I’ll do some proper photo shoots at some point, but for now have some photos of the box opening:

The arrival of a giant box. This is bigger than the box for any of the other dolls I’ve owned, including the 60cm ones! I was a bit shocked at first, since the doll itself is only 45cm.Thankfully inside the box was another much smaller box, and an even smaller one beside it (the culprit behind it needing the giant outer box).

Inside the box, lots of things all safely covered in foam and bubble-wrap.

Hands, horns and human feet. He came strung with the hooves attached, although I’ve since restrung him with his human feet.

Clothes, albeit rather skimpy ones. The detail on the outfit is really impressive.

The wig. I’m not usually a fan of fur wigs compared to fibre ones, but this one really suits him.

All Angelheim dolls come with a little laminated ‘birth certificate’.

They gave me two sets of eyes for some reason – one in the doll and this pair here. They’re acrylic, and I’m more of a glass fan so I probably won’t be using them, but I’m not complaining.

And the wings. They fitted together pretty easily, and the magnets are nice and strong. I’ll be painting these myself at some point, along with the hooves. I haven’t finalised the design yet, though.

Finally, the face! His faceup turned out perfectly, and looks just like the promo photos. It’s rather sparkly, but I like it that way. They also gave me the default eyes, thankfully. They really suit him (although my family think he looks creepy with them) so I’m glad I don’t have to go looking for an equivalent, although I’ll probably pick up some high-end glass or urethane eyes when I have the money because I do like the higher quality eyes.

Now for some shots of him out and about in the garden, all dressed up. It was really windy so not ideal conditions and I couldn’t be too creative with poses or he’d fall over, but I got a few decent shots.

Sparkleface

This was the only shot I took with his hooves in – oops. I’ll have to take some more at some point.

Fin.

In any case, after working out that I’d have enough money by selling the right things and being careful with money, I went ahead and ordered the doll. I’ve now got a wait of a couple of months or so ahead of me, but I’m sure the time will pass quickly with ‘delightful’ things such as my 15,000-word dissertation to deal with in the meantime…

And this is my new purchase! Another boy doll, since the female and neutral dolls I want are way out of my budget range right now. He’s MSD-sized (about 43cm high) and this time I’ve gone for a doll with tan skin. Tan dolls are actually kind of a pain to get hold of, not to mention considerably more expensive. The colour is more delicate and not as stable and easily affected by humidity levels, so companies may have to cast more dolls in order to get one of suitable quality, and often there are small flaws in the colour anyway so many companies (especially the pricier ones) are reluctant to offer them as standard releases. I’ve wanted a tan doll for a while, but the companies that sell them have been either too expensive or not appealing to me (several of the cheaper companies like Bobobie offer a range of colours as standard, but alas I’m not a fan of their sculpts).

He’s by a Korean company called Angelheim who I think are one of the newer companies around but their dolls are lovely, especially the fantasy parts. He’s limited to 15 (and his ‘twin’ doll is also limited to 15). Originally they were supposed to be time-limited ending on January 31st, but they had a 50% off sale on all of their older dolls running at the same time and most people opted for those instead, so they didn’t sell many of the twins and switched them to quantity limited instead. That was when I caved and ordered him. I had expected that I wouldn’t be able to justify getting him within the time limit and gave up originally, but seeing such a beautiful pair of dolls neglected like that I couldn’t restrain myself ^^;

He comes with human parts as well as the fantasy ones (including horns not shown in the image) and I’m getting him full set except for the painting on the fantasy parts, so he’ll have the same wig and outfit and the faceup, although I think the eyes will be random.

Images are from Raul’s page at Angelheim.

Back when I was applying to university, I made a point of looking at the social side of the university – specifically the clubs and societies – because I was looking forward to the prospect of finding more people who I shared hobbies with. I was really excited to see that Sheffield – my first choice for educational reasons – also happened to be home to an anime society. I was accepted to Sheffield to study Japanese, and of course I joined the anime society right away.

As a first year I really enjoyed being part of the society – everything was new and shiny and I got on well enough with the members. The society held its roughly annual charity fundraising ‘all-nighter’ in which members pay a fee that goes to a charity and spend 28 hours watching anime. This was loads of fun, since some of the members at the time were highly knowledgeable about older and more obscure anime, which I feel really broadened my horizons as an anime fan. I watched Cowboy Bebop for the first time, a long overdue introduction to a classic among Western anime fans.

As a second year, a few months in things began to go down hill a little. This was nothing to do with the club members as a whole, or the anime being shown – it was the unfortunate consequences of a short, disastrous relationship and a really messy breakup (that was woefully prolonged against my will) with a classmate who was also a member of the anime society. It was an interesting year in other ways, though. We had some of the Japanese exchange students join the society (which later resulted in my contribution to a doujinshi) and I also got on really well with some of the new first year students. The society showed Revolutionary Girl Utena as part of that year’s lineup, something I had heard a lot about but never watched for myself, to mixed reactions from the society members, and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann which was loved by everyone.

