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 …
Read More »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 …
Read More »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 …
Read More »Happy Chinese New Year + Website Updates
Happy Chinese New Year! Happy Chinese New Year everyone! For those who don’t know, January 31st is this year’s Chinese New Year, also known as the “Spring Festival”. It marks as the first day of the Lunar New Year, which is based on the lunar cycles of the lunar calendar rather than the solar cycles of the Gregarian calendar. While most of the world uses the Gregarian calendar as an international standard, the lunar calendar is still used for many traditional holidays in many asian and middle-eastern cultures (including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Indian, etc.) although the degree of celebration …
Read More »Winter 2013 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. In my past anime chart blog posts, I would make predictions for the upcoming season prior to the first airing week, then update my comments at random points through the season. This time around, however, I’ve decided to first go through all the EP1s (and a few EP2s) so that I’d be able to give actual first impressions based on the actual episodes rather than just PVs + descriptions. I’ll probably end up updating this post a few times …
Read More »Anohana Movie: Letters from Menma + Autograph Board (Aniplex)
Today was the US/Canada screening of the the Anohana Movie. For those unfamiliar with the movie, it is a retelling of the Anohana (short for Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai., known in the US as AnoHana, We Still Don’t Know the Name of the Flower We Saw That Day.) TV anime series, from the point of view of one of the characters, Menma. See here for the movie’s PV. If you’ve never watched the series, I’d highly recommend watching it as long as you have a tissue box nearby (aka prepare for ninjas cutting …
Read More »Saber Extra EX Figure (SEGA)
Today we have the proud Saber Extra (aka. Saber Nero, aka Saber Red) from Fate/EXTRA. I usually don’t like collecting prize figures, but I try to collect at least one figure of each kind of Saber and the alternatives weren’t all too appealing (not a fan of Satoshi’s faces in Gift’s figure and Clayz’s 1/6 figure is way too big). I’m probably going to sell this once I find a Saber Bride figure that I like (have SEGA’s PM Figure preordered but it’s also a prize figure, and Alphamax’s looks tempting but a bit too boobaliscious…) Anyway, as Saber Nero …
Read More »Caster Extra 1/8 (Phat Company)
It’s been a while since I took a break with figure collecting (mainly because my figure photography desk got invaded by my new desktop and miko Saber Lily) but I’m back with slowly chipping away at my To-Review list of TYPE-MOON figures. Tonight, we have Caster Extra, the playful servant from the Fate universe’s spinoff PSP game, Fate/EXTRA. I haven’t played the game yet but it has official TYPE-MOON endorsement, so despite the char designs/art style not being Takeuchi’s (Fate/EXTRA character designs are by Wada Rco), I’ll acknowledge it as part of an alternate Nasuverse. Anyway, to the figure! How …
Read More »Caren Ortensia 1/8 (Alter)
The forgotten, real fourth TYPE-MOON heroine. Caren is the main heroine of Fate/hollow ataraxia, but no one remembers because 1) Fate/hollow ataraxia wasn’t as popular as Fate/stay night as a VN, and 2) Caren was a pretty bland character ;( TYPE-MOON considers their 4 heroines to be Ryougi Shiki (Kara no Kyoukai), Arcueid (Tsukihime), Saber (Fate/stay night), and Aoko (Mahou Tsukai no Yoru) in that chronological order, but they forget the other two main heroines that came before Mahouyo (i.e. Caren of Fate/hollow ataraxia and Sion of Melty Blood, both of which came before Mahouyo). Even though she was meant …
Read More »Matou Sakura ~Battlesuit Ver~ 1/8 (Alter)
Been spending most of my free time playing Blade & Soul lately as well as setting up my new desktop, but the queues are forever, so here’s another TYPE-MOON figure review! Today is the gentle kohai/perfect housewife, Matou Sakura, in her battle outfit How the hell did I end up so low on the popularity ranking polls? Saber!?!?!? This is just the one of a long series of post-unboxing, backlogged TYPE-MOON figure reviews. After moving to my new place, I set up a nice corner of the room for figure photography and took a bunch of review-style photo sets of …
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