Flandre Scarlet is by far my favourite Touhou character, so getting this nendoroid from Good Smile Company was a must for me. Flandre is the younger sister of Remilia Scarlet and is also a vampire. She lives in the basement of the Scarlet Devil Mansion and has immense destructive powers. Her first appearance was in Touhou Project: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil as the extra boss. This nendoroid of her was released in January 2011 and like all of the other Touhou nendoroids, is a “For sale in Japan only” item.

Flandre has blond hair, red eyes, and wears a red dress. The nendoroid is true to her appearance, but one little gripe I have about it is that there is a small gap between the top and bottom half of her body.

On the back is a nicely sculpted ribbon with no noticeable seam lines or excess plastic. There are also two small holes where you can insert her wings. You’ll also notice that her hair is not just one solid colour, but has some shading to add some depth to it. Some of GSC’s other nendoroids don’t have shading on the back, which makes the hair look bland and flat, so it’s good to see they didn’t forget about it here.

Flandre’s ponytail on her left side appears like it is movable, but is actually glued in place. It’s not really a flaw, but when other nendoroids have movable hair pieces, I just expected Flandre to have it too. You can also clearly see the gap between the top and bottom half of the body here. This is as far as you can push the two pieces together.

I think the most attention-grabbing feature about Flandre are her iron-prism wings, and I’m glad to see that GSC did an excellent job creating them in 3D chibi form. Despite the small size, they managed to still make the iron portion look jagged and the prisms are the right shape. Not only that, but the colours and the order in which they appear are also correct. From her back to the tip of the wings, the colours are: light blue, blue, purple, pink, orange, yellow, green and light blue. There are other figures out there that either have the colours in the wrong order, or have colours that shouldn’t be in there.

Like her sister, Flandre also wears a mob cap, but her ribbon is on the opposite side. The bottom of the cap is contoured to fit on top of Flandre’s head so you don’t have to worry about it falling off when trying to set her into the perfect pose. Personally, I’m not a fan of the cap though, it just feels like something poor people in the past would wear.

Flandre also comes with her iron wand, the Leviathan. Unfortunately, it tends to fall out of her hand because it’s not an exact fit.

Up till now I’ve only shown her with the default face, but she also has a smiling face showing one of her fangs.

Her other face is a more mischievous look, as if she’s plotting something or about to blow someone up. The claw hands fit perfectly with this expression, but they are limited in the things/poses they can do.

I haven’t talked much about the paint job other than the hair, but this nendoroid has one of the best paint jobs I’ve seen. The lines are smooth, there’s no splatter, and the shading is excellent. The only flaw I could find was some rough edges on her shoes.

As with the other Touhou nendoroids, Flandre also has a painted base. The design on it shows the prisms of her wings on what appears to be a moon background.

One major downside that I found with my nendoroid was that the inside of one of the faces was cracked. It doesn’t affect the outside appearance at all (thank goodness), but I have to be extra careful when removing or inserting the neck peg, just in case it breaks. I guess it could easily be fixed with super glue though.

Design-wise, Flandre is one of the highest-quality nendoroids I own. GSC managed to get everything about her right, from the colours to the clothing and wings. Production-wise, while the paint job was near-flawless, the one thing that really bothers me is the gap in the middle of her body. If the peg connecting the two pieces was just a  little bit shorter or the slot was a little bit deeper, it would’ve been perfect. Overall, I am very happy with how this Flandre nendoroid turned out.

Related posts:

1. Remilia Scarlet Nendoroid by GSC
2. Ein Nendoroid by GSC
3. Luka Megurine Nendoroid by GSC

Enough about me though, I’m sure you guys are more interested in another nendoroid post.

Haruhi should not be a stranger to anyone, so I don’t think an introduction is necessary here. I skipped out on the original Haruhi nendo, but decided to get the Disappearance version because I love Haruhi with long hair.