Then came the year abroad, so of course I couldn’t be part of the anime society that year. I actually found myself watching far less anime while living in Japan than I had done in the UK, but on the other hand I made plenty of trips to Akihabara, conventions like Comiket and Wonder Festival, and of course I bought a lot of manga and figures. I branched out into things that would challenge my Japanese reading abilities, and I began to read less and less scanlations for lack of need.

Now I’m in my fourth and final year, and something seems to have gone rather wrong with me and my relationship to Sheffield Anime. When the list of titles for the first semester were posted, I was disappointed. There was one show I really wanted to see, and one show that I liked but had already seen. Nothing else caught my eye at all (and some of it actively repelled me!) which is something I never experienced in my first two years there. There was always enough ‘hey, that looks interesting’ to balance out the ‘not my sort of thing’ and my taste in anime isn’t all that narrow. I went along anyway, just to see if the social side could make up for things. Having been away for a year, I now found myself with two years worth of people I did not know (this year’s new students, and last year’s who I never met). There were certainly people I knew part of the society as well, but everything was out of sync – few people had even heard of the anime I liked, post-showing socials were spent talking about video games I don’t play and internet memes I don’t care about. Half way through the semester I just stopped going, not an intentional break, but rather a lack of motivation to go and stress from the workload on my course.

Today they sent out the newsletter with the new anime for the Spring semester, and I was hoping for something more interesting but my reaction was about the same as last time, and this time I know the social side isn’t going to make up for that. Now, I didn’t write this post with the aim of complaining that the society don’t cater to my interests. Rather, I simply don’t ‘belong’ there any more. When I was a new student, I had never met so many anime fans in real life before and I felt a sense of community, but now simply being an anime fan isn’t enough for me to have common ground with someone. We’re all anime fans and most like gaming as well, but aside from that I have very little in common with any of the society members.

Did my taste in anime change irrevocably during my year abroad so that I can no longer relate to the average British anime fan? Am I a different person now, more suited to different social circles (certainly my social circle is drastically different now to the one I had as a second year)? Did this year’s committee simply pick a poor lineup of anime? I don’t really know, but I can definitely say that my time at Sheffield Anime has come to an end. I’m going to miss seeing the members I do get along well with, whose departments are so different that I never see them around the university, but there’s no use in trying to force myself to be a part of something that just isn’t working for me any more. I’m still going to keep watching anime, but no more anime clubs for me, I think. I’m not going to make an announcement of my leaving (and I haven’t mentioned this blog before) or anything like that, but I won’t be going again.

Photographs: Selidor
Model: Maya (Volks F-17 SD13 boy)
Outfit: Volks SD13 boy Omukae set, Japanese style

As always, click for full images.

Here’s something a little different from my usual posts – I have an illustration in a doujinshi! I got involved in the project via one of the editors, who studied at my university on exchange last year. It’s called アニメルか (Animerca) and it’s a magazine with articles and essays (in Japanese) about anime, with some illustrations included, one of which is mine. The website for it can be found here, and contains a full list of the contents (in Japanese). Some of the articles have been submitted by foreign fans, including David Cabrera (whom followers of the American anime industry might recognise as the new Astro Toy columnist at Anime News Network) and a kouhai of mine from the UK.

I think it’s quite different from what most English-speaking anime fans think of when the word ‘doujinshi’ comes to mind, but I think it’s a great project and a good counterpart to most of the stuff sold at doujinshi events.

Animerca Volume 1 will be sold at Bungaku Freemarket in Tokyo this Sunday, and also at Comiket in the summer, so keep an eye out for it if you’re appropriately located for either of these events!

Here’s the basic info on it:

アニメルカ vol.1
(Animerca vol.1)

Published by Project Animerca (アニメルカ製作委員会)
Publishing Date: 23 May, 2010
Place: Bungaku Freemarket (文学フリマ）in Tokyo
Price: 800 yen

And the list of contributors in English:

Nobuyuki Izumi
karimikarimi
Yuichi Murakami
Edoya Neko800
Kokone
noir_k
Sakasa Donburi
Sugitau
n_euler666
Kain
Jennifer Fu
David Cabrera
Brett A Smithson
mitsugo
kotohatoko
Kia Akita
Itsuya Shinooka
Robin (Me!)
EPISODE ZERO
ill_critique

I’m glad I was able to draw for the magazine. The majority of my experience with comics has been as a webcomic artist, so it was great to get an opportunity to try something different. It was also an interesting challenge for me, as I don’t have my scanner with me in Japan. I could have borrowed one from a friend, but instead I’ve been practicing drawing digitally in full (instead of my usual hand-drawn lineart with everything else digitally) since coming to Japan, and I decided to try doing the whole illustration with my tablet and copy of Photoshop. I was pleased with how it turned out, and while I won’t be giving up drawing by hand any time soon (I can’t imagine reproducing the cityscape I’ve just finished digitally), I’m can be more flexible with drawing now.

