by | May 1, 2012

Mikumo Kitty Blobs

A few weeks ago, a package arrived on the doorstep. Luckily, I knew it was coming, otherwise I’d be very puzzled. My best friend had ordered an adorable little figure for me!

The Mikumo series of figures all feature Hatsune Miku somehow and are a cheaper alternative to some of the other figures available.  This one features a kitty blob design inspired by the video for “Becoming Round,” which I posted a link to a few weeks ago.  Here you see Miku, Rin, and Len chilling in a comfy cloud.

It’s definitely adorable. The paint job is pretty decent. The only real  messiness I could find was around Miku’s face. There’s some visible seam lines, but they’re not distracting, and the clouds are shaded nicely too.

Now for the weird bit.

There’s a naked nekomimi Miku around the back of the figure! This does relate to the video, as at the end, it shows Miku stripping out of her little cat suit. It’s still pretty weird. It’s an odd choice for the sculptors to have made, putting her in the back like that. It almost takes away from the figure as a whole. However, if you simply display the front of the figure, there’s no hint of this strange naked girl.

It’s a cute figure, and pretty decently made. I’m really happy with this figure. It brightens my day, sitting on my desk.

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by | April 15, 2012

Nendoroid Sena Kashiwazaki

Usually I limit myself to buying figures from anime I’ve seen or video games I’ve played. I fear that I would buy a lot more figures otherwise. I had to make an exception for Sena though.

Sena has some pretty nifty accessories, which is the main reason I bought her. She has a couch, a television, and a PS3. Plus, I really like her sparkly expression. Did the rest of her fit my expectations? Let’s find out!

I enjoy the fact that Sena is a cute girl that plays video games. Well, I guess she does. She’s pretty basic otherwise. Hair, check. School uniform, check. Her sparkly face is pretty cute.

Her butterfly clip is pretty. The edges are rougher than I’d like or expected, and it’s already fallen out more often than I’d like. The transparency is pretty awesome.

It looks like the painter for my Sena didn’t really care to get it right. One of her socks is pretty sloppy. I definitely like her petticoat though! Nice little bit of detailing there.

The accessories are curiously devoid of detail. Perhaps the PS3 couldn’t be labeled as such for legal reasons. I still think it could be more detailed. In fact I know it could be more detailed. I have other nendos with tiny accessories that have better detailing.

Just look at the back of the television. Plenty of detailing without any brand stamp. It’s weird.

The bottom of the television cart is pretty rough. This is the kind of thing I expect to see from kits I put together from plastic frames since I’m generally too lazy to neaten up the pieces. I don’t expect this from a finished product.

I don’t mind the television being blank, but white was really the wrong color choice. It’s very glaring. The PS3 fits very snugly in the cabinet, though!

I felt the way Sena looks while playing Mega Man 2 the other night. That game is unforgiving! With this picture, I also realized that it is pretty well impossible to take a picture of Sena sitting on the couch where you can’t see her underwear. If you angled from above it’s possible, but it might look a little weird. She sits fairly securely. There wasn’t too much tipping her over for this shot.

Tsundere pose! (Her cheek was probably smudged by me. I didn’t notice any problems with her faces upon first opening her box.)

Final verdict? Sena is 50/50 for me. I love her faces. She’s the only nendoroid that I see myself regularly using all expressions. However, the messiness of her production and the lack of details with her accessories really bug me. The PSP really weighs in her favor. I can see captioning many pictures of Sena with the PSP (or other nendos!).

If you really want Sena, I’d say go for her, but if not she doesn’t seem all that necessary.

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by | April 13, 2012

Planet Comicon 2012

It’s been a while! Sorry about that, I get weirdly antisocial and don’t even get on the internet for a week or two sometimes. That’s why I don’t really try to keep a schedule.

Also I’ve given up on vocaloid videos for now. I bored myself with them. Regular posts of some kind of theme are a good idea though. I’ll see what I can do there.

So! A few weeks ago now, I went to Planet Comicon in Overland Park, KS. It’s been running for ten years now, I think, and it’s aimed more at the sci-fi comic book crowd than the conventions I usually attend. I’d gone a few previous years, and although I’m never all that interested in panels, there’s usually some pretty cool guests. One year I got a picture signed by Lou Ferrigno! He’s HUGE.