Her default pose reminds me of her first appearance in the movie. As Kyon described, Haruhi had that “fighter with no peer” look and feel about her when he finally found out where she had disappeared to. The discontent face that GSC included here captures that look perfectly, and the crossed arms just add to that pose. The arms themselves are two pieces, but both hands are stuck on the left arm. I thought it looked a bit weird when I took them off, but I guess it was either have both hands on the same arm, or make the arms one single piece.

From the side, Haruhi still looks pretty intimidating. The ribbons in her hair really help make her look less dull, and I’m glad that GSC made them a bit longer. If you shortened them even a bit, I think Haruhi would’ve looked way too brown (i.e. brown hair, brown jacket, brown skirt, brown shoes).

Some of the other arm pieces that Haruhi comes with are one holding her bag, and one for posing with her hand on her hip. Once again, the placement of her hand makes her look intimidating, almost as if she’s going to whack you with her bag.

It would have been nice if they had included a bent leg so that you could pose Haruhi kicking something (like Kyon), but instead they included an extra pair of legs with longer socks. They also included the regular Haruhi hairstyle and a happy face for if you don’t like the mean Haruhi. The SOS Brigade armband fits over the left arm piece.

This is just a comparison between the short hair Haruhi and long hair Haruhi. Like I said before, I like her with longer hair, but what do you guys think?

Haruhi also doesn’t look as intimidating in this pose when she has short hair. I guess the longer hair just makes her look bigger than she actually is.

The last face that Haruhi comes with is this sort of mischievous smile. We all know how Haruhi always comes up with plans for the SOS Brigade, so this was a good one to include.

I was very impressed with the print on Haruhi’s armband. There’s no black splotches anywhere on the band and the writing looks very fine and detailed.

Her clothing is rather plain, being solid brown all around. The only details are a button and some pockets. I guess there isn’t really much else GSC could have done here considering this is how Haruhi looked in the movie.

Haruhi’s school bag isn’t quite as well-painted as her armband. You can see a few spots of silver paint where it shouldn’t be, but from a distance it’s not noticeable.

While there aren’t too many details to judge the quality of this nendoroid on, it does have plenty of choices with regards to poses and expression. Haruhi certainly has a wider range of poses than Yuki did, but sacrificed having some non-brown clothing for that. One thing that I really would’ve liked is an extra bent leg. If I had that, I could pose Haruhi kicking Kyon like in the movie.

Since the Haruhi movie takes place in the winter, I thought it would be a shame to not take any pictures of the nendoroids in the snow. It’s all melting now too, so this week was my last chance to get some winter shots with my figures.

Here we have Haruhi winding up for a throw…

… and nailing poor Yuki with a snowball.

I would’ve taken more pictures, but people were starting to stare at me so I packed up and left, but I hope you guys enjoyed that.

Related posts:

1. Yuki Nagato Nendoroid Disappearance Ver. by GSC
2. Riannon Nendoroid by GSC
3. Azusa Nakano Nendoroid by GSC

Those of you nendoroid collectors will probably already know of the Miku Support version nendoroid that Good Smile Company (GSC) is releasing soon. It’s basically a remake of the original Miku nendoroid with an extra face, flag, and pompoms included.

What I find more interesting are not the extras, but how GSC is marketing and selling this new nendoroid. According to the product description, the Miku Support ver. was created to help with relief efforts in Japan after the massive earthquake and tsunami. How exactly will selling a nendoroid help with relief efforts? Well, GSC claims that 1000 yen from every nendoroid sold will go to the Japan Red Cross. Not to mention, the new Miku will be sold for 3000 yen, a bit less than most nendoroids.

That sounds like a pretty good deal right? Not only do get a discounted Miku, you’ll feel good knowing that some of your money is going to help people in need. It also paints GSC in a positive light, forfeiting a portion of their profits in order to help others, but is that really what’s going on?

If you take a look at the instructions for ordering the Miku Support nendoroid, you’ll notice that it is only being sold through GSC’s online store. Surprisingly, orders will also be open to international customers after orders for Japanese customers close.