I couldn’t miss the opportunity to go to a Volks Dolls Party event while I’m in Japan, and the Tokyo Dolpa 23 was held in Golden Week so I made sure to attend. I got my copy of the guide book (which serves as the entrance ticket) in advance rather than at the door, which allowed me early entry to the event. While most events go on during the day, two of the most important ones require you to turn up early: the Tenshi no Sumika shop and the limited edition lottery. The Sumika shop the Volks official store for the event, and sells various things like regular edition dolls, stands and also a whole range of new, limited-edition clothes and accessories. This is what attendees turn up early to the shop for. The Sumika event outfits are only sold at the Dolpa event, and then at the after-events online and in their stores, always in limited numbers so you have to be fast to get what you want. The limited edition lottery is for attendees who want to get hold of one of the limited dolls Volks is releasing for an event. This time there were two YoSDs, an SD girl, an MSD boy and three DD girls. Attendees had to line up to get a ticket with a number on, and the lower the number the earlier they could go and try to buy a doll so the better chances they had of getting what they wanted.

Note: this post is very image-heavy. As usual, click on any image for an enlarged version.

This was my only chance to visit a Dolpa for the moment, as I don’t know when I’ll be returning to Japan after I leave in July, so I decided to go for the whole experience and turn up early. I can’t afford any more dolls at the moment, and there were a couple of things I wanted from the Sumika shop so I joined the queue for that. The event opens officially at 10 am, but early entry is from 7 until 9. I got up obscenely early and arrived at Big Sight for the event just after 7. I was number 364 in the queue (they give you a ticket to stop queue jumpers), which meant that a lot of people has already arrived ahead of me. Including the line for the lottery, I’d say there were probably about 1000 attendees there when I arrived, with more arriving all the time. Tickets for the Sumika line were handed out from 7 until 9, and then when the event officially opened at 10 ticket-holders were allowed in a few at a time to grab what they wanted, then queue again to pay. It was a little nerve-wracking as the line moved very slowly, and when I was nearly half-way to the till the first ‘sold out’ notice was given. Thankfully the first item – a pair of long white boots for SD and DD girls – hadn’t been on my list. as I got nearer and nearer more items were selling out. I was fortunate in that I was after clothes for my SD13 boy, because the outfits selling out were primarily the DD and SD girl sets. Luckily I was in time to get both of the items I had really wanted – one of the SD13 boy sets and a pair of black headphones for DD (although I’m using them for my resin dolls, since they fit just fine).

There was clearly a big otaku presence at the event (apparently the DD were the first limited dolls to sell out). The crowd was actually very mixed – from spending time on English-speaking doll fan sites you might get the impression that most doll collectors are women, but I’d say the event was split pretty evenly. There were a lot of middle-aged men, and while some were DD collectors many of them had SD girls and boys. There were married couples attending, with both husband and wife with their own dolls, gothed-up young people, women in delicate lolita dresses and all sorts of different people.

The event halls were still pretty empty when the opening ceremony was conducted, as only the early entry attendees and the staff were around. Once that was over the Sumika shop opened and the regular attendees started to arrive, and it got crowded pretty quickly.

Outside the Sumika shop Volks had set up a display with all of their new products being modeled by various dolls. They had a good selection, with outfits for all of their different sizes and ranges of dolls (aside from the original 1/6 Dollfies).

It was amazing watching some of the people buying from the shop – many people just went in and grabbed everything they could get, and left with baskets piled high with ridiculous amounts of clothes and accessories. I bet some of them could have purchased at least one new doll with the money they spent on clothes! It’s no wonder things sold out so fast with so many people just grabbing everything in sight.

After I had finished in the shop it was already past 11am, and I decided to have a look around the hall rather than throw myself straight into something like the dealers’ area. Volks had set up several displays including their Dolpa 23 releases along with various other dolls. The displays were very elaborate, with lots of different objects used for the scenery.

The frilly, lacy dresses seem to be very popular among Japanese doll owners. I can’t say I’m so fond of them myself – they make the doll look like it’s wearing a cake or something. I prefer subtler, more elegant outfits on the girls, but Dolpa was all about the frills.

They had a section dedicated to Dollfie Dream as well, of course. Part of it was set up as a sort of Fate/stay Night shrine to mark Sakura’s release at the event. They also had a mini Volks Showroom, with original character dolls Moe and Natsuki as the shop assistants. My favourite display was Maria’s though – the elaborate frame with flowers was really eye-catching. Maria was probably my favourite of the DD girls released for the event.

Alna is Volks’ new original character DD girl. She’s a bit more mature-looking than Moe and Natsuki, and they gave her the curvier Dollfie Dream Dynamite body, although I do think the huge breasts look a little awkward.

Next I wandered over to the one-off booth. One-offs are dolls from Volks’ Super Dollfie lines that are ‘unique’ versions of previously released dolls. They have specially-painted faces and one-of-a-kind outfits, and can be bought at the event if you’re really lucky. I’ve heard that they have various different ways of selling the one-offs, including auctioning them, but this time was a simple lottery. Every guidebook contained a form to fill out your details on, then you could place it inside the appropriate box for the doll you wanted. The lucky winners were chosen later in the day, and given the ‘honor’ of handing over their money to Volks in exchange for the doll.

