Seasons change, clocks turn, and before we knew it, Hobby Hovel is three years old! This past year has born witness to a dizzying amount of changes for me, both within and without the blog. Of course, these changes need to be chewed up, digested and expelled into the cauldron I prepare only once a year. That’s right my lovelies — it’s time for another anniversary post!

(Artist:  にわ子)

Returning from the Dead

When I wrote the second anniversary post, the future of Hobby Hovel seemed uncertain, and for a while it really seemed that way. After the Revoltech T-Rex review, it took us no less than nine months to post another review.

Ashlotte bemoaned of how well-recieved this “no-effort” shot was. It was hilarious.

Thankfully, we got back into reviewing with renewed vigour with a long series of weekly posts. Ashlotte ended up shooting photos for a bunch of reviews he’s written prior, and no matter how much he insists his photos were mediocre, I still think they look great.

I’ve started to use a black glass setup that produces some really nice reflections, and I’ve been trying a number of new things to avoid the same old routine I’ve repeated for so long. Gone are the days when an image being good enough simply by being clear — my current goal is to impress and stand out in a growing figure community full of talented individuals. You can tell by the considerably more aggressive post-processing methods I’ve been using. Whether or not I am successful in impressing people is another story, but I feel the need, which is both encouraging and intimidating at the same time.

I’m currently playing around with out out-of-focus objects as backdrops. In this photo, I used crinkled tin foil.

Asides from the black glass, I’ve had some favourable results with coloured lights. Currently I’m playing with the idea of using out of focus objects in the backdrop for interesting results. Most importantly, I feel like I’m making progress, and that’s what excites me the most going forward.

News-worthy?

I’ve dabbled twice in the world of figure news in the past year — the Double H podcast and writing as an associate editor for Tomopop. For Double H, Ash and I pulled out certain pre-orders that went up over the past week and bounced our opinions against them in audio format, and for Tomopop, my job was post figure news (mostly new pre-orders), which also consists of me giving opinion of figures to varying degrees. Neither of these two ventures took off after the initial novelty wore off, and there are several reasons for this.

The first reason is simply that opinion and news don’t mix. Traditional news writing is not supposed to be loaded with opinion, and when it comes to figure news, I really don’t think it’s even necessary — anyone with a working pair of eyeballs can make up their own opinions about a figure, so why would I (or anyone else) care about what some random bloke thinks of a figure when I am perfectly capable of making up my own mind?

Figure news is not like  figure reviews — in the latter, the reviewer has hands-on access to the subject and is able to provide information and content  that others might not have. But in case of figure news, everyone has access to the same half dozen promo photos, and this inherent problem bugged me more and more as time went on.

Secondly, figures have always been a fun hobby to me, yet when forced to spout off opinions about pre-orders, there is often a lot of negativity. This was natural, given how picky I am with my purchases, and it certainly got amplified when discussing figures with Ashlotte, who is very vocal about what’s wrong with a given figure/figure maker/figure industry. I wasn’t a fan of this; putting a such a negative tone over the hobby just made it seem so needlessly serious. Regardless of how valid the negativity is, at the end of the day we were just complaining about a bunch of plastic tits, and when I put it that way, doesn’t that sound kind of sad?

Of course, the alternative was to fake positivity. I tried to play a bit of good cop to offset Ash’s bad cop in Double H, but I mostly struggled with this in the Tomopop posts. I don’t always get to write about the figures that I want to, and trying to muster up positivity (or even just enthusiasm) for some mediocre Griffon figure or the umpteenth Nanoha figure is hard. When I read the old reviews I’ve written, I usually do so with a smile on my face, but some of these news posts make me cringe.

Ultimately, I think the best way to go to present figure news outside of the barebones approach would be to use a humorous and light-hearted tone. This is also something I’ve attempted to do. The problem was that it made the task substantially more difficult and time consuming because humour doesn’t come naturally for me, and when you’re spending two hours to churn out a pre-order post for Tomopop, you know something’s not right.

By now, you probably think Tomopop and Double H have been horrible experience for me, but that’s not true. Of anything in the past three years, Double H probably got the most excitement out me of. Driven partly by illusions of grandeur, trying to become internet personalities with Ashlotte was not only new and refreshing, but also really fun in the early stages. The same could be said for Tomopop — I enjoyed being a part of something that was much bigger than myself. I was proud to say that I work for Tomopop, even though most of my close friends are not fans of the site. And let’s not forget that my Tony Luka figure is a review sample provided by HobbyLink Japan through Tomopop, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed shooting and reviewing that figure.

Does this mean the end of the road between me and Tomopop? Not necessarily — though I doubt I’ll be doing much in the way of figure news in the future, there might potentially be something new I’ll be working on. I don’t want to spoil it since the idea is still in its infancy, should it ever see the light of day, I’ll be sure to let you know here.

Life Outside

PARTICLE EFFECTS: THE GAME

2012 has been the year of MMOs for Ash and I. Starting off with Star Wars: the Old Republic back in December, we’ve rolled through TERA Online and Guild Wars 2. In retrospect, the most fun I’ve had with was in TERA when we teamed up with the Otagamers and Plastic Parfait crews and cleared quests and dungeons together — at least until most of us go bored of the game. Overall, I feel that SWTOR was the most enjoyable out of the three, if only because how much personality and immersion the extensive voice-acting gave to the game.

As I mentioned in the room post, I’ve also moved out of my parents’ place. Life has been good as the flat continues to take shape, now with a 46” TV on the way. Between work, chores and other interests, I don’t have as much time for figure or even weeaboo hobbies in general — hell, I’m not even up to date with what’s being released sometimes. However, now that I’m more interested in photographing  figures, it kinda balances out. I still might not post as often as before since I’ve becoming more demanding of myself, but that also translates to less plain black backdrop sets in the future and more experimentation.

The Status Quo

Traffic to the blog has risen over the past year. Unique visitors per month averaged at 4,530 per month, peaking at 6,497 in August, up from 2,539 in the second year. Page views have also risen from 9,275 to 12,754 per month, also peaking in August at 17,519. This came as a great surprise to me, since participation on the blog has fallen noticeably. There are less comments on reviews and there also hasn’t been a lot of new faces on Twitter.

Unsurprisingly, the most-viewed pages have been the gunpla reviews. This is because Gundam models are rarely discontinued, thus reviews for these products remain relevant. I do find the fact that the top coat tutorial has overtaken the home page in terms of views hilarious.

As for the dip in active readership, I can speculate about the cause all day. Maybe it’s because I haven’t been venturing outside my small circle of blogging friends (with whom I chat with every day on Skype), thus limiting my participation in an already small community. Maybe it’s a result of MFC’s growth and the shift of the figure community from self-run blogs to a hub-site like MFC. Maybe it’s because we stopped posting reviews for nine bloody months. Hell, maybe people left after being repeatedly subjected to the sound of my voice in the Double H podcasts — who knows?

Though I occasionally dwell on this subject, my game plan remains unchanged. I’ll continue to make contents that I enjoy making and I think my readers would enjoy, be it the usual reviews, or new things like videos and whatever else that comes to my mind. The most satisfying way to elicit a response is through the merit of the post itself, and to that end I want to improve further, especially as a photographer.

Ashlotte has had some tough luck over the past year. He’s been out of a job for a while, and he’s been selling a lot of his figures, partly to give himself more financial breathing room and partly to prune his large collection. Given the circumstances, it’s natural that he hasn’t been as active on the review front as before, but I was glad to see him finding new interest in his visual novel recommendation posts, which have been very well-received. Being thousands of miles away, there’s not much I can do for Ash, but I hope his luck turns for the better in the coming year.

Acknowledgements

As always, I’d like to thank the readers for continuing to follow our misadventures, even when we lapse into periods of inactivity.

I’d like to thank Luth, Zai, Miette-chan, Exilehero, and Aka for being great pals and a goldmine of advice, figure-related or otherwise.

I’d like to thank Hamstercorp for being a great guest and a great host. It might have only been two long weekends, but your visit to Toronto and our trip to Otakon have made this summer truly memorable.

I’d like to thank Ashlotte for being a good friend and my harshest critic. Without your blunt but fair criticisms, I bet I would still be shooting everything in front of plain backdrops. Having you as my partner-in-crime has driven me to try harder at photography, if only to avoid being completely outdone by Hobby Hovel’s grumpier half.

I’d also like to extend a special thanks to Wara Zashi on Google+, who has repeatedly recommended our posts to the figure community he’s been fostering on Google+. His #figurefriday events have been great fun and a great alternative to the photoshop comic-loving crowd of MFC. At first I joined Google+ solely as another way to whore out the blog, but lately I’ve been enjoying sharing for sharing’s sake, not bothering with linking back to the blog, and I think that’s very important. If you use Google+ or is thinking of joining, be sure to add him give #figurefriday a whirl.

Annnd that’s it for this annual excessively long reflection. +1 internet cookie to you if you actually sat through all that. If you cheated and skimped…well, a cookie to you anyway for being here!

Saber, Saber, Saber — even eight years after she was introduced to the world, the figure-collecting community is still driven by a never-ending hunger for anything with a big blonde hair bun. I would know, since this is the sixth Saber figure I’ve reviewed here on Hobby Hovel. However, this is not quite the guilt-burdened King of the Britons that we all know, but rather a curious look-alike from the PSP game Fate/Extra.

I didn’t like Fate/Extra – in fact, I think it has the worst combat system of any video game I’ve ever played. It’s literally rock-paper-scissors, and one’s success in fighting monsters boils down to memorizing the order in which the opposing monster will throw their selection of the three attacks. It’s completely dull, unintuitive, and should you take a break from the game like I did, have fun re-memorizing all of the patterns, because going in blind will get you thrown back to a distant save point.

It’s a shame, really, because Fate/Extra has a great cast of characters. With servants like Robin Hood, Sir Francis Drake (who apparently has a pair of great tits), and Vlad the Impaler, The backstories of the servants alone were  almost compelling enough to keep me going…almost.

As for Saber in Fate/Extra, she’s is in no ways related to the Saber in Fate/Stay Night, despite what her appearance might suggest. Her identity is the Roman Emperor Nero, thus there is no reason for her to look almost identical to vanilla Saber, and the game can be fairly accused of tastelessly mooching off of the original game’s imagery.

But appearances aside, Saber Extra comfortably sets herself apart. Confident, arrogant, frivolous and hot-tempered, this red Saber’s personality seems to have taken a page from Gilgamesh. Yet even though she sometimes looks down upon her Master, she has a great sense of loyalty and would lash back at those who would insult her Master.

Since I never finished the game, I don’t actually know Saber Extra’s character all that well. Looking back, this figure was a blatant impulse buy. Wave’s Beach Queens have been around for quite a while, and even though Ashlotte has warned me of what is to be expected out of their 1/10 scale figures, I thought I would give it a try anyway.

…I should have listened to him.

Beach Queen figures are small — I knew that, but it’s hard for me to appreciate how small Saber Extra before actually having her in my hand. Measuring in at only 15cm tall from the bottom of her feet to the bottom end of her ahoge, she is small. It’s not like I don’t know how big of a difference size scales can make (I’ve seen it first-hand), but the 1/10 scale is so small that it doesn’t even feel like it belongs to the same category as other scaled PVC figures. It’s small like an action figure that I’d pick up at the local toy store, and it just doesn’t feel right with the rest of my fixed-pose collection.

Saber extra has an interesting face. Her big toothy smile really suits her overbearing personality, but her eyes are also a little…unsettling. Ashlotte has more than once commented on the sheer terror her “yandere eyes” inspire, and I can completely see where he’s coming from.  Yet that intense look in her eyes is still my favourite part of the figure. Nero is known in popular history to have played the fiddle as Rome burned, so there definitely may be a few screws loose in her head. Maybe that’s what gets me off — women laughing manically while burning my house down.

Like all Beach Queens figures, Saber’s head sits on a ball joint is able to rotate to a degree, though her hair gets in a way a little bit. More interestingly, her ahoge also able to move around to a significant degree. It’s also rather easy to fall off should you try to stuff her into a bag like I did for these outdoor shots, but that certainly beats having it broken off permanently.

Saber Extra’s fashion sense is as loud as her personality. Her breasts looks as if they’re inflated with hot air — appropriate for her character, actually. Both her expression and body language seem to imply she’s got the goods and she’s proud to show them off, and when I take into consideration how toned her midriff looks, I’m inclined to agree.

Sadly, things don’t look as great up close. I’ve done a pretty bad job at showing them on camera, but she’s got very noticeable mold lines running all the way down her sides. There’s also a mysterious scar across one of her breasts, as well as a couple of over-painted spots on her bikini. Furthermore, the backside of her hair has no shading whatsoever. Most of these flaws wouldn’t be too big of an issue on a larger figure, but because the Beach Queens Saber Extra is so small, even the smallest flaws show up in a big way.

Final Say

At the end of this, I still don’t really know what makes Beach Queens popular. In fact, the only thing I’ve come to realise is how much fun figmas are when I shot that size comparison photo with Rin. Seriously, for the cost of less than a Beach Queens figure, I could have something that’s almost as big, is articulated, has more accessories,  and has more elaborate outfits than bikinis.

Just as prize figures dip below a quality standard that I can’t accept, Beach Queens are just too small. As nice as the sculpt might be, it just doesn’t’ feel substantive enough, and the quality control errors are a lot worse on such a puny scale.

