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.

Figures

Unless this is your first time here, you’ll know that I’ve been collecting figures for a while. I bought my first figure back in August of 2007 – a 1/8 scale PVC figure of Haruhi by Max Factory. I later found it it was a bootleg, but managed to get a hold of an authentic one a couple months later. The detail that was put into the sculpt and painting really impressed me and that was what got me started on buying more figures. I got my first nendoroid soon after that, Light Yagami from Death Note, and once again I was really impressed with the detail. Currently, over a third of my figures are nendoroids. Pictures of my figure collection are below. Some of my newer figures aren’t displayed because I haven’t opened them yet.

You can see a full list of my figures at MyFigureCollection (aka Tsuki Board).

Manga

Despite watching anime since I was a kid, I didn’t really get into reading manga until much later. The first manga that I read was I”s by Masakazu Katsura. I was a teenager in high school when I read this and it just blew me away. I”s was what really got me off the shonen/action genre and into romance/drama such as Fruits Basket, Love Hina, and Pastel.

Right now my manga collection consists of Chibi Vampire (aka Karin), Comic Party, FLCL, Fruits Basket, The Legend of Chun Hyang, Magic Knight Rayearth, Mamotte Shugogetten, Nadesico, Pastel, RG Veda, Sailor Moon, School Rumble, and Tsubasa Chronicles. As you can tell, I really like Clamp’s works. If I could only pick one series to keep out of all of these, it would have to be Sailor Moon. It was one of the first successful manga in North America so it was extremely hard to find and very expensive, not to mention that Sailor Moon was my favourite show back when I was a child.

Magazines/Artbooks

My magazine and artbook collection is still pretty small since it’s the most recent thing I’ve started collecting. Right now I’m subscribed to Megami, Dengeki G’s, and Nyantype magazines. I also try to get a copy of the Etsu Girls Girls Girls! collections when they come out.

My main reason for collecting these magazines/artbooks is because of the beautiful artwork. After that, I just want the extras that come along with each magazine issue ^.^

Games

Videogames have been a big part of my life ever since I picked up a light gun and shot some ducks in the game Duck Hunt on the NES. Although I only really play on my XBOX 360 nowadays, I still have an NES, SNES, N64, Dreamcast, PS2, Gameboy (original), and NDS.

My favourite games for each console are: NES – Duckhunt, SNES – Super Street Fighter 2, N64 – StarFox 64, DC – Capcom vs SNK 2, PS2 – Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, Gameboy – Tetris, NDS – Ace Attorney Series, 360 – Gears of War. Although I do enjoy playing JRPGs, they never became my favourites, probably because once you’ve finished the game there really isn’t any point in going back other than to get some more items or fight some more monsters. Also, in case anyone is wondering, I do have an XBL account, so if you’re interested in playing a game with me just email me and I can give you my XBL name. Just note that I am pretty busy sometimes so I might not have time to play anything.

Yu-Gi-Oh

I got into Yu-Gi-Oh a bit late so there weren’t many people to play against, but I did manage to amass quite a few cards as you can see here.

I even managed to get the original Kaiba and Yugi decks (though they were opened). Right now, my main deck uses Pikeru and Curran with a ton of support cards to freeze my opponent’s movements and drain their life points while increasing mine. It seems to work great most of the time. My favourite card in my collection is Dark Magician Girl, she cost quite a bit, but she’s such a cutie that I had to get her.

Sailor Moon

The collection that I’m most proud of is my Sailor Moon card collection. Like I said earlier, Sailor Moon was my favourite show when I was a child, so naturally I wanted a bunch of Sailor Moon merchandise. I started my card collection when I was 8 years old and I would trade cards with my friends once or twice a week. My collection didn’t really get very big until several years ago when I started buying cards off of girls that had grown out of Sailor Moon and from parents whose daughters had moved out and left behind their cards. It’s kinda weird knowing I’m one of the very few guys in the world that collect these cards while most other collectors are female. In total I have over 1300 unique cards in a very thick binder, but my collection is far from being complete. What sucks is that most of these cards are over a decade old (some are approaching 2 decades) so it’s getting harder and harder to find the cards I need to complete my collection.