The guests this year were Billy Dee Williams (Lando Calrissian in Star Wars), Edward James Olmos (Battlestar Galatica), two of the girls from the Guild (not Felicia Day), and various comic book artists and other personalities. Personally, I was really excited to meet Randy Milholland, who writes and draws the webcomic Something Positive.

There was one thing my husband and I hadn’t counted on for this convention. The CROWDS. It was crazy crowded! If you’re familiar with say, Naka-kon, think like that but with twice the people in the space. Or perhaps A-kon. The dealer’s room was wall to wall people, and they milled everywhere! There were no lanes for walking, people just up and stopped randomly and I started to really lose my patience in that sea of humanity. I was really confused, because the previous times we’d gone, it hadn’t been all that crowded.

Then I got to meet Randy, who is a super nice guy. There was a small crowd at his table, and he told stories of past conventions and children’s theater while he did sketches for everyone that wanted one. It was an oasis in the middle of the crowded dealer room. Also, I was recognized as a Homestuck by a fellow conventioner, and admired his awesome plushie. Then my husband and I trekked over to the Tardis in the corner for his big photo op, and that was our time at the convention. There were some impressive costumes, and some awful costumes, a pretty good variety of merchandise, and lots and lots of people.

So many people. I’m happy for the convention that they had such good attendance, but I really hope it’s not that crowded next year. Also, it would be great to not coincide too closely to any doll meets. Just sayin’.

 

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by | March 12, 2012

Vocaloid Music Monday: Bad Romance (cover)

Last week, looking up the video for Dye, I noticed a lot of Luka videos involving Lady Gaga songs. So that’s what you’re getting today! I like vocaloids and I like Lady Gaga, so what could go wrong?

Nothing really. I’d say Luka’s English is in the middle range of what I’ve heard from Japanese people, so that’s actually pretty good. At the same time, English speaking singers and voice actors have nothing to worry about at the moment. The English isn’t THAT good yet.

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by | March 5, 2012

Vocaloid Music Monday: Dye

I’m going to be lazy this week. It looks like I’ve run through all my own youtube favorites, so after next week’s video, I’m going to have to search out more videos!

The video for this week is pretty boring. It’s just Luka’s face with or without color, and possibly flipped. I do like the song though. Her voice is a nice contrast to the electronic backing music.

I’ve listened to a few vocaloid songs from AvTechNO! and I like most of them actually.

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by | March 3, 2012

FINALLY. Love is War DX

It has finally arrived. My Love is War DX Miku!

You should have seen my face when I went to pick this up from the post office. The box is huge! I brought in my Tony Taka Miku to help provide a sense of scale. This is definitely the largest figure I’ve ever bought. There were no windows in the box showing the figure – you’ll see below that it wouldn’t have made any sense. The box itself has an excellent design, really accentuated the style of this figure.

Opening the box, you see a fearsome array of parts! I haven’t seen the box for the regular edition of Love Is War Miku, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they used pretty much the same box, with just some text changes. There’s two layers of clamshell here, and some really diabolical use of tape, and wire to hold the clamshells together. Seriously, who puts a knot in those bits of wire?! I ended up just prying apart the clamshells enough to claim everything out of them.

Here’s Miku’s clamshell! You get a good look at her and part of the base.

Here’s the giant megaphones and railings that make up the rest of the base.

Instructions and the wire for the megaphone. The pictures provide all the illustration you need to put this all together. The wire is a pain. I may never buy another figure with any kind of wire again.

Looks like Miku’s twintails get extra support, which is good. Looks like they’ll need it!

Miku without the rest of her base. The pose ends up looking a little weird to me. Also her butt is sculpted very strangely. I wish I’d thought to take a picture at this stage but it didn’t occur to me until I had the rest of the base together. My camera stopped cooperating with me at that point, but maybe I will take a picture later. Her underwear is very strange as well. Her skirt is wonderful, looks very windblown, as well as her belt.

Her hair is just gorgeous. My only worry is that the smaller bits seem a little brittle. Hopefully nothing happens to them.