The frustrating truth is that Saber Extra makes an excellent swimsuit figure. The sculpt is very sexy, and the flashy bikini and confident body language really suits a frivolous personality like hers. Without a doubt, I would have loved this figure if it were 1/8 scale or large, even if it had some quality control issues.

I had a lot of fun shooting her (even if I had to go through a couple of failed ideas), so I’m beyond regretting the purchase. But to those of you on the fence about her, I would advise think twice, as I just don’t see the bang in the buck for shelling ¥3,800 on a Beach Queens, even though Saber Extra seems like one of the better entries to the line.

What’s Good

• Sexy body sculpt
• Energetic face

What’s Bad

• Dimunitive size
• Dubious quality control

For another look, check out Hamstercorp’s review.

The figure is far from relevant today, the post is hardly a proper review, and there won’t even be any neat photos — hell, it’s not going to be much of anything. If anything, what you’re reading now is a filler post that you might see more of in the future. This time, I’m going to talk about Good Smile Company’s Rizfis Luttiva Mente (Rize), released back in 2008 as a part of the Shuraki series.

Shuraki was a collaboration between Red Entertainment and GSC, probably inspired by Hobby Japan and MegaHouse’s Queen’s Blade series, which also had an emphasis on the violence against female clothing. Each Shuraki figure came with an alternate “battle-damaged” outfit, a illustration book introducing the character and her backstory, and a drama CD starring some solid voice talent.

There has also been five Shuraki light novel books and 1 volume of manga released, according to MFC. I don’t know exactly how well the franchise did, but given there hasn’t been another Shuraki figure in over four years, I assume it didn’t take off as well as GSC and Red Entertainment turned out, despite the talent recruited for it.

Back then I had only started to get into the figure collecting hobby, so I was nowhere as picky as I am now. My eyes sparked as Danny Choo’s blog showed me all manners of plastic boobs and butts, and everywhere I looked, there were things I wanted to throw my PayPal money at. The fact that I don’t know anything about the character didn’t matter — all it took were some pretty looks and a cheap price to move my hand. Such was the reasoning that gave birth to much frustration.

Rize is a story of disappointment in more ways than one. I bought her from Play-Japan on sale for $39.90, but what began as a bargain suddenly turned sour when the SAL shipping fee turned out to be $20.90. I found out the reason for such an unexpectedly high fee when the package arrived at my doorstep, as the box was obscenely large. But as luck would have it, there was yet another surprise pasted on the box — a customs charge of $15. So much for a cheap addition to my budding collection.

Rize came with an alternate battle-damaged set of clothes, but the cast-off feature was an nightmare to work with. the tight fit of her corset top created a lot of fiction against her torso, and after a couple attempts, Rize’s stomach was already being damaged and rubbed bare. The little clip on the regular top never seemed to work right and broke off, and my messy superglue job did not help things one bit. After changing her clothes twice, I decided that I was done with that forever, and to this day, I still can’t see myself buying another cast-off figure.

On a side note, the reason why I didn’t like the battle-damaged clothes is that her stockings are not interchangeable. This means even though the rest of her clothing is completely tattered, her stockings are completely unscathed, which is weird, because in my research (i.e. H-manga), the stockings are the first thing to get torn! OMGERD UNREALISTIC

A well-documented problem Rize has is her ungodly large dress. Made of heavy and hard plastic, it puts a lot of strain on the feet pegs on the display base until the pegs eventually are literally torn out of the base itself — a bad design choice that Good Smile Company has undoubtedly learned from since. A little bit of epoxy manages to return the figure to a standing state, although that means I had to tear her out of her foundation when I moved out.

By now you probably think that I regret getting this figure, and you would be right thinking that. But unlike other disappointments which became eyesores, for every failing Rize possesses, she has something to redeem it.

The sculpting is razor-sharp and the application of shading (especially on her hair) is impeccable. Combined with the solid character design and the attractive blue/red colour contrast, Rize is very pretty to look at. She’s better-looking than most modern figures, and if not for the questional design decisions, she would outright trump them.

My favourite part of the figure has to be her stubby little boots with little red ribbons on them — along with her slightly pigeon-toed pose, they give the halberd-wielding warrior an added dose of girlish charm.

Another thing to consider is her price; for ¥6,800 you get:

• A 1/8 figure that does not skimp on size
• Cast-off feature with an alternate outfit
• Art booklet that introduces the backstory of the character
• A drama CD

Wow. I know figures these days better made and whatever, but I’m not convinced that rising prices have been proportional to improvements in quality. For example, GCS’s Godoka looks damned good, but I always wonder if she’s actually worth her mighty ¥15,000 price tag, and when I look at what Rize has to offer for less than half the price, I can’t help but to feel nostalgic. These days, for the price of the iconic 1/8 Max Factory Haruhi, you can get a Beach Queens figure from Wave that’s pretty much inferior in every single way.

…Bah, get off my lawn. Let’s just say I’m glad I got into the hobby before it got substantially more expensive. Whereas my gunpla and video games has remained more or less consistent in price over the past 4 years, figures have not, and I wonder how far the upward trend will go.

Anyway, let’s end this “review” with a question: what do you guys think of the rising cost of the figure hobby? Has it affected you relationship to the hobby? What is your sweet balance between quality and affordability? Let me know!

“Cute loli’s presented as an apology for how delayed and shit this article will be.”

Hellooo everyone and welcome to some more eroge reviewing goodness!

Sadly this article has been greatly delayed due to one unfortunate fact…There’s been nothing worth reviewing! Honestly, in the past few months there has been a depressingly large amount of what I’d call throwaway games released that just didn’t have enough substance to be talked about at any length.

But the new year is almost upon us, and with that milestone looming I’m just going to give up and go with only one review this time! Hopefully next year there’ll be far more games to discuss!

Well now, the first and only game on our plate today is Period from the now (sadly) defunct Littlewitch who previously brought us the spectacular Quartett! As much as I wish it lived up to the standard that game set, it unfortunately does not.

The first problem would be that they moved away from the innovative floating frames director system Quartett! had and used a standard eroge setup with sprites and static CG backgrounds. Its those generic backgrounds that really harm the presentation most to me clashing with Oyari Ashito’s lovely illustrations. I have to wonder why it was Ashito couldn’t have drawn the backgrounds with that trademark warmth that’s sadly only reserved for the CGs. Other than that though the game looks great with a nice clean UI and very large sprites that really show off Ashito’s beautiful artwork.

The other problem is the way the game handles routes, and it is a big problem. It’s hard to really get into without spoiling but the game uses the lovely archaic design of locking out routes until you clear others. This has been done well in other games where it has hidden characters or uses this restriction for narratives purposes where you gain insight by having routes that can only be unlocked after others. This is not one of those games.

“Generic backgrounds taken from any other Eroge do the visuals a disservice unlike in Quartett!”

Because of this arbitrary lockout combined with a truly bizarre and nonsensical choice flow that easily allows you to get into the completely wrong route, simply getting to the girl of your choice becomes a massive chore if you didn’t look up a walkthrough beforehand. The fact that if you try to use the skip function and alt-tab the window to do something else while its skipping will stop the skip function immediately just adds a lovely bit of annoyance to top the cake.

When you do actually get to the girl of your choices route you sadly won’t be paid off much for the effort expended. All of the girls are extremely lovely, but the routes themselves have very little to say and only a scant few of them actually offered any sort of memorable moments.

As one last middle finger to me the very last girl you can get who requires you clearing all the other girls actually has a glimpse of a really interesting story that drew me in…And then abruptly rushed to a half-assed ending. Gee thanks, Period!

Final Verdict: Pass. Go download the HCG collection which is the best part of the game and save yourself the frustration.

“Even Teresa can’t believe how shoddy her game is. She deserved better.”

So then with that out of the way, let’s get to the round up of random trash that’s also came out recently.

Boob Wars: A fun little fap game with a few animated scenes, but sadly nothing much more then that. The premise, characters and combat system have the makings of something great similar to Princess Waltz, but its all far too short and stripped down to be worth your time.

Duel Savior: Combat system is ok, but every last one of the main girls is just boring as sin. The story never grabbed hold of me and the main characters was the only mildly good thing about the whole thing.

Tomoyo After: Lacks all of the charm that Clannad had and replaces it with sex. Play it if you like Tomoyo, but if you’re expecting anything other then a game solely made for Tomoyo lovers don’t bother.

Sexy Demon Transformation: Terrible terrible game. Check it out for the utterly awful music and a laugh at some truly bad writing.

Violated Hero: This is actually a vaguely interesting little game if your into lots of monster girls reverse raping the protagonist! The game play is a simple but addictive roguelike-esque experience that I surprisingly found quite a bit of enjoyment in!

And that’s that folks! Hopefully some of these games I have in my backlog right now will provide far more enjoyable experiences then the junk I got stuck with this time round!

I’ll also hopefully get out at least a few figure reviews as I can’t make Chag do ALL the work!

As some of you might know, I have something called the “one figure rule”. Since there are so many characters and series that I like, I’ve always thought that it’d be a waste to have multiple figures of a single character. So far Saber and Miku have skirted around the rule due to the drastically different appearances and costumes of each version I own, but I had thought that after getting the figma Aegis I would be done with the character.

To be honest, I have felt some tinges of regret over selling Alter’s first Aegis figure to make room for the figma. Though the figma is a is a lot closer to the character sprites in the game, it just feels a little…insubstantial.

Since I reviewed the figma, Aegis has been the subject of many more figures — so much so that fans of Persona 3 and 4 have been frustrated. While some of the Persona 4 girls have finally started to get some love, there hasn’t been a single figure of any of the human Persona 3 girls in the last three years, while no less than eight  figures of Aegis have been announced. But though I completely understand how frustrating this might be diehard fans, there’s a reason why Aegis has been such a favourite.

Simply put, Aegis is a smoking hot bucket of bolts (and I don’t mean her Ortega Mode), and Alter’s second take on the character, dubbed “ART WORKS ver.” after the name of Soejima Shigenori’s  artbook from which the source illustration came from, demonstrates this point brilliantly by taking my “one figure rule” and throwing it into a pit of fire.

At 1/6 scale and 29cm tall, Aegis is a pretty big figure. Though some large-scale figures seem to be big for the sake of being big, Alter’s Aegis puts that added size to work, incorporating details that just aren’t possible at smaller scales. Every screw, every zipper tooth, every rivet is distinguishable.

As a robo-girl fanatic, the mechanical parts on Alter’s Aegis are nothing short of a wet dream. The metallic paint looks perfectly convincing, and neither the shoulder nor hip joints skimped on any detail — the shoulders even go so far as rending the cables tucked beneath.

A tear on her right leg reveals a bit of the metal plating that lies underneath — a reminder that Aegis is a weapon. Though her grey fingertips have not been deployed as bullet-spewing barrels, a single round in the chamber of her right wrist reminds us of their deadly potential.

Her left foot even reveals something which was never shown in the game — the inner mechanisms of Aegis’ “hoofs”. While it doesn’t explain how on earth she manages to maintain balance on her pair of stumps, the hydraulics and mechanical details within are a real treat to behold.

Alter even goes as far as stamping tiny markings onto the figure that the naked eye can barely make out, such as the text on her “headphones” and inscriptions on her wrist unit. By the way, isn’t it kind of a bad idea to stamp the name of your corporation on a top-secret robot weapon? Just sayin’.

The “girl” side of  the robo-girl equation on Aegis does not disappoint either. Her curves are just as lethal as the guns in her fingers. A pair of barely-contained robo-boobs is balanced by a bountiful robo-butt, and the sculpted wrinkles on her cloth enclosure makes me wonder what manner of erotic mechanisms lie underneath. CLANG CLANG CLANG.

Her signature bow ribbon is depicted here undone and tattered. Its flowing shape adds to the sense of motion in the figure.

My favourite part of the figure is Aegis’ face, which has shockingly natural feel to it. Her pair or blue eyes are obviously larger than any real woman’s, but her eyelashes, soft-looking glossy lips, and the subtle pink flush to her cheeks distinguishes itself from any other anime figure I own. Seriously, her subtle and serene smile reminds me of the Mona Lisa (if the Mona Lisa had machine-gun fingers, that is).

The great irony is that despite being a bucket of bolts, Aegis looks more life-like than any other figure of my collection because of the pink tones on her face. I don’t know how hard this is to pull off on the technical level, but I would love to see more figures do this.

Unfortunately, for all this talk of realism, there’s one part about the figure that drops the ball — the hair. In attempting to capture to super-shiny look in the source illustration, Alter decided to use a super-glossy finish on the hair. While I appreciate the effort put into accuracy, the hair looks really out of place and distracting in a figure like this.

With that said, Aegis’ hair did grow on me a bit. The shading is very well-done, and the sculpt is very detailed for short haircut, avoiding an overly simple dome-like appearance completely.

Finally, is secured to her base thanks to a splodge of shadow rising from the distorted checkerboard disk, There’s not much to be said about it other than it’s functional, inconspicuous and suitable to the figure.

Final Say

Unlike most figures I own, I can’t think of a scene to place this figure in. The source illustration certainly does not offer any clues, as she is simply situated in white space. One would think she might be emerging triumphant from a scuffle, yet despite the damage to her ribbon and right leg, she is remarkably spotless everywhere else — not to mention she has no ammunition magazines attached to her arms.

…Yet I’m completely fine with all that. Alter’s Aegis might not echo any particular moment from the game, but she’s just so well-made and pretty that it doesn’t even matter. This figure is a triumph for its looks alone, so much so that I still occasionally lose myself looking at the figure many months after acquiring it, and that says a lot about how much I like this figure.