Being unique versions, none of the one-offs came cheap, as you can see. They ranged from about ¥70,000 for the smaller dolls up to nearly ¥140,000 for the larger ones.

Next I visited the owners’ exhibition section, where for a fee doll owners could use a section of table to put their dolls on display for people to look at and photograph. There were some amazing dolls, like the transparent angel, and the little forest of YoSDs dressed as animals.

After that it was time to hit the dealers’ area. As well as some very nice items to buy, sellers often had elaborate little dioramas to show off their goods being modeled by their dolls. I bought a wig, a lovely pair of glass eyes and a dark blue shirt for Keiyan, my non-Volks doll. There were loads of lovely outfits, but being elaborate and hand-made they were all rather pricey. It was pretty difficult finding suitable clothes for my dolls though. While as I mentioned earlier most outfits for girls were frilly, lacy affairs, the boys’ clothing had its limitations as well. There was a lot of goth-y casual and formal wear, and military uniforms (I er, even saw a Nazi uniform… complete with a swastika…) and it was mostly black. It’s very difficult to find a wider range of colours for male dolls without venturing into the Asian street fashion-type outfits, which aren’t really appropriate for the backstory of the characters my dolls are based on.

A Miracle Train cosplay group! I never got around to watching the anime (probably just as well) but I recognised the theme of this group of dolls instantly.

I took a rest and ate some lunch after wandering the dealers’ area. Volks were selling their own bento, but as a vegetarian I was out of luck and had brought my own bento that I had made the previous day. Since it was the afternoon, the main events were starting, and first up was the lottery drawing for the one-off dolls.

The limited edition lottery had taken up a lot of floor space, which left lots of room once it was over and Volks’ staff set up tables and chairs for the ‘tea party’ area where doll owners could sit down and set up their dolls for display.

Danny Choo readers will recognise this DD Saber as his. I saw him at the event, and spoke to him for a couple of minutes.

The rest of the event consisted of the events on the main stage. Answers and winners for the Super Dollfie Quiz were announced, winners for random drawings and other contests, and finally the bingo. For every copy of the guidebook you are entitled to one bingo card, and the people who won got a random prize ranging from postcards to wig sets to the coveted Rei Tenshi and Sei Tenshi, special Volks dolls that are only given away for free at events. The Volks Tenshi are neither male nor female – their bodies are blank rather than having sculpted genitalia like the regular dolls. Winners of the event Tenshi have to register as owners with Volks, and are not supposed to sell the dolls as they are a special gift from Volks. I didn’t win anything of course, but the events were good fun.

I had a good time at Dolpa 23, and I hope to be able to attend other Dolpa in the future if/when I am able to live in Japan again. I highly recommend the experience for Volks fans, whether or not you’re looking to buy any of the dolls or limited outfits because there is plenty to see at the event even if you’re not.

You can see all of these photos and plenty of additional ones over on my Flickr set.

As readers following video games might know, new Square Enix titles Nier Replicant and Nier Gestalt were released in Japan a couple of days ago, with the latter seeing a US release within the next few days as well, I think. I got my copy of Replicant on release day, and have had the chance to try it out a little. I haven’t finished the game yet – not even close, but I can give my initial impressions of it at least. I probably won’t do a full review because I don’t have a lot of time for video games so I rarely finish them in good time, but I can give an overview of the gameplay and early story.

Note: as mentioned, this is based on Nier Replicant, the Japan-exclusive PS3 game. I have no idea the extent to which it differs from Gestalt, although it’s pretty safe to say the basic game system, dungeons and bosses will probably be the same, so I can’t say how much use this will be to anyone looking at Gestalt. This will contain spoilers for the earlier sections of the game, but I’m not far enough to have uncovered anything drastically spoiler-y.

The prologue section of the game might be a bit misleading. It opens on a grim, slight-future city (2053, the game tells you) and you play a hooded youth beating back demons with a length of metal pipe while his ill sister hides. Also nearby, a creepy talking book offering you the power to protect your sister if you would just open it. Inevitably, the demons overwhelm you and you give in and reach for the book. Now you have magic. With that, you have to fight off demons, who just keep coming, and coming, and coming… After a while I started wondering if I was doing something wrong, if maybe I was supposed to go somewhere else and maybe the demons kept spawning because I was standing around in the same area. I’m not entirely sure whether I misunderstood some of the instructions, or whether the developers simply thought it would be fun to throw hundreds of demons at the player, but in any case they stopped eventually. You level up really, really fast in this section (I think I was about 28 by the end of that bit, and I wasn’t hacking away at them for hours even if it felt like that).

