the pictures you might get to see on MFC sometime in the FAR FUTURE!!

Might as well talk about LunaTrigger some. As my first Figuart, I am quite impressed. The articulation is just as excellent as one might find in the Figma, Revoltech, and Robot Damashii lines.

The sculpt detail and paint job are both amazing, too. This guy simply just looks great to look at. And the crazy compound eyes are very nice.

I think my biggest complaint about it is that the hands are a bitch to swap. Luckily, it's a pretty sturdy figure, so I only sorta worry about breaking the figure when swapping hands. I'm hoping they'll break in a bit and get easier to switch.

If that Katoki Haruhi actually is a Figuart, as I've heard, then hopefully it'll be just as good. Though, it doesn't look like the knees or elbows are double-jointed like on most of the Kamens. I am rather tempted to get another Rider anyways, as well. Maybe Accel or if the rumors are true about a non-exclusive release version, Skull.

Speaking of Skull!

Of course, he didn't stand much of a chance...

KAMEN RIDER, INTENSELY PLAYING QUIZ MAGIC ACADEMY! (though, Philip can sort of cheat being a human Wikipedia...)

He needs another Rider to play against!

But Double is two seperate people forming one Rider, so he might be able to play against himself...

Kamen Rider supports breast cancer awareness, by demonstrating a boob self-exam!

Yotsuba can hold LunaTrigger's guns. Of course, Yotsuba can hold just about any weapon, ever.

I also got my hands on the War for Cybertron ~~LANDMASTER~~ Megatron. Feels really hollow for some reason, but he looks awesome and is pretty well articulated. Also, LANDMASTER

This is actually one of those Ambien pictures, but at least it's just Megatron standing on my Keytar instead of a bunch of dismembered figures or something like some of those Ambien pictures are.

There was a full moon on an amazingly clear night recently, so I took a couple of moonlit pics.

This picture isn't as good as the picture I took of Menace in the moonlight not wearing her top, but I'm not posting that picture!

Unicorn held Menace's top for her while she wasn't wearing it.

"Hey, my boobs are bigger than Slut Nun's, right? Right?! Hey, are you looking? Aren't they bigger?!"

The Bonus Helmet works kinda well as some kind of weird Shinki blindfold.

And finally, we simply can't talk about Morrowind without CLIFFRACERS, CLIFFRACERS EVERYWHERE GOD DAMN HOW MANY OF THESE FUCKERS DO I HAVE TO KILL BEFORE THEY GO EXTINCT

REeETCH REeETCH REeETCH REeETCH REeETCH REeETCH REeETCH REeETCH REeETCH REeETCH REeETCH REeETCH REeETCH REeETCH REeETCH REeETCH REeETCH REeETCH

New Arrival: Iron Man 2 Mark IV (6")

2010-10-18T21:30:00.002-04:00

Tony Stark, the Invincible Iron Man, posing heroically!

After weeks and weeks of searching and only ever seeing the Mark V/Suitcase Armor, I finally found one Mark IV at a Wal-mart and immediately bought it. Now just to find WfC Megatron. Lighting may seem a bit off in these, I'm still trying to figure out how I should arrange my lighting setup and camera shooting positions since I've switched to a new desk. And some of these were taken with my crummy Nikon Coolpix instead of my Canon SLR, since the SLR + tripod does not fit on the new desk.

I already have one 6" Iron Man figure, but this one represents a substantial improvement over the first movie's Mark IV toy and I've basically been wanting it since it was first shown. Tony brings with him a completely new sculpt, swappable hands, and most importantly, swappable heads.

Of course, the star attraction of this figure is the helmetless Robert Downing Jr. head, wearing sunglasses and making some kind of awesome face. Sure, it's only as well painted as any other mass-produced American figure, but damn is it awesome, and it looks rather good at normal viewing conditions. It also makes a good "Deal with it" face.

Like the 6" War Machine from the same line, Tony comes with three sets of hands: fists, open palms, and holding-things hands. Conveniently, the holding-things hands can hold Mitsune's beer bottles quite well.

The shoulder pads are done in the same style as War Machine's, instead of the way they were on the first movie figure, where they would constantly pop off. These can still come off, but not as easily. I think they also look a bit better than the originals, though they can look kinda like a goofy set of wings. Flap flap flap flap...