As you might be able to tell from the above pictures, I have some cards that I’m missing here and there. I’ve listed my complete collection below:

Hero Collection

Hero 1

1, 4, 8, 9, 16, 17, 20-22, 24, 27, 29, 31-34, 36-38, 40, 42, 45, 48, 51, 52, 56, 60, 63, 65-67, 74, 76, 77, 82, 89, 90, 99, 100, 104-106, 108, 109, 122, 127, 132, 137, 142-144

Hero 2

145, 146, 148, 149, 245, 250, 252, 254, 259, 264, 283, 290, 293, 295, PC 28

Hero 3

306, 309, 313, 314, 316-318, 320-323, 325-327, 329-336, 338-345, 347-385, 387-384; PC 34, 40-42, 44

Hero 4

385-389, 391-395

Hero 5

WGL 1-3; PC 1-10,12-16; LC 1-12

5^th Anniversary Memories

12,14,15,17,19,22,25-29,33-56

 

Cardass Series

Carddass 2

35-70

Cardass 3

71-112

Cardass 4

114, 118-154

Cardass 5

160, 161, 164, 165, 168, 169, 171-173, 175, 176, 178, 179, 182, 183, 186, 187, 190, 192, 194

Cardass 6

198-201, 204, 206-208, 211-214, 216, 217, 219, 220, 222-226, 230-236

Cardass 7

240-246, 249-252, 254, 256, 258-260, 262, 264-267, 269-273, 275, 278, 279

Cardass 8

281-285, 287, 288, 290, 294, 296-303, 305-308, 312-315, 317-319, 321, 322

Cardass 9

323-343,345-357,359-363

Cardass 10

368-370,372-391,394,396-405

Graffiti

Graffiti 1

1, 12, 16, 25

Graffiti 2

46, 49, 59, 62, 65, 72, 75, 78, 82

Graffiti 3

87-101,104-107,109-117,119-126

Graffiti 4

127-130, 132, 134-136, 138-140, 142-149, 151-159,161-165, 169, 170

Graffiti 5

171,173-175,178-183,185-191,193,195-198, 200, 203, 204, 206-208,211-213

Graffiti 6

215-232,234-256

Graffiti 7

258-300

Graffiti 8

2, 4-9, 11, 13, 16, 18, 19

Graffiti 9

4-21

Pull Pack

PP1

41

PP2

49-58,60,62,63,65-72,74-77,81,83-87,89

PP3

95,97,99,103-105,109,111,114,115,118,119,122-126,129,133,134,139-143,145,146,156,158-161,168,169,171-173

PP4

175-179,181-216

PP5

217,219-222,225,229-263

PP6

265,274,276,277,279-283,286,287,295-302

PP7

315-335,338-368

PP8

377-384,386-424

PP9

425-466

PP10

488,502,503,508

PP11

509-550

PP12

557,560,569,572,581,584,592

PP13

613,615,638

PP14

647,650-657,661,670-678,680,683,691-693,698,701,702,704,706-735,737-741

PP15

742,743,745,746,748-767

Sailormoon World

World 1

N14,N16

World 2

N1-N36

World 4

N6,N17,N28

Battle/Private

Series 1

2,4-20

Series 2

1-21

Banpresto

Sailormoon Set 2

10,14,15,18,20,24,27,29,36

SailormoonR Set 1

1-18

SailormoonS Set 1

8,10,12,13,14,20,22,24

SailormoonS Set 2

10-12,15,18,19,21-24

Sailormoon SuperS Set 1

14

SailorStars Set 1

7,11

If anyone out there has some cards that I’m missing (ones that aren’t listed above), I’m willing to trade. I have a LOT of duplicates so just send me an email with your offers and what you want in return and I’ll check to see if I have extras. Oh, and for those of you who are wondering, my collection is worth well over $1500 and 14 years of searching so I’m not selling it.

So that wraps up all the things that I collect. You can probably tell that once I start collecting something, I can get pretty obsessive with it, which might not be a good thing. Anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed the peek into my other collections besides figures and magazines. I’d love to hear about what everyone else likes to collect so feel free to leave a comment, or even make a post like this one on your own blog, maybe we’ll get a trend going :)

A few weeks ago I decided to buy some swimsuit figures because honestly, who doesn’t like swimsuit figures. The first of the three figures I got is Louise Valliere from Zero no Tsukaima. I decided to get the white swimsuit version instead of the black one because it’s a limited edition (I guess I’m a sucker for that kind of thing).