Now, I’m no expert in economics but I do know a thing or two about business and it sounds like GSC just gave the middleman the shaft and went straight from manufacturer to consumer. Consider now that GSC has kept the price at 3000 yen, about how much most regular nendoroids cost. Since stores like AmiAmi regularly sell nendoroids at 20% off and HLJ sometimes lists them for 50% off, that tells me that GSC sells nendoroids to them for 1500 yen or less. One of the first rules in business is to increase profits and decrease losses, so a store would never sell something for less than what they paid unless it’s not even worth the space it takes up (which isn’t very much).

Recall now that retailers like AmiAmi and HLJ have been taken out of the picture. Even if GSC donates 1000 yen per nendoroid, that means they get 2000 yen, an extra 500 yen (at least) per nendoroid than if they had sold them regularly. Take note that GSC is also opening orders to overseas customers, something they’ve been trying to restrict recently.

All of this points to one big money grab under the guise of a humanitarian fundraiser. I’m not saying GSC is a bad company for doing this, I just think they’re being way too aggressive. Some of you may have heard about the recent spat between GSC and online retailers which sell their products overseas. I don’t know about you guys, but that was an indication to me that GSC wanted a piece of the overseas pie by restricting the release of their products to foreign markets and thereby giving them the exclusive ability to sell their products outside of Japan. They’ve already set up the foundations to do so by opening the GSC online shop, which I think is bad for business relations because you should never compete with your customers. This, combined with GSC’s blitzkrieg marketing strategy of recent years and now the Miku support version tell me that they are not just trying to top the figure industry, they intend to completely dominate it.

Profiting off of people’s guilt/conscience is a legitimate business practice though, and at least GSC is donating a relatively large proportion of their earnings. I’ve seen companies say that they will donate a portion of their profits from a new product to cancer research, but if you read the fine print it will say “up to a maximum of…” and have some ridiculously low amount like $5000 or less.

If you really want to help the victims in Japan, you should do so by donating that 3000 yen to a relief organization directly rather than falling for a gimmick like this. If on the other hand you’re a nendoroid fanboy (or girl) like me, then by all means buy the Miku Support version. It’s not often that you get to buy an exclusive figure for such a low price and despite already owning a Miku, I might get this one just for the pompoms.

As for my final thoughts on GSC, I think they really are set to dominate the figure industry (at least outside of Japan) with the way things are going. Unless the other large figure manufacturers like Alter and Kotobukiya step up their game, they’re going to lose out on an opportunity to gain greater brand recognition and expand into untapped markets.

Related posts:

1. Miku Hatsune GSC Figure
2. Miku Hatsune Nendoroid
3. Happy Birthday Miku!

I never liked the first set of Haruhi nendoroids that Good Smile Company produced, overall they looked dull and I didn’t think they captured the essence of the characters. That’s why I was really happy that they decided to release a new set of nendoroids based on the movie The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. Yuki was the first nendoroid released, and the promo shots looked good so I preordered her (yes, I’ve had her for a long time now).

In case you haven’t seen it, Yuki is the main female star of the Haruhi movie, which was why her nendoroid was released first. Her standard out-of-the-box look includes her winter coat, a scarf, and a pair of glasses. Her coat sways to one side to make it look like it’s blowing in the wind, which has its upsides and down. It looks better than just a plain coat, but on the other hand, Yuki will always look like she’s out in the cold so people who like to pose their figures in little figure houses will be disappointed.

I’m not sure why her hair turned out blue in this picture. Either something is wrong with my camera/camera settings or my lighting (any photography experts out there, please help me). I had the same problem when taking pictures of Remilia, and noticed that one time a picture I took of a fire came out with purple flames rather than orange.

The scarf extends behind Yuki on both sides, adding to the impression that she’s out in the cold, but it can be easily removed by popping off the head. The hood and buttons on the back of her coat don’t stand out much, but make the nendoroid seem so much more detailed.

The downside about the coat is that there’s only one position for Yuki’s arms. The joint is designed in such a way that you can only move her forearms a few degrees sideways. Just about the only thing you can do with them is switch the hands. Here I’ve switched one of her closed hands for the one used to hold a piece of paper. I thought it was a bit small compared to her other hands, but at least it fits and you can pose Yuki trying to hide her face with the piece of paper.