Pros

• Amazing amount of mechanical detail
• Fine markings that go above and beyond
• Soft pink flush on her face

Cons

• Distracting glossy finish on the hair

Alter’s Aegis (ART WORKS ver.) is a great figure, and it doesn’t matter how many other Aegis figures came before it — if anything, this figure has made me appreciate how persistent figure makers can be. So you know what? Keep making those Tamaki, Miku and Kanu figures. If figure makers can consistently improve and produce better iterations of a well-liked character, so be it — I don’t mind not being the target market of every single figure ever made. Complain about a figure because it’s shoddily made or badly designed, not because you’re not interested in the character — there are plenty of others who do, even if it is the umpteenth version.

For more reviews on the figure, check out Miette-chan’s and Tier’s.

Suprise — a Gundam review! Bet you weren’t expect that, huh?  It’s a little depressing to realize that it’s been a year and a half since I’ve done one of these. But unlike the hiatus I took in figure collecting, there’s a bit more to why the plamo section of Hobby Hovel has been neglected for so long.

In short, I’m a little burnt out on Gundam. From its conception, the Gundam franchise has been somewhat of a glorified toy commercial. Director Tomino Yoshiyuki broke the conventions of the late 1970s with the original Mobile Suit Gundam, but after 30 years, Gundam has become a convention if of itself, along a long list of tropes that are continually recycled to this day.

For me, the straw that broke the camel’s back was episode 5 of Gundam Unicorn, which continues to sideline quality storytelling in favour of echoing as many tropes as possible. There’s even a Lalah clone, right down to her physical appearance. The OVA has started to feel like a snotty little rich kid living big on his grandfather’s fortune — everything about it seems to be a thin slice of something great long ago. Once again, I find my expectations butting heads with reality.

I like Gundam, and the adventures of the White Base and its crew will stay with me forever (not to mention the exploits of Bernie, Shiro, and hell, even Domon). Yet for the sake of the franchise, there is a desperate need for innovation and risk-taking. I’d much rather have oddballs like Turn-A Gundam and G Gundam as opposed to the same story of about the space colony boy stumbling into the cockpit of cutting-edge military hardware.

By now you’re probably asking “if you’re so worn out on Gundam, why’d you buy another kit?” Well, I didn’t — this bad boy is actually a freebie from HobbyLink Japan for a little article I wrote for them (which will be up on hobbylink.tv in a few days). Whatever feelings I may have towards the Gundam franchise, building models is as fun as it has always been, especially when it’s one of the big daddies of early universal century mobile suits.

The RX-93-ν2 Hi-Nu Gundam never appeared in any anime — rather, it is the alternate interpretation of the Nu Gundam in the novel Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack – Beltorchika’s Children. Nevertheless, the Hi-Nu, along with the its rival the MSN-04II Nightingale, are very well-known amongst the Gundam fandom.

The original design of the Hi-Nu Gundam is bulky — really bulky. Its thick legs, large shoulders and forearms give it a rather tough and intimidating appearance. But for reasons unknown, the suit was re-designed for this kit and would go on to become the “official” look. Its proportions have been changed to more or less match that of the of original Nu Gundam.

As someone who first saw the Hi-Nu Gundam in its revised form, I like the new look, but after seeing the original design, I can’t help but to feel that the kit missed out on a great opportunity. The original Hi-Nu’s bulkiness set itself apart from its predecessor and most other Gundam designs out there, whereas I can easily see a Gundam newbie mistaking the new Hi-Nu with something like the Strike Freedom.

But alas, we’re not really here to debate whether or not Bandai made call in the design department. Instead, let’s take a look at the actual model itself. Being at the apex of the Universal Century era before mobile suits were miniaturized, the MG Hi-Nu stands at an impressive 22cm(9.6 inches) tall. Bandai also used the large size to flex its injection technology muscles, most noticeably on the raised writing at the middle of its v-fin.

The Hi-Nu also takes the greatest aspect of Char’s Counterattack mechanical designs and improves upon them. Small vernier boosters are scattered across the surfaces of the suit, and the addition of two propellant tanks on its back further pushes the realism of the design. The plated metal finish at the ends of the tanks are a very nice touch, and the tiny nozzles at the tips says volumes about the attention paid to detail in this kit.

If you own virtually any kit from Gundam Seed Destiny, you probably have already guessed that this kit would have a rather hard time standing on its own two feet with the funnels attached — and you’d be right. While it’s not impossible to do, having the Hi-Nu stand upright feels like guiding a drunk across a tightrope. Thankfully, the included display base does a great job at propping up the model in three angles.

Hi-Nu’s right forearm has an integrated machine gun and detachable magazine — another nice touch of realism on a giant robot made for Japanese space Jedis. The machine gun barrel can tilt up and down, and though tiny as it might be, it’s got a bit of a mean stubby look to it.

If you recall, the main beam saber of the original Nu Gundam has a beam spike at the end of its pummel. Not to be outdone, the Hi-Nu’s beam sabers just have a second smaller blade sticking out the other end. There are two of these larger beam sabers, which are stored inside the compartments on the wings.

Also like the original Nu, the Hi-Nu has a miniature beam saber. Opening the hatch on the left forearm conveniently extends out the hilt of the weapon. Interestingly, it only accepts the larger set of the beam saber blades.

The Hi-Nu’s hyper bazooka is, for the lack of a better word, standard. As it does not mount to the back of suit , it has lost its place amongst the Hi-Nu’s mainstay arsenal. I’d like to point out that the square brackets around the barrel are not separately moulded pieces, thus the entire front end of the weapon is white. I think this is a bit of a wasted opportunity to insert some contrast to front end of the bazooka, much like the original Nu Gundam’s black brackets.

The ubiquitous beam rifle comes in a sleek package. There’s no oversized targeting radar on it, which is partly why it’s one of my favourite beam rifle designs. Nothing to write home about, though — a beam rifle is a beam rifle.

The top side of the shield is comprised of colour-separated parts, giving it a unique striped pattern. I was surprised that the main decal for the shield is actually a clear sticker, which I’m never a fan of. Thankfully, there is a smaller version of the decal on the dry-transfer decal sheet.

This is one of the few shields that look just as great underneath, thanks to its fully detailed underside. This is important due to the fact it can only be mounted one way to Hi-Nu’s left forearm, limiting its display option — not the most practical part of Hi-Nu’s design, to be sure.

Thankfully, the Hi-Nu scores back some big practicality points with its funnels. While it looked cool, the giant sail of funnels on the original Nu Gundam’s back can be real clunky and often got in the way of the shield and left arm. By contrast, the Hi-Nu’s funnels are stored on wing-like back units that can be adjusted and repositioned. It’s a great mix of hard sci-fi and flair — they look like angel wings without undermining the overall aesthetic of the suit.

The funnels can be detached and displayed via bendable clear tubes mounted onto display base. It’s a great idea in theory, but in practice, these tubes are unstable and frustrating to adjust. Let’s just say there’s a reason why the new Katoki version MG Nu Gundam opted for solid jointed arms instead of these floppy tubes.

On the bright side, the effects part on the Hi-Nu look absolutely amazing. The crackling electricity effect is reflective and very convincing, and there is even a little effect part that connects the funnel to the tube. Unfortunately, the Hi-Nu’s funnels cannot be used with the Ver. Ka MG Nu Gundam’s stand, so you’ll have to either get used to the tubes or ignore the feature like me.

Articulation

Compared to other post-stone-age Master Grade kits, MG Hi-Nu’s articulation is standard (i.e. pretty damn good), so I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking.

There are a couple of points that need to be raised, however. The Hi-Nu’s chin is ridiculously large — so much so that it actually inhibits its ability to turn its head.

The hip pegs utilize a swinging design, which allows the legs to be raised higher, making kneeling poses like the above possible. The central portion of the chest opens to reveal the cockpit within.

The shoulder and hip joints have a nasty habit of coming apart after some fiddling. This can easily be remedied by manually pushing them back together, but needless to say, it’s still a bit of a drag.

Though the Hi-Nu’s back unit is heavy, a simple contraption on the suit’s back prevents the waist joint from being tilted backwards by that weight. Simply flip down the tab to keep the waist an upright position, and flip it up if you want the waist to bend further back.

Finally, as an added bonus, the hooks on the underside of the feet are actually deployable.

Final Say

The Hi-Nu doesn’t have too many fancy tricks going for it, and that’s mostly because it was released back in 2007. That is actually impressive in of itself, as this 6-year-old kit is no slouch when compared to newer kits. Granted, It doesn’t have anything like the crazy articulation of the MG AGE-1 or the laser-etched clear orbs on the MG Exia, but it’s enough detail and articulation to trump some kits that came long after (I’m lookin’ at you, MG Shenlong!).

The only concern I have about this kit is the value factor. The MG Hi-Nu retails for ¥7,000, which just so happens to be the price of the new MG Nu Gundam (ver. Ka). Leaving aside the questions of taste or preference, the new Nu kit is objectively more detailed than its older brother, not to mention the fact that it has a much better system of displaying its funnels in action.

So as much as I like this kit, the MG Hi-Nu is not a straightforward recommendation. This is a solid kit even if a couple of its gimmicks are slightly lacking. The big prices corresponds to the kit’s big size, so if you have a thing for the redesigned Hi-Nu, the minor issues shouldn’t be enough to dissuade you.

However,  if you’re on the fence between the Nu Gundam and the Hi-Nu Gundam, and you aren’t screaming bloody murder at what Katoki’s done to the design, then I definitely recommend the newer kit. You gotta love how the Gunpla hobby has been able to keep consistent with its prices across the years — if only figure makers had a similar policy.

What’s good

• Details right down to the writing on the v-fin
• Great articulation
• Convincing funnel SFX parts

What’s bad

• Displaying the funnels using the supplied tubes is frustrating
• Shoulder and hip joints come apart easily

And that is that — for someone who’s supposedly burnt out on Gundam, I sure do get easily carried away with the tl;dr, don’t I? Shucks, I’m sure I’ll snap out it once Sunrise makes a real winner of a TV series one of these days. Many thanks to Hobbylink Japan for giving me this bad boy — it’s one hell of a way to snap out of a long hiatus, I’ll tell you that! For those of you interested, you can pick up the kit here.

Remember that post I wrote for Hobbylink Japan that I mentioned in the Hi-Nu review? It is now live on hobbylink.tv — check it out!

Over the last few months, I’ve gone on a bit of a spending spree. With a new camera body, new lens, and a new bag to hold everything in, I found myself feeling slightly ridiculous at how much I’ve poured into this hobby of taking photos of plastic butts. I was itching to make more use out of the D7000′s advantages, and that itch drove me from my cozy man-cave and into the Canadian winter, where I rediscovered why I enjoy photography.

I’ve tried doing some non-figure photography before, but none of it clicked with me. That’s probably because I didn’t post-process my photos all that much back then. Even if the idea occurred to be back then, I probably wouldn’t have known where to even begin. Thankfully, my good friend Blowfish gave me a bunch of Lightroom presets he had for doing cosplay photography, and I decided to playing around with them by going out and snapping some photos.

These presets are definitely more nuanced than the usual adjustments I use for figure photos. Where as I’ve almost always aimed for a bright and exuberant look in my photos cartoon girl statues, these outdoors photos tend to be sombre in tone, mostly due to the season, and the preset settings showed me a couple of things on how to make a photo more moody and dramatic.

When Hamstercorp dramatically removed his figma Miku from his collection and sent it my way, I knew I had to follow it up with something. The initial idea was to have her hot-glued by Gollum, but upon the sight of a recent snowfall, I decided to take advantage of the weather and do something a little more ambitious by going to the field of a school nearby after work.

The lesson learned that day is to wear gloves. Being an urban hermit who rarely goes out in the winter, the importance of keeping my fingers warm in the dead of winter is one of those common-sense things which eluded me. By the end of the short shoot, my frozen sausages could barely turn the focus ring. There were some missed opportunities with this shot, but there’s no point in crying about spilt milk. After a fiery grilling from Ashlotte, this is what I ended up with — A most bleak fate for a former president.

I also took a couple of self-portraits, which I had not done in a long time. The first one had me travelling to High Park once again, mostly due to the fact that it was secluded enough to make me not feel ridiculous when smiling stupidly at the camera sitting atop the tripod. The Tamron 90mm macro lens made for some pretty really nice bokeh, and I’m loving the subject isolation potential of the lens when it comes to 1/1 scaled figures. Overall I’m happy, as the shots really brought out the narcissist in me — though that’s not really saying much.

The second self-portrait was crazy fun. I took it on my birthday with the aim of creating the most depressing birthday photo ever. It all started when I found in the fridge this cheap supermarket cake my roommate had bought. I thought to myself: “wow, this would be the most pathetic birthday cake ever.” From there the idea just snowballed. The whiskey bottle vase of dollar store plastic flowers, the dinky party hat, the ugliest shirt I have, petit nendo Haku, and a row of neatly-arranged party blowers. The cherry on top is the look in my eyes — I confess I am perhaps a little too proud of that dead expression that seems too convincing to be faked.

My favourite thing about going out with a camera for the hell of it is the fact that there aren’t any expectations. Whereas I would get frustrated if a figure photo idea doesn’t work out the way I had wanted it to (which has happened many times), taking a stroll downtown or in a park has virtually no planning involved.  Although most of photos I shot are throwaway garbage, finding the few interesting shots at the end of the day is a very satisfying experience — like this black guy on an unicycle whom I happened across downtown.

