As you can see, I got both the Good Smile Company goth-loli and the Alter maid version of super-rich and crazed otaku girl Sakura Nankyoku (aka Penguin-chan). Sakura is from the comedy anime Penguin Musume Heart, which means Penguin Girl Heart (where penguin is Sakura’s nickname, not an actual penguin). Up till now I’ve tried to avoid getting more than one figure of a character (excluding nendoroids), but these two figures came out at the same time and they both looked so nice from the promo pics that I couldn’t decide on which one to get so I got both.

First up is Good Smile Company’s goth-loli version with Sakura wearing a really pretty yukata.

Foot fetish anyone? j/k

I’ve seen some figures where the hands and feet (more so feet) don’t look that great, but I thought every part of this figure was sculpted really well. You can tell when a lot of thought and effort has been put into a figure when the little nit-picky things like the feet and toes turn out well. I also like the stand, so shiny ^.^

The red flower is a nice touch.

The designs on the yukata look really simple, but somhow it also looks really detailed. Maybe it’s the wavy white parts.

I didn’t notice this at first, but like many other Good Smile Company figures you can remove the skirt to reveal the figure’s panties.

I don’t think they actually showed Sakura’s panties in the episode where she wears this yukata (correct me if I’m wrong), but here she has pink panties with a bow in front.

There are also some frilly things in the back. I wonder if that makes sitting uncomfortable.

Overall I thought this was a wonderful figure. The simple yet detailed design gives Sakura a rather elegant look and I can’t find any flaws in it.

Up next is Alter’s maid version of Sakura with nekomimi ears and tail included.

When I opened up this figure, one of the things I started worrying about was whether it’ll lean in the future. As you can see, Sakura is only standing on one leg, which isn’t even straight and most of her weight is shifted a bit to the side.

Sakura’s left leg bulges out a bit above where the stocking ends.

Here you can see above how the leg doesn’t go straight up, but rather goes to the side. The stand is really cute though.

Sakura’s maid dress is the typical black with a white apron. The nipples pointing out make me wonder how big they’d have to be to show through two layers of clothing…

Here’s a panty shot for you all since the skirt isn’t removable like the previous picture :P

At first I thought the tail and cat ears might be removeable, but they’re permanently stuck on as you can see here.

It’s difficult to show this with pictures, but it looks like the part of Sakura’s hair just in front of her face was accidently pushed up against her face during the sculpting phase. Of course, the sculptor could’ve just decided that there shouldn’t be so much space between the hair and the face. Overall I thought this figure had a lot more detail put in, but the quality is a bit lower than the goth-loli one. It’s still a nice figure to look at.

Out of the two, I’d have to say that the goth-loli Sakura by Good Smile Company is the better figure. There weren’t any ribbons or cat ears/tails, but the overall appearance and slightly better quality made it more appealing to me.

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.

Well, I just finished watching ep 15 of Penguin Musume. This episode involved Etorofu hijacking the Nankyoku time machine and going back in time to get rid of an embarrasing event. Of course, with any show that involves time travel there are unwanted consequences. At the end of the episode it appears that Pen-chan (Sakura) is no longer the main character and the anime is now called Shirokuma-ojousama Heart. I guess this is how Shirokuma gets her fortune/company back after going into bankruptcy.

So, after watching this ep, I started to wonder what I would do if I could go back in time to change something. If someone gave me a time machine right now, I would travel back a few years and tell the producers of Code Geass R2 to change the ending ^.^

(spoilers below for anyone that hasn’t seen the ending to Code Geass)

When I was watching the last ep of Geass I was so happy when Suzaku died. That bastard killed my favourite disposable character, Monica Kruszewski (the Knight of Twelve). I don’t think she got more than a few minutes of screen time, but she was still cool.

It was also partially Suzaku’s fault that Shirley got killed since he was supposed to be watching her, and I can’t even remember how many times he’s switched sides now.

What also sucked about this episode is obviously Lelouch’s death. The fact that it was Suzaku that killed him too doesn’t makes me hate him even more. I’m sure that most people predicted that the ending would see either Lelouch gain control of the world or see him die in a blaze of glory, taking everyone with him (or at least that’s what I predicted). But no, he just gets stabbed in the chest and slides down his big moving throne thing and dies with Nunally holding his hand (they could’ve at least made him die in Nunally’s arms or something). Speaking of Nunally, I really thought she looked like she was plucked straight out of Star Wars.

So after Lelouch dies, the world is at peace and magically, everyone turns out happy. Kallen goes back to school, Nunally is still in a wheelchair but at least she’s enslaved Suzaku and has him pushing her around, and Ohgi and Villeta get married.

Is that the girl that stole Lelouch’s hat behind Rivalz?

Anyways, I think the most “wtf” ending was Orange-kun picking oranges with his new loli girlfriend…

Seriously, who in their right mind would want to pick oranges for a living? And why is Anya even with Orange-kun?

A nice shot of CC before the episode ends. CC was one of my favourite characters, but when you think about it, the plot wouldn’t have changed much if she didn’t exist. Other than giving Lelouch his geass she didn’t have any other important purpose other than looking sexy and advertising for pizza hut.