The only real details on the front of Yuki’s coat are the three buttons. They’re rather large, which helps with the chibi look, and except for a small splotch above the middle one, I thought they looked nice.

Yuki also comes with her school uniform and cardigan, something more familiar for people who haven’t seen the movie. You’ll notice that she can hold the piece of paper from the side too. I’m guessing it’s supposed to be that club sign-up sheet she handed Kyon in the movie, with with no writing (not even any scribbles) on it, there’s  no telling what it is.

This pose looks so not Yuki-like (both the alien and normal Yuki), which was why I took a picture of it. The scratches on her cardigan are actually from me being rough trying to get pieces on and off. While I like her school unifrom body as much as her coat body, I’m a little disappointed that you can’t do anything with her left arm. Sure you can take it off, but there is no extra arm piece for different poses.

I should mention that Yuki comes with two pairs of glasses. One pair is designed to fit on her by attaching to the sides of her hair. The other pair is meant to be held by one of her other hands. Personally, I think the second pair of glasses looks way too big for Yuki’s nendo body even though they’re the same size as the worn glasses.

Enough with the accessories and poses though, lets take a look at some of the fine details. The school emblem on Yuki’s unifrom is nicely painted with extremely smooth lines, you usually don’t find something this intricate done very well when it comes to nendoroids. With that said, it seems GSC focused their efforts on the emblem and ignored the other parts. The red stripes on top of the aqua is rather sloppy and has some rough edges. There are also some blue splotches on Yuki’s neck.

If you look above the belt and below the red bow, you’ll also notice there’s a space between Yuki’s top half and bottom half. I tried pressing the two pieces together as much as I could, but they wouldn’t fit together perfectly. It’s rather disappointing because if you take a look at the previous pictures, that gap is pretty apparent.

The back of Yuki’s uniform also has a problem with the paint job. You can see that some of the aqua paint has gotten onto her cardigan. GSC’s paint jobs seem to be a hit and miss when it comes to nendoroids. On the bright side, the details in the sculpting (like the bottom part of Yuki’s cardigan) are well done.

I have mixed feelings about this figure after taking a look at all of the different parts. Yuki’s faces cover the expressions that you see in the movie and allow you to put on and take off her glasses, so that’s a good point. The coat body looks great and has a great pose, but is limited to that pose since the arms are practically stuck in place and there are no extra legs. The uniform body offers a bit more pose-ability but suffers from a poor paint job.

I guess in the end it depends on whether you want to display her in her coat or uniform. If you like the coat, and the pose it’s in, then by all means buy the figure. If you want to pose her in her uniform, then you might want to reconsider because of the paint problems.

Related posts:

1. Touko Amano Nendoroid by GSC
2. Ein Nendoroid by GSC
3. Luka Megurine Nendoroid by GSC

If you’re a regular reader here, you’ll know that I absolutely loved the Bungaku Shoujo OVA and the Bungaku Shoujo movie, so there was no way I could pass up a chance to get this nendoroid of Touko Amano, the title character of the series. Touko is described in the Bungaku Shoujo light novel series as both a beautiful, delicate high school girl, and as a book-eating goblin. In order to capture both aspects of her, GSC has included quite a few accessories, making her box slightly larger than most nendoroids’ boxes.

In the official illustrations of Touko by Miho Takeoka, Touko’s hair colour ranges from dark gray watercolours to light gray with a tinge of blue and purple. In the anime, however, Touko’s hair is a dark shade of blue, which is what they decided to go with in the nendoroid. I think going with the anime style rather than the original illustrations works out better as it would be difficult to emulate the effect of watercolours on a figure.

My nendoroid had some chips and scratches on her head that were just painted over. It’s a bit disappointing, but I’m thankful that they’re small and off to the side so they’re not very noticeable.