Then out comes the boss, and you get a real test of your abilities. Also, you get to learn that they were taking tips from the developers of Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow when designing their boss fights. Anyone who has played any of it might remember that the developers thought that having you beat the bosses simply by fighting their health down to zero wasn’t enough, and that it would be a great idea to get to the end of the boss fight and have a magic circle come up on the touch screen for you to draw a symbol onto, and if you got it even slightly wrong the boss regained partial health and you had to carry on fighting. Nier uses a similar mechanic – get the boss’ health to a certain point (zero in this case) and a target in the shape of a clock will appear on its body. If you don’t hit the target (right in the centre, and they’re pretty strict about it) and apply enough damage before the clock hand reaches 12, the boss gets a chunk of its health back and you have to try again. You’ll be pleased to know that later boss fights involve more than one of these targets at different stages in the fight! Some people might enjoy this, but I found it a pain. On the plus side, when you do successfully hit the target, you get too see a neat little cutscene in which the protagonist launches weird-looking formations of dark energy at the boss to finish it off.

Once you finish off the first boss, you can return to your sister, and we get to see that her sickness is a little more supernatural than it first appears. Once the scene ends, the screen fades to black and over 1400 years pass. Now the game starts for real. Once again you’re a teenage boy looking after his ill sister, but this time you’re in a more traditional RPG setting (sort of – remnants of the previous age are scattered over the landscape in the game, in a sort of post-post-apocalyptic way). You’re a young man in a small rural village, and lately all sorts of nasty creatures have been popping up close to your home. Where have I heard this one before? I know in interviews the developers have talked about wanting a different, more personal motivation for the protagonist than a generic ‘save the world from evil’ but it’s a pretty moot point because the set-up isn’t really treading any new ground here. I enjoy RPGs, so I don’t think this is a bad thing but I can’t see it convincing anyone with a strong dislike for this sort of set-up.

You start off performing various tasks for the village and trying to keep your sister happy, and not long afterwards incorporate demon-slaying into this. There are plenty of standard side quests – fetch x amount of mutton, deliver this parcel to the next village and other things. You meet Kaine, to be your sidekick later on, quite early in the game, but as of writing this I haven’t teamed up with her yet. I can tell there’s probably still a lot more to do because the protagonist looks a bit young and is sporting a really silly hairstyle instead of the emo-ish one from the promo material.

One thing that immediately struck me was the atmosphere of the game. They’ve done a really good job with the setting. The landscapes and dungeons beautifully capture that epic fantasy feel. Early in the game you visit a nearby village which clings to the sides of a great gorge, and you move between levels via tall ladders and high, narrow bridges across the gorge itself. There is no ‘world map’ in the usual JRPG sense, but rather settlements and dungeons are connected by wilderness more reminiscent of the open-world style of Western RPGs, and although you don’t have quite that level of freedom (the plot progression is still pretty linear, although I believe it has multiple endings?) it’s far more immersive than the world map sections of say, Tales of Vesperia. The music is beautiful in dungeons, settlements and even the world between them. The game switches between peaceful and chaotic quite a bit, and aside from the prologue section I haven’t found it tiring and repetitive.

It’s also really… bloody. This surprised me given incidents like Uncharted appearing censored on Japanese PS3s, but maybe they’re more okay with demon blood spilling everywhere than human blood? After a fight your protagonist can wind up covered in the stuff, although it disappears not long afterwards. There are two basic types of creatures you encounter: beasts and demons. Beasts are your regular animals, from sheep and goats to oversized spiders. For the most part they aren’t aggressive, but for example if you stand too close to a sheep it might give you a nasty kick. There’s really no need to kill these unless a quest requires it, but if you’re feeling mean/want to get some wool or meat to sell, then you can run around killing them if you so wish. Demons are your main foes, and come in various shapes and sizes. I’ve seen small, fast ones that can kick you back several metres if you’re not careful, large ones with clubs and shields and a couple that used magic, amongst others. It’s hard to describe them because they’re indistinct shadowy forms that can materialize out of nowhere. These are definitely aggressive, and if you wander anywhere near them they will approach and attack.

The camera is a little odd – for most sections it’s a standard 3D console game view, but certain sections of dungeons switches into top-down, or even a side-view allowing for sections that play more like a platformer. I also found a block puzzle at one point, so the developers were clearly looking for variety, and while the sudden camera switches are a little jarring the different elements blend quite seamlessly otherwise.

The combat is action-based and real-time in the dungeon or wilderness, so you can see foes from afar and choose whether to engage or evade (and certain types of foes like to gang up on you if they spot you fighting from a distance). I’m playing the game through on normal this time, and the combat difficulty is about right, and pretty challenging in certain sections. More experienced console players than me might find it easier, but I definitely haven’t been finding this as simple as a lot of other JRPGs. I’ve gotten through two boss fights, and am just trying to get through the third and while the first was quite simple, they get harder after this. Bosses follow the standard RPG mold of having a sequence of different attacks that get more elaborate and dangerous when you get the health low enough, but have a particular type of attack that kind of reminded me of bullet hell shooter games, but mercifully less complicated, in which they send balls of energy at you in specific patterns. Examples of this can be seen in the game trailers.

