Since I’m feeling lazy, I’ve decided to cover all the figures I got during June in one post. Some of these were from my Japan trip while others were preorders that arrived while I was away. The ones from Japan are the Reimu, Marisa, Sakuya, Sanae, and Sumomo nendoroids. The Fate nendoroid, Bakemonogatari nendoroid petits, Seitokai no Ichizon figures, and Ruri were all waiting for me at home when I got back at the end of June. I could have picked up everything in Japan instead of preordering, but that wouldn’t have left very much room in my luggage. That’s why I decided to just get the Touhou nendoroids since they’re hard to find online. Sumomo was an impulse buy, so I had to find some room for her in my luggage, luckily everything just barely fit.

Reimu was the first figure I picked up in Japan. After searching around Akiba for a day, I had found her selling for anywhere between 7,900 – 15,000 yen. As you can see, the one I got was just 280 yen more than the cheapest, but the store owner said that this one was unopened whereas the cheaper one had already been opened. Naturally, I went for the unopened one.

This is what she looks like straight out of the box. The details are perfect, and if it weren’t for that little red smudge on her collar, I’d say that the paint job was perfect as well. Reimu also has a base with the ying yang symbol painted on it, which is a nice touch.

I loved the ribbons on her back and in her hair. Her ponytail is detachable and movable, in case you wanted to have her pose in the wind or something.

This is one of my favourite poses. Reimu comes with a hand that has a tea cup glued on to it so you don’t have to worry about the cup falling off.

Reimu also comes with some miko related items. I’m not sure what exactly they are or what they’re called, so if any of you know, please enlighten me :)

This Marisa nendoroid was an opened one that I bought at Mandarake for 4,700 yen (I think). The box was in a lot better condition when I bought it, the damage you see here was from being tossed around in my luggage.

For a used figure, Marisa wasn’t in a bad condition. There were some scratches on her clothes that you can see here, but it’s nothing too major. Her base has the same symbols as the magic thingy that she has (I really need to learn my Touhou items).

No witch is complete without her broom and pointed hat. I was hoping that the hat would be magnetic, but unfortunately it’s not. It stays on the head if you put it straight on, but you can’t have it at an angle.

Here’s the magic thingy I was talking about. There’s a peg on the back that you can stick into one of the hands, but I wish there were two pegs so that you could stick it in both hands. I found it a bit difficult to line up the second hand with the first to make it look like she’s holding it with both hands.

Sakuya ended up being the cheapest Touhou nendoroid that I bought. I found her in a small store in Akiba underneath the train tracks near Book-Off. It was a really shady looking area because it was so dark and dirty, and there was a porno shop across the street, but at least things were well-priced.

To tell the truth, I’m not a very big Sakuya fan, but since I was planning on getting most of the Touhou nendoroids, I figured I’d just collect them all. Unlike Reimu and Marisa, Sakuya comes with a sort of angry face rather than a happy face. Her base is painted with a clock since she can control time (somewhat).

My favourite part of this nendoroid is the tea set that it comes with. There’s a peg underneath the platter so you can stick it on her hand, but the interesting thing is that you can rotate the tea cup and teapot. Most nendoroid accessories are static items, so I was surprised to find that GSC made one with movable parts.

Sakuya also comes with some crossed arms, which could be used to show some dissatisfaction (maybe because it’s so dirty?)

Of course, you can’t have a Sakuya figure and not include her knives. The knives are cool, but I wish they had a hand holding several of them between her fingers rather than just having one knife per hand.

I got this Sanae nendoroid for 5,800 yen in a store a couple blocks away from where I bought Sakuya. The store had everything behind glass display cases so all of their figures were in good condition.

I haven’t played past Perfect Cherry Blossom in the Touhou series yet so I don’t know much about Sanae other than she’s also a miko like Reimu. She looks like a cute character, and I like the frog clip she has in her hair. As for the figure itself, I was a bit diappointed with the quality. If you take a look at her shirt, you’ll see that the paint job isn’t very smooth. This is the same thing I noticed with my Nanoha nendoroid, but to a lesser degree. Both of these nendoroids are relatively recent releases, so I’m starting to wonder if GSC is cutting back on quality control to produce more figures, or if it’s just a coincidence.

Sanae comes with several hands and sleeves which allow you to make more gestures than most nendoroids.

The only accessory she comes with is another item that I can’t name. I’m assuming it has something to do with her miko duties.

Sanae also comes with this cute scared face. This pose reminds me of when we played dodgeball in grade school. Most of the girls would have this look on their face sometime during the game, then you decide not to throw the ball at them, and then someone on their team gets you.

