Kanu Unchou Maid Ver. - By GoodSmile

Hello all! I know it's been a LONG time since the past post, which was my first music post, but I swear I have a good excuse! Actually, I have a few. After classes ended last semester I was planning to make more posts here, but little did I know that I had less than a couple of weeks worth of vacation, and life off the internet took priority there. Christmas time came, and I got the new Nikon D40 that I asked for, so I have been doing a little experimenting with it, trying to get used to it. It's rather difficult for someone who has never used an SLR before, digital or not. Anyway, down to business. I recently purchased the maid version Kanu Unchou off of a Dannychoo.com member, drakanity, so I thought I would go ahead and do my first formal figure review on her, especially since I have a DSLR to take some nice pics with now. ^^




This Kanu figure isn't a brand new release or anything, but she is quite lovely. She's listed as a "Wani Books" figure, but she was actually sculpted by Good Smile Company, and I have as of yet to be disappointed with Good Smile.



Her skirt is castoff-able (pics at the end of the article ^^), but it's too bad that her top isn't. :p



I read multiple reviews on her before I decided to purchase, something I suggest everyone do before making a figure purchase, even if they are sure that they will like the figure. One review I read mentioned her boots, which happen to be somewhat of a vibrant, semi-dark color blue, which, of course, does not seem to match her outfit at all. This would be the only complaint I have -- as they look more fitting of Ryomou than Kanu, but it's most definitely not that significant of an error in my mind.



I love her maid outfit, it gives her sort of a more girlish, cute look, while retaining her strength and elegance.



In quite a few of these pictures you can see the way Good Smile sculpted her hair, which is quite amazing. Very detailed, lots of work went into her hair, and the entire figure at that.



If anyone were considering buying this figure, I would wholeheartedly recommend it. It's an excellent sculpt, paint job, and general figure design. Definitely worth the money.

Also, not much, but at least a little yoko-pai (side of the "eyes," if you do not know what I mean by "eyes" then you may want to visit dannychoo.com and do a little research) is exposed, always nice to see. ^^



Also, these are the first pictures I have watermarked. I'm not very experienced when it comes to digital photography, whether it be actually taking pictures, or working with them in a photo editor, but I tried my best to make a good looking watermark. I ended up watermarking each photo by hand, individually, for two reasons. One, I don't have a batch watermarker (anyone know of any for windows? ^^.) Two, I had finally found a good looking design/color combo for my watermark text, but it didn't contrast enough with the white snow, so I had to tweak certain images by hand to get the contrast right.





Well, I'll stop babbling on and finish this article off with the remainder of the photos. Any and all feedback on my photo taking/editing skills is welcome, as I am trying to improve however I can. Also, just a little heads up. Here start the cast off photos, not too risque though, so shouldn't matter for most. ^^















I had promised more music posts previously, and they most definitely will be coming. For now, posts will be unpredictable, just as my current school schedule is. x.x Also, I am taking a web design class, and my final project is supposed to be a custom designed web page. As such, I am thinking of using that project as an opportunity to improve this blog. I might end up overhauling the entire design of this site, and hosting it on my own in the (somewhat) near future.

I know I don't have very many readers, but what would you like to see on this site?

(Read the rest of this post here.)

Opening of Good Smile English site

As you may or may not have heard by now, Good Smile Company has opened an English version of their website. The website is being run on Danny Choo's web platform, Mirai Gaia. Danny was, of course, the first to announce this great achievement. In his post, he also made mention of the fact that he is now part of Good Smile's "International Strategy team", they are aiming to make figures more easily available to people all over the globe. Very good news for all of us not in Japan right now.

With such great a great achievement and, I'm quite sure, many more to come, I do believe we have much to look forward to in the otaku community.

(Read the rest of this post here.)

Danny, Haruka and Mirai Nendoroids

Amazing artist and dannychoo.com member chun finished doodling and coloring her "Nendoroid" versions of Danny Choo, Haruka Suenaga and Mirai Suenaga. Haruka and Mirai are Danny's mascots over at his blog, dannychoo.com.

I sure hope GoodSmile Company decided to make nendoroid figures of these, I would definitely buy them. xD

Once this site gets bigger I think I'm going to commission chun to make me a mascot. ^^

Dannychoo.com news item post here.

(Read the rest of this post here.)

Akihabara Geeks

Otaku Dan has a review up of a movie called Akihabara Geeks over at his blog. More pics available there, too.

I'm trying to get this movie as we speak, seems very interesting. I would really like to see more about the lives of Japanese otaku. Is anyone else interested ins seeing this movie?

(Read the rest of this post here.)

My new Nendoroid and Figma!

Just got these two from Hobby Search, will take more pictures and do full reviews later. Nendoroid Mikuru and Konata Figma, I just HAD to get them both when I saw them at Hobby Seach... I should probably stop browsing that site when I know I should be saving my money. xD

I know I said the same about other figures I got, but I'm having some trouble getting any kind of good pictures out of this camera I'm using. I'm probably going to use my dad's old 35mm SLR and get the pictures on CD, at least till I get my own DSLR.

(Read the rest of this post here.)

WonFes 08

Unfortunately I live in the US so I wasn't able to attend Wonder Festival this year, but many others were.

Those interested in WonFes coverage can check out Danny's post. He also has links to more coverage on other sites in his post.

Pic is of Nendoroids at WonFes, via dannychoo.com. Original source at Ota-Suke

(Read the rest of this post here.)

Comic-Con 08: part 2

I'll begin with a (somewhat quick) description of all the loot in the first picture:

The things we paid for: a ton of manga, the wallscrolls, the figures, the art books (Tony Taka, lucky star, and Arina Tanemura; sorry, didn't take closer pictures of these, let me know if anyone wants some.), different versions of the Mokona plushies for my sister, Pocky and Black Black, Gundam Seed "Complete Best" cd, Shojo Beat, and the Love Hina Christmas special dvd.

And now the free stuff