Toward the Terra Blue and Jomy PVC

I was pretty surprised to hear about this, since figures of male characters are rare, especially from a series like Toward the Terra which probably has a larger female audience than anything else. I’d love to see more of an attempt to produce this sort of thing (especially by the more well-known companies), because I’m sure there are more people than the figure companies seem to expect who are willing to buy them. I guess depending on how well things like the Megahouse GEM line and the male Nendoroids do, there might be a better chance of this in the future.

The painting doesn’t look to be one the same level as the more well-known anime figure companies but it looks decent enough, and the sculpt looks pretty good, especially for Blue’s outfit. The poses of the two characters are dynamic and interesting. I’m not sure what the base is supposed to be. I suppose it’s just one of those abstract shapes that figure companies sometimes use.

I’ve never even heard of the company producing it. Pair-Dot seem to be a subsidiary of Pit-Road, who appear to make more military kits than anime figures. In fact, this seems to be their first foray into anime characters, although HLJ lists them as having done trading figures and PVCs of some girls in military uniform. I assume this must be a new venture for them, and I suppose something like Toward the Terra is a decent place to start, because there’s no competition with other manufacturers as there would be with more popular characters and shows.

My Room

I got around to taking some photos of the most interesting areas of my room yesterday. I had to tidy it up a lot after I got back from university – I hadn’t cleared out my old belongings for a very long time, so I had to throw out a lot. It was worth it though. My room is now looking very neat and tidy for the most part, and I made room to have all of my figures, manga and DVDs on display and shelved instead of being inside a cupboard that was too small for them.

I have a pretty brightly coloured room. It always surprises people because they expect something more subdued. I had it painted when I was about eight or nine, and it’s never been redecorated since because we don’t have the time to redo any of the house, especially not a room that has already been redecorated once since we moved in. I kind of like it being colourful, though.

I’m not much of a photographer (especially indoors) but the pictures I took should be clear enough for the most part.

This post has a lot of images – just click on one to see it larger.

Nendoroid Saber Lily

Mikatan’s blog has a new post up showing the complete set of accessories and extras for the adorable Nendoroid Saber Lily, along with an announcement that preorders will begin on June 25th!

I’ll probably be getting mine in at HLJ, although I may change it later if I can get it cheaper through something like Amazon JP, since I’ll be over in Japan by the time it’s released.

Clearly they were saving the best until last when they started to reveal her different faces.

I think she’s probably one of my favourite Nendoroids yet. The detailing on her outfit is really lovely, and they’ve included a nice range of extras – she comes with both Caliburn and Excalibur, and her facial expressions are all great. She has a fierce expression, a smile and the adorable one shown in the image above.

I’m glad to see a proper, regular release Nendoroid of Saber at last – all of the previous ones have been exclusives or have been adorable but a little odd, like the Saber Lion, and those F/S N Nendoroids with the weird faces and accessories. I’m also glad to see a Saber Lily at an affordable price – both the Figma and the GSC PVC (I’m not so fond of the Alter) are outside of my budget for now, but I should be able to afford the Nendoroid just fine, and she’s just as lovely as they are in her own way.

—

I’ve been a bit neglectful with blogging the last week or so, but I’ve been pretty busy now I’m back at my family home. I booked my flight to Japan last week, which has taken a serious chunk out of my poor finances even at the student price. There are more expenses to come as well – I need an expensive vaccination, and I’ll need to pay a visit to London to get my visa once the documents come through from the university I’ll be studying at. I also need insurance for the trip, plus a laptop (although Apple has a nice student deal on at the moment which will mean I’ll get an iPod Touch for very little money if I get the laptop through them, which I likely will for the student prices), and no doubt lots of smaller costs as well.

I’ll have a couple of photos of my collection in a day or two now that it’s all in one place, and some art as well.

Figma Cute ‘Shift Body’

Over at the Figma blog (take a look at the blog for more photos) there’s a new post about Figma Cute, the Queen’s Blade limited edition Figma being bundled with the PSP game. The makers had previously been alluding to something called ‘shift body’, and they’ve now explained what it actually means.

As the image shows, they’ve done something rather interesting with this Figma. Previously the Ikki Tousen girls had come with exchangeable parts to make their outfits look battle-damaged, and Figma Rin came with an extra lower arm, but they were standard exchanges of parts. This one has gone a slightly different route, clearly in the name of fanservice. It seems her whole torso and upper legs can be exchanged for a static part that looks like it belongs with a PVC statue rather than an action figure. The main problem some collectors have with action figures tends to be the visibility of joints, and the tops of most action figures’ legs can often look a little awkward and certainly weren’t designed with showing off the figure’s assets in mind, but this extra part provided with Figma Cute gives her a smoother sculpt at the sacrifice of pose-ability (which is no problem since it’s an optional part).

It remains to be seen whether this is a one-off special because she’s a limited edition (and from a fanservice-y franchise like Queen’s Blade) or whether other Figmas may include similar features in the future, but either way it’s an innovative little extra to include.

Death Note Nendoroid Puchi

Mikatan of Good Smile Company has two blog updates featuring Death Note Nendoroid Puchi! You can find the entries here and here. There are lots of other photos, so it’s well worth taking a look. These are the first half of the line-up. It looks like there will be two each of Light, L, Misa and Ryuk, plus Watari and Rem. The Misa and Light ones look especially adorable, and I think you can really see an improvement on their Nendoroid line when you compare them to the regular Nendoroids released in 2007. I’m too tired/lazy to read through the Japanese at the moment, but I’m presuming by the number of figures they will be released blind-boxed like many of the other Nendoroid Puchi.