I definitely see myself doing more of this in the future, especially when the weather gets warmer. I’ve recently met someone who’s pretty big into cosplay, and with any luck she’ll be my unfortunate test subject for some cosplay portraits. I’m also planning to go to San Francisco at the end of May for a friend’s wedding, and given the things I’ve heard and seen about that city, it should make for a pretty amazing weekend of aimless roaming.

Anyway, that’s enough of this off-topic nonsense for now — I really must finish working on the hobbylink.tv post this weekend. To my fellow figure photographers: do you do much creative photography without figures?

I got this gigantic movie poster for being one of the first people to pre-order tickers for the screening. Nifty ain’t it?

Earlier this month, the first two Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica movies finally came to the fine city of Toronto — at a theater right across from my flat, no less! The sold out theater looked like any anime convention in this part of the world: dressed up and disproportionally Asian. There was a festive air at the screenings, and if the Madoka movies ever do show up in a city near you I would whole-heartedly recommend attending for that bizzaro-world vibe alone.

If you are curious about actual movies, don’t be — these movies don’t really add anything new to the series. There are some new cuts here and there (most notably some spiffy transformation scenes), but they’re fairly inconsequential and most of them would go by unnoticed unless you’re comparing them side to side with the TV series like the nerd you probably are.

Rather, these movies simply a slightly dressed up version of the original series that retains the integrity of the storytelling, nothing more. If you’ve never watched the series before, you wouldn’t be missing much if you dived straight into the movies. The Gurren Lagann movies these are not.

However, the movies are a good occasion/excuse for fans of the series to revisit the story — a perfect way to reflect on the little SHAFT show that took the world by storm. It’s been a long while since I watched the series, and I’ve forgotten the a lot of Madoka‘s quirks. The first movie made me look down at my watch far too often, while the second movie warmed my heart enough to make me think twice before writing a tl;dr textual smackdown. So instead of a smackdown, this not-so-little post is a gentle putting down of Madoka — a retrospective on the series and a couple of the storytelling problems that irked me during my two-part re-visitation.

Needless to say, the following rant contains plenty of spoilers, so you have been warned.

Superzombie

Worth becoming a magical girl for?

Sayaka is not very bright.

…Okay, that came out a little too bluntly, but throwing your life away for an arm? Talk about selling yourself short.

I never was a huge fan of Sayaka in the original series, and as I found myself rolling my eyes in the theater, I started to remember why. Don’t get me wrong though, the whole “saving my not-boyfriend’s fapping arm” thing isn’t my problem with her, because the frivolity of that wish reinforces her naive nature. Stupid as it may seem to me, it certainly paints her as a character who is innocently romantic. Nay, it’s when Madoka threw Sayaka over the bridge that the eye-rolling commenced.

Sure, the realization of having been transformed into an Easter decoration is a lot to take in. But after the initial shock and horror, is the idea of having a super-durable magical body really that bad? Of all the things she has to worry about (i.e. dying a horrible violent and lonely death at the hands of otherworldly horrors), this line of fine print on the magical girl contract is pretty benign.

But alas, Sayaka seems to be impervious to common sense as she latches on that one detail with like a hungry piranha on a drowning man’s buttcheek. Her reaction towards it becomes the driving reason behind her freefall down a cliff of angst, spouting nonsense like “I can’t even hold him with a body like this.” The length of the series rushed things along even further, but at the same time the entire phase of the story felt agonizingly long.

Seriously, what bloody difference does it make? The fact that no one other than Homura knew about it means that there is no difference on a functional level. The faculties of her senses remain perfectly normal and would not a hindrance between her and her would-be boyfriend. You know what would be a hindrance? The constant need to go engage in mortal combat with the aforementioned horrors — something she is perfectly aware of already. If I were Sayaka, I would have no problems with the idea of having violin boy plow my invincible pain-resistant zombie vagina. Just sayin’.

With Mami removed from the picture rather quickly, Sayaka’s drama is essentially the core of the first movie — a very flimsy core at that. The weight of the drama dangles on this thin string — a weight it could not sustain.

Telling, not showing

Fighting over scraps of screen time, no doubt.

For all of the time spent on Sayaka’s sob story, the time spent on Kyouko and Mami’s respective stories is remarkably scant. The only thing I remember about Mami’s past was that she was a victim in a traffic accident who made her wish on the verge of death. Oddly, no mention of the accident was made in the movie, nor did it expand on the loneliness of her life as a magical girl beyond the brief mention shortly before she had the run-in with Charlotte. Ultimately, I never got the chance to really know Mami as a character, and I still think losing her head was the best thing that’s happened to her.

Kyouko fares a bit better in that she actually gets a back story — an effective one at that. What happened to her was truly awful and made me empathize a lot more with her cynical attitude. Yet as good as it may be, it could’ve been so much more — instead of having Kyouko narrate over a short recollection of paper cut-out lookalikes, a flashback could’ve been included to allow the audience experience this story directly.

Kyouko reminds me a lot of Archer in Fate/Stay Night – not only are both of these characters defined by their tragic pasts, but both character also suffer a big case of having their stories told to the audience instead of being shown to the audience. Archer is by far the bigger offender, though — not only was his past completely conveyed by telling, but it was also vague — it was almost as if Nasu ran into a writer’s block and gave up. I still have trouble picturing Archer running around a world of guns brandishing his little swords around, but that’s a rant for another time.

The reason why I think Mami and Kyouko are big missed opportunities is because of how well-done Homura’s backstory is. Instead of merely telling the audience, we are actually shown Homura’s attempts to save her friend. We see her frustrations and the way she changed over time, and by the end of her montage, the audience has a good sense of how emotionally exhausted she must be. The sheer determination with which she carried out her task made her admirable, and the growing sense of futility in her attempts was heartbreaking. That’s quality character development.

Because of this, the second half of Madoka soars above the first. It make me wonder what Madoka would’ve been like if it was a 2-cour show with enough time given to each of the supporting characters. Hell, even Sayaka would probably benefit from this — if I knew more about her history with violin boy, maybe I wouldn’t think making a contract to heal his arm is such a stupid wish. Madoka did a good job at fitting its story within its twelve episodes, but the glossing over of its side characters is its biggest flaw — a character drama needs to give its characters time to develop.

Afterthoughts

Though I’m still not the biggest fan of the WIDENESS, Ume-sensei’s character designs are still appealing.

At the end of the day, Madoka is not high art. It is not anime Shakespeare. It is, however, a great blend of entertainment value and substance — a clever twist to an existing genre, along with unique art direction and a stellar soundtrack. I can nitpick at it all day long, but at the end of the day it would be like nit-picking Inception for its plot holes instead of just enjoying the movie for what it is: an action Hollywood blockbuster with an idea. And with all the derivative schlock on so prevalent in both anime and Hollywood, I would feel uncomfortable dismissing the few gems out there, flawed as they might be.

My hipster senses do get inflamed sometimes at how the anime fandom (especially on MFC) worship Madoka as if it’s the best thing since sliced bread, but between the quality and the marketability of the series, the reaction it has received is pretty reasonable. I guess I just wish the anime industry was in such a state that an offering like Madoka would be considered “above average” instead of ANIME OF THE YEAR ALL YEARS — an industry filled with shows venture outside of tropes and conventions to varying degrees, an industry fueled by a fanbase that would actually reward ambitious shows with sales figures.

…Well, a man can dream, can’t he?

Anyways, what do you think? Am I being a little hard on Sayaka? What do you think of Madoka, both the anime itself and the reaction it has had?

Hey there boys and girls! For this review I’m gonna be using the 1 game format like I did last article and probably will continue to do so for all future reviews going forward. Hopefully this will cut down on the delay between articles plus I think I yammer on enough about one game as-is to warrant each getting their own post!

So the topic for this review shall be Rewrite!

Rewrite is the latest Visual Novel by the oh so famous folks at Key and boy just uttering that name creates all sorts of expectations doesn’t it? They’ve seemingly cranked out one memorable game after another and out of every Visual Novel maker I can think of they’re probably the one most people who don’t even play such games will recognize. For myself though I haven’t been as enthused about their games honestly. Starting with ONE which I detested I’ve thought of their games with the exception of Planetarian as merely average (Discounting all of the Little Buster games that I haven’t played as I’m waiting on the translation of Ecstasy and Kud Wafter).

That said even with my opinion of Key games being what it is you still feel more then a little excitement to see a new game from them and so I headed into this with more then a few expectations. So how did it hold up to those expectations? Well in some regards it fulfilled them and in others it fell woefully short.

Lets start with presentation first before we get ahead of ourselves here though. As I said this is a Key game and when it comes to its presentation it has all the strengths and weaknesses of a game they made, namely the music is WONDERFUL and the art is fairly mediocre haha…First on the music side of things it doesn’t disappoint at all from the great opening to the ending songs it’s all great. While the character themes aren’t quite as strong as they were in say Little Busters they’re still a step above the rest of the competition for sure. You’ll also notice that the game is in glorious 720p resolution thank god! More and more games are adopting wide screen resolutions and I couldn’t be happier (Now all they need to do is get to 1080p!).

This bump up in resolution comes with a lovely UI being supported by Visual Art’s new Visual Novel engine. Features of it include a slick pop-up radial menu, a nifty little moving icon in the bottom left affected by story choices, and a huge suite of options in its menu. You’re given a large number of tools to manage your save games (Including an unheard of in the VN world auto-save function!) and vast control over practically every aspect of the game you could want. This game probably has one of the best and most comprehensive engines I’ve seen to date and it was a joy to see it in action! Sadly all this loveliness isn’t always supported by Key’s art as always. While the art assets have improved considerably over previous games like Clannad the designs and overall art still don’t match up to the otherwise high quality feeling of the game.

“Lucia is angry at how cheap the art assets are in this game! Still that UI is lovely~”

Probably the biggest offender is what’s missing…Namely character sprites. For some reason that I can only guess was a lack of time or manpower many MANY characters in the game simply lack Character Sprites. If this was simply “mob characters” or side ones that only appear briefly I could write it off but they’ve neglected to give extremely important side characters with speaking roles and main antagonists sprites which leaves you staring at empty backgrounds for large tracts of time. Sadly seeing as Key’s main artist is one of their founders I doubt this problem will go away anytime soon and even though it bothered me at first it quickly took a back seat to the story…Or rather the problems I had with the story.

To start with the positive though the common route is GREAT! As fitting a Key title their is large amounts of fun to be had here and while the humor can be a bit juvenile it almost always had me laughing out loud at it. No small part of that is due to the various girls in the game that each have very interesting personalities and leave a strong impression almost immediately  Key has long been known for making more then a few characters that were how to say…Borderline mentally retarded. While  this made them cute to some I can see how it can be extremely grating to others, but thankfully Key went a different route this time and made each and everyone of the characters extremely intelligent and capable (Well ok Chihaya is a bit of an idiot but she’s far from incapable)

“It would have been awesome if the art had been as good as the animated second opening…Oh well at least the common route was as heart warming as this image shows!”

While the common route does a wonderful job of getting to know the girls and have a great time the individual girls routes is where things begin to go horribly wrong. Probably the biggest oddity is just how massively different each route is from one another where they literally shift into entirely different genre’s from one another. I’ll do a brief mini review and break down of each to help lend some understanding.

In play order:

• Lucia: Begins with creepy horror elements then jumps to romance then jumps to a political thriller. At least the route does have some romance but the genre shifts are handled extremely poorly.
• Kotori: Probably the best written and most “Key-like” route. Very internalized with lots of those classic “Sad Key Girl” moments. Very little romance but it at least has SOME sexual tension to it.
• Chihaya: The exact opposite of Kotori’s. A very straight-up almost Shonen like route with battles and lots of side characters. Probably the most enjoyable one for me, but it also has almost no romance in it.
• Shizuru: Again a thriller like Lucia’s, but with more of a personal level focus instead of a more global one like Lucia’s. Barely any romance to speak of and probably one of the worst epilogues ever.
• Akane: A goddamn mess. A sad precursor for how utterly terrible the “True” routes will be. Again no romance because its too concerned with boring you about the inner workings of a literally faceless organization and scandals.

“There’s a lot of relationships in this game though sadly the friend tag doesn’t change much for most of the girls it feels…”

As you can probably see the unifying thing here is the utter lack of romance in this game. Yes it is an All Ages game but just because you remove the sex doesn’t mean you cut out romance as well! Just to tell you there’s ONE real kiss scene in the entire fucking game (Unless you want to count secret girl which carries with it as much romantic feeling as kissing a rock…) and your lucky if you even get to hug the girl in your route. In every last one of these routes save for Lucia you just keep the girl at arms reach never really expressing any sort of genuine affection for the girls whatsoever. The game is so busy trying to tell these large in scope stories it just completely discards any notion of romancing these girls altogether.

This fact is made all the more frustrating by the AMAZING voice acting of the girls. They really do an absolute stellar job across the board with the lines their given and really make you care about the girls…But the story never gives them a chance to make you feel the common routes sparks ignite into some passion between your character and them instead just keeping you at a distance constantly…Its all just so disappointing. There is a secret 6th girl who is the focus of the last two “True” routes, but sadly she’s as boring as boring can possibly get. An unemotional lump that the game tries to convince you the Main Character fell in love with despite the fact that you have absolutely no chemistry with her and are provided with not one scene that makes you feel like theirs any real emotion behind his confession other then “The Writers say so”. This problem sadly crops up in the other girls routes probably worst of all in Chihaya’s.