One thing which I thought was a manufacturing defect at first was that Touko’s hair is uneven, one side stretches further down than the other. After looking at some promo shots and collector pictures, it seems that was intentional. GSC has improved their painting quality a bit here if you take a look at Touko’s back. The indigo and blue lines are nearly perfectly smooth, something which was lacking in previous nendoroids.

An interesting thing about this nendoroid is that her stand isn’t the typical GSC stand. The normal stand has a plastic pin joint with the GSC logo on both sides. With the Touko nendoroid, that has been replaced with a metal pin. I guess it’s harder to take apart the stand now, but I’m curious as to why they did that.

My least favourite pose is this one of a goblin Touko jumping out of a can of “surstrommings”, whatever that is. I’m guessing that this has something to do with the latter novels which I haven’t read yet since there was no mention of it in the OVA or movie. The can of surstrommings is actually quite large, and all of those black things crawling out get int he way of Touko’s braids so you have to move them to stick her head on. The fins on her head are attached to a different front hair piece, making it easier to swap in and out. Her face is rather disturbing; she’d look cute if you covered her mouth, but those teeth and that blood stain suggest something sinister.

I much prefer the cute Touko pose sitting on a chair munching her stories. Touko comes with a number of stickers, some of which are meant to be used as pieces of paper which you can stick onto her mouth. GSC did a good job portraying Touko the way she’s described in the book by Konoha, as sitting with her legs curled up on the seat and such that her panties aren’t visible (yes, he’s a pervert in the novels).

GSC kinda cheaped out here though; the chair that Touko always sits on is a fold-able metal chair, the one she came with is exactly the same as the ones used in the nendoroid school life playsets by Phat Company. Considering the two companies work very closely together, it’s not surprising that GSC would have access to Phat’s extra parts, though I guess it’s not a big deal in this case. One improvement I would have liked to see is a bit more blush on her cheeks. If you watch the series, you’ll notice that whenever she eats a good book, sparkles show up and she blushes a bit.

Besides her meal book, Touko also comes with an un-eaten book that can be held between both of her hands. It’s rather difficult aligning both of her hands, but I prefer it this way because you can have her hold the book in one hand and use the other hand for something else. Objects attached to both hands really limit the pose-ability of some nendoroids.

This is just me playing around with some other nendoroid parts. The body comes from the Yuki Nagato Disappearance Ver. Nendoroid, which I will review in the future, and the hat comes from the Sakura Nankyoku Nendoroid.

I can’t say I’m a big fan of Touko’s goblin face, but I thought her other faces and poses were adorable. Actually, I liked them so much that I ended up buying a second nendoroid so I could have one sitting down and one standing up. It also gives me extra stickers in case I ever run out. Overall, I thought this was a  good quality nendoroid, with the only real flaw being the chip and scratch I mentioned earlier. The painting looks great, the joints fit well, and she comes with plenty of accessories to make for lots of cute (or scary) poses. This is definitely now one of my favourite nendoroids.

Related posts:

1. Nanoha Takamachi Nendoroid by GSC
2. Ein Nendoroid by GSC
3. Luka Megurine Nendoroid by GSC

It’s been a long time since I’ve written about any figures, and that’s because of three reasons: a) I’m cutting back on figure spending (they’re crazy expensive), b) I have nowhere to put them now, and c) I haven’t been able to get around to taking any pictures. However, I do have a bunch of nendoroids I just opened so you can expect to see them in the coming weeks. The first one is Remilia Scarlet from Touhou Project. All of the Touhou nendoroids are Japan-only releases, so it’s a bit harder to get a hold of them. My previous Touhou nendos were all bought while I was in Japan, Remilia was ordered online.

This is what she looks like straight out of the box. I love how they included that little vampire fang at the edge of her mouth and they didn’t forget her wristband on her left. Her hair is actually more purple than my pictures make it out to be, and it has a slight texture to it, but is still a bit plain. The dress is as detailed as nendoroid clothes get, which is a welcome improvement to the mediocre paint job that some of my previous nendoroids have had. My only real complaint about the nendoroid design is that her wings aren’t what they should look like. If you take a look at Remilia’s Wiki page, you’ll see that there’s actually a kind of hook shape at the top of her wings. The wings on the nendoroid are just pointy at the top. Although I didn’t take a picture of it directly, her base is also decorated like all of the other Touhou nendos. Since Remilia is a vampire, the base has a white background with black silhouettes of bats flying around. Below are some shots from different sides.

