Some of you may recall that I bought two boxes of the Toy’s Works Toradora figures a few months back. That was to ensure that I got the complete set since a single box isn’t guaranteed to have all of the figures. Well, it turns out that both boxes had the complete set so now one of them is just lying around.

With that said, rather than throwing out the extra figures, I’ve decided to give them away by holding a contest. The details of the contest are below:

This will be a banner making contest for http://nopybot.comand is open to everyone. What I am looking for is a new banner for the top of my blog. The banner should be 950 x 200 pixels and include something related to my site (anime, figures, etc.). You are welcome to use any pictures that I have taken and posted on my site, but it is not necessary. Banners should also have the words “Nopy’s Blog” written somewhere across it with or without the words “Anime, figures, magazines, and everything related.” in a smaller font underneath.

I will be the one judging the submissions, so banners that cater to my interests will be ranked higher than those that don’t. If you aren’t familiar with my interests, you should take a read through some of my posts here and on ForeverGeek. Submissions that show some creativity (like making a mascot *wink wink*) will also leave a better impression on me. There is no limit to the number of submissions you can make as long as they meet the requirements.

All submissions should be sent to contest@nopybot.com and either be a jpg, bmp, or psd file. Make sure you include your nickname too so I know who to credit. By sending in your work to this email address, you are allowing me to post it on nopybot.com

The deadline for submitting your work is March 1. This should give anyone who doesn’t know how to make banners enough time to learn and make one. Even if it doesn’t look great, if there is only one submission, then that person would win by default. I will contact the winner by email within a week of the deadline to confirm his/her mailing address. I will ship the prize anywhere that Canada Post will ship using snail mail. If the winner wants a faster shipping method, then they will have to pay for it.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment.

EDIT: The contest is now closed and submissions will no longer be accepted.

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As you can see, I bought two boxes of the figures. Why you ask? It was because When I was ordering it, there was a note that said figures were placed in boxes at random and it wasn’t guaranteed that all figures would be in one box. Considering I wanted the whole collection, I opted to buy to boxes just in case (I know, I got caught up in a cheap marketing trick).

So this is how the figures are packed into the box. Each little box contains a figure, so yes, I have 24 altogether. Incidentally, each of the two big boxes had all of the figures in the collection.

Unfortunately, all of the figures require some assembly. It wasn’t hard to figure out where each piece went since there were only a handful for each, but some of them were extremely hard to fit together. I think I spent a total of 1.5 hours trying to force pieces together, and here are the results:

Taiga with a white dress is so cute, but that bowl of rice looks a little like brains to me…

Taiga in a school swimsuit was the hardest figure to put together. The only pieces were the base, the body, and the head, but the head simply wouldn’t fit onto the body. I was so afraid hat I’d break Taiga’s neck trying to get her head on, but I somehow managed.

The angry nekomimi Taiga was pretty cute too, though I don’t really like her lopsidedness. 

I don’t understand the flower on Minori’s head, but then again, I always thought Minori was a confusing character. (sorry about the blurry pic)

I guess a viking hat on Minori is a bit more normal than a flower (only a bit).

Puppy Ami is so adorable.

Devil Ami was exactly the same as puppy Ami except she has a different tail and ears (or wings in this case).

And for anyone wondering, the secret figure in the collection is a white version of Taiga in her swimsuit. After spending so long getting Taiga’s head on the first figure, it only took me 20 minutes to get her head on this one.

Here’s the full collection for you to compare the figures side-by-side. Personally, my favourite figure is the one of Taiga in the white dress, with puppy Ami a close second. I was expecting the secret figure to be something better, but you can’t always get everything you want. Now I just need to figure out what to do with the remaining 16 figures I have. I might sell them on ebay or something, but if there’s enough interest I guess I could hold a contest here and give them away.

EDIT: The poll does not seem to be working, so if you think I should have a figure giveaway contest, just leave a comment instead.

[poll id="3"]

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Time for a look at another volume of Megami Magazine. This issue has a lot of goodies in terms of posters, and some very very nice extras which you will find near the bottom of this post.

Haven’t seen one of these larger posters in a while. The front features Kyou and Ryou Fujibayashi from Clannad.

On the reverse side are the girls from everyone’s favourite anime this season, K-ON. After seeing Mugi-chan in a nurse costume and here in a maid costume, I have concluded that she should be a professional cosplayer. Poor Mio looks so embarrassed.

I wonder how Nodoka is able to keep that towel around herself.

I finally have the Taiga nopan poster ^.^

Queen’s Blade is too much ecchi and not enough story for my tastes.