The lack of romance could somewhat be excused if the game could at least nail its other aspects, but it can’t even do that. All of the fight scenes except for maybe Lucia’s end one are extremely dull and unengaging. They rely far too much on pretty pre-rendered effects and the same reused CGs over and over. Some don’t even bother with a CG and only ONCE is ANYTHING bloody shown despite the graphic descriptions…The best you can hope for is a flash of red light on the screen and that’s it. You don’t see so much as a scratch on any of the characters or anything violent in the least beyond one lousy CG. Meanwhile the overall story told across the entire game while being suitably high stakes never delivers much tension or interesting drama at any point…It all just comes off feeling very immature and  PG-ish at best.

It really boils down to the problem that the individual routes in general don’t build upon the great things that the common route setup…Instead they quite literally discard most of it and rush headlong into telling these “bigger” stories while leaving silly notions like nuanced emotions and  deeper personal connections with characters by the wayside. I sadly can’t really expand on these criticisms without massively spoiling the game but all I can tell you is by the time I finished the game all I felt was disappointment at what they had done with such wonderful characters. From looking at the Fan Disc Key later released it seems to address this problem nicely, but for the game at hand this is not a “Romance” game in the least. It starts as an enjoyable game in general but ends as a disappointing bloated self-important piece of junk with no heart that will be quickly forgotten.

Verdict:

Play it for the common route and maybe Chihaya’s and Kotori’s routes. Otherwise don’t go near it with a ten foot pole ESPECIALLY if you’re someone like me who enjoys the romance aspect of Visual Novels most.

“Oh Takako don’t worry you’ll always be #1 to me!”

And now for a quick summary of all the other various games I’ve played lately!

Otoboku: An older very standardish Harem eroge, but it has some solid characters and a surprisingly enjoyable story. I’d honestly say give it a shot as the selection of girls covers pretty much all of the bases and it’s almost Yuri vibes make for a pretty fun game all things considered.

Moero Downhill Night Blaze: Its another Moero game just like the ones that came before it…Well except they stuck in some driving game bits with PS1 graphics and car handling that makes you feel like you’re driving a really crappy go-kart. Wouldn’t bother with it personally.

Sono Hanabira 6/8: Again these are additions to long running series where nothing much has changed…High sexual content of the Yuri variety while light on story mainly focused on a pair of girls. That said 8 in particular has probably my favorite couple thus far from the series and is worth taking a look at if you never played a game in the series before.

Rance III: If you want a nostalgia trip you could do far worse then this classic. Obviously not nearly as refined as more modern games its still a great trip to the past of eroge history.

Slave Witch April: Bland fap game not really worth your time…Like most fap games its short on choices and story. Art is merely ok sadly.

And that’s that! I’m planning on writing another general Visual Novel list in the very near future and maybe ACTUALLY do a figure review! Amazing I know…

Until then folks take care of yourselves!

If there is one personal quality that the figure collecting hobby develops, it’s patience. The journey from original source material, to the first prototype at an expo, to painted prototype, to pre-order, to delay(s) and finally to release usually is an absurdly long one. This often means by the time a figure appears of a anime I really enjoy, that anime has flown off the radar ages ago. Still, some series manage to endure the test of time, one of them being AnoHana from which Alter’s 1/8 Menma hails from.

Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai.(AnoHana for short) is a melodrama about a group of estranged childhood friends. Once known as the “Super Peace Busters”, the hang has since parted ways after Honma Meiko (nicknamed “Menma”) — one of its members — died in an accident when the group was out playing together. Yet several years after, Menma’s ghost would come to revisit Jinta, another member of the group and the protagonist of the story, thus beginning a journey to reconcile with the past not only for Jinta, but the rest of the Super Peace Busters as well.

The anime is good, but it’s one of those shows that I’m a little uncertain about after the fact. Looking back, it was very heavy-handed with its melodrama and I can easily see a lot of potential eye-roller moments. But I didn’t seem to mind — I marathoned the series in two sittings, and the floodgates on my face crumbled away to nothing by the end. Having emigrated to Canada at the age of eleven, I don’t even remember the names of my childhood friends from the motherland, so I may be especially susceptible to a story about the ultimately unbreakable bonds of such friends. In any case, I would recommend AnoHana to anyone, but especially if you’ve enjoyed melodramas like the KEY shows — if you could stomach the melodrama in Clannad, then AnoHana should be just the thing for you.

Anyways, back to the figure, which depicts a girl who isn’t dolled up and sexed out in any way — unthinkable, I know! I suppose that’s testament to how much I liked AnoHana, so let’s see if Alter’s Menma lives up to that.

Despite being a ghost, if I had to describe Menma in one word, it would be “playful”. There have been other interpretations of the character before, but Alter really hits the nail on the head here. From her tilted head to the legs in mid-swing, Menma is the picture of playfulness.

I might be a little weird for saying this (oh who am I kidding — I am more than a “little” weird), but I really like Menma’s toes. Her bare feet constitute as one of her hey visual traits, and I’m glad it is emphasized so greatly in this figure. Even her toes are parted, which really isn’t something you see too often in figures.

The pose of the figure allows Alter to really give some volume to the sculpt of her dress — and they did. It looks very fluffy and multi-layered, though it doesn’t look quite as light at it looks in the anime. I think this is due to the small scale of the figure — at only 1/8 scale, I imagine Inagaki Hiroshi sculpted himself into a wall when he had to sculpt such a skirt in such a scale. The result is something that looks a tad too heavy and bulky.

Menma’s display base depicts a slice of their cosy little clubhouse in the woods. The little cross-section lifted from the clubhouse is remarkably comprehensive — it’s got the sheet metal backing, a bit of mattress and um…a mattress-less top bunk? I wonder who built their clubhouse. Either these are some very  industrious kids, or there’s a father-of-the-year working tirelessly behind the scenes.

A stack of tires, wall decorations, and a removable umbrella and Menma’s journal completes the picture — a very detailed picture, at that. The journal deserves special mention. It may be smaller than you big toe tail, but it leaves no de tails wanting.

The display base would be the flawless highlight of this figure if not for one thing and one thing only: the support block underneath it. The clubhouse base is great because it greatly enhances the context and atmosphere of the figure, but the white block underneath it does nothing other than to undermine it, so much so that I can’t fathom why it’s there at all. Hell, even a generic brown disk would be better — at least that would represent the dirt floor the clubhouse is built on. But don’t get me wrong — Menma’s base is amazing — it’s just the decision to put a white box underneath is also amazing (for decidedly different reasons).

Final Say

Would I recommend Alter’s Menma? Yeah, she’s pretty cool. This figure has the distinction of being the only figure I currently own that doesn’t overly play up the sex appeal (unless you’re into feet), and I do admit that I feel something is missing because of that. But she’s such a great depiction of the character that I have plenty of other reasons to like the figure.

Menma is also a great figure to take for outdoors photos — you can make her sit on anything! Furthermore, she’s small enough to fit into the padded compartments of most camera bags, so she is easily “deployable”.  During my Washington trip I had Hamstercorp hold her by her little foot in the middle of  one of the densest crowds all year while I stood off  to the side and snapped away with my long focal length macro lens. And though a horrible human being I may be, even I felt bad for subjecting the Hamstercorpse to such cruel and unusual punishment as I could detect the hint of unease across that usually expressionless face of his.

Pros

• Very true to Menma’s character
• Scene-setting display base
• Detailed feet

Cons

• Slightly chunky feel to the dress
• Block beneath the base breaks the scene

Speaking of Washington, here are some random photos from the trip!

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky on that day and the cherry blossoms weren’t in full bloom, so the conditions weren’t ideal for my plans to take photos of plastic butts. However, I rather enjoyed Washington, and I especially took a liking to the memorial statues. Makes sense — I mean, they ARE technically large-scale figures if you think about it.

…Now I feel terrible about comparing the statues in Washington to the plastic butts in my Detolf. Oh God I’m so sorry.

You can find the rest on Google+ where I occasionally post stuff for the #figurefriday events or other things that may not be too relevant to plastic butts. So if you use G+ ADD ME because my self-confidence is measured in +1s.

After taking a year off, I’m back at Anime North! After Otakon last year, I had my doubts on whether or not I’d attend AN again, but as luck would have it, I got into touch with Jenn and Suich from Poke the Merch and decided to give it a shot — I just can’t say no to meeting strangers from the internet!

As you might know, figure bloggers have a strong tendency to be smart and attractive (LIKE ME), and Jenn and Suich were no exception. They were rolling out in full force with their friends with their Magi cosplay. I confess I know nothing about the series and had only found out that the characters are actually men much later in the day.

I was both happy and jealous to see readers of Jenna and Sui Chee greet and approach them throughout the course of the day, as their giveaway contest was a smashing success! The lucky winner of the draw took home with him a Nendoroid STRength, but the real winners are hosts of the contest. Not many figure bloggers have the pleasure of meeting readers in the flesh, and I definitely want to do more of that. Dear Santa: I want a life-sized Mikudayo outfit to wear next year. I can just see it now: FIND THE MIKUDAYO AND WIN FABULOUS PRIZES.

The highlight of the day’s events was a three-hour program called “Totally Lame Anime After Dark”. Hundreds upon hundreds of people packed into a massive presentation room to watch hilariously awful anime clips along with fun commentary. There were all manners of badness, but one thing that stood out was a series of super-depressing Japanese beer commercials featuring animated penguins. Apparently the ads were successful enough to warrant the making of a Vietnam War film…starring the penguins. I’m not kidding — it’s serious as cancer.

But that’s enough of me blabbing — I know you’re only here for the cosplay photos. The convention proved to be a great testing ground for the YN-560 III flash I bought recently.

I have to say that I didn’t have much success with it outside. Using it for fill flash outdoors gave off a rather unnatural look, and using the soft box + optical trigger was way to fiddly between adjusting the power of the flash, having the trigger randomly not work,  using one hand to hold the flash and the other to work the camera. But more importantly, Since the maximum sync speed is 1/250 of a second, I had to really shrink the aperture during the bright outdoor lighting conditions. This means I can’t take advantage of the subject isolation that comes with having a large aperture prime lens.

However, the flash really shined indoors. Bouncing the flash off the ceilings made for very nice lighting, and since it’s not blindingly bright indoors, I could keep my aperture big and blur out the crowd behind the subject. I couldn’t believe how easy it was! A couple years back I absolutely dreaded taking photos indoors, but with a flash it suddenly became the preferred place to take photos!

All in all, Anime North was pretty fun. It may not have the superior location and all-star guest list like Otakon, but it’s still a great excuse to meet friends from the internet and blind people with my toys. I’m definitely bringing more water and food next time, though — getting food is a daunting task when you’re fighting in line against the weeaboo hordes. Bringing a couple of pepperoni sticks along with a bottle of Gatorade ranks amongst the best ideas I’ve ever had.

DELAYS! Oh good lord the delays…*cough* I mean hello everyone!

So this was supposed to have been done many many weeks ago, but unfortunately, many, many delays happened instead.

Said delays started right away when I began researching this list I actually found about 9 games that I never played that looked interesting. Of course, we can’t have an incomplete list, so I spent about a week and a half on that (sadly none of them made this list…I guess there was a reason I skipped them). So with that out of the way, I sat down to write this article! Except the website was down, which happened two days in a row to me…Talk about a motivation killer. Sigh anyway by the time that nonsense was fixed I’d been gripped by resurgence in my MMO addiction and we all know how those go…

SO! To make a long story short I suck and am easily distracted like a small animal by shinies! In any case this list here was actually the brainchild of the lovely Zai from Plastic Parfait and the general idea of it is to cover games that aren’t what I would call AMAZING like what I included in my last recommendation list, but merely enjoyable in my eyes. Kinda like guilty pleasures only actually good to a degree!

Now without further ado, the first game up in the entirely alphabetical order is…

“If you want a colorful cast of girls to pick from, Canvas certainly delivers!”

Canvas 2

Some of you may recognize the title as it had an anime adaptation quite some time ago (8 years to be exact…and now I feel old), and much like how the show was fairly standard harem fare, this is a fairly standard eroge! The protagonist however isn’t completely useless and the cast of girls is pretty great all around, so just on those merits alone it places it above a lot of the junk I’ve played lately! Specifically you get to play a teacher instead of a student, which changes the dynamic of the usual school setting quite a bit.

Also one thing to note is while this is technically a sequel it shares no characters with the first one, so don’t’ worry about not having played that one already. Overall, it’s just a very nice simple little enjoyable game, which is what the majority of the games on this list will end up being I’m sure!

“Turns out slightly older games only have really piss low rez shots of their box art…”

Castle Fantasia Renewal 2 / Men at Work! 2

I’m actually putting these two together in the same entry because what I can say about one pretty much applies to both. They were made by the same company around the same time, both utilizing RPG gameplay and they are both sequels with silly names! Beyond that though they’re enjoyable enough games with solid gameplay, stories, and characters. While I doubt either of them will wow you with any one aspect, I’d say they both do pretty much everything you’d want from an RPG eroge.

“If nothing else, you know an Alice Soft game will have enjoyable art!”