So essentially, while there are some points of frustration and of course it’s not perfect, I’m having a lot of fun with it so far. JRPG fans looking for a slightly different take on an action RPG will probably have fun with this one. I’m not sure how much appeal it might have to action fans in the West despite the intentions of the developers, but I think it’s better than early previews suggested it might be. I noted with amusement that the Japanese Amazon reviews for it are a lot more positive and far less polarized than for FFXIII. Famitsu liked it as well, so while Gestalt is likely to be a bit of a niche product in the West regardless of efforts to appeal to the mainstream, Replicant at least seems to have been well-received in Japan and I can see why from playing it.

Lastly, I know a lot of SE fans were disappointed that if they wanted to play Nier in English they’d have to put up with the older, more macho protagonist supposedly created to appeal to Western gamers, so I’ll try to give an idea of how import-friendly it is. Short version: not very.

Reaching the next goal in the game shouldn’t be too hard for someone with no Japanese language ability – you have a map in the bottom-right corner of the screen showing a red cross in the direction of your goal, so you don’t have to worry about knowing where to go next. The complicated part is probably the maps system itself. In an interesting touch of realism, by default you will have no map of an area, and your mini-map in the corner will be a grey block (you still get the red cross though). If you want a map of your surroundings you have to go about obtaining it in a different way. Your first map is given to you by the leader of the protagonist’s village, but subsequent maps must either be bought or found in the field. Being able to passably understand Japanese I had no problems with this, as I could recognise the place names and then buy the relevant maps, but otherwise you’re best off just buying all of the maps (items ending in 図) – you’ll need all of them eventually anyway.

Basic combat is pretty easy to work out with trial and error, but magic might give you a little more trouble, as it’s not like the standard RPG magic where things are separated by element and given a handy relevant icon to indicate this. I haven’t found it very easy to navigate myself, so without no knowledge of Japanese you’re likely to have trouble.

There are different types of items that can be distinguished by which type of icon represents them in the inventory and shop menus. HP recovery items use ‘HP’ in the description so would be easy to recognise, but there are also items that reduce damage for a set amount of time, cure poison and other things that aren’t so obvious if you can’t read the text. There are also lots of different natural resources that can be harvested – stone, metal, animal products, plants and fruit – which are useful only to sell or in a quest. Shops can be identified by pictorial signs.

The story doesn’t seem too complex so far, and you can get an idea of it from reading about it online but the dialogue and subtitles are Japanese only.

If you really want to play Replicant over Gestalt, wait for someone to translate the menus/create an English guide, otherwise you’re better off going for Gestalt instead.

I got to play with my brand new camera, which was good since it’s far superior to the old Nikon Coolpix L2 that I share with my sister normally but brought to Japan with me. My new camera is a Panasonic FZ38 (FZ35 for American readers). It’s not a DSLR, as I didn’t feel like making the jump from a four-year-old simple compact to something quite that advanced, but it has a lot more features than my old camera and the picture quality is really nice.

We went by highway bus, which was a new experience for me. The journey to Nagoya was about seven hours from Shinjuku in Tokyo to Nagoya Station, and we traveled overnight. We caught a bus at 11.30pm, and reached Nagoya a little after 6am. We paid for the tickets separately online, so they put us on different buses, although I was with one of my friends on the bus I rode. It was not a particularly pleasant experience, but it was far cheaper than taking the Shinkansen. The lights on the bus were switched off shortly after leaving, and we were supposed to sleep but it wasn’t really possible because the seats weren’t designed for comfortable sleeping and we stopped a couple of times at service stations to use the bathrooms and buy more snacks and drinks.

We were pretty wrecked by the time we got to Nagoya, but we had a whole day ahead of us and couldn’t check into our accommodation until the afternoon, so we stored our heavier bags in the station lockers, grabbed some breakfast and then set off around Nagoya. By the time we had all arrived and eaten it was probably about 8am, which was still rather early for sightseeing, but we took the subway to the station for Nagoya Castle and wandered around in the nearby park for an hour or so, in the rain no less. We were so tired at that point that we didn’t care, though.

The original Nagoya Castle was mostly destroyed by an air raid in WWII, so what stands now is a concrete reconstruction, but it’s still an impressive sight. Inside the castle there are various displays of remaining parts of the original castle, replicas and models, and then when you get to the top floor there’s an observation area where you can see across the whole city.

The windows couldn’t be opened far enough to stick a camera out, so this was taken through the window and it was a gloomy day anyway, but the view was pretty good considering the circumstances.

We found ourselves a nice prize in the castle grounds – some early sakura! Most of the sakura here haven’t come out fully yet, but in the odd place you could find a few trees in full bloom. The dorms at my university are surrounded by sakura, so once they bloom I’ll have lots of photos of them to share. It was funny seeing the sakura in tourist spots in Japan – they were always surrounded by tourists (foreigners and Japanese alike) taking endless photos.