They’re a little difficult to see in this picture, but Miku’s boots have some really nice blue highlights! It’s not a trick of the reflection, it’s the painting. I am impressed.

More great detailing in her shirt, and the hand holding the megaphone: her trigger finger actually curls around the trigger! And look at all those nice wrinkles in her sleeve! Her face sculpt is beautiful, as well as her hair! On an intial examination, I saw absolutely no seam lines.

The base is complete. The quality is just great, everything looks like it’s actually metal. I’m always impressed when something manages to look heavier than it is.

Love is War Miku all put together, next to Tony Taka Miku for reference, again. These are the two most expensive figures I own, and I love them for different reasons. I also suspect that there’s a lot less wire than in the model pictured on the box. Trying to get it to do what it was doing in the diagram was super frustrating.

Now for some closeup shots of the details, specifically Miku’s shirt and arm warmer things!

Here is an example of my camera being uncooperative. It’s an automatic, I don’t have any control over the lens, which sucks often. I *thought* it would focus on Miku, but instead it focused on the megaphones behind her. This shot is still cool, but it’s a little frustrating. If you have any tips that don’t include “buy a new camera,” I’d love to hear from you.

 

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by | February 27, 2012

Vocaloid Music Monday: Become Round

I had work off last week, so I totally forgot to post a video – sorry about that!

This week, the video is for a song called Becoming Round or Become Round…it’s a weird little song, with a weird little video to go with it. It’s pretty cute though, you get to see Miku, Rin, Len, Kaito, Meiko, and Luka as little round cats. The song explains why it’s a good idea to become round, and features a couple weird military interludes that come out of nowhere in the second half.

Don’t blink or you’ll miss an especially scary looking smile from soldier Miku, pictured below. If you watch through the end of the video, it’s not a threatening smile, but maybe she just doesn’t know how to smile…nicely?

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by | February 26, 2012

Goodsmile Woes

I couldn’t contain my excitement when Goodsmile Company announced a release date for their Love is War Miku. Love is War is my first and favorite Miku song, so I was really happy to be able to order this awesome looking (and wallet breaking) figure. In the past month, Goodsmile has gone from being one of my favorite companies to a possible candidate for boycott. (Yeah right. I’ll still buy plenty of nendos.)

I decided to put in an order for the DX version of the figure, which comes with an enormous speaker base, and a lot more cost.

I had a couple issues with my payment, and learned first hand that their customer service leaves something to be desired. I had a slight miscalculation of my personal funds, so I had to scrape together money real quick (my fault, not theirs). However, their instructions were nearly inscrutable, and in this case impossible to actually follow. I was directed to click buttons on a page that didn’t exist, which puzzled me to no end. However, they do answer e-mails pretty promptly, so after back-and-forth conversation in e-mail, I got my payment cleared up.

Now to wait for it to ship!

I received the e-mail that this shipped, along with e-mails from other companies for other figures I’d ordered. It’s always exciting to expect something in the mail.

I received my Taiga nendo just before Naka-kon. I received my Append Miku nendo in the week after Naka-kon. They used the same form of shipping, I thought, so Love is War DX Miku should arrive any time now….

ANY TIME.

This past week (February 19-25), I mapped out when I’d received the e-mail saying Miku had shipped and when I thought I could reasonably expect to receive her. For the cost, I had better receive something! Then I received an e-mail that suggested through some weird error that a number of figures had simply sat at a post office for the past couple weeks, traveling exactly nowhere. Supposedly they are shipping now. This e-mail also looked to have been run through a translator and just copied-and-pasted to recipients, so I had to read it twice for it to make sense.

This on top of many shipment delays for the Cheerful Japan nendoroids is definitely not making Goodsmile Company look good. I seriously doubt I will order from their webstore again after all this.

That figure had better arrive this week.

(Yes, I did forget to post a vocaloid video last week. My apologies.)

image courtesy of Mikatan’s blog

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by | February 15, 2012

Ask My Nendos?

I don’t know that I’ve shared the fact that I’m on tumblr. If you follow my twitter, you’ll have seen some posts. I like it for posting just one or two pictures, and a snippet about whatever.