Daibanchou – Big Bang Age

Now this one is again a case of a similar game from the same company, although the one I compare it to is on the other list in the form of Sengoku Rance. Now why is this one relegated to the B-List while Rance gets to sit pretty on the AWESOME games list? Well the gameplay may have some similarities what with conquering territory and all, but the actual in-combat fighting didn’t capture me like Rance’s did. Likewise, the characters just weren’t as memorable as Rance’s in general…They’re OK in their own ways, but from the protagonist all the way through all the girls you can bag the line-up just wasn’t nearly as compelling.

With that said though this is still a pretty enjoyable game with a fairly fun gameplay system and typically imaginative Alice Soft character designs.

“Only girls that matter in each game!”

Da Capo 1/2

Another twofer! Like Canvas earlier, these games very squarely occupy that “typical” eroge space. However, I’d say the overall cast and writing in the routes is a bit weaker than Canvas. What really made both Da Capo‘s stand out for me was that each had a truly exceptional girl with a memorable and well written route in each game that really drew me in. So I’d say this one is a bit more hit and miss overall…I doubt you’ll like the entire cast or even a good amount of them, but you might just find a really exceptional and special route buried underneath the mediocrity like I did!

“Minori just loves their light flares!”

ef ~ a fairy tale of the two

Ok, this is technically two games (First Tale and Latter Tale), but the overall name of them as a series is the one above, and we had to keep the awesome twofer theme going anyway! But yea I may catch some crap for this one being on the “B-List”, and I can’t really argue they’re wrong honestly…ef is a gorgeous game with really great production values, interesting characters, and good writing all around. It however lacks — to use an extremely pretentious and vague word — a spark. It just never really captured me nor do I think it was particularly memorable. Hell, I can only remember like 2 or 3 things that happened in the game and yea…

But as I said, it is a really well put together game and your experiences may be vastly more enjoyable than mine, so I’d highly recommend you give it a try, as you may end up loving it far more then I did!

“Where it all began for me~”

Figures of Happiness

NOSTALGIA TIME! This is actually the very first Eroge I played ever…amazing, I know. Now it may look like a typical trashy harem eroge that English publishers just looove to translate, but trust me it actually has a few twists!

I don’t want to spoil too much about it (in fact, don’t even read the VNDB synopsis of the story), but you start out already in a relationship and…well, lets’ just say things take a turn for the weird fairly quickly! It’s just an overall very fun quirky little game that I really ought to play again for old times sakes.

“Mecha musume…The perfect blend of my two favorite things!”

Gadget Trial

This one is probably the odd man out in this list. It has no h-content and is entirely linear which aren’t qualities that I’m terribly fond of. Throw in a fairly weak story and somewhat unbalanced gameplay you quickly see why it’s on the B-list.

It does however have great art, pretty fun tactics-based combat, and some seriously charming characters! It’s just a shame they couldn’t be put in a more ambitious game, but whatcha gonna do? It’s still an overall fun little mecha musume themed game to play.

“Note the large amounts of blood — ’tis not a happy game!”

Kara no Shoujo / Swan Song

Ok these two games have almost NOTHING to do with one another in any way shape or form. The reason I put them together like this is they occupy a similar feeling to them, one of a dark and realistic atmosphere.

I usually don’t want anything to do with overtly dark or realistic feeling games. To me, playing eroge is an escape! I want to see pretty colors and cute girls, yea? I don’t mind violence or somewhat darker themes (one of my favorite games and A-Lister was Saya no Uta, afterall) but games of this ilk just aren’t what I’d call enjoyable for me. That said though objectively speaking I found both of these games extremely well done in story, characters, and presentation overall. So if your into more depressing fare that has a gloomy atmosphere to it these are probably perfect for you!

“The amazing thing isn’t how many characters there are, but rather how the protagonist finds time to bang each and every one of them… More then once for most of them at that.”

Koihime Musou

This one made fairly big waves when Mangagamer announced they were going to release it, and its presence on this lower list is in no way a condemnation of it, but the game honestly could have been more. The combat in particular is pretty damn shallow and easy, and there are only 3 girls with actual routes while all the others are just side dishes the protag sleeps with (which is a damn shame because there’s some really amazing side girls). Of the girls that you do get a route with, two are lolis. One of them is frankly so childish it even gave ME a bit of regret “romancing” her, and the the last non-loli girl was fairly dull to me.

That aside though it is quite a large game with some really fun and snappy dialogue along with an enjoyable main story. Hopefully Mangagamer translates the what looks to be the far superior sequel in the future!

“Somehow they make transparent clothes badass!”

Muv-Luv Extra – Unlimited / Alternative

Alright lets break up the twofers with a uhhh…three…fer? Now to be fair Extra and Unlimited are technically one game, but they are so VASTLY different from each other and substantial in length they might as well be thought of as two separate games.

Right now, a lot of people consider Alternative to be the pinnacle of Eroge and I honestly can’t really dispute that. But then you must ask: “Why the hell is it on the B-List then Ashlotte you douche nozzle!“. Well my foul-mouthed friend, that’s a complicated answer! Basically, to me to get the most out of Alternative you really do need to play through Extra (at least one girl’s route) and Unlimited. The problem with this is that neither game is especially good as it were. Extra is an extremely generic and often times flat-out boring eroge that I could only barely get through one girls route of. I didn’t think much better of Unlimited either, as I found it often times unlikable and not terribly enjoyable after I had finished it.

But again, without these two games and the experiences of going through them I think Alternative‘s impact would be greatly lessened. So…IF and only IF you have the commitment to play through two fairly mediocre games to play one AMAZING one then I’d suggest this series. If that sounds like too much of a pain in the ass I’d say simply don’t bother.

“Oh boy, seeing that nostalgic form really gets me in the heart!”

Private Nurse

This is actually the second eroge I played (much love for G-collections for getting me into these silly things ages ago <3)! Now since I AM slowly becoming an old man I have a lot of fuzzy memories of this game, and my jaded current self may think it was silly to have loved the game as much as I did, but lets keep those memories beautiful and say this is a wonderful game!

But no seriously, this is a very nice small-ish game. The writing and the characters are quite superb and its one of the few games that actually made me cry like a little bitch, which is a pretty hard feat even for my younger self! Sadly though it’s on the short side, the sex scenes were kinda repetitive I remember, and one of the routes is far superior to the others, but its still very much worth playing I’d say!

“While it’s not the greatest Eroge ever, it has some of the damned cutest girls ever!”

Shuffle!

Once again in the company of Da Capo and Canvas, this game is yet another one that got a fairly successful harem anime adaptation back in the early/mid 2000′s (and was the peak of the shipper wars for me on anime boards…oh man, was that a scary time.). Also just like those games, it’s a very “standard” eroge with little change in the usual formula. But out of the three I’d say Shuffle has the best all round cast with all of the girls being very charming in their own ways (Although Asa-senpai is CLEARLY the best girl and anyone who says otherwise will be KILLED! Oh sorry I regressed their for a moment…).

Overall, it’s just a really nice fun cute game being a bit on the short side that’s kept a special place in my heart for various reasons. You could do far worse!

“All you need to know about this game summed up in one game cg!”

Wanko to Kurasou

Why aren’t their more good animal girl-centric eroge translated? Seriously, whose dick do I have to suck to get some cute freaking dog/cat loli girls up in here?!

…Ahem, Wanko is jut a fun great little game especially if you’re like me and have an unhealthy obsession with loli animal girls. The story is far from amazing though and it doesn’t have a huge amount going for it aside from said animal girls, but for what it is I found it very cute and enjoyable on the whole.

“Goddamn is the art great in this game!”

Which girl should I choose? (Hinatabokko)

I included the original romanized title because the official English one is stupid as hell (which ranks up their alongside such gems as Suck my dick or die!). Anyways, questionable English title aside, this one is similar to Wanko above in that it’s just a very cute sweet standard eroge (though sadly lacking Wanko’s animal girls).  The art style and writing all contributes to a very nice comfy quaint atmosphere. This is the kind of game you want to play in winter with a nice cup of hot chocolate curled up in a blanket.

And…WE’RE DONE! Holy hell I actually wrote an article after god knows how long…Where’s my gold star?!?

Jokes aside, again I apologize for how long this took. The regular reviews probably won’t come out anytime soon either, because there’s nothing I really want to write a full review of! I’m contemplating changing my format and separating the round-up junk I do at the end into its own separate thing from full length reviews so I can actually get out some content to fill the sadly large gaps between good review-worthy releases. Guess I’ll fiddle with it this weekend.

A month ago, I flew to San Francisco and met someone in person for the first time. We had In-N-Out Burger and visited the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art briefly before she had to run off.

On the very next day, I attended her wedding. And believe me, I had a lot of fun telling the other guests about the briefness of  our acquaintance.

Of course, there’s more to the story to that, and this post is going to be all about my friendship with the newly-wed Alicia. Before anyone objects about yet another normalfag post:

1. This is my own blog and I can ruin it however I want!
2. This also has everything to do with how I got into figure photography and blogging in the first place. I’ve shared the story of how I got started with figure photography before, but that’s not really the entire story.

I did not actually take any photos of the wedding itself because I didn’t want to get in the way of the professionals on the scene. I did end up taking a lot of photos at another wedding, but that’s another story entirely. So in lieu of weddings photos, here are some of my photo highlights from San Francisco to keep you from dozing off!

The room I stayed at in the San Remo hotel was minuscule and didn’t have a private bathroom, but the place really oozed character.

So, how did this cross-continental adventure come about? Well, it all started on MyAnimeList, of all places. Around five years ago, Alicia noticed me from one of the reviews I had written. She then took note of our very high compatibility rating when it comes to our tastes.

Sunset at Fisherman’s Wharf.

It turned out she had recently ended a long-time friendship and was wandering around, possibly looking for another friend. Languishing in an university environment that I found highly alienating, I was certainly in the frame of mind to build some new ties that school life did not yield. After a few messages we exchanged IM info, and being people from completely different background, we both had plenty of stories to tell to each other, weeaboo-related or otherwise.

Alcatraz was a blast. It could have been just a rock off the shore for tourists to wander around on, but the audio tour narrated by actual keepers and inmates of the prison made it immersive, educational and fun.

In addition to the audio tour, the volunteers on the island were also very enthusiastic and knowledgeable  One of them took a small group of us to an off-limit area of the island. Apparently this is where all the laundry was done for the American Navy during WWII. The more you know~

Pretty soon she became the best friend whom I’ve never met. One of my favourite things we did together was to sync-watch anime — we would do is count down and hit the play button the same time and exchange banter over instant messaging. You would not believe how much fun Code Geass is when you don’t have to suffer the nonsense plot alone. Together we also went through the likes of Card Captor Sakura, Planetes, Monster, and many more.

Dolores Park on the edge of the Mission. The California vibe was very thick here.

The famous Chinese food in the Mission District. I didn’t actually like the taste all that much, but boy does that look good on camera.

What makes her especially relevant to this blog is her direct and indirect role in the blog’s very creation. Over the course of our many conversations, I mentioned my figure-collecting hobby to her, and being a fellow weeaboo, she was interested in seeing them. This prompted me to borrow my dad’s D40 to snap a few shots of the fledgling collection, some of which being bootlegs at the time. Taking the photos is one thing, but sharing photos is another entirely. Of the many options out there, I went with Flicker, which was Alicia’s photo sharing website of choice.

Can’t be a proper weeaboo without visiting the Japanese tea garden in Golden Gate Park! Admission was $7, but sooooo worth it.

I brought both Danbo and figma Kagamine Rin, but I ended up only taking Danbo out. It’s just so much easier to set up, and Danbo just goes well with anything and everything.

Even though Flickr might have fallen behind the curve in recent years, it still had a community of figure photographers. Pretty soon I noticed that I was getting views, favourites and the occasional comment. Emboldened by what appeared to be an audience, I decided to add increasingly lengthy captions underneath the photos, some of which ended up being almost reviews.

These sea lions provide the soundtrack to the Fisherman’s Wharf — ARR ARR ARR ARR ARRR ARRR

It’s at this time that I’ve started to notice the blogs of some Flickr members. I remember seeing Aka‘s site (still named OMGwebsite at the time) and thinking “hey, I can do that!” With a camera in hand and an English degree in the pipeline, I figured that I’d be a pretty good fit for this. Sure, my photos weren’t going to win any prizes, but I thought I’d compensate for that with the quality maelstroms of information that my reviews will be. Hawwwww.

San Francisco’s Chinatown has grown into such a giant tourist trap that it’s hard to actually see a community underneath it all, especially when entire streets are covered by souvenir shops and little else.

This dude was making the most pitiful wailing noise all day, and I gave him five bucks because I was in full tourist mode. But when I stooped down to take a photo, the guy asked me for more money. Wow.

I’d be pretty grumpy if I was stuck selling tourist junk in Chinatown, too.

That was how I decided to start blogging, starting first on Blogger. A few days after my first review went up, Alicia discovered my newborn creation with much excitement. She asked for my login information for the blog, and a few days later, I woke up to the sight of a brand new theme. Although the site has since then gone through two different visual iterations, the typography of the header remains what it was that morning, though I’m sure I’ve violating a dozen of visual design rules without even knowing it.

Trekking along the ocean at Sutra Baths.

Alicia did far more than just watch cartoons with me and do some unpaid design work — she opened up the door to many things. Having a presentable theme was definitely a huge motivator in keeping the blog going, and through it I’ve come to know many friends either through the blog directly, or from social media related to the blog.

Obligatory photo of the Golden Gate Bridge. I was forewarned of the city’s perpetual fog, but the weekend of my visit was clear as clear can be!