After the castle we got some noodles for lunch (kishimen – a Nagoya speciality) and then headed over to a different part of the city to see Atsuta Shrine. It’s not the largest and most elaborate shrine in Japan, but it’s famous for supposedly holding one of the three treasures of the Imperial family (a sword, with the other two being a mirror and a jewel) but nobody is actually allowed to see it so nobody knows what it looks like, or even whether it’s really there!

Chickens seem to be a common sight around the major shrines, although I’m not sure if there’s any special significance to them. It gave me a nice opportunity to try out my camera on some moving objects, though. They were congregating near the sake barrels.

It was still raining at that point, in fact I think it had gotten even worse. That didn’t stop people from turning up at the shrine, though. Like churches in the UK, the majority of visitors seemed to be elderly, or families with young children. The shrines dedicated to love and fertility that we visited on our trip tended to have more young couples.

I managed to get a sneak shot of one of the miko when she happened to walk by while I had my camera out and ready.

There were lots of trees – sacred or otherwise – to be seen around the shrine.

After leaving the shrine we returned to Nagoya Station to pick up our things, and then we set off towards our accommodation. It was quite a walk, especially with heavy bags, but it was worth it when we arrived because it was a great little place and cheap as well. It was Japanese-style, so we has a simple tatami-mat room and a futon each, and we had an en suite bathroom attached. There was also a computer, an inexplicably a massage chair (300 yen for 15 minutes, not that this deterred my friends from trying it out). Outside the room was a beautiful little garden shared with the other rooms, and a path leading to the bathing area (there was also a shower in the en suite, though). No food was included (I’m vegetarian so I make food awkward anyway) but it was still good value, and we could eat at nearby restaurants or buy from convenience stores.

We all had a good rest after arriving, and then went out again later after recovering, although we didn’t fully regain our energy until we had slept properly. The next day we went to Ise, a small city not too far away – I’ll make a post for that soon!

Hourou Musuko, translated as Transient Son, is a series by Shimura Takako. Yuri fans will know her for being the creator of Aoi Hana which had a fairly recent anime adaption, but she has a really interesting catalogue of manga dealing largely with relationships, but touching on a wide range of themes especially in the LGBT side of things.

Hourou Musuko has gained quite a bit of attention recently after it was licensed in English by Fantagraphics as Wandering Son, and only a few days later an anime adaptation was also announced. With Aoi Hana having gained quite a fan following for it’s more mature and realistic take on lesbian relationships compared to most other yuri manga, Hourou Musuko seems to have piqued the interest of quite a lot of people.

For me, seeing it become more mainstream leaves me both excited and worried, and probably not for the reasons a lot of people might expect. Hourou Musuko is rather unusual in that it deals with characters who are transgendered. I mention it briefly in my about page but I’m actually trans myself so to see a series dealing with trans issues touches quite a personal note for me. It’s sort of interesting to look at trans representation in Japan, because in some ways it’s superior to my own country – the UK – and in others rather inferior. There are certainly a lot more actual trans individuals (especially trans women) to be seen in the media, but at the same time Japan is lacking in terms of things like equality legislation. Certainly with regards to fiction, in Japan you can see a lot more fluidity in mainstream media representations of gender than in the West. Thus, Japan is probably one of the few places where something like Hourou Musuko could see a TV series at this point in time.

To me, Hourou Musuko has a pretty good representation of trans characters – they are realistic characters rather than stereotypical caricatures that are often seen in anime, and a far cry from the way Japanese media can’t seem to differentiate between a gay man, a drag queen and a trans woman (Western media is much the same in this respect). The series deals pretty well with the hardships faced by trans children, whose lives are rather out of their own control, and is certainly miles ahead of any other series I’ve read.

My apprehension has more to do with the way the anime fan community that I interact with will react to the series. I’m not talking so much about outright negativity here, although I’m sure there will be plenty of that too, but rather sheer ignorance. Trans people do not have a good media presence in any culture, and the vast majority of non-trans people have little to no understanding of trans people and how to behave towards them. I don’t mean this as an insult, it’s just an unfortunate effect of the position trans people occupy in most societies. It’s mainly ‘small’ things that most people might consider benign, like using the pronoun a trans person wants you to use instead of the one associated with the sex they were assigned at birth. Anime fandom rarely deals with directly trans-related issues so for the most part it rarely makes me feel uncomfortable, but having a series that deals directly with trans characters means that suddenly I’m going to be faced with incorrect pronoun usage, mis-gendering, debates about trans issues (whether transsexuality exists, what gender a trans person is “really” etc.) in the fandom I participate in for fun, and I’m really not looking forward to this. Perhaps being trans myself means I might be able to correct some of the weird ideas people have about trans people, but I’m not a living educational tool and it’s tiring having to fight with people at every step just to be treated like a regular human being (refusing to address somebody by the gender they say there are, using terms like ‘it’ or ‘he-she’ is treating a trans person as though they’re not an equal human being).

This post was probably a little heavy and academic in parts but I wanted to articulate some of my thoughts on the topic, if only to point out that the issues dealt with in Hourou Musuko are also faced by real people, and that there’s more to transgender than just academic theory and comic relief on TV.