Since Remilia’s wings are movable, that means that they’re also removable. If you take them off, she looks just like a regular girl. I tried to make it look like she was plotting something, but I couldn’t figure out a good way to position her arms.

I did find a way to make her look not evil.

Remilia is always seen with her mop hat, so they couldn’t forget about it in the nendoroid version. The bottom of the hat isn’t molded to the shape of her head, so you can move it around a bit.

She also comes with her signature weapon, Gungnir. The spear is made out of a transparent red plastic and is actually really sharp. The downside is that it can only be held by one of Remilia’s arms. This greatly reduces the number of poses that you can make with it. What’s worse, is that the arm that Gungnir attaches too sticks straight out, so really all you can do is move it up and down.

Except for the few inconsistencies with Remilia’s character design that I mentioned, I found no faults with this figure. The details are good, the paint job is perfect, and she comes with a hat and spear. What I didn’t like about the figure is the limited poses that she can make. I didn’t expect them to add in any extra legs considering how long her dress is, but I would’ve liked some more arm pieces. She comes with two straight arms, two bent ones, and one to hold the spear. I guess her hat just took up so much space that they didn’t have room for more pieces. Other than that, I quite liked this figure and I’m looking forward to GSC’s Youmu Konpaku and Flandre Scarlet nendoroids soon.

Related posts:

1. Azusa Nakano Nendoroid by GSC
2. Luka Megurine Nendoroid by GSC
3. Ryougi Shiki Nendoroid by GSC

Happy Halloween! I hope everyone is out enjoying their candy and/or parties. Since today is Halloween, I thought I’d review a related figure that I seem to have missed: Hiyori Pixy. I bought Hiyori sometime last year but didn’t review her due to it being a cast-off figure and having a very provocative pose even when cast-on (hence the NSFW tag). In fact, this is the most ecchi figure I own, so if you’re at school/work or any other public place, you probably shouldn’t scroll down any further ;)

Anyways, for those of you wondering what Hiyori Pixy has to do with Halloween, just take a look at her. How could a girl with a giant pumpkin on her head not remind you of Halloween?

Hiyori Pixy is a character from the eroge Chu x  Chu Idol. This figure from Good Smile Company was sculpted by Kaiya Hajime and released back in January 2009. Considering Hiyori does come from an eroge, it should be no surprise that she wears as little clothing as possible to keep herself covered. In fact, she isn’t even wearing real clothes, just some ribbons that hang off of her.

One thing I like about Hiyori is her pose; rather than face forward, she faces to the side, allowing you to display her with her face and shapely body in clear view.

Here’s what she looks like from the other side.

And from behind. You might notice a little gray thingy between her cheeks here, I’m not exactly sure what it is, but it seems to be some kind of substitute for panties. As with her clothing choice, the gray thing seems to be designed to reveal as much as possible.

Here’s an interesting fact: not only does Hiyori have a cool pumpkin hat, it’s also magnetic. Her head is tilted at such a large angle that the pumpkin would fall off normally, so it’s stuck onto her head via magnets.

Hiyori’s face is pretty standard, just a simple smile, but I prefer this expression on my figures. Her hair is also extremely well-painted. It changes from a sky blue to a dark blue almost seamlessly as you move from the top of her head down.

The ribbons I was talking about hang from around Hiyori’s neck and make up one single piece. The skull at the collar was nicely done.

While the ribbons aren’t perfect, it’s impressive how much detail GSC was able to get into a piece so small and fragile.

Hiyori’s bracelets also don’t look perfect. From the few images of Hiyori that I’ve seen, the bracelets don’t look like they should be old and worn out, but they do here.