Furthermore, because I’ve had such a positive experience with Alicia, I became very open to the idea of closer relationships with people on the internet — in fact, she was the one who convinced me to try online dating. Conventional wisdom may suggest that the internet is full of pedophiles and grown men masquerading as little girls, and though in my experience that statement is true in a very loose sense, there internet is home to true friends if one looks for them.

If I had to use one word to describe San Francisco as a city, it would be “tenacious”. Some areas of the city were so hilly that cars had to be parked sideways to prevent them from rolling down the hill, yet houses were still densely packed onto these slopes. Clearly, San Franciscans do no take “no” for an answer, even if it’s from mother earth.

What’s the moral of the story? Well, much like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get from a chance encounter on the internet. Inauspicious as it might be, that comment on MyAnimeList ended up indirectly defining my lifestyle and hobbies in the years to come. Whether starting down a path of buying plastic butts and writing and taking photos of said butts was a positive or negative thing is up to your interpretation, but as I looked on at the mysterious stranger on the internet wearing a wedding dress thousands of miles from home, I could not help but to be overcome by how far that inauspicious encounter has come in these past 5 years.

I went to Japantown hoping to score some conveyor belt sushi. Instead, I found sushi on BOATS. It easily ranks amongst one of the best meals I’ve had in my life.

These days, Alicia and I don’t talk as often as we used to. We’re no longer students with all the free time in the world, and ever since she moved to San Francisco, the 3-hour time difference between the west and east coast has been yet another obstacle. But none of that mattered as I tapped away at a Facebook post back at my hotel, eyes still leaking with the emotions of the occasion:

“Congratulations to Alicia on your most happy occasion. The memories of this day will stay with me forever.

You were there in my most difficult times. You showed me that there are true friends to be found in unlikely places. I owe you much of the current happiness I now enjoy, and I can never thank you enough.

No matter how far life may separate us, I will always be your sincerest friend. I wish you all the happiness in this world.”

So to all you beautiful people on the internet, give your faraway friends an e-hug — you never know when they’ll return the favour in person, no matter how far they might be.

From the top of Twin Peaks. Protip: you might want to skip this place if you don’t have access to a car, because buses don’t go up there. Or you can be stupid climb straight up on the slope like I did and risk tumbling a very long way down.

If you want to see more of my San Fran photos, go to my Google+ post. The city was an absolute joy to photograph, but I can only squeeze so many into one post!

If you’ve been a long-time reader of Hobby Hovel, then you would have undoubtedly noticed the lack of activity over the majority of the past year. I had even skipped my anniversary post due to the laughable amount of content produced. The reason for this has something to do with this engagement ring happily accepted by my fiancé Melissa, and if you’ve got time and patience to spare, I will tell you the story of how I and the blog ended up where they are right now.

Chag, Internet Romeo

Chag, one year ago.

The fact that I was a late bloomer to dating is one which would surprise absolutely nobody. As someone who has missed the romance bus during their school years, I was at a bit of a loss as to where to even start. I didn’t have any normal hobbies, and it’s not as if I could go to a bar and blurt out “Sup baby, check out my POTM on myfigurecollection.net.” The lack of experience left me with a sense if inadequacy; I was already 23 years old, one of my close friends was already getting married, and I felt that I wasn’t going to be young for that much longer. The ticking of the clock echoed ever closer in the back of my head, and I did not want to let it overtake me.

When I first moved out of my parent’s home, I was asked by my dad whether I wanted a twin or a double bed as we were furniture-shopping at IKEA. This inadvertently made me ask myself the question: have I given up completely on finding someone? Sure, I’ve joked with friends about hoping to see android waifus invented in our lifetimes, but have I actually accepted science fiction as my only shot at companionship? “No,” I told myself, especially not before I’ve made some serious effort first. A couple of hours later we were squeezing the double mattress into the family SUV — an outcome I would come to appreciate later on.

Guided by the suggestion and encouragements of a couple of friends, I decided to give online dating a try. After all, what good would my English degree and years of blogging be if I can’t charm some women through the interwebs? Furthermore, the advantage of internet dating is that I would have some idea of the other party’s personality and interests are, so in theory I could single out the matches who would appreciate my geeky weeaboo hobbies, because otherwise the room full of plastic butts is going to be impossible to explain.

My first forays into online dating were disheartening. As I browsed through the high match-rating profiles, it became increasingly clear that there aren’t nearly as many feasible matches as I had hoped. Worse yet, it seemed that every other profile listed The Big Bang Theory — possibly the most loathed thing I’ve had the displeasure to glance at on TV — as one of their favourite TV shows. A brief episode of despair unfolded as I doubted whether even the internet had anyone for me, and the massive numerical imbalance between men and women on OkCupid did not help.

Through a combination of luck and savviness with the search features (protip: try searching for the keyword “anime”), I started having some moderate success . When I first came across Melissa’s profile, it had been for few months since my first relationship went belly-up. Her profile suggested that she was a big fan of anime and video games, and I was particularly impressed by her mention of Kuragehime as one of her favourite manga. “Wow, I never expected to see Kuragehime mentioned on OKC. You have great taste. :)” was the first message I had sent her, and a few days later at 3 in the morning, I awoke to a notification alert on my phone — she had responded:

“Hahaha of course! I appreciate good josei anime! I’m happy that you also enjoy Kuragehime!

AND you don’t like the Big Bang Theory! AHH! Let’s be friends Oooh, and you a have personal blog~ I’d like to check it out.

Oh, I should mention that I don’t really go on OKC a lot though. I’m so infrequent with responding to message on this site so if you want to chat more we can exchange emails or whatever suits your boat.”

As I immediately found out, she is inquisitive by nature. I had mentioned that I run a collectibles blog in my dating profile, since I figured that there’s no point in hiding such matters, but I hadn’t anticipated such a direct request to see this blog right off the bat. I had hoped to tell her more about myself first before pointing her to the website in which I fantasized about wanting to become a little girl for a day in an audio recording, amongst other things. Fortunately, despite her thorough inspection of the blog, she did not run of screaming but instead became genuinely interested.  So yeah, I guess figure blogging does get the girls after all!

Our first dates were full of her asking questions and me talking about mostly myself, but the chemistry between both of our rather goofy personalities overcame her initial plan to friendzone me. Astonishingly, I was her first boyfriend, which meant that I was the one with more relationship experience (something I never thought I would say). This made me more at ease about my lack of experience, and we happily bumbled through the stages of our relationship through joy and misunderstandings alike.

Our favourite pastime is watching anime together, we started with Psycho-Pass when it was still airing, and now Kill la Kill and Space Dandy have become our weekly staples. Melissa is also a big Disney and TV buff. Initially I started watching The Walking Dead just to build one more bridge of common interest between us when we first started dating, but she has since made a Game of Thrones convert out of me, and indoctrinated me with more Disney songs than I care to admit. By the way, Beauty and the Beast  had made me feeling all the feels.

There was a remarkable boost in my self-confidence. After taking off my hat and showing the thin hair on one of the first days of our relationship, Melissa told me that “I’d like you even if you shaved yourself bald”, and I thought that was the sweetest thing. Since then I’ve cut my hair very short numerous times and showed more people my hobbies. It’s amazing how the feeling of being loved made my insecurities regarding my hobbies and physical appearance seem trivial.

Today we are happily engaged, and before you ask: no, there wasn’t a fancy proposal, but rather we just commemorated the occasion with a lovely hotel getaway and a weekend together. We spontaneously started singing the Beauty and the Beast theme together, and I cooked her stewed beef noodles, the dish I had made for her birthday on the very first time she came over to my home. We had been talking about getting engaged for around six months, so both of us had more or less set on the date to go “official” months in advance. In retrospect, we probably had been too hasty, but I’m glad that we’ve come to love each other even more since then.

Best birthday card? Best birthday card.

If I had to think of a secret to our success, it’d be our openness to each other and the willingness to talk out any budding conflicts before it becomes a source of passive-aggressive animosity. Because of this, we’ve never had any real fights, and every instance of us overcoming our differences always brings forth an outpour of affection. We’ll be moving in together in the coming months, and I’m as optimistic as ever about the road ahead.

Too Good for Figures?!

Now that I’m done establishing the context, it’s time to talk about what’s happened to the blog in the past year.

It’s probably sacrilege to say this on a figure blog, but as far as hobbies go, figures really aren’t all that cost-effective to me. I started collecting figures back when 1/8th scales figures were around 5,000 yen and figmas were around 2,000 yen — all under a favourable exchange rate as well, mind you. Now the prices have effectively doubled, and I found it increasingly difficult to justify the price. Although I recognize the technical advancements in the hobby, they’ve been never enough for me. I found myself complaining about the figure prices with ever-growing frequency, and as a result I had become increasingly picky with my purchases.

While the price of figures have crept up with alarming pace, my other hobbies have remained relatively constant or have even fallen in price. The slight increase of price for gundam models feels more than fair, especially considering the advancement in engineering and the number of parts. On the video game front, my ascension to the PC master race a couple years back have drastically altered my expectations; for the price of a 1/8 scale figure today I can get around ten to twenty games during a steam sale. That is a lot of fun to compete against.

But no matter how cheap Steam sales get, they can’t beat free, which is what I’ve been accustomed to in my past year with Melissa. No successful figure photoshoot, no freshly-built gundam model, and no 80-hour Civilization V victory has yet to beat a weekend spent together with her, whether it’s watching anime or TV together, or talking for hours on end about anything and everything, or doing nothing at all. There’s always a sense of fullness at the end of our times together, as well as an every-growing difficulty in parting. It’s this feeling of fulfilment that has no substitute, and as we spend more and more time together, the time I spend on my other hobbies consequently get sidelined.

Does this mean I’m not interested in figures any more? Not really. In fact, we really enjoy looking at new figures together. Discussing new figures with Melissa is a welcome alternative to the uber-critical smackdown that inevitably happens every time I talk figures with Ashlotte. For Christmas I even got the LAT Miku from her — who interrogated poor Ashlotte to no end on what my tastes in figures are — because she didn’t want me to give up on the hobby that was so important to me when we first started going out.

Yet despite her encouragement, I still find it hard to actually buy any new figures. The most memorable example was the Megahouse Elf figure. The figure has a relatively tame price tag, an interesting art style, promising quality and is from a source material that I’m interested in. Yet despite the stars aligning, I just couldn’t do it — the dollar-to-fun ratio was just not favourable. Figures used to be my only subjects which fuels my photography hobby, but now that I’ve expanded my horizons somewhat, even that aspect of the hobby’s value weakens.

The length of my idea of a long-term goal used to be the time span of the average figure pre-order, but today words like “mortgage”, “car”, and even “children” swirl around in my head. There is always somewhere the money can be put towards, and this common-sense realization is something that I have not taken seriously until very recently. Of course, this is not to say that one should put every penny he earns way into his metaphorical piggy bank, as life would be horribly dull without pastimes, but given the frustrating value proposition of the figure hobby, it has become something that I can let go without missing it all that much. Simply put: there are cheaper hobbies and activities that give me just as much pleasure as figures, therefore I am reluctant to invest more money in it.

Though I might not be buying figures anymore, I’m still enjoying the hobby. I’ve been periodically active on Google+, often taking figure photos for the sake of itself rather than to reach some self-set standards. I also won 5,000 points from grand prize of the Amiami Halloween photo contest with the help of Melissa modelling as the victim of Mikudayo, which made me giddy to no end. I still have a few figures that I haven’t reviewed, I haven’t had much interest in reviewing those, to be honest. I’ve posted a bunch of the figure photos I’ve taken since the blog was last updated in this post, and I’m considering moving away from the old review format in the future — perhaps something shorter and to the point? Bah, at this point I don’t think there’s any point to make any promises.

Aim for the Gold

Anyways, that is how things have been with me for the past year. I’m not exactly sure how Hobby Hovel will be in the future, but I hope we’ll still have a place on your RSS feed reader.

To end things off, I will attempt to bestow some advice based on my experience over the past year. I say this with some hesitation, as I’m a pretty lousy source of life advice, but to my single brethren: if love is something you want in life, please do not be mired by your doubts.

The cutest little hobo.

I won’t bullshit you by saying that our hobby does not complicate things, and I won’t even say that everyone who tries will find success, but I do say that if you don’t want to be single forever, then you must roll up your pant legs and get your feet wet. Things such as one’s own hobbies and experiences would only cripple you if you let them. Be yourself, put yourself out there, learn from trial and error and look until you either set your embers aflame or extinguish them for good. Only then can you find closure with yourself and not be addled with regret later over the chances you never took.

To love and be loved is a wonderful feeling, and I’ve met too many of my figure friends who sell themselves far too short (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE). Not everyone needs to be in a relationship to be happy, but to those who want to, I give you every encouragement I can possibly give, and I wish you the best of luck in your endeavours.

-Chag, Chang, CHARLES-KUN

“What is that?”

 “Why do you collect these things?”

 “You spent how much on this?”

As a figure collector, one is bound to run into questions like these sooner or later. Of course, there are many reasons why we love the things we do. Some may marvel at the detail and workmanship which go into the making of these mass-produced wonders, while others may appreciate the faithful depiction of their favourite characters in three dimensions. I’ve even seen the word “art” thrown around in discussions here and there.

But no matter how hard we may try to rationalize ourselves, sometimes we do it for reasons beyond reasoning, because sometimes we just want some plastic booty, and it is the quest for said booty that which had led met to Max Factory’s Tharja.