So if I could change the past, what would my ending be like? I would’ve just ended it once Lelouch became emporer rather than try to drag it out and make a happy ending for everyone (minus the main character). Either that or I would go back in time and tell myself how the cliffhanger from the first season ended and not to watch the second season.

Well, that’s it for my combined post, I was too lazy to write 2 separate ones. On a side note, chibi Pen-chan is so cute ^.^

I finally got my copy of Megami Magazine Volume 101 earlier this week. The packaging has “Do Not Bend” in big black letters so someone tried to bend it in half; I really hate people like that. One thing about Megami Magazine is that they have what look like fan-made manga inserted between some pages that only stick out halfway from the spine. So when the magazine was bent, all of the regular pages ended up getting these little folds where the manga pages ended. Fortunately the folds weren’t too deep so I was able to straighten out the poster pages. Well, that’s enough rambling about the postal service. I took pictures of all the posters this time, and here they are:

The first poster is of Kagami and Tsukasa from Lucky Star. Personally, I think this poster looks a little bit weird. I think maybe their hair colour is off.

On the other side of the Lucky Star poster is Haruka in a maid uniform ^.^ This one is definitely going up on my wall, no point trying to keep the magazine in good condition when it’s already damaged.

More Zero no Tsukaima in this issue. I wonder why Louise has a towel ready to cover herself when they’re changing behind the tarp.

A nice pic of Birdy from Tetsuwan Birdy Decode. I swear, steam and bath foam has something against us guys.

I’ve only read the first volume of Negima, so I can’t remember any of these girls’ names.

I haven’t seen Ikkitousen, but this poster would be very good advertising for it. Makes me consider taking a look at the anime.

Hidamari Sketch was too loli for me. I prefer girls to be a bit closer to my age or at least look like they’re in they’re teens.

Some more loli material. No clue where they’re from.

I watched a couple of eps of Koihime Musou, but the plot didn’t really interest me so I dropped it.

Looks like some of the girls from Clannad are out for a festival. I wish they had a poster of Kotomi :(

Yoko looks like she has some sunburns in this picture.

I think Nia looks really weird here, maybe she got some sunburns too.

bluish-white hair = win.

Don’t know which anime the rest of the posters are from. Maybe that’s why they’re at the back of the magazine?

That’s it for the posters in the magazine, but of course there’s also a whole bunch of articles which have more nice pictures to look at :)

A couple pages on Gurren Lagann. I’m guessing it’s talking about the upcoming movie.

There’s quite a few pages on new anime that will be coming out soon. I’m really looking forward to both Clannad After Story and Tora Dora this season. Both of these will actually begin airing this week in Japan. Clannad will air on Oct. 3, and Tora Dora will air on Oct. 1.

Like I said before, there’s these little manga pages inserted in the magazine. Here’s one of Zero no Tsukaima. I wish I knew what they were saying :/

The Lucky Star OVA came out a couple days ago. I’m still waiting for some subs before I watch it.

The Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni OVA (OAV) will be coming out on DVD on Dec. 26, and it’ll be out on Blu-ray on Jan. 23, 2009. I wish the release date was a little bit earlier, Higurashi was one of my favourite anime.

Some info on Penguin Musume and Hidamari Sketch. I would’ve liked it if they had some posters of Sakura Nankyoku, she’s so cool ^.^

At the back of the magazine is some info on adult games. I wonder if people in Japan have a problem with promoting adult material in a magazine that anyone can buy. I also noticed that all of the games were labelled with Win, PS2, PSP, or NDS. I guess the PS3 isn’t very popular even on its home turf.

On the back of the magazine is a lovely picture of Rika and Hanyu in some frilly dresses. I think Rika looks really cute with the cat ears and tail ^.^

There’s also a useful little table at the bottom with the release dates for the Higurashi OVA. It looks like I’ll have to wait until August of next year before the last episode is released :(

And of course, with every issue of Megami Magazine comes a large double-sided poster. This one had Yoko from Gurren Lagann on one side and the girls from Strike Witches on the other.

–>Subscribe to Megami Magazine

I’m currently watching Penguin Musume Heart (Penguin Girl), which is an anime about a girl called Nankyoku Sakura (a.k.a. Pengiun or Pen-chan) and all the weird things that happen around her. There really isn’t any plot so far, but it does have some of the silly things we’ve come to expect from anime, including: the muscle man butler, the battle maid, the tomboy, the lesbian martial arts girl (reminds me of card captor sakura), girls with exploding clothes (see below), maid cafes, miko (shrine maidens), and of course the all-important panty shots.

I think this is more of a parody of anime in general as most of the characters represent some stereotypical personality that you’d find in a regular anime. For example, the butler seems to have military training of some sort (anyone recall school rumble?) and his name is Sebastion (if you’ve seen lucky star, then you’ll get it). The episodes are only 10-15 min long so it’s a good anime to watch if you don’t have much fun, and it’s pretty entertaining too. I’m currently on episode 11 and hope a subbed version of ep 12 will come out soon >.>