I’m stealing an idea yet again, but I started a tumblr for my nendos to answer questions! The link is: http://asknendos.tumblr.com/ If you want to ask a question, go ahead! I’ll take a photo (or two) of their response and post it as soon as I can. It’s just another fun little side project.

For anyone who’s interested, my main tumblr is http://graphicnostalgia.tumblr.com/ I post mostly pictures of figures, plus I’ve been doing a 30 day Marvel challenge. Sometimes I go on about books and such too. If you have a tumblr, drop me the url in the comments, and I’ll follow you.

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by | February 13, 2012

Naka-Kon 2012

Dun dun duuuunnn! Naka-kon was this past weekend, February 10-12, and this is a timely update!

This year the convention was held in the Overland Park Convention Center in Kansas, a new location. It’s a nice big space with two floors, and plenty of parking, plus there looked to be plenty of hotels and restaurants pretty near. If the weather was nicer (not so cold, brr!), there would have been many excellent chances to take pictures outside. Alas, it was completely freezing. I was tempted to cosplay a girl in a skirt, but I changed my mind in a hurry.

Cosplay-wise, there were a lot of Homestuck and Hetalia cosplay. It was also nice to see a couple Sailor Moon groups, a complete genderswap Adventure Time group (lots of Fionna’s!), some Madoka Magica (which I haven’t watched…yet), and a pretty good mix of lots of others. My personal favorite is this mascot Fluttershy. Speaking of, there was also a pretty good mixing of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and some random Dr Who cosplays.

I went to three panels, all on Saturday: BJD: WTF?, What Time is It?, and Constuck: a Homestuck Panel. The BJD panel was pretty informative, and the girls running it had enough dolls to pass around to illustrate some of their points. It was a little unfocused, and seemed like it was only scratching the surface of the subject matter, but it is a huge subject to cover. Nonetheless, I learned a couple new things.

What Time is It? was an Adventure Time panel, which mostly consisted of the panelist interacting with the audience, since internet in the hotel was pretty spotty. Fortunately she’s had experience with that type of thing before, and was more than able to lead a good discussion with the audience. It was pretty fascinating to listen to.

The girls running the Homestuck panel really needed to have saved their media to their computer. The panel was constantly hampered by the fact that the girls would attempt to play a youtube video which would promptly buffer. This caused me to want to suggest some good guidelines for newbie panelists, one of which is that if you’re using visual aids, keep a back up on your harddrive, or a cd, or some other media. The panel also advertised itself as a good panel for all levels of fans, from people who don’t know anything about Homestuck, to rabid die-hards, but that wasn’t true. My husband is a complete newbie and he was completely confused by the panel. Heck, I’m all caught up and I was pretty confused too. It could use some work.

Seeing some different panels, I want to try running a panel. I’ve got a couple ideas, so I think I’ll submit them when Motaku opens panel submissions. Wish me luck!

This year, Naka-kon had the musical guest Blood Stain Child, a metal band from Japan. They’re probably best known for contributing to the Princess Ghibli album, which is a collection of heavy-metal covers of songs from Ghibli movies. Unfortunately, they were unable to play any of their contributions, but they still put on a great show. I’m really happy that I took Friday off this year, so I’d be able to check out the concert. It doesn’t look like concerts will ever get precedence over cosplay, which makes sense. I’m sure cosplay is a much bigger draw than concerts, at least here.

Naka-kon also had some growing pains this year. Registration had to be closed down Saturday because they ran out of badges! The number I saw for overall attendance was 5,100 which is really impressive, but I might see if I can’t track down last year’s number to see what the difference was. My husband and I headed out pretty early Friday evening, hitting the convention center around 4:30, and the line wasn’t too bad then, but much to my amazement, the line got insanely long after we got through, and it stayed pretty well packed all evening! (I’m definitely pre-registering next year. DEFINITELY.)

So overall, it was a good convention. The panels I went to were all decent, the concert was awesome, the cosplays were varied, the space was large enough for all the attendess comfortably, and there was plenty of parking. I’m really happy with my convention experience this year, and I hope they use the same location next year.

 

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