For the aforementioned, this figure had been on my radar ever since I saw it. Furthermore, It somehow became a frequent point of discussion when I first started going out with my fiancé. Though I was surprised (and slightly confused) at the degree of enthusiasm she had for Tharja’s big plastic booty, it has made a firm impression on my mind. Conveniently, since the her Animal Crossing 3DS fell to a state of perpetual neglect, I was happy to commandeer it for the sake of finally scratching this itch.

I very much enjoyed my time with the game, which I view as the tactical RPG equivalent of the Persona games. Like Persona, making friends plays a key part in your success, but Fire Emblem: Awakening ups the ante by giving the option to marry your team members, whose offspring then become recruitable units.

To a casual player, the friendship and marriage system is a very charming and light-hearted way to explore the game’s colourful cast. To the min-maxer, the stat and skill inheritance systems makes the game an exercise in weaponized breeding. But all in all, the game balances its friend-making and gameplay halves really well, and going out of my way to make sure certain characters are holding hands while murdering their enemies is a fun twist to an genre I already enjoy.

Tharja joins the team about a third of the way into the game. A dark mage with a penchant to try out experimental curses to satisfy her morbid curiosity, her personality was not what I envisioned from the figure. The game seldom provides a proper full-body view of the character, as the 2D sprites only go from the waist up and the 3D sprites are crude at best, so along with a few pieces of official art, this figure provides a rare full view of the character. To that note, I must say that many creative liberties were taken.

The Tharja I saw in the game is perpetually slouching, along with bags under her eyes to match her gloomy image. The figure on my desk has a back arched like a drawn bow and is showing off her ass as if she has a booth in the butt enthusiasts convention. If you squint real hard or point a macros lens at her face, you’ll make out faint dark patches which you probably mistook for eyeliner before.

So the body language and the face might feel a bit off for the game’s purists, but I can hardly hold it against the figure when she looks so good. Tharja has a palpable seductive aura to her. The suggestive way she places her fingers near her mouth and the teasing expressing in her eyes go a long way in achieving this, but they’re also supported by the more subtle aspects of the figure.

Tharja’s superbly sculpted cape painted in its deep, rich blue colour reminds me of bed sheets, and I’m sure that’s a part of sculptor’s design. Even the stack of books and the skull help to establish an atmosphere of intimacy that sucks the viewer in.

Of course, there’s only so much I can say without mentioning the elephant in the room: Tharja’s mighty ass. It is an ass people worthy of songs to be passed onto future generations, and for good reason. When placed in a dusty room, the gravitational forces generated by the sheer mass of her ass is known to create miniature moons orbiting it. Propped up by her shapely legs, it is the unabashed focal point of the figure. I’m not sure why her thong is so blocky, but I’ve never been to question the wisdom of large objects wedged between a woman’s legs.

The reason why I harp on about Tharja’s legs is not only because they’re long and shapely (of which they are), but also because they’re so singularly prominent in this figure. Between the cape and the placement of her arms in front of her chest, the viewer’s eyes are really corralled to either her face or legs. In that respect, this figure is all about presentation; are Tharja’s legs and bum really that objectively amazing? Probably not — it’s way the figure frames those parts that makes them great.

Tharja’s cape is removable by popping off her head and replacing large cape piece with a much smaller collar piece. However, as expected of a cast-off figure, she looks slightly off without her cape. The parts of her body which were covered by the cape (her shoulders and her waist) appear unnaturally small, creating a rather alien silhouette when combined with her large posterior and long legs.

Surprisingly, the figure does not plug into the base, which is just a felt-lined disk which also serves as a major dust magnet. Tharja balances on her own feet just fine, and without her cape and books, she looks like she’s in the middle of an idol dance routine.

Final Say

At the end of the day, Tharja’s elegance is what sets her apart. There’s no overblown display base and no acrobatic action pose to be found; rather, Tharja keeps things simple by setting the mood with her face and body language, then goes for the kill with the butt and legs that are impossible to look away from. With a bit of creative re-interpretation, the sculptor turned an unlikely character into a bombshell pin-up girl, so who knows — maybe Nintendo was onto something when they censored Tharja’s butt in the DLC after all.

Pros

• Alluring pose
• Detailed cape sculpt
• DAT ASS
• Looks unnaturally proportioned without the cape

Cons

• Looks unnaturally proportioned without the cape

Hope you’ve had a good year guys, because it’s time for a new post!

I won’t ignore the elephant in the room and pretend this blog hasn’t been fallen into an obvious state of disuse in the past year, but despite not purchasing any new figures since Tharja, I still take photos of figures occasionally and post them on Google+ and flickr. Since these posts are much shorter than the full-blown reviews Ash and I used to post on this site, I never thought about posting them here, but now feels like as good of a time as any to change my mind. For despite all the neglect this site has suffered over the years, Hobby Hovel is still dear and close to my heart. So for as long as I long as I partake in the figure photography hobby, I would want to share it at the place where it really took hold.

So without further ado, this post will be about the Robot Damashi Sinaju figure I received from Hamstercorp on his recent visit. The Sinanju has been a mobile suit that I had often thought about purchasing a model of, but the task of hand painting the gold trim proved to be too intimidating of a task for me. This Robot Damashi figure, on the other hand, looks great out of the box and is designed to stand up the punishment of play. It is quite a liberating experience to be play around with the Gundam universe figure without the fear of scratched paint and broken pieces.

I won’t get into neurotic detail, but of special note are Sinanju’s rubber hands which allows for a lot of flexibility when it comes to positioning its melee weapons. The double beam axe weapon would’ve been a nightmare to pose, but thanks to its rubber hands, there was virtually no frustration at all! The figure is also decently articulated with solid joints, though the torso needs some extra hand-holding at times.

This lighting for this shot ended up being slightly tricky when I realized its arm and weapon cast a shadow over its head. This was a bummer because as pleasant as Sinanju’s hands were to work with, this weapon is so clunky and impractical that it’s rather hard to come up with a decent action pose with it. I ended up putting one light source directly above the figure and a second below and to one side to balance it out.

For this shot I used my 35mm (50mm equivalent) lens when it became clear that I wasn’t going to fit both figures in the same frame, but I was surprised at how big of an effect it had on the feel of the image. With the wider lens, the stretching effect on the corners really added a nice dynamic look. It made me wonder about the potentials of using a macro wide-angle lens to produce some iconic effects. Maybe one day!

Finally, there’s the shot at the top of the post. I decided to try an low-key effect with some colour gel flash lighting on one side to convey some drama. I was mostly happy with the results, but the lack of a prominent mono-eye on the figure made me wish I had the know-how to Photoshop it in. Enter Francis, who did exactly that after I mentioned in on my post on Google+. I must admit this addition makes the image more interesting by leaps and bounds.  I tried doing this myself in Photoshop afterwards, but was only partially successful. The mono-eye was reasonably simple, but adding a convincing green glow around it proved to be too much for my patience.

By request, here’s the photo of Sinaju re-imagined as a stripper by the wife.

Anyhow, that’s the end of the first of these new posts. I have a couple more of these planned for the near future, so please bear with me while I figure this out!

So I was yet another wedding a couple of months back, and when it (finally) came time to leave, the wife insisted on taking the small box of little white flowers on our table home with us for figure photos. The flowers didn’t strike me as a great prop, but I heeded her advice and drove back with the loot. Before the flowers wilted, I took a quick shot of Menma with them, if only to end the incessant questions of “when are you going to take picture with flowers?”

I threw the shot above on Google+, and to my surprise it ended being pretty well-received (judging by the number of +1’s, the vague measure of approval on the platform). On top of that, the photo did decently on flickr too. I suppose the colour of the flowers matches Menma’s hair colour rather well, and since I shot this indoors while blasting it with two flashes, the lighting conditions were better controlled than the real flowers in Washington. Still, I found the image somewhat flat due to the lack of contrasting colours. The only colour that stood out was the blue in her eyes, and though I increased the saturation of the blues and aquas, as well a the reds and oranges to add some warmth to her skin colour, the image as a whole is still a far cry from being vibrant.

Still, I did do a few things differently in this shot that might have contributed to its positive receptions — in fact, they were things I did not do from my usual fare.

The raw export without any adjustments.

I decided against adjusting the clarity slider for this shot. While this particular setting in Lightroom has added extra pop to most of my figure shots in the past, I quickly realized that they were not ideal when shooting people if the idea is to make look pretty. It brings out a lot of details that I don’t necessarily want to see with such clarity. Over time, the slider has become with grittiness and the dramatic. It also has the unwelcome tendency of increasing the visibility of dust. These are all reasons why I’ve been weaning myself off the setting recently when I don’t have a good reason to use it, and since this shot is going more of a light and fluffy feel, I left the clarity slider alone.

The other thing I didn’t do was add vignetting. I add post-processing vignetting to most of my shots. I just find it makes most shots look a bit better, probably because it’s subtly directs the viewer’s attention to the centre of the image. But once again, since I was going for “light and fluffy, I added some reverse vignetting to make the corner brighter.

So this is how the shot came together. While I don’t consider it an amazing shot, I’m still very glad that I took that box of flowers. To the fellow photographers amongst you: how would you edit this shot? What’s your favourite trick to spice up a shot?

Photography has a way of adding new meaning to things. Behind every image is the potential for a stories and memories about how it came to fruition. At the best of times, it’s a veritable adventure of getting one’s hands dirty, trying new things and ultimately being rewarded for the trouble. Sadly, the story behind this shot of Max Factory’s Tharja will be remembered for a substantially less pleasant reason: an awkward and painful physical injury.

It all began when I decided to take photos of Tharja again. I was never too pleased with the shots I took for her review, so I wanted to give it another go. With that said, I didn’t really have an idea for her, so I just put her in front of the camera with my usual setup, hoping to find out what clicks along the way.

This was the first iteration, which used a key light on front-right side of the subject with a rim light coming from the back left side. It’s very similar to the some of the photos from the review, except the rim light here does not have the red colour from the colour gel. I felt the rim light was distracting and failed to add anything desirable to the shot. In fact, I liked the way the figure melded into the black background in the bottom of the shot a lot more than the separation from the black background that the rim light achieves.

The subsequent attempt did away with the rim light and more or less achieved the effect I was going for, but something still bugged me. Upon closer inspection, I noticed her eyes were no longer directed towards the camera. Now, it might not look like it, but I have been pacing and squatting around the dinner table for quite a while between these two shots, and the more I stared at this figure through the viewfinder, the more convinced I was that having her look at the camera was absolutely essential.

So by this point I was getting pretty impatient. I couldn’t believe how long it has taken to squeeze this one shot through the pipes, and as consequence of my impatience, it was at this point when the fateful injury happened: when I squatted down to adjust the tripod on top of which the flash was mounted on. I slammed my tail bone corner of a nearby side table, which sent me writhing on the couch for a good five minutes and a bunch more with a bag of ice. Since I’ve never broken a bone in my body, my measure of physical pain may be limited, but it is hard to overstate the pain of this experience. I would go on to spend the majority of the next 2 weeks sitting on a rubber inflatable doughnut, but at the time I was too stubborn to leave the shot hanging. I went back to the table to get the shot I was had aimed for.

Yet I was still unhappy about the shot. The original goal was to have a smooth transition into the black background, but there wasn’t much empty black space left in the frame, so I took one last shot with a basic rule of thirds composition. Now there’s more room to appreciate the transition to black, the job is done… or so I thought.

Right after I uploaded the shot to Google+, it occurred to me that the black and white treatment would make a lot of sense if I wanted to focus on the transition to black. And sure enough, the shot works without colour, so I quickly took the original post down and replaced it.

There wasn’t much in the way of post-processing for this shot beyond basic tone curve adjustment to increase contrast, lens correction and sharpening, but one change of note is the brightness of the left eye. I decreased the contrast and increased of the exposure of the pupil with Lightroom’s adjustment brush tool to make it a bit more visible.

And that’s the story of how this shot came together. Today I am happy to report that there does not seem to be any permanent damage to the derrière. It has been a lesson on the importance of spacial awareness, but also on the importance of critical thinking in the creative process. Rather than blasting the figure with two lights simply because I have them, sometimes one is all that’s needed to achieve a specific effect more appropriate for the subject. It has gotten me to think harder about how to better use the black backgrounds in my shots; I’m not so great making props from scratch, nor do I collect much in the way of figure-friendly props, so if I am to stick with this hobby, then it would be very important to make most of the tools available to me.

Of all the figures I re-shot since their original reviews, Alter’s summer Saber was among the most difficult. While the original review had some of my favourite photos to this day, the fact that I ran out of ideas for the indoors studio shows was plain as day. In retrospect, despite all the praise I heaped onto this figure, it really didn’t have that much going on by itself. It did not have great detail to admire up close, nor does it fill up the frame in an interesting way. So without fancy rivers and flowers, I struggled with making an interesting shot with it.

However, more recent experimentations with rim lighting got me thinking about ways to apply the technique more meaningfully. Rim lighting outlines the shape of the subject, and Saber has a very elegant and slim profile, making it the perfect candidate. The figure was lit from the back and to both sides, and the figure’s shape makes it easy to light relatively evenly. One source of frustration is that some of the light from the flashes would find its way into the lens, but this was circumvented by blocking off parts of the softbox.

Incidentally, this is what the shot looks like in colour. Which version looks better? I might be going through some sort of a b&w phase and I need to make sure it hasn’t developed into an insane obsession.