I preordered Fate back in January from Toyslogic and she arrived just before the end of June. I’ve placed orders with Toyslogic before and was not happy with their service so I try to avoid them, but at the time they were the only place I knew of that was still taking orders for Fate, everywhere else was sold out. This time there were no problems with my order, so I have a little bit more faith in them.

Fate has movable twintails and a cape that is held in place by her head. The cape was actually a bit troublesome when it came to positioning the figure because I couldn’t get Fate’s head all the way down with the cape on her shoulders. This means that her head is always tilted up a little bit. I didn’t find any obvious flaws, and I like how they managed to sculpt the outline of her bellybutton.

Fate comes with two versions of Bardiche, the first one is just in regular form.

The second one is in its scythe form. This one looks a lot cooler, but the number of poses she can do with it is limited because of its size.

Since the Nanoha nendoroid came with a little Yuuno figure, Fate comes with a little Arf figure. Unfortunately, the only movable part on Arf is her tail, so there’s not many poses you can make with her.

Like I said earlier, Sumomo was an impulse buy. I found her in a game store in Hiroshima for only 2,800 yen. A good deal considering most nendoroids cost more than that, and Sumomo comes with the Nanatsuiro Drops DS game and a bunch of other stuff.

From what I can tell, Sumomo is a magical girl, but when I was playing the game, most of the time you see her in her bedroom in her PJs. She looks really cute, and except for a brown spot on her shirt, I didn’t find anything wrong with her.

She also comes with this weird animal thing, which is supposed to be who you are in the game. I guess that explains why I was in a girl’s bedroom. Everything was in Japanese so when I was playing I thought something dirty was going to happen since I didn’t know what was going on. Turns out all you do is count sheep as Sumomo falls asleep.

Sumomo only has two faces instead of the usual three, but she comes with a little pillow that she can sleep on. The only downside, as you can see here, is that her head is a bit too big for the pillow so it looks a bit awkward when you look at her from the side. I was still really happy with this purchase though, probably the best deal I’ve ever gotten on a nendoroid.

I got the Bakemonogatari set 1 nendoroid petits sometime early in June. The only other nendoroid petit I had at the time was a Yuri (Angel Beats) that came with an issue of Dengeki G’s magazine, so these were my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th ones.

After owning 4 nendoroid petits, I have to say that I’m rather impressed with how much detail they can put into something so small. The only real downside that I found with these figures was that it was hard to get pieces on and off since some of the pegs were too big. I think it took about half an hour for me to pull Hanekawa’s body apart to remove the piece of plastic separating them.

The box of figures on the right came with the Seitokai no Ichizon artbook on the left. I really enjoyed the Seitokai no Ichizon anime so I decided to buy this even though the figures didn’t look very high quality.

Sure enough, the figures I got aren’t that much better than what you would find in gachapon machines in Japan. You can move around the arms and heads a bit to make a few different poses. The only thing I really didn’t like was that Mafuyu isn’t attached to her base so she keeps falling over since her head is so heavy.

This Ruri figure is the only non-chibi figure that I got in June. Long time readers of my blog will know that Nadesico is my favourite anime of all time, and Ruri is my favourite character. That’s why I just had to get this figure when I heard about it.

I’m generally happy with Kotobukiya’s figure quality, and this was no exception. Ruri’s dress is really nicely done, and there were a lot of small details like her shoe ribbons and the flowers that make having Ruri all the more worthwhile. The only bad thing about this figure is that her left hand is attached to her skirt, but her skirt isn’t attached to her body. When I was taking off her legs to remove the protective plastic, I was really nervous about accidently breaking her hand off since her lower half was really stuck in there.

Overall, I was satisfied with my acquisitions for June. I don’t normally get so many figures in one month, so I’m going to have to cut back on figure spending for a while.

Related posts:

1. Miku Hatsune GSC Figure
2. Figure Splurge
3. Hayate Yagami Figure Shipped

Have you ever had a song stuck in your head for along period of time because it was so catchy? Well, for the past week the opening song for Bakemonogatari episode 10 has been running through my head nonstop. If you watch Bakemonogatari, you’ll know how cute and adorable this song is, but if you don’t, here’s the video from youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VHMA4AcZNs

Now wasn’t that just adorable? I think the fact that Nadeko is so kawaii also helps make the song seem even more so. Like the title says, the song is called Renai Circulation and it’s sung by Nadeko’s voice actress Kana Hanazawa. I think the reason this song has been stuck in my head for so long is because the only thing the people in this city I just moved to care about is beer and football, so I needed an injection of pure kawaii/moe-ness. Hopefully it won’t be too long until the full song is released on CD.

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