Attached to the bottom of Hiyori’s ribbons are some leggings. I love how GSC was able to get the transluscent effect just right. Where the legging isn’t folded, you can see the outline of Hiyori’s legs, but where it is folded, you can’t see through it. I can’t imagine how hard it must’ve been to get different levels of transluscency in a single piece of plastic.

The base isn’t spectacular, but it’s far better than a plain one. It contains some text around the edges that say “Chu x Chu Idol” and “The Idol is A Vampire” and there’s a picture of the pumpking in the middle with some other symbols beneath it.

Anyways, enough with the accessories, I’m sure some of you are more interested in Hiyori with everything cast-off, and here she is:

In order to go from cast-on to cast-off mode, you have to pop off Hiyori’s head. The ribbons slide up over her neck and the leggings are taken off by pulling each one apart (each is two pieces). The only complaint I have about this design is that when you slide the ribbons up over Hiyori’s neck, they tend to rub against her body and either scratch it or transfer some paint.

Without the leggings, you really get to see how long and slender her legs are. You also get so see how awesome of a job Kaiya did sculpting Hiyori’s figure. If this isn’t perfectly proportioned, then I don’t know what is.

Some unobstructed shots of that thing… I’m just going to call it a crotch-plate. The crotch-plate, the bracelets, and Hiyori’s shoes are the only things that you can’t remove.

A close-up of her oppai. This is the only figure I have that has this “feature” so I’m not sure how the sculpting compares to others…

Out of the two ways that you can pose Hiyori, I prefer her with all of her accessories on. The main reason I bought her was for the pumpkin and funny clothes, and I wouldn’t feel comfortable with a nude eroge girl sitting on my shelf. I felt the most impressive aspects of this figure were the sculpt, and the pose, while the only big downside was the damage caused when removing her ribbons. When I first saw the promo pics of Hiyori I thought she looked great, and two years later, I still think she looks great, so this was definitely a good buy.

PS:

For those of you wondering where I’ve disappeared to recently, I’ve been studying for exams and clocking in some over-time hours at work. These past two weeks have been hectic and it’s going to continue on until Remembrance Day. So if I haven’t visited your blog or replied to your comments/emails, it’s not that I’m ignoring you, I just haven’t had time to do anything else but work.

Related posts:

1. Pixie Hiyori – To Buy or Not To Buy
2. Ryougi Shiki Nendoroid by GSC
3. Ein Nendoroid by GSC

For my first figure post in a long time, I have Azusa Nakano from K-ON. This figure isn’t from the first batch of Azusa nendos since they were sold out by the time I decided to buy it. I had considered buying Azusa for a higher price, but instead I decided to wait and hope that GSC would make some more and they did. When preorders opened for the second batch, I made sure to place my order early. This is my first K-ON figure and will probably be my only one. Like everyone else, I was crazy over K-ON when it came out, but by the time they started making nendoroids, I was already getting tired of the series. The only reason I got Azusa was because of “Azu-nyan” pose.

Anyways, here’s Azusa straight out of the box. She’s wearing her school uniform and has her hands up like cat paws. Her default face is just the normal blank look with a smile that comes with many nendoroids.

Nothing special about her side. From this shot though, you can see that GSC went with a slightly different base than most nendoroids. Rather than have Azusa stand on a circular, clear plastic base, she stands on the ground with a stand to support her.

From the back you can see that Azuza’s twintails have joints on them. This allows you to move them around to any position you want. I liked how they included that line running down the back of her head to show that her hair is being pulled to the sides.

Here’s Azusa’s other side, once again not much to see here.

Like I said before, I got Azusa because of “Azu-nyan” and here she is. I was expecting the nekomimi ears to be attached to a separate front hair piece, but it’s actually an accessory by itself. All you have to do is slide it on Azusa’s head just like a real hairband. This second face that Azusa comes with isn’t too different from the first. Her eyebrows are a bit different (though you can’t see it from under her hair), and she has her mouth open, perhaps to make some nyan sounds?

