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Anime

Latest figure reviews, Dollfie Dream photoshoots, anime season thoughts, and other anime-related rants.
I’m a pretty hardcore TYPE-MOON otaku and old-school Gundam fanboy so you’ll see plenty of both here.
Check out my full collection at MyFigureCollection.
Blog posts here are often cross-posted on MFC and/or Figure.fm
Photos are usually uploaded to both MFC and Flickr.
Up-to-date anime list can be found at MyAnimeList.
Crappy amateur cosplay pics can be found at WorldCosplay.

Here’s some useful anime-related links:

Japan Trip 2014 – Tenshi no Sato + Kyoto Station

See this post for the introduction. Continuing on from the Fushimi Inari Shrine visit, I went to meet up with sorrowmoon for a visit to Volk’s Tenshi no Sato. Tenshi no Sato was a dedicated Super Dollfie museum and “den” for Dollfie owners, complete with a Japanese-style garden in back and had always been a must-see for doll owners (reservation required, passport needed for foreigners). I had previously visited the location before and took some of my first Dollfie photography there, but that was before I had completed Arcueid, so this would be Arc’s first photoshoot there. Arcueid posing outside …

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Japan Trip 2014 – Fushimi Inari Shrine

See this post for the introduction. This was the first actual do-stuff day of this Japan trip, and the plan for me was yet another visit to Tenshi no Sato, but this time with my completed Arcueid Dollfie. sorrowmoon had scheduled our visit for the afternoon, so I decided to spent part of the morning with the rest of the group visiting the Fushimi Inari shrine yet again. Arcueid chilling at the Fushimi Inari shrine Japanese breakfast at the ryokan/hotel! Consisting of tofu, fruit bits, cheese balls with some sauce, preserved radish, bowl of tea, some spinnach?, piece of fish, …

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Shinonono Houki ~Akatsubaki ver.~ 1/8 PVC Figure (AmiAmi Zero)

This came in one of the huge AmiAmi boxes that I finally got around to unboxing along with the rest of my June 2014 backlog loot. I’m a huge fan of mechas and mechamusume, so I was pretty excited way back when AmiAmi Zero announced their Infinite Stratos line (though right now all they have is Akatsubaki and Blue Tears). While I was ultimately quite disappointed with the show (especially its sequel, “Infinite Fanservice 2” as I call it), the IS designs are apparently inspired by various Mobile Suit Gundam designs, with Akatsubaki very likely inspired by the ZGMF-X19A Infinite …

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Arcueid’s Custom Kimono Set by 兰亭

Care for some more sake, Master? A few months ago I attended Sakura-Con 2014, where I attended a mini doll-meet with OhnoRaptor, jadepixel, thebobness, and perfect34. thebobness had brought his Melty in a nice kimono, which made me think that I should get my Arc one as well. I searched around online afterwards and came across Haku1923’s beautiful Kimono Sora, whose kimono I immediately fell in love with. After doing some searching around, I eventually found out about the many kimono shops on Taobao, including the one Haku1923’s Sora had. Turned out it was an older set, 花絳Ⅱ, by Infinite …

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June 2014 Loot Backlog

Been pretty busy lately with work and planning the upcoming Comiket/Japan trip but I finally got a chance to sit down and unbox/go through all the loot backlog that has accumulated over the past while. Normally I don’t bother posting loot blog posts, but this time around there were some pretty big items I had been looking quite forward to getting. And so, here’s the rundown, with the lovely Arc as eyecandy ^_^ Pile of loot boxes, from AmiAmi, Suruga-ya, Rakuten, Yahoo Japan Auctions, and more! Everything opened up and all together! Mostly TYPE-MOON stuff (of course) but a few …

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Sakura-Con 2014

Last weekend was Sakura-Con 2014, the biggest anime convention in the north-west. The convention is pretty big with over 25,000 attendees this year and was the biggest I’ve ever been to since Anime Expo 2011. It was also the first time I was attending an anime con with friends also interested in anime (including OhnoRaptors and Tsukikira), which made it a lot more fun since I wasn’t always the only person excited to see stuff. Attended a few of panels, including “A Helpful Guide to Anime Figure Collecting”, “Are We Live? The iDOLMA$TER!”, “Cosplay Skit Contest”, and “Lesbian-Themed Anime”. Spent …

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Spring 2014 Anime Season

See MyAnimeList for my list of watching/completed anime. Check out AnimeCalendar for a nifty tool to keep up-to-date with airing anime. It’s the second week into this airing anime season. All the episode ones have been watched and all first impressions made (see here for notes and thoughts on the last season). Time to jot down the notes so we can check back three months from now and see how ridiculously wrong (or accurate) our initial thoughts were. It’s a bit early, but I think I’m more looking forward to the summer 2014 season (Sword Art Online 2: Gun Gale …

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Prisma Illya 1/8 PVC Figure (Phat Company)

This weekend I dropped by OhnoRaptor‘ place and she spend an hour or so teaching me how to use Adobe Lightroom. I was previously using Adobe Photoshop CC for all my photos but could never get any of them to look as nice as the gorgeous Dollfie pics I see on Flickr. Thankfully, OhnoRaptors to the rescue, and after being walked through most of the basic Lightroom settings and a few sample touchup edits, I was ready to try it out in my next figure review. So here’s the results, hope they look nicer now! Prisma Illya was chosen as …

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Arcueid Brunestud V1 Custom Dollfie Dream

Could this be the True Ending? Intro A while back, following my second Japan trip, I ventured into the world of Dollfie Dreams and created my very first custom DD, Arcueid V0. It was “V0” because at that time, she was created using only standard/unremarkable parts that you can easily pick up online through web stores or hunt down through eBay/Yahoo Auctions Japan. While Arcueid V0 was pretty good, she wasn’t perfect enough. And so I went on a quest to complete V1. Ideally, V1 would include a custom faceup, custom eyes, more stylized wig, and a proper skirt. A …

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Ryougi Shiki 1/7 (GSC) vs 1/8 (Kotobukiya)

So this weekend, the cherry blossoms (sakura trees) on University of Washington campus were in full bloom, so OhnoRaptors and I decided to go on a picnic + photography trip with a few friends. I thought it’d be a good opportunity to bring along a few figures for figure photography (was originally planning on bringing along Saber Lily but I realized it’d be a hassle to carry her around along with all the picnic food), so I went ahead and finally unboxed Good Smile Company‘s 1/7 Ryougi Shiki and Kotobukiya‘s 1/8 Ryougi Shiki. The place turned out to be far …

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