My next doll isn’t nearly as expensive as my Volks boy, although he’s not from one of the cheaper companies either. He’s from a Korean company, and is around the same height (a few centimetres taller) as my other doll Maya. Another boy, since of the three remaining characters of this particular universe that I want to turn into dolls, he’s the simplest as the other two (a boy and a girl) require much darker skin tones. ‘Tan’ dolls as they tend to be called, are more unusual compared to paler yellow or pink tones (usually called ‘normal’ by doll companies) and ‘white’ skin which ranges from paper-white to a very pale cream or otherwise tinted colour. Resin-making is a apparently a difficult process and requires an appropriate climate amongst other things, and making darker-skinned dolls without too much unevenness in the colour is tricky, and with the wrong weather many companies just give up until the season changes. So the two other characters will be harder and more expensive to obtain (Soom’s Chalco in tan would have been perfect for one of them and not too tall, but he was far too expensive and the wait times tend to be long on their special monthly limited dolls so I had to give up on him – I might wait until Crobidoll do another limited tan run on one of their sculpts and see if that works for the character instead).

The company I went with this time is called Dream of Doll. They’re very well-known among BJD fans, and have been producing dolls for quite a number of years now. They’re actually one of the first companies I ever encountered and the first doll I ever wanted was from them, so I feel it’s rather fitting to finally be ordering a doll from them, although it’s quite different to the dolls of theirs I was originally drawn to.

The doll I decided to get is this one – Code no.02, DoD’s newest standard release doll. I’m taking a bit of a risk with him as there are no owner photographs to go on, only the promo shots on the company’s website, but having seen plenty of owner photos of their other dolls I’m pretty confident that I won’t be disappointed by him. With standard release dolls, it’s not the same as with the Dollfie Dream licensed character girls where there’s only a set period within which you can order, the company carries on making them until they may decide to discontinue the doll in the future (and DoD don’t appear to discontinue dolls often if at all) but being in Japan gives me the rare opportunity to import something expensive without the horrors of the UK customs process. I’m not sure whether in Japan they can charge customs duties on expensive items, but I’ve imported things valued over $50 with no problems, and the consumption tax here is a mere 5% compared to the 17.5% VAT in the UK.

I’ve taken a couple of promo pictures of him from the company website and posted them here. There are more images of him to be seen on the previous link.

He has a very pretty face, but he doesn’t look too much like a girl (by BJD standards at least). His expression is also pretty versatile depending on the angle of the photo and the positioning of the eyes. I needed a doll who could pull off a scowl, but also achieve a less aggressive expression (I was also considering Crobi’s Yeon-Ho when they rerelease him as a full set). A lot of the DoD line have quite wide eyes which doesn’t really appeal to me in either their girls or boys, but when I saw Code no.2′s sculpt I knew right away that I wanted to get him. They do have some other dolls that I would rather like to own, though. One of their girls, E-an, is really gorgeous although I’m not sure what I would use her for character-wise.

I’m getting him with the default face-up shown here, since the colours and style really appealed to me and I think it should work okay with my plans for the doll. He’ll come with the wig shown and a random colour pair of acrylic eyes, which I’ll be replacing at some point so that he can look appropriate for the character I’ll be turning him into. I’m not getting the outfit, largely because there’s just so much leather on it and as a vegetarian I’d feel uncomfortable owning it, and also because it would add an extra $80 onto the order. It’s also not especially appropriate for the character in question.

His body type is brand new – their other 65cm boys have a slimmer body, but they’re also producing a somewhat bulkier one now and Code no.02 is the first doll to feature it. Apparently DoD dolls tend to be very slim anyway, so even with the wider body he shouldn’t look out of proportion compared to Maya (there’s not a massive physical difference between the two characters, but Maya is slightly smaller and faster with slightly less brute strength which means the dolls should work well together) and hopefully I won’t have too much trouble finding clothes for him.

I ordered him mid-February, so he should arrive some time around late March or early April. They have an event going on currently so they will be busier than usual as they’re currently offering free face-up service on one doll per customer (useful for me, as it saved me $60 on the order) but at worst he might take ten weeks which is about what Maya took. The wait will be worse this time though, as I’ve been participating in the waiting thread for this particular company on one of the larger BJD forums and watching other people’s dolls get shipped out and arrive as you wait is nerve-wracking. There should be some photos of Code no.2 soon, as the first person to order him on the aforementioned forums has already had the shipping notice.

Since I have a long wait ahead of me, I’m going to be spending the time keeping an eye out for wigs and eyes that I can use for him, although clothes will have to wait until he arrives and tries on some of Maya’s clothes so I can work out what fits him (knowing my luck the only things that will fit him will be Dollheart or something equally lovely yet bank-breaking).

I’m getting a new camera for my birthday in March, so once I have it I’ll be taking some photos of Maya in his newer clothes. I’m also going to be taking a trip around Kansai (the western part of Japan) for a week in March due to the Spring break, so I’ll have lots of photos from that.