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.

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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.

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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.

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Its been a while since my last nendoroid post, but they’re still the fastest growing part of my figure collection, I just haven’t gotten around to writing about them. Originally released in January 2010, this Luka Megurine nendoroid was hard to come by since she was sold out in most places. I managed to get my hands on one a couple months ago, and I was really excited to be able to add another Vocaloid to my collection.

The picture above is of Luka’s standard pose. I was impressed at how well they were able to match Luka’s outfit in nendo form to what it should look like, but the paint job could have been a bit better. It’s not immediately obvious, but some of the paint seems to have splattered onto adjacent areas which is not something you’d expect from a company like GSC.

One thing I didn’t notice until I had played around with the figure for a while is that the long clump of hair on Luka’s left side is actually adjustable. You can rotate it in different directions, allowing easier replacement of the arms. If you look at the above picture, you can see the point where the hair rotates about.

Like many other nendoroids, the back of Luka’s head is pretty featureless. One thing I’d like to point out is that Luka’s stand holds her by the bottom of her skirt rather than her legs. I didn’t particularly like this design since Luka was more prone to falling over.

I love the detail on the control pad thingy on Luka’s right arm, but besides that, there isn’t really anything different about this side from the other.

Of course, being a Vocaloid, Luka has got to come with a face for singing.

She also comes with several arm parts to allow you to make different poses while she’s singing. You know how singers are, they have their arms flailing everywhere.

The only word I can think of to describe this face was that it’s “interesting.” I’m not exactly sure what kind of emotion (if any) it’s supposed to represent. Personlly, it looks like some kind of alien.

When aliens come to enslave humanity using the power of music, I’m sure they’ll be bringing along their pets with them. Anyone who follows Vocaloid will know about Tako Luka (aka Octo-Luka), which is basically Luka’s head and an octopus rolled into one. Tako Luka was one of the main reasons why I wanted this figure, it’s just one of those things that’s so weird but so cute that you have too have it.

Overall, I was pretty happy with this nendoroid. Not only do you get the faces you would normally expect for a character, but you also get one alien-like one and a Tako Luka figure. As I mentioned before, the only downsides are the paint job and the stand; however, this nendoroid is a lot more detailed than most so naturally it’d be harder to paint perfectly. If you are a Vocaloid and nendoroid fan though, this is one figure you don’t want to pass up.

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Ein is the main female character from the anime Phantom -Requiem for the Phantom- which was based on the game Phantom of Inferno. She’s generally quiet and has a reserved personality due to being trained to be an assassin from a young age. If you’ve watched the anime, you’ll also notice that she shows absolutely no emotion at all; I guess that’s just something you need to do to be the best assassin in the world.

This nendoroid of Ein came with a lot more pieces than I had anticipated. There are at least three different arms for each side and the figure also comes with a bunch of accessories like a stuffed teddy bear, a pistol, and a dagger. Unfotunately, there was only one extra leg, so although there’s a lot of poses that Ein can do with her arms, there’s not much as many choices when it came to her stance.

This is what Ein looks like out of the package. She has a standard pose and coupled with her expressionless face, she looks really plain. Pics from other angles are shown below:

This is Ein’s smiling face, but it still seems a bit expressionless, just like in the anime. What I really liked about this nendoroid is that she can actually hold her teddy bear with one arm. Most of the other nendoroids I have can either only carry small items that you fit through a hole in the hand, or have stuff sitting beside them.

In the anime, Ein actually cut open the poor teddy bear. It looks like GSC decided to include the stuffing for the teddy bear so you can recreate that scene. The only thing missing is a Reiji nendoroid.

My favourite face was the one with the Phantom mask. Although Ein doesn’t look cute anymore, she looks a lot cooler. All of the extra arm pieces also allow you to place both the dagger and pistol in her hands at the same time. A lot of nendoroids only come with one arm or hand piece that you can place items in so I was happy to see that Ein can carry two items at once.

This is probably what most of Ein’s victims saw before they died, and it’s my favourite pose.

The main points that make this nendoroid better than others are all of the extra little items like the weapons and teddy bear. All of the extra arms also make Ein a lot more poseable than your average nendoroid. My only complaint is in the choice of the faces. I know that Ein is usually expressionless, so it makes sense for her nendoroid to be expressionless too, but the two non-mask faces look identical except for the mouth. It would have been nicer if the two faces were a bit more different, perhaps having one with a sad expression. Other than the two really similar faces, I thought this was a nice nendoroid that has a lot of different pieces for you to play around with.

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