The last face Azusa comes with is what I would describe as a surprised expression, but I can see it being used in other situation. She also comes with a small non-moveable cat. I don’t recall ever seeing it in K-ON, but it could’ve been introduced later in the series after I stopped watching. Azusa’s twintails seemed really loose so I didn’t think they’d be able to stay in place at first (due to gravity), but as you can see here, they can stand straight up just fine.

Azusa also comes with a guitar and amplifier. I loved the details on the amp, but I noticed some scratches on her guitar. Does anyone know if those scratches are a part of her guitar or if mine was just damaged?

The paint job on Azusa was of regular quality for nendoroids, which is good considering the last few nendoroids I’ve gotten had some paint splatter here and there. The only paint problem I found with Azusa was a bit of splatter on the sleeve of one of her arms.

The last thing I want to point out about Azusa is that her base (or I should say stand) is in the shape of a nekomimi hairband, which I just found adorable. I actually like the use of a stand rather than a circular base underneath because it doesn’t get in the way of pictures as much.

Overall, I thought Azusa was an excellent nendoroid. Other than that bit of paint splatter, I didn’t find anything wrong with her, and she comes with some pretty good accessories. The amount of detail they were able to put into her guitar and amp was impressive, and the new stand design really helps the figure appeal to Azu-nyan fans.

Related posts:

1. Luka Megurine Nendoroid by GSC
2. Chiaki Minami Nendoroid by GSC
3. Ein Nendoroid by GSC

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

It’s been months since I’ve done a figure review, so before I do my posts about my Japan trip, I thought I’d cover the Nanoha nendoroid which I got back in May. Nanoha comes with the standard three faces, but rather than include extra limbs in different positions, GSC decided to just include another pair of hands. This doesn’t mean that she can’t make good poses though, because she also comes with two versions of Raising Heart and Yuuno in his ferret form. She also has two sets of wings that can be attached to her feet. As always, here are the shots of her regular pose from different angles:

The expression on her first face is pretty standard, with the blank stare and slight smile. Nanoha’s clothes are a bit more detailed than most nendoroids. The hand guards (I’m not sure if that’s the right term for them) have these screw-like things in them, and they managed to include that in the nendoroid. Unfortunately, the paint job wasn’t as good as the sculpting. While Nanoha looks fine from a distance, up close you can see several areas where the paint got on an adjacent area (ie: blue paint for the stripe getting on the white part of her jacket). Considering GSC has made nendoroids with just as much detail and been able to paint them just fine without getting paint on other areas, I was disappointed with how Nanoha’s jacket turned out.

On the other hand, I really liked Raising Heart’s two forms. GSC might mess up a few nendoroids every now and then, but for some reason, their accessories always seem to be perfect. You could argue that nendoroid accessories are a lot less detailed than the nendoroid itself, but I would consider an accessory like Raising Heart to be as detailed as Nanoha. You just have to look at the small parts on the top end to see all the details put into making it.

This is one of my favourite poses; she looks like she’s concentrating on using some magic. One thing that would’ve made this perfect is a magic circle for a base. Like almost all nendoroids, Nanoha has the standard plain clear plastic base.

Yuuno in ferret form is cute, but there really isn’t very much detail to an animated ferret. That’s why I don’t have any complaints about how Yuuno looks. Unlike most plastic animals, however, Yuuno’s head is movable, along with his hind legs. I was expecting him to just be one solid piece of plastic, but was quite happy to see that he has some poseability. There’s only one head though, so if you don’t like his face for some reason, there’s not much you can do about it.

Overall, I’d say that Nanoha is an average nendoroid. As much as I liked Nanoha’s accessories, I don’t think they make up for not having more positions for her arms and legs. Besides her face, the only thing that really changes is the position of Raising Heart: which hand(s) it’s held with, and the angle it’s at. If you like Nanoha and you’re fine with her just holding her staff in different positions, then you should go ahead and buy her, but if you were planning on getting a nendoroid with more action poses, then you might want to look into some other ones.

Related posts:

1. Luka Megurine Nendoroid by GSC
2. Ein Nendoroid by GSC
3. Riannon Nendoroid by GSC