Gift Saber arrival and the end of term

Despite having made a couple of posts over the last week, I’ve been extremely busy due to exams. Thankfully that’s all out of the way now – I had my second and final exam yesterday morning. It was my Japanese language exam, so it was pretty nerve-wracking, but I think I should at least have managed to pass, and maybe I’ll even get lucky and do better than last time. I don’t think I did as well on the written section as the previous exam because I really hate doing statistics in Japanese (I’m pretty good with stats, but not so great with them in a different language, it would seem). The translation and reading comprehension went better than last time though, I think. Now I’m effectively free until whenever in August or September I head out to Japan (providing I didn’t fail that exam). I’ll have to keep up the Japanese with lost of practice. Maybe I’ll scanlate a couple of the one-shot manga in my possession. I have a nice little original doujinshi by Yamakami Riyu that has never been translated, and is flat enough that I won’t have to take it apart in order to scan it. If I’m confident enough with it I might even lend a hand to some of the scanlation groups. I’ll also have lots of opportunity to draw, although I’m probably going to focus mainly on making money from it because I need as much as I can get for Japan.

I’ll be moving back home in just over a week, which I’m glad of because my living arrangements at the moment are… less than desirable, shall we say. I’ll have access to a camera again, which will be useful. It will also be the first time in nearly two years that all of my hobby collection will be in one place. Last Summer I left a lot of things at the house I’m currently in because the lease covered the Summer and it was easier than trying to take everything home in the car (which I’m dreading having to do next week). Since I don’t have accommodation up here next year for obvious reasons, everything is coming back and I can combine it with all the DVDs and manga I had to leave at home. I’ll have to take a photo of my collection or something because even though it’s not exactly impressive, it will be one of the few opportunities I have when it’s all in the same location.

Barely relevant Saber image

On a different subject entirely, I went and collected Gift Saber from the post office this morning. They didn’t even try to deliver her because she had customs charges, so I had to hand over the money before I could get my hands on her. This is the first time I’ve been caught by customs, although one of my current housemates has dealt with it before. I had to pay £10.73, which is probably getting off easy but the main annoyance about it was that only £2.73 of that was actual charges by customs – the other £8 was Royal Mail’s ‘handling fee’. I guess I should be grateful that they caught me on Saber and not Lelouch, who was a lot more expensive and would have incurred much higher charges.

She does look great, though. I’ll probably take some photos of her (along with some of my other figures) after I’ve moved back home, even though dozens of people have already done this. I’m probably going to use the anime head most of the time because I love the colour of the paint used for her eyes, and I like the detailing on the hair better. I think the only part I don’t like is the sword – the rest of the figure is so elaborately detailed that it just looks plain and doesn’t really fit the style. It’s fairly accurate to the original design, from what I can remember off the top of my head, but I would have rather it been subjected to the same artistic interpretation as the rest of the figure. The mirror base is really nice, but it’s just going to get so dusty ^^;

Golden Sun DS

Click for huge version

Nintendo announced earlier today at their E3 press conference that Golden Sun is officially coming to the DS in 2010! Rumours and occasional comments had emerged from time to time, along with that hoax a couple of years ago, but this time after six years it’s the real thing. It looks to feature at least some 3D elements, although obviously there are no concrete details yet. You can take a look at a short trailer from the event here! The summons look fantastic!

The two Golden Sun titles from the GBA were my favourite games for the system, and probably my favourite RPGs, so I’m really excited about this. Presumably the story will be carrying on from the somewhat open ending of the second game. I wonder how many of the original cast will be making an appearance in it? Given the ending, it could conceivably be set quite a way into the future. I suppose the most likely scenario will be having the descendants of the original cast as the main protagonists please don’t kill my ship too badly. Hopefully data from the previous game will be transferrable through the GBA slot (which will put DSi owners out of luck) because if I have to enter one of those passwords manually again I will cry.

EDIT: Replaced the image with a gorgeous piece of character art released by Nintendo. The main character is an earth user as is typical for the series, and looks very much like Isaac so he’s presumably related. The guy in the back resembles Garet a little, but seems to be a wind user? The girl looks to be a water user. There are only three characters shown though, which potentially raises some questions. Hopefully it’s just because it’s the first bit of art we’re seeing.

Some screenshots have also been released, you can take a look at them over here. The backgrounds look like full 3D, and look very nice for a DS game, although I’ll miss the stunning pixel backdrops of the GBA games. The sprites look like a mixture of both – it’s hard to tell. Either way it’s looking good, and I can’t wait to see what other details are going to be announced for it.

HLJ Sale Part 2

HLJ finally started the second part of their sale this morning. There are plenty of good figures in it this time, including Alpha x Omega Kallen and Shirley, and Yoko Nendoroid and Gift versions. Some of the items sold out almost immediately. There were quite a few tempting things, but I think I’m going to give it a miss because when I looked over my non-essential expenses for the last few months they were way too high, and there’s only so much I can make taking commissions over the summer (I’m planning on doing some freelance landscape and map art for virtual pet sites, if any of them will have me). I need to be able to make at least a heavy contribution towards the MacBook Pro I’ll hopefully be getting (or a higher-end MacBook if my family decides the Pro is too expensive) because unlike figures, the laptop is a necessity since I can’t take my beloved iMac to Japan with me.

It's not that I don't want you, Yoko, I just can't afford you!

The only one that I was really tempted by was Nendoroid Yoko, since as lovely as the Gift version is I can’t be spending £50 at the moment. When I’m in Japan I’ll hopefully be able to get Nendoroid Yoko for the same sort of price anyway though, what with much lower delivery charges and the prospect of brick-and-mortar stores.