For some reason he also comes with the exact same missile launcher the original had. And like the original, it goes straight in the trash.

Can't quite make that iconic pose, but I may just be doing it wrong. Tony's joints are rather loose feeling on this figure, but not enough so that he won't hold poses. For now, I do like it better than the first movie's joints that would keep getting stuck because of the glossy coat sticking to itself.

Side-by-side comparison of the new on the left and the old on the right. I had thought that the IM2 version would only have subtle sculpting differences from the original, but I was wrong. IM2 has better paint apps, is slightly bulkier, a tad taller, and much more angular than the rounded and lanky original. IM2 version looks much better to me. I'll probably still keep the original around, though.

IRON BROS. Curiously, Tony seems to be a bit taller than War Machine, but that may be just me not posing them standing straight.

Come at me, bro.

Helmet doubles as a beer cozy!

Aw hell yeah.

This is what Iron Man looks like without hands or his head.

A shame the RDJ head isn't really compatible with Figmas.

I have no explanation for this picture.

And a few random pictures that I've taken recently.

For a thread with a topic of basically, "the last three figures you opened now live together in a sit-com situation". And those were (not counting the Nendo playset) Iron Man, the Air Drone, and a motorcycle (Motorcycle has bad table manners).

Don't need no magical sticks when you're packing lead.

Nanoha firing the Friendship Beam.

Azunyan rocking out while I was trying to figure out how I could do lightings on my desk.

Unicorn does a good facepalm.

Takoluka.

I've been reminded recently that someday, I will purchase a Giga Pulse figurine. Apparently they have some new set coming up that involve a futa.

New Arrival: Figma Azusa Nakano

2010-09-03T23:33:00.000-04:00

THIS IS HOW K-ON!! WILL END

(not that the end of episode 22 didn't spell out how the plot will continue after the four main girls graduate)

Still, she'll be alone until I get Nodoka in November/December.

OH LOOK ANOTHER FIGMA. But it's not Black Rock Shooter! Everyone and their dog seems to have gotten BRS this past week. But not me!

Anyways, Figma Azusa Nakano. Bought her from Amiami. They changed the way they pack the Figmas in the shipping boxes, I kinda like it.

I'm going to try and make this picspam actually useful (most of it, anyways). Let's go!

If you're reading this blog, you probably already know that a Figma is covered in joints. And just to be safe, Azusa is a newer Figma so she uses the new hand pegs.

Azusa's whole jacket on her torso is made of a single piece of the softer plastic material that Max Factory typically uses for skirts and stuff. It lets her move her shoulders and hips around a lot better than they would be able to if it was all hard plastic. But the torso joint is hidden underneath and can't really move all that much. The waist isn't as impeded. While this isn't my first Figma that was made like this (Aya's shirt and Canaan's shirt are both the same way), for some reason it doesn't quite feel right on Azusa, in a quality way. Maybe it's just me, though, or that her jacket covers more than the stuff on Aya and Canaan.

Azusa's pigtails use the same style of joints that Kagami's uses. I kinda wish Max Factory would stop doing them this way, but I guess it'd be hard to get the Figma joint into those small hairpieces. I never broke the ones on Kagami, but I still always worry about them, and will be worrying about Azusa's hair as well. But I think Rin Tohsaka had it the worst, they might have improved the strength of the plastic since then.

And since we're looking at the back and that stand...

Good fucking job on the QC there, Max Factory. Besides what appears to be an alien lifeform encased within the stand, it also feels flimsy, as if it were a bootleg stand, and also the stand is actually grinding itself up at the center joint there. God damn, good thing I have an extra stand arm, I might just toss this one into the trash.

On to accessories. Azusa has three faces, first is this normal face. She also has a "gang symbol" (in the words of Tony Stark!) hand.

And then the angry/tsundere face. LIKE WHAT THE HELL, MAN?!

Finally, embarrased face. Also, NEKO MIMI MODO!! (or Nyan Nyan, if you prefer).

The guitar bag is pretty neat. Like with the other K-ON! Figmas that have them, Azusa's guitar can go inside the bag, though I'm not sure of how much use this will actually be. The bag doesn't seem to actually open completely like I was expecting, so the guitar has to kinda be shoved in and then dug out. Also, for reference, there are three straps inside the box, two for the bag and one for the guitar strap. They all look the same, but two are the same size (for the bag) and one is longer than the other two (for the guitar).

The guitar (I forget what she called it already). Azusa has two different 'fret' (I think that is the right word?!?1) hands. First one has the index finger extended.

Second one has the pinky extended. I'm not quite sure what the importance of having two different hands for this is, I guess from that one episode where Azusa was showing guitar hand movements to those other students. It's not like KyoAni ever actually shows them playing their instruments much. But I guess this is something those crazy otaku might notice?

Takoluka can't wear the cat ears, sadly.

Oh my God I just HNNNNGGGG'ed all over the place.

Speaking of Aya, hm.

Now onto the important part! WHO CAN WE PUT THE CAT EARS ON?!

Aya works pretty well, though I image Seto's cat ears would match better.

Aegis...doesn't really work. Dammit.

Too big for Canaan's head. And by extension, Saber's as well. DAMMIT.

Haruhi sorta works, but her ribbons get in the way. FUCKING RIBBONS.

I was hoping Menace would work better since she actually has black hair, and you know, that whole thing where Egyptians worshipped cats or something. (also see: Hyper Police)

Nanael's head is bigger, though, so it does work a bit better here!

PERFECT!

Sorry, Noble Six, it just isn't working.

...hey Bungie, put cat ears in Reach and I might just buy it!

So, in conclusion, Azunyan's cat ears only really fit on a few other figures. Damn.

New Arrival: Halo: Reach Noble Six

2010-08-22T17:28:00.002-04:00

A somewhat timely stupid post! Perhaps someone will be interested.

This is the Halo: Reach Noble Six, made by McFarlane Toys. Acquired from a Walmart, as they seem to be leaking these things all over the place before the "street date", apparently. Now I just have to wait for the 6" Tony Stark Iron Man.

Hurray buying figures for a game I'll never buy! Videos from the Reach beta made it look kinda interesting, but then I remembered I really don't play FPS's, I definately don't play FPS's on consoles, and I sure as hell don't play FPS's on consoles that make you pay to play online.

McFarlane seems to have finally decided to overhaul their Halo line starting with the Reach figures. Several nice changes have been made, and overall quality seems to be higher than some of the earlier crap. The figures are also a bit bigger than they used to be. Paint is pretty good, even if it is just DRYBRUSHING EVERYWHERE. Better than a number of other Halo figures, though.

The most prominent changes are with the articulation. All of the hinge joints now use ratcheted joints. Not anywhere near the Revolver joints, but I think they are working better than the old joints. The wrist got a significant upgrade from the shitty wrists the line started out with. Besides the hinge seen there (mine's floppy, sadly), it also swivels on both ends, so the wrist pretty much goes wherever you want. The hands also don't look freaky anymore, though Noble Six lacks trigger fingers.

Next major improvement is those damn hips. Some of the later pre-Reach figures started using new hips (like Operative Dare), but they still looked kinda ugly. These newest hips manage to fix all the problems both older styles had, I think. I'm not even really sure how to describe how they work, but I think it's something like a hip swivel, hinged balljoint of some sort, then thigh swivel. Anyways, I'm pleased with them.

Despite those improvements...the knees and elbows can't even go 90 degrees. I think they could have probably trimmed the sculpt down in a few places to get a little more range, particularly on the elbows.

REACH FOR THE STARS! The toe joint earlier Spartans had has been reduced a bit, and is now just a swivel instead of a swivel/hinge. That's fine with me (both toes swivel, I just didn't get that other one unstuck until after this picture). Also, the double-jointed neck works pretty well, better than it is on other Halo figures, I think.

Some adjustments have also been made to how this guy holds his equipment (assuming the other Spartan molds keep with this). Previously, everything had little removable pegs that could be stuck in holes. While they're still on Noble Six's gun, they took the peg off the grenade he comes with, and instead he has two pegs sculpted on himself. I like this better than before.

Still has plenty of holes for weapons, though, including on his back and on...his arms.

There's also a peg hole above his crotch. I'm not sure what it's for (probably the beer-can belts other figures in this line have) since it's too small for the weapon pegs. No gun-dick for Noble Six.

Alongside some of the older Halo figures. Halo 3 Master Chief on the left and Operative Dare on the right. As you can see, Six is slightly taller than MC and makes Dare look like a loli or something (though Dare is a normal human so he would tower over her anyways, but not by that much, I think).

I don't think that's very noble...
I like the thing he has on the top of his helmet. Maybe it shoots lasers.

Alongside one of my well-liked power armored figures. The Reach figures are still off in their own size-land, somewhere between the usual 4" and 6" sizes.

The Flood have come up with some kind of Moe-form!

I think I like Noble Six. Don't know if I want to get any more Reach figures, even with my love of power armor, but I'll have to see what else they come up with. The back of the current wave's boxes label a bunch of the generic Spartans as "(male)" which suggests there'll be some female versions, even though there wasn't originally a difference between male and female spartans on the outside. I do want to get that Warthog that's coming out, though, that ought to be fun.

New Arrival: Tandem Twin Sheep Girl Merino

2010-08-15T17:37:00.001-04:00

I WILL GET THE REST OF THESE OTAKON PICSPAMS DONE

Even though I decided to not really bother with one and sorta started losing motivation. But I think this one should still get its own thing since it is probably a less common figure in people's collections.

Anyways, this is the Sheep Girl Merino from the Tandem Twin series of figures done by Yamato. Managed to find her for a nice, low price at a random booth at Otakon, which rather nicely made up for the more excessively-priced figures. I want to get a full "set" of the Tandem Twin figures, the ones that can actually be bought, anyways. Merino puts me one step closer to that goal, and now there is only one of the five different figures left for me to get, the dog girl Alma/Anneroze.

This is what the box looks like. It matches the other Tandem Twin boxes in style, naturally.

I think I'll just run this picspam like the Goth Loli Haruhi one. So here we go, front view! Also, imagine some jokes/innuendo about her having to get sheared.

Left side!

Hindquarters!

Right side!

A close-up. All those red strings Merino has on her are actually plastic strings, laced around the metal pins which are actually metal pins. It's a pretty neat thing to see on her, since it's not part of the sculpt like it would probably be any other time. I'm slightly worried about the strings, though, that they might come undone over time. But I suppose they stayed put while in the box however long it was in there, and I shouldn't be handling her much outside of dusting and the occasional picture.

Since she didn't fit entirely in the other pics, here's her feet. More strings on her legs and little tufts of wool or whatever.

Not much different from the other close-up, I guess. I do like Merino's hair color. I know it doesn't really make any sense what-so-ever, but using a nice gradient for hair like that seems neat to me.

Unlike the rest of the other Tandem Twin figures, Merino doesn't have optional parts or cast-off ability to allow her to display her big tits in the nude. I imagine getting such to work with that outfit would have not been easy. Instead, she has a second back hair piece, so you can choose to have her with that curious ponytail thing or a shorter style.

Better shot of the optional hair. And her back and tail! I think I like the shorter hair better than the ponytail. Less likely to get in the way, at least.

Standing as close as possible next to my Momo from the Tandem Twin line (the bases prevented them from being any closer). Merino's built much like Momo is; slender, big tits, and super-long legs.

A picture from when doing the marquee shot (GRASS BECAUSE SHEEP EAT GRASS GET IT?!1).

Another shot that went horribly wrong (I couldn't actually look through the viewfinder since the camera was basically on the ground). But for some weird reason, I kinda like it and kept it.

Takoluka. "Lambchop! Lambchop!"

"Hey, those are some nice horns you have there."

Wait a minute. Are female sheep even supposed to have horns?!

New Arrival: Revoltech Queen's Blade Aldra

2010-08-11T21:19:00.001-04:00

I'm not entirely sure I should even do this, because, well, Aldra, but that previous post on the statue version didn't get me shut down so...

I'm being rather slow about getting the rest of the Otakon haul picspams done, but the next one is almost ready. For now, we're going to talk about something that's actually new. We're going to talk about Aldra. Iron Man will probably be getting overtime. And maybe hazard pay, too.

Revoltech Aldra. Actually part of a "limited edition" bundle, with the Queen's Blade Rebellion game/art book of Aldra. The Rebellion version of Aldra, anyways. Makes Aldra a bit more expensive than the usual QB Revoltech, but I don't mind much, as I like art books. And this is...a nice book. Procured from HLJ, as tends to be (they were actually cheaper than Amiami, I think because HLJ didn't charge the tax price...).

So let's show a bit more of the book. You'll noticed that Rebellion Aldra looks a lot different than the original Aldra. Well,a pparently the story goes that Aldra was possessed by a demon, which stopped her from aging/turned her into a loli, but once the demon was beaten out of her, she got oldered and became a titty monster housewife. And truly, Rebellion Aldra’s theme is HOUSEWIFE, as she is doing the whole “naked apron” thing and her weapon is a giant wooden cooking utensil (I’m pretty sure it’s a real thing with a name, but I’m not sure what. Giant pizza oven spatula??). She also has two stuffed animal-looking familiars, and I don’t know what their deal is other than one breathes fire and one is filled with what appears to be cake/dough batter.

On to the main item of interest. I want to make a particular note here, this picture is the plastic tray that sits inside the larger box. The box is the size of the book, so it's pretty large. But that tray? Small. Efficient. Everything the normal QB Revoltech boxes are not. And some other Revoltechs, too (lol Liger). I wish all the boxes could be like this, it is amazing. Usually only see this kind of good use with Shinkis.

Out of the tray that I am tempted to keep (the box, being a plain box with some paper taped to it, is already in the recycle bin). Looks pretty good, standard Queen's Blade Revoltech stuff.

A quick back view, since with Aldra it's actually a bit important, with the tied-up arm back there. Aldra's articulation is pretty much the same as any other QB Revoltech. However, there are some issues that need to be mentioned, since I'm sure some of you are reading up on reviews before deciding to throw down your 4400 yen plus shipping.

The smaller version of the Revolver joints (6 mm, I think?) were supposedly upgraded recently to be less flimsy, and Aldra supposedly uses them. I haven’t really been able to tell if this is true or not yet, though, as Aldra does not use the joint in the one place where it would make the most difference - her elbows. Instead, Aldra uses the tiny non-Revolver joint that has been used for wrists on the other QB figures as her elbows.

By the way, Aldra’s sword is nearly as tall as her. I think you can see where this is going.

Now, I understand Aldra is supposed to be something of a loli, but...this doesn’t make any sense at all, especially with that giant sword of hers. I think they would have been fine if they had simply made her arms a little thicker to support the Revolver joint. Her arms seem like they’re thinner than they should be, anyways. This is one of the main issues I have with Aldra, although it’s not too terrible. I just won’t be posing Aldra swinging her sword around much.

Second main issue, and this one is far worse, as it might have been enough to cancel my pre-order if I knew about it beforehand. Kaiyodo made the brilliant (“brilliant” should be read with extreme sarcasm) decision to change the way the Queen’s Blade stand connects to the figure. Aldra does not have the peg hole in her back that every other QB figure has. She has nothing. So instead of using a peg, you now connect her to her stand by using one of those stupid clips/clamps that the terrible Fraulein stands use. The QB stand wasn’t really all that great to begin with, but the peg holes were just the right size for Figma stands, and Aldra is denied that. I suppose this might, might, have something to do with her design, but, well no. They could have stuck the hole in her lower back, like Elina’s, if putting a hole in her harness/top wouldn’t work. Kaiyodo, I am disappoint.

While those two problems annoy the crap out of me, I think Aldra is still good otherwise, so let's move on with more pictures!

Aldra comes with a fair amount of accessories. More hands than I've seen from any of my other QB Revoltechs, and she actually came with extra hands for both sides! She's got three faces, normal blank face as seen above, shouting attack face, and an embarrassed/shocked face. Not as good as four faces like Menace and Elina, but better than two, and they are a good selection of expressions. Aldra has her big evil-looking sword, of course, and also an alternate right side of her head, to have her ~~scouter~~ evil eye of doom open, and the eye is translucent. Also, "M-mode" clothing parts and the usual standard stuff of a stand, Revocontainer, and useless to me Revochip.

And about swapping the clothing...the skirt thing is more or less just sitting on her hips, so that's easy to switch. The M-mode skirt isn't much different, just a small tear in the back. The top and harness on the other hand...a pain in the ass. To get the top off in the first place, you have to do the following: 1. Remove the left forearm; 2. Remove the rest of the left arm, and the right arm; 3. Take off the head and detach the chest from the rest of the torso; 4. Kinda pull the harness off from the top, as it is a seperate piece but still glued to the top, so you have to pull some parts one way and other parts the other way; 5. Finally, pull the chest piece out.

The M-mode top is a single piece with no harness tomfoolery, so it's much easier to get on and off. Though, unlike the M-mode stuff on the other figures (at least on the ones I have), Aldra's alternate top can't be used to just barely hide stuff with proper camera angles. It's just right open. Not that it matters much, though, as the straps on the normal version are so small, and being a seperate piece, that it's very easy for Aldra to have 'nip slips' (as I believe the kids call them), sorta like Menace.

The whole top and skirt can just be left off, as well. Aldra's Special Unit of Doom is also removable (the peg hole for it is...where her butt hole would be), in case you want your loli to be completely naked in that region instead of just having the spikes.

I guess the only other thing possibly worth mentioning is that the Unit is not articulated, like it is on the statue. I'm okay with it, I'm not sure they could have even made it articulated at that size.

Random pictures time.

Aldra has found herself a suitable Epic Mount.

Not so epic.

I always suspected Yuuno might be that way...

A marvelous display of the paint transfering/staining going on on Erina, despite my attempts to remove it. She has to be stored naked, now, which means I can't really put her on a shelf.

I...really like this picture. So moe.

Delicious horns? I would have tried to hang Takoluka somewhere specific, but it doesn't work...

"No, I think you can't handle it right now."

TELL YANDA TO PREPARE HIS ANUS.

Okay then, hopefully the blog won't just up and disappear on me...

New Arrival: 1/7 Haruhi Suzumiya Gothic Lolita ver.

2010-08-04T21:52:00.000-04:00

Oh hey trying something fancy for the marquee image.

First picspam of one of my Otakon goodies, the 1/7 Haruhi Suzumiya Gothic Lolita statue, made by Griffon. I've wanted this figure for a while now, but had always passed up earlier chances to get it because of monetary concerns or whatnot. This time, I just said "to hell with it" and got it when I saw it at a vendor's booth. Too bad there couldn't be a Figma or Fraulein of this outfit...

Since this is a statue and not an action figure, I pretty much don't really know what the hell I'm even doing, so there will be a bunch of pictures that may or may not actually be good or useful and maybe some text.

Box pic for reference purposes. It's rather beat up.

Since Haruhi is significantly taller than my Nendo playset, I decided to get a bit more intelligent and put something on the wall that possibly fits.

Since there's no movement, might as well have a pic of each side. This is the right side.

Back side and that giant ribbon.

Left side. This must be quite entertaining.

Close-up of the head and Haruhi's bust. Interesting note: the way the insides of Haruhi's mouth is painted makes it sorta look like she's wearing lipstick, even though there is no paint outside of the mouth. I can't seem to recall if there is an image this figure is based on, so I'm not sure if it's intentional. Still works, though.

...another close-up for some reason. The roses in her hair look rather neat!

Torso. I'm pretty satisfied with the sculpt and paint details on this Haruhi. I don't know if my opinion is really worth much, though.

Pretty nice section of her back exposed. Since TVTropes has an entry called Sexy Back, I assume bare backs (heh) is someone's fetish.

The stand. The stand looks nice. Unfortunately, the stand is a lie. It's completely hollow underneath, and there isn't even any kind of supports under where the feet peg into the base. This is probably the only thing I took issue with on the figure, but it was easily rectified by gluing some coins underneath. It's a curious design lapse.

I think I'm starting to not have clever/interesting things to do with the Lightning Bases.

A shot taken while I was trying to get the shot that became the top one. Was trying to find some gothic-looking scenery, but unfortunately I don't have any cathedrals near me.

"I AM HUGE."
"YOU ARE HUGE, ME!"

Takoluka picture.

Alternate Takoluka picture.

Well now.

IT HAD TO BE DONE. YOU KNOW YOU WANTED IT.

Otakon 2010 THE AFTER

2010-08-01T22:02:00.000-04:00

I have a Haruhi 'Brigade Leader' armband that I like to wear for the various conventions that I go to. As I was driving home today, the part of my arm where the armband would be was generally in the corner of my vision, and I kept expecting to see a mass of red there. Even feels a bit funny not having it on.

So anyways, I think this year's Otakon ended up being a great success for me. Despite one major failure on my own part. As I variously mentioned before, Hiroki Kikuta, composer of the music for Secret of Mana and Seiken Densetsu 3, was going to be there. I have a CD that he did called Secret of Mana+, an interesting seventy minute-long single track of SoM and SD3 arrangements. Obviously, getting him to sign that CD would have been really easy. Extremely easy. And very cool, it could stand proud alongside my copy of the Gradius V OST signed by Hitoshi Sakimoto.

I fucking forgot the CD at home.

Still did get an autograph, at least. It's just on a photo they had copies of. I'm going to crawl into a corner and cry myself to sleep.

I'm happy to have it, though. And two other autographs came with it! The dude in charge of the Eminence symphony thing, Hiroaki Yura (which I actually already had from his 2007 Otakon showing) and a lady named Shihori that's some sort of singer/songwriter but she's done work with Yoko Kanno and Nana Mizuki (FATE-O CHAN!) so I guess that is cool! Apparently the three of them collaborated on the music done for Otakon's opening animation, which I need to go investigate. They had a panel all together, and they said a bunch of neat stuff and it was neat listening to them. There were also a bunch of OCRemix guys in the audience for the panel...I'll not speak more of them. Also, apparently at the time of the panel, around 2pm on Saturday, someone decided to pull the fire alarm in the convention center, causing an evacuation of the building. The panel was being held in an adjacent hotel, however, so we didn't even know until afterwards.

As for the rest of the con, saw the Yoshida Brothers concert and thought that was pretty great. I wanted to buy one of their CDs afterwards, but when I went to their booth on Saturday, they were already sold out! So I'll just buy a digital copy or something. The concert ended up being much more than I had been expecting of shamisen music, though the drum guy did help. They were still cool. Should have tried to go to their Q&A session, but I think it might have conflicted with the Kikuta/etc. panel. Also watched most of something called Kamen Rider the First. I guess a movie remake of a Kamen series? I really hadn't seen any Kamen stuff before, but this was pretty cool and ridiculous. They burst out of the splash of a wave in the ocean riding on their motorcycles and did cool things.

I sorta wish I could have gone on Sunday, too. There was another concert that day, even though I don't think I'd have cared about it much, as well as a panel from Tomopop, which I don't look at much but they'd be talking about toys. Could have also potentially met some other people from /toy/ then a bit easier, too. I'll try to plan things out even better next year.

I bought a ton of stuff, of course. Though, only a bit over half of it is figures! Haul includes Griffon's Gothic Lolita Haruhi, Tandem Twin Sheep Girl Merino, Figma Nanoha Takamachi the Movie 1st Version, Robot Damashii 00 Gundam Seven Sword(s), Sega's Strike Witches Mio Sakamoto prize figure (though I discovered mine had a problem; I got two left Striker Units, argh), and Petit Nendoroid Akira Kogami I think "Real Personality version" or something like that. The Haruhi and Sheep Girl figures were both minor grails of mine, been wanting that Haruhi for quite a while but never actually acted on the chances I had to get it, and the Merino puts me one step closer to completing my Tandem Twin collection (that being one of each figure, since each figure they've made has come in at least two colors/versions). Just one more Tandem Twin figure to go! Since I got a new bag recently, I decided the bag should get its own keychain/charm thing instead of stealing the old bag's Dejiko, so I got a TINY Hayate Yamagi keychain to stick on it. Cute as hell. Two art books this time, Zealotic Blade Zero from the artist called Blade that did some work for Busou Shinki and likes to draw loli catgirls, and something called "Splash One". I haven't figured out who the artist for the second book is yet, though, but it was filled with Mecha Musume-type stuff so I picked it up. Two (rape-priced, but that's normal for them) Cospa shirts, one with Miku Hatsune on it and another with a picture of Saber and the Unlimited Blade Works spiel written on it. Finally, two yuri doujins, semi-randomly selected by me just sifting through the section with all the Nanoha doujins and picking two labelled "yuri". One's Subaru x Teana and the other is Fate x Arf.

I've been on a bit of a Nanoha kick recently.

Bunches of pics of the two larger statues, Nanoha, and 00 will come soon, hopefully! Also, I got a minature/doll house bed that I had ordered just before leaving, so now I can have fun with that.

Ultimately decided to wait a bit on replacing my desk. I just don't have the energy to deal with it right now, and there's a lot of stuff I should take care of before getting the desk instead of after.

And now, Post Exciting Thing Depression! Back to my shitty normal life!