I watched the first episode of Asura Cryin and it just looked like an amalgamation of every anime genre possible: supernatural, magic, mystery, adventure, mecha, ninjas, etc.

Nice poster of the girls from Tayutama.

Not sure which anime this is from, but I like the girl on the left (pink hair is always a plus).

The K-ON girls in swimsuits ^.^

I thought this was a very nice poster of Fate and Teana. I think Teana looks better with her hair down.

I was too busy looking at the girl to notice the huge number of cats in the background at first.

Currently enjoying Natsu no Arashi, but I wish the animation was a bit better.

Yoko’s right oppai looks really deformed with the strap like that…

It looks like Ein doesn’t go anywhere without her gun.

Second episode of Kissxsis comes out on May 22.

I really like this Higurashi poster. I wish the Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni Rei OVA episodes would be released sooner.

*smoooch*

One more Nagi poster for all the Kannagi fans.

I liked the variety of posters that they had this time around. Only K-ON had more than one poster so there’s sure to be something for everyone in this volume. I also liked how they included past, current, and upcoming series this time. On to more of the magazine itself:

Looking forward to To Aru Kagaku no Railgun. More Mikoto and Kuroko ftw (though I actually like Kuroko more than Mikoto).

Can’t wait for the new Nanoha movie to come out.

I just love Fate’s pose on this page.

I read the Hatsukoi Limited manga, and although it was easy to get lost in all the characters, it was still enjoyable. I would have to say my favourite character is Koyoi.

I did not know that the school swimsuit mecha nurse girl nana figure was cast-offable >.>

Episode 3 of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Rei is almost out, only 1 more week! The 3rd and 4th episodes will be released on June 24 and August 21 respectively.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, this volume came with some very nice extras, and here they are:

First is a Nanoha pencil board, with Nanoha on one side

and Fate on the other. I really love Fate’s pose, hope they make a poster of it in the future.

The other extra that came with this volume is Megami Magazine’s volume 1.5 of the Nanoha Visual Collection. Since it’s volume 1.5, there aren’t as many pics as a full volume, but they’re still really nice. Resized scans are below, the originals were too huge, but if enough people want them then I might post them somewhere.

This is definitely one of the better Megami Magazines I’ve seen (maybe even the best). Lots of variety to appeal to a larger audience, and although there was no large poster this time, I thought the Nanoha goodies more than made up for that. If you’re planning on buying a Megami Magazine, I would recommend volume 109.

–>Subscribe to Megami Magazine

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After nearly a month of waiting, I finally got vol. 108 of Megami Magazine. This volume contains a lot of Clannad After Story and mostly posters of older series. Since I had some free time today I decided to scan the posters in to see how they turned out.

More Nanoha is always good. Still waiting for the movie though.

Toradora was an awesome story, if you haven’t seen it I suggest you do so soon, you don’t know what you’re missing.

Queen’s Blade looks like a hentai disguised as an anime…

I’ve never seen Da Capo or Da Capo II so I don’t know who this maid girl is, but she’s so cute ^.^

At this point I stopped scanning the posters. My scanner could only fit half a poster at a time so it took a while to scan each one and sticking the two halves together was a bit annoying too.

I think Ushio looks too much like a boy. They should have drawn her more like the girl that’s always with that robot.

Seeing Nagisa in those clothes somehow reminds me of Card Captor Sakura, all she’s missing is a wand and some Clow Cards.

One big happy family. It’s so hard to believe that Sanae is actually a grandmother, she looks so young.

The K-ON craze (or Mio craze) is really getting out of hand. I’m sure there will be more of these posters to come in the next few volumes of Megami Magazine.

Is it just me, or is Nodoka not wearing any panties?

I wish they had a poster of Mikoto and Kuroko instead of these three. Oh well, Mikoto is getting her own anime so I’m happy.

Overall, I didn’t think the posters in this volume were that spectacular. The only two that I really liked was the Da Capo II one and the one with Nagisa in that white dress.

Although the posters lacked content from the new season, at least the main part of the magazine had some nice full-page ads and screenshots of some new anime.

After watching the first episode of Hatsukoi Limited, I decided to read the manga, which turned out pretty good. It’s not as loaded with fanservice as Lilim Kiss or Ighigo 100% (same author), but in my opinion the story was much better.

Everyone probably already knows this, but the K-ON opening and ending songs were released on April 22.

I just thought I’d point out something here: the girl on the far left seems to be missing a vital piece of clothing.

I watched the first episode of Tayutama, the character designs are really nice, but it looks like another harem anime and I’ve gotten sick of harem anime now.

Phantom, on the other hand looks to have a lot of potential. Hopefully it doesn’t suck as much as people said the OVA did.

I didn’t know about this until I saw this page, but there’s a Toradora game coming out for the PSP. Now if only I had a PSP and knew how to read Japanese

Up till now, every Megami Magazine that I’ve gotten has come with a large double-sided poster, but that’s not the case this time. Instead of inserting a large poster along with this volume, Megami Magazine included a little booklet on Clannad After Story.

There were a lot of nice pictures on the cover so I thought there would be larger version inside the booklet, but I was wrong.

Most of the booklet was like what you see above. There was also four pages with the characters in different outfits which is a bit better, but not as good as having a poster.

After looking through the booklet, I was rather diappointed in it. If you’re a big Clannad fan, then this volume of Megami Magazine would be worth getting, but just keep in mind that this one doesn’t come with a large poster.

–>Subscribe to Megami Magazine

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Taiga Aisaka

The so-called “Palmtop Tiger” really didn’t interest me as a character at the beginning. Sure she added a bit of humour to the series along with Ryuji, but the way she acted timid around Yusaku all the time was really annoying. To me, she just seemed like your typical anime tsundere girl, and tsundere girls in anime are way overused nowadays. I didn’t start liking her until around episode 9 or 10 when she started to show some feelings for Ryuji. I guess at that point she seemed a bit more open than she did previously. The whole thing with trying to hook up Ryuji and Minori even though she has feelings for Ryuji also made me so sorry for her (the scene with her sitting at home alone by a candle on christmas eve comes to mind). It was also good to see how Taiga had changed from someone who beat up anyone that got in her way to a person that cares for the people around her, even going so far as to leave all of her friends to make her mother happy. I loved how she reunited with Ryuji though; hiding in the locker in the corner of the classroom. I actually would’ve liked to see her roll out of it again, but I guess that’d just ruin the mood.

Ryuji Takasu

I think Ryuji personifies the saying that the best things in life are right under your nose (really though, the height difference between him and Taiga is so great that she’s literally right under his nose). Right from the beginning of the first episode, Ryuji is complaining about how is looks scare people away (I think he should’ve taken advantage of this and made some money). Anyways, throughout the series Ryuji is so obsessed with trying to get closer to Minori that he really doesn’t notice Taiga’s growing feelings towards him at all. What I didn’t like about Ryuji is that he kept chasing Minori until she finally rejected him, and right after, when Taiga accidently confesses her feelings to him, he suddenly loses interest in Minori. Pretty soon after that, he ends up asking Taiga to marry him. I don’t know about the rest of you, but Ryuji seems like a fickle person to me.

Minori Kushieda

Minori is one of those characters that you love one moment and hate the next. At the start of the series, she could be classified as the person that’s always happy and smiling, the type of character that everyone likes. That changes a few times in the series, revealing a character that’s torn between her best friend and her own feelings. I think the first time that Minori wasn’t putting on her “happy” act was at Ami’s summer villa when Ryuji was trying to find the right time to confess to her. That scene was a bit confusing the first time I watched it, but after seeing the whole series, you realize that even that early on Minori had at least some feelings towards Ryuji but was trying to steer the conversation away from who likes whom because she knew Taiga liked Ryuji. When you go back and think about how much Minori has sacrificed so that Taiga would be happy, you can almost forgive the time she broke the christmas tree or the time she rejected Ryuji without even giving him a chance to confess. On another note, I believe that Minori is bisexual, if you don’t trust me, you should take a look at this post on Sankaku Complex.

Ami Kawashima

My favourite Toradora character, Ami is a teen model keeping a low profile to hide from stalkers. When you think of models, you usually think of the stereotypical no brains and all beauty, but that’s certainly not the case with Ami. I think Ami is the hardest character to understand in Toradora. Some of her comments and actions really contradict each other. For instance, when Ami was alone with Ryuji in a cave during summer vacation, she told him that she’d be a better choice because he’d get burnt if he got too close to Minori, but then after the cultural festival there was the comment she made to Minori about not having to feel guilty about liking Ryuji (and pushing her on to accept his feelings). I think that Ami really means well, but she has a bad habit of toying around with people so she ends up getting on their nerves. Everything turns out well in the end though, so I’m happy

Yusaku Kitamura

This guy is like a masochistic exhibitionist, I’m not joking. Just think about it, he was originally the one who confessed to Taiga back when she was still beating people up, he mentioned that he liked Ami’s bitchy side more than her cute side, and he had a crush on the dictator-like student council president. As for the exhibitionist part, I don’t think that needs any explaining since he’s almost naked half the time.

Overall, I liked the way the character development went in Toradora. The only thing I thought was left out was whether or not Noto and Maya got together in the end.

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