One of the first things I noticed about the figure was that it was screwed to the base. Normally, figures have these little holes on the bottom of their feet for the pegs from the base to go in, but I guess the people at Wave Corporation didn’t think a little peg would be strong enough to hold her up.

When you think about it though, Louise does have quite a bit of hair which would make the upper half a lot heavier, so I guess screweing the base to the figure is a good thing.

From the side you can see how skinny (and flat) Louise really is.

I like the sculpt of Louise’s body, but I think a better job could have been done with her hair. Most of it is just one big clump of pink PVC with some wavy lines in it.

Another side shot of Louise.

I didn’t know this until I looked at this piece of paper inside the box, but apparently Louise’s head is designed so that it can be moved from side to side (just like a figma or nendoroid). Unfortunately, since the hair is so close to the body and is present on both the front and back, you can actually move the head (unless you want to break off some of that hair).

Overall, I thought this figure was OK. Besides the big lump of hair, Louise looks pretty good in a bikini. I like the little things that they added, like the star on her top and the little ribbons. Her body proportions also seem to match the anime pretty well. This figure definitely won’t appeal to everyone, but I’m sure any Louise fan would like it.

Recently I received my Kaito nendoroid in the mail. Kaito is one of the less popular vocaloids, but personally I think his voice is better and more realistic than Miku’s. If you don’t believe me, just look up some songs on youtube.

As with all nendoroids, Kaito somes with several interchangeable pieces to allow for multiple poses. My favourite piece is Kaito’s scarf, he just wouldn’t be Kaito without it.

The shoulders are designed so that the scarf can be placed either way. It seems like GSC is trying to increase the number of poses that their nendoroids can have. Most of the earlier nendoroids were only able to turn their bodies a bit and move their arms up and down.

One of the differences I found with the Kaito nendoroid compared to the other vocaloid nendoroids is that you don’t have to remove his headset to swap faces. Instead of having the headset as a separate piece that fits into the head after the face is in place, it’s actually a part of the hair, making it easier to change pieces.

Kaito comes with two extra right arms. One of which faces more outwards and can either have a fist or open hand at the end.

The other right arm is closer to the body and is meant to hold Kaito’s popsicle. Somehow it doesn’t seem right to be wearing a scarf and eating a popsicle at the same time though.

Although Kaito doesn’t come with a microphone, Rin’s mic fits perfectly well into his hands. I hope that future nendoroids will also be able to carry items from other nendoroids.

Another part of the design that I liked was the stand. Like the other vocaloids, Kaito can stand by himself, but is still unstable. One of the problems I had with my other nendoroids is that you have this big piece of plastic holding the figure up. In Kaito’s case you don’t really see the stand because it’s hidden pretty well underneath his coat:

It may just be that Kaito has a long coat so GSC was able to hide the stand, but I hope they can find other ways to hide it for other nendoroids that don’t have such long clothing.

Kaito did come with a 3rd face, but unfortunately I left the figure on the floor after I opened the package and before I knew it my dog had stolen a face. By the time I got it back, it already had several bite marks over it. The moral of the story: don’t leave figures on the ground. Even if you don’t have a pet, you might accidently step on it, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want that to happen.

Other than GSC’s attempts at improving the displayability (is that even a word?) of this figure, there wasn’t anything especially fancy. His hair was pretty plain and his clothes just had some stripes painted on, but still nice to look at. Overall and average figure, meant for Kaito fans or people looking to expand their vocaloid collections.

The first word that popped into my mind when I saw the figure was “shiny”. I guess it’s not surprising that GSC decided to make Miku all shiny considering how big of a star she is. Her shirt is painted with a metallic-like paint and the rest of her clothing has this thin layer of something clear and reflective which gives its shiny appearance.

After a few minutes admiring the figure, one of the things I noticed was how thin they made Miku. Her waist is only a little bit wider than the upper part of her leg and quite a bit of pvc went into making her hair compared to her body (I’d say the hair makes up 1/4 of the pvs in the figure.

One of the features that seems to be common with figures wearing skirts is the ability to take them off. Here we see Miku wearing white panties with a little turquoise bow matching the colour of her hair and tie.

Miku’s bottom is pretty detailed :)

Rather than having a plain white base like most figures, Miku gets a dark transparent gray base in a hexagon shape.

Overall I was pretty impressed with this figure. GSC did such a good job that there wasn’t anything to complain about unless you hate shiny things, but what kind of person doesn’t like shiny? If you’re a Miku fan you should definitely get this figure (that is if you can find one).

As many of you already know, Rin and Len are twins from the Vocaloid series, a program that you can use to create anime-like music.

Since Rin and Len are twins, their makers decided to give them the same face. That’s great for nendoroids because each figure comes with 3 faces and you normally can’t swap them between figures, but with these two you can, allowing for 6 possible faces.

Like the Miku nendoroid, Rin and Len can stand on their own, but aren’t very stable. I accidently knocked my desk and they both fell over so I decided to use the stands that they came with.

I’m not sure why, but you can remove Rin’s bow on top of her head and the top part of Len’s hair. I’m guessing it’s so people won’t have to worry about breaking those parts off if the head gets stuck or something and they need to pull really hard.

When I opened the boxes for the first time and looked through the contents, I thought I might’ve been gipped because with each box was a face piece but with no face on it. A quick search online revealed that they were supposed to come with a blank face so that you could make your own custom face with the stickers provided. After closer inspection of the boxes I found the stickers taped to the back of the inner cardboard piece. It’s a good thing I don’t throw out my boxes or I would’ve lost these for good.

Now that’s 3 vocaloids down, Kaito should be coming in the mail soon and I hope Good Smile Company makes nendoroids of Meiko and Luka soon :)

A couple days ago I got my Sakura Nankyoku nendoroid in the mail. I had actually forgotten that I had ordered this figure since I placed the preorder for it last summer which was quite a while ago. Sakura Nankyoku a.k.a. Penguin or Pen-chan for short is from the anime Penguin Musume Heart (Penguin Girl Heart), a pretty good comedy to watch if you have time.

Pen-chan comes with three different facial expressions, two different positions for each arm, a pickaxe, and a hardhat.

She comes with her school uniform which is nice, but I think they should have gone with some different clothes or added another body since she’s always cosplaying in the anime.

The back of Pen-chan’s head reminds me of a fish. The bottom part is like the tail, the hair sticking out the top is a hook that the fish is about to bite on :D

What I don’t like about the way this figure was designed is that when Pen-chan’s holding the pickaxe with both hands it covers part of her face.

The hardhat is a really cute add-on :)

Here are more pics with different combinations:

What I like about the hardhat is that it fits on other nendoroids as well, such as Shana here:

Although Pen-chan isn’t as popular as other anime characters, I think her nendoroid is one of the cuter ones. It looks like Good Smile Company has fixed all the problems that I noticed with their older nendoroids (such as being top-heavy, and having hard to fit pieces) so there isn’t anything for me to complain about in terms of quality. Different costumes would have been nice though, I guess I’ll have to wait a few months for Good Smile Company and Alter to release their goth-loli and maid version figures of Pen-chan.

It came in a really huge box, which is probably why shipping cost so much. The weight and size of the box is probably why it got here so fast. It would make more sense to get rid of light parcels that take up lots of room first so that you can fit more things on the plane/truck for all the christmas presents being mailed everywhere this month. From the looks of it, someone took a peek at my invoice while it was being shipped here; is that even legal?

The actual packaging for the picture was huge itself and just barely fit inside the box it was shipped in.

There’s a big window infront to show everything inside :)

The back of the box just has some info on the figure and on Hayate.

All of the pieces were wrapped in plastic and placed nicely in the package.

When I finally took the figure out, I thought it was just amazing. It’s pretty big because of the cape and wings, but there’s so much detail too. I actually didn’t notice how short her skirt was until I took this picture because I was admiring how detailed the rest of the figure is.

A low angle shot shows how much detail was put into this part of the figure ;)

Hayate looks like she’s casting a spell.

Rein is also casting a spell. She looks like she’s floating, but she’s actually attached to one of Hayate’s wings.

A closeup of Hayate and Rein.

Hayate’s hat is shaped exactly like her head and just sits on top so you can take it off if you don’t like it.

Here’s what Hayate looks like when she’s in unison with Rein.

Another angle of Hayate in unison form. I really liked the paint they chose for her clothes, it’s so shiny!

My only problem is with this white blotch on her jacket. It looks like this one got by the quality checkers at the factory.

This is what Hayate looks like from behind.

I really liked the jewel-like look at the end of Hayate’s staff and on her sleeve.

Hayate’s Book of the Night Sky is probably one of the more detailed parts of the figure. The shape of the pages matches what a really thick book would look like if it wre open, and you can also make out the individual characters on the open pages.

The placement of the wings was also pretty impressive. In the anime they don’t actually come out from the body, so the sculptor had to find a way to make it look like they’re just floating there and I think he did a very good job.

This middle wing is attached to the inside of Hayate’s jacket.

I was so focused on the figure that I almost forgot to take a shot of the staff. It’s about as long as the figure is tall, so it goes well with the figure. Sometimes items for figures are slightly too big or too small and it just ends up looking weird.

I think Hayate’s actually supposed to hold onto the white part of the staff since it fit in her hand better (it was a little bit thicker), but the white paint looks like it rubs off easily so instead I had my figure hold it further back. The only problem with holding it at the gold part though is that it doesn’t fit into her hand as well so sometimes it falls off if you touch it.

The base is just a plain white plastic base with a label printed on it. For those who haven’t watched Nanoha or don’t know german, “Meister des nachthimmels” means “Master of the Night Sky” and “Buch Der Nachthimmel” means “Book of the Night Sky.”

Rein also came with her own stand if you don’t want her floating by Hayate. I couldn’t get that plastic piece into the hole in Rein’s cape though. I was afraid I might break something since she’s so small.

I’ve got to say that this is definitely the best figure I’ve ever bought and it’s now my favourite. It was also the most expensive figure I’ve ever bought, but it was well worth it.

Unfortunately, I preordered this back when everything cost a lot (like gold and oil) so I thought that with shipping the figure would only cost me about $140. However, it looks like the price of gold and oil and other natural resources have dropped, and since the canadian dollar is largely based on the price of natural resources, its value compared to other currencies has dropped as well. That means that this figure actually cost me $190 with shipping since I wasn’t charged until now :(

I really hope its as good as the pictures.

My first thought was that maybe I shuldn’t have gone and bought these things. The Emuemu figure comes with a Kemeko head, but you have to buy Kemeko’s body (which I couldn’t find in stock anywhere) separately, and the Dengeki Daioh “magazine” is a 4cm thick book that I can’t read since everything is in Japanese. But then I reminded myself of two things:

1. The Kemeko suit just gives me the creeps and Emuemu looks way cuter just by herself.

2. I only bought this issue of Dengeki Daioh for the calendar that came with it.

With that being said, I went ahead and opened the figure and admired the pictures in the calendar.

One of the things I like about figures by Max Factory is that the faces are really close to what the characters actually look like.

Here’s what Emuemu looks like coming out of Kemeko’s head. I was wonderng how she fit inside the Kemeko suit for the longest time until I remembered something covered in one of my math classes called a hypercube. Basically, a hypercube has more space inside than outside because it’s a 4-dimensional object, so I guess Kemeko is a 4-dimensional suit.

As you can see from the above two pictures (well, maybe not so much in the second), this figure is very detailed. The text on her arm in the first picture reads “weapon discharge area! beware of blast” and in the second picture, the text underneath KMC reads “Mishima Industry Custom Image”. Just to give you an idea of how small the text is, the height of the letters under KMC are the thickness of a mm measurement line on a ruler and the letters in the first picture are slightly bigger.

The cotton ball thingy (what is that supposed to be anyway?) looked very fragile so I avoided touching it as much as possible. The hair spikes on Emuemu are also really sharp; I almost cut myself when I was detaching her body from Kemeko’s head.

I’m running out of places to put my figures, so I decided to get some sticky tack and put Emuemu on my monitor.

I wasn’t expecting anything from the Dengeki Daioh book itself since it’s supposed to just contain a bunch of chapters from various manga, but there was one double-sided pull-out poster.

On the first side is a rather well-endowed witch girl with what appears to be a list and a basket of treats. I hope my name is on that piece of paper ^.^

The other side has what looks to be a girl doing some acrobats.

And here are the pictures from the calendar that came with this issue of Dengeki Daioh. Since I’m not very good with a camera and the calendar was small enough to fit in my scanner, I scanned the images instead. Enjoy ^.^