Happy New Year!

Postal Goodies

I’m part Vietnamese (the other being Thai/Chinese…) so I tend to associate the lunar new year as a Vietnamese custom rather than Chinese.
Anyway, yesterday I went down to the post office to pick up some goodies!

As you can already see, my Shuraki box #2 finally arrived, that’s a shocking 2 months or so of wait… -_-;
This was purchased over at Kid Nemo Company. After a month, I emailed them to see what was the delay about, apparently there was a mix up or something… -_-;
I wouldn’t of known if I didn’t go and ask them myself, so I was a lil annoyed. Shipping and handling was also a lil steep since this was an American company, having the figure sent from Japan, to them, then to me in Australia… However, if you do happen to live in America, Kid Nemo might be a great option as they do update their products fairly fast, usually faster than HLJ from what I’ve seen.

So here’s my beloved MeiFeng, a figure I’ve been longing to get. I must say tho, I find myself getting Shuraki figures because of 3 main reasons, in order:

• Their hair, Drill Hair~!
• Weapons
• Facial expression, grrrr~!

Oh god, I LOVE MeiFeng, EVERYTHING, her unusual hair colour and style, china dress and that “ribbon” on her leg, her weapons and her general pose and “attitude” and HER LEGS~! No battle damage photo, same deal with Char, you’ll see it when I do a photo shoot :3

Next up are doujins and magazines which I received from my good friend Hectic3, without him I’d be… more rich… orz

Megami Creators, some of you may know it from a previous post. This is Volume 10 of the series and it has some very nice artists being presented, such as Kei who happens to have done the art for Crypton’s Vocaloid2 series.

This issue comes with a huge B2 sized poster, double sided, one of what you see on the front cover, and the other is an illustration by KOMATSU EEJI~! featuring Noriko, Asuka, Nia and Yoko as Mecha Musume as Gunbuster, EVA-02, Gurren and that thing that Yoko sits on…respectively.

YOU WA SHOOOOCK~!!! Some of you may recognise the artist from another previous post featuring the iDOLM@STER girls. Now it’s Vocaloid2‘s turn :3 I assure you, it is hilarious XD

Next up is a Touhou doujin “Another day comes” by Claps Cat, non-H, and it’s something about Marisa having catears (instant win) and she wants it off…Alice gives her a kiss and POOF, they disappear, Marisa then proceeds to run away~

Another Touhou doujin, this time by HappyBirthday. The cover is really really nice :3 The background has a holographic sheen to it. It also comes with an A4 oversized poster :3 This is also non-H, I can’t really tell what’s the story about, but it looks like a simple happy-go-lucky type one~

Now, I also received the long overdue iDOLM@STER Christmas for you! soundtrack, yes, I know it is now February, blame Hectic3 (I did mention I love you right? ^^;)

I haven’t had the time to listen to it yet, as I’ve been busy (in fact I just ripped it while I was typing this post) so I can’t really give a review, but what I can give is an opinion on the art:

So with that, Happy New Year!

Unfortunately I don’t know who drew that so I can’t link back =/
btw, I was born in the year of the Tiger, two more years to wait! rawr! >:3

Today’s package

Char Rhousemann

Just a small post today… again.

Char Rhousemann graces my room with her elegant yet firm presence~

Went to pick up a package today, it was my first ever post from Hobby Search.
For those who havn’t shopped from them before, they’re pretty decent. Perhaps a lil expensive in terms of shipping, since they only have EMS option for international orders. However, they are fast in their product listings, so if you have an item you MUST have pre-ordered ASAP, then this might be a good choice since HLJ is a lil slow in that area.

As you can see (please excuse my room…) and prolly already know if you’re into figures, is that the Shuraki line of series come with a small booklet and a drama CD, both focusing on the character of the box.

Char also comes with some battle damaged (ripped :3) clothing, but you’ll have to wait till a photo shoot before seeing that. Also, it’s a bloody PAIN to undress and dress her up, rubbing painted plastics together is not a thing I’d like to do with my figures. Anyway, I have a few ideas in mind on where to take photos of her around here, so look forward to it!

…than never

Upcoming Stuff!

OTL Sorry guys about the lack of updates, been busy yadda yadda~ Point is, I got a whole bunch of stuff to show you guys soon, and just in time for the xmas holiday :D Wanna know what’s going to happen? Read on!

Basically what I have lined up are the photos that I’ve still to post, some other nifty items of otaku interest from soundtracks to video games, and I’ll be starting the simple weathering tutorial for newbies as well! The current poll seems to indicate that the Soviet T-34 is in the lead at the time of this writing, which is great as I got lots of them…living up to their name of the most numerous tank in WWII. The poll will be open to the moment I start, which may be into late November, or early December.

Here’s some previews of the photo shoots I’ve still to post, in no particular order:

For those interested, I’ve been busy with final assignments with my study for the year, also I’ve been sucked into the grinding world of Lineage 2 again, along with games occupying me on PC, Xbox360 and PS2. I’ve gotten into the interview stage of my studies for next year so hopefully they’ll turn out well, otherwise it’s job hunting for me! :D

Peace@Pieces

Nagi – School ver

Oh god,
before I go any further, this is prolly the worst batch of photos from the Manifest photo shoot day >.<

So here is Nagi, in her normal school outfit, you may remember her from a previous post

I’m almost ashamed to post this set but oh well, it’s a short post-ish. Here we go!!

Location

Nagi was having her photo shoot at the quad area in Melbourne University, I don’t know the actual name of this area but it’s beautiful. Makes you feel like you’re in a castle :D

Setup

Again, no mini-tripod but I didn’t really need it for this area, what I really REALLY needed was a piece of white canvas/paper/SOMETHING to stop the green reflection of the grass =/

Figure

I love this figure, it’s just so appealing to me for some reason. Maybe the hair? clothes? her bust? who knows. Sculpted by Hiromitsu Morikawa, this 1/8 figure is spouting of Goodsmile company/Alter quality.

She’s painted nicely as well, soft gradients give her more depth in the curves and creases. While not an entirely accurate sculpt of how she looks in the game, it’s still pretty as ever. Oh, and you can take her skirt off :3

Thoughts

The worst photo shoot of that day, mainly due to the sun’s indecisive bouts of hiding behind cloud or not. Gah, I’m just awestruck at how many of the photos sucked ^^;
Sorry folks.

Summary

Moé is what I would describe this Nagi. She was one of my first figures, and one of the older ones in my collection, so old that it doesn’t even appear in Goodsmile’s website o_o; Anyway if you look reaaal hard in some of the photos, you can see a white area on the tips of her back hair, that’s from me DROPPING her… I guess the strong highlights mask most of it away, yay for bad photography! XD

Details – Photo shoot

Camera
Nikon Coolpix P2
Date
15th September 2007
Location
Near the Old Arts Building – Melbourne University

Details – Figure

Name
Nagi Akizuki
Series
Peace@Pieces
Maker
Goodsmile Company
Alter
Sculptor
Hiromitsu Morikawa
Scale
1/8
Release date
September 2005
Place of purchase
Wonderfest ’06
Retail price
4,200 yen
Bought it for
2,500 yen ($29.00 AU approx at the time)
Availability – HLJ (at time of writing)
Discontinued :(

Original illustration of Nagi

GOOD APPEAL!!

Japan Packages

Today, I got what I wanted for a whiiillee~
I have a friend who’s staying in Japan for a year on the JET program (teaching english etc). Now, he’s also a fairly obsessive otaku and a kind one at that, he’d get stuff that I wanted from Japan that would otherwise be unavailable, or too costly for me to get.Today two packages came in the mail from him :3

This is all the things he managed to get for me during that whole summer event period in Japan, I wish I had given him more money…

Again, apologies for crappy indoor shots~

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I glee with excitement, my mouth salvating, my fingers wriggling, a gun in my pocket…
That’s how it was when I got home with the packages, I opened then up and began my exploration and documentation of the items for both this blog, and for my database of all things otaku (this is going past 14k AUD…and I still haven’t included some items…).

Aaah advertisements, I love the ones from Akihabara :3

Gao~! Finally got the Illya + Berserker plushie I’ve been trying to get for some time, and also the Saber Lion from Fate/Tiger Colosseum which is a Wonderfest Summer ’07 exclusive.

Rawr~! Nendoroid Saber Alter and the non-scale Saber & Irisviel of Fate/Zero, both by Goodsmile Company (MY BOX, MY BEAUTIFUL BOX~!!!!), both exclusive to Wonderfest summer ’07.
It’s possible that I’ll be bringing the Saber & Irisviel to Manifest for a photoshoot~ I’ll be scouting for places this Friday.
I’ve been so busy today that I haven’t even opened the figure boxes yet >.<

( ﾟ∀ﾟ)ｱﾊﾊ八八ﾉヽﾉヽﾉヽﾉ ＼ – ＼- ＼
I managed to nab myself a super limited edition of Lucy Maria Misora maid version. The regular is pictured to the left in a white and red with green trims outfit, the boxed version is the white and black with gold trim. Only 950 were produced, 400 for Wonderfest Summer ’07 and 550 for limited online orders. You can check the site at Wave, although you can’t buy it anymore…
Excuse me while I drool all over the box…

The two Fate Fantasm Boxes come choc-a-block full of goodies that just shouts ｷﾀ━━━━━━(ﾟ∀ﾟ)━━━━━━ !!!!! The first is Illya, it comes with a book with character illustrations and other articles, and the second half has some fan manga which was fairly cute. The box also includes Fate Character Trump playing cards, a bust of Illya with blood and a BerserCAR! >:3

The second box is Black Saber, my favourite, the book contains the regular stuff but the fan manga is so cute :3 Along with this box comes a Black Saber tapestry weighing approx 50 x 65cm, a Black Saber eyemask bust and a flashing LCD keychain

I now have three busts, from left to right, the one I got with Computiq magazine and also weathered, the Black Saber eyemask version, and the Illya + Berserker with blood.

Also, the BerserCar lights up it’s right eye when you push Illya down XD

YES! Ito Noizi’s new artbook which everyone and their uncle has, it just oozes（；´Д`）ハァハァ with all the Shana art and her other works, it also includes other characters such as Alulu/Elulu, Bridget, the Melonbooks mascot and much more. Like the previous artbook GU-RE-N, KA-E-N comes hardcovered and a beautifully illustrated jacket. My friend also managed to grab me a poster with it but he had to send it another time =/
The KA-E-N came with this photocopied sheet by Ito Noizi for animate, a chain store in Japan :3

Now onto the two doujins (he would of gotten more if I gave him more money beforehand…) that my friend managed to get from Comiket 72. I requested for iDOLM@STER and he delivered on the goods.

First up is NORTHANM@STER by Ojo-Noyokusitu.
It’s a Hokuto no Ken (Fist of the North Star) cross iDOLM@STER parody! I know i know… but trust me on this, it’s hilarious! I laughed for a good few minutes and now my stomach hurts (although it’s prolly rather to do with what I ate…). My Japanese language skills aren’t that great, so I couldn’t really understand the whole story =/

Enlarge to clear censorship

Second is i.D.M side A by U.R.C
Yes, it’s a H doujin, and a full colour one at that o_o
Story goes along the lines of the Producer having to interview candidates for a new idol group, he gets the first five girls details and goes off to “interview” them.
After “interviewing” he goes back to the manager and eagerly asks for the next batch… *drools*

There ya go, all my stuff I got today in the mail, time to stroke my e-penis…I mean open up my figure boxes ^^;

P.S. I’m gonna have small post images for non-photo shoot posts from now on so don’t think there’s something wrong with the small one :3

Mabinogi

Nao

Second post! This is Nao from the Korean MMO Mabinogi, also one of my friend’s figure from his collection. These photos were also taken on the same day as Himekuri in my last post with the exception of one of them.

Also in the last post, I said that the photos aren’t all that great in my opinion, but hopefully the later photos will reflect my learning, or lack of…

As well as taking pretty pictures of plastic, I also try to include the backdrop to a degree. I want it to compliment the figure, being careful not to make it the central focus while making sure it actually helps the figure aesthetically.

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Location

Slightly different with the Himekuri this time, the first photo is at the same place, but the rest were taken a few metres away at a small stone pavilion. It was still early afternoon and the sun was still high in the sky, so there was ample light even in the shade.

There was a few more people walking through, some lady watched me for a sec…not sure what was going through her mind.

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Setup

Easy, placed the pretty Nao on the ledge, and snapped away! I had to use a white sheet of paper to reflect some light back though as it was a lil dark, this is why having a buddy around is good, extra pair of hands. Other than that, it was pretty simple, no need for any other equipment such as a mini-tripod.

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Figure

Now, the figure herself is nice. Nao makes a fairly nice transition to plastic. The sculptor has done a nice job with her, the detailing on the body and figure aren’t too complex but that suits the character design just fine.

Paint wise, great. From the floral patterns on her dress to the wooden texture on the staff, the paintjob was done nicely, my only concern is the hair. Some parts of it seem to have a different colour where it should be smooth, along with some noticeable seamlines if you actually pay attention.

Her dress is also translucent, which is a nice touch, makes you want to look a lil closer…and if you do, you can see the top of her delicious stockings~

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Thoughts

I screwed up lol. I don’t have any full body shots of Nao for that session, so you can’t see the detail of her luscious legs with that backdrop. However I do have a full body shot of her from the next day’s photoshoot with other figures at the Royal Exhibition Building, shown below:

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Summary

Photos are again, decent in my opinion, I did like how she turned out when we were in the stone pavilion though. Anyone who is a fan of simple and elegant girls with stockings, Nao is a nice addition. For some it may seem a lil too plain, but take a closer look and it may appeal with it’s nice lil details such as movable necklace and her thighs.

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Details – Photo shoot

Camera
Nikon Coolpix P2
Date
11th/12th October 2006
Location
Outskirts of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Royal Exhibition Building

Details – Figure

Name
Nao
Series
Mabinogi
Maker
Goodsmile Company
Sculptor
Hiro
Scale
1/8
Release date
April 2006
Place of purchase
eBay
Retail price
4,200 yen
Bought it for
$50.05 AU
Availability – HLJ (at time of writing)
Discontinued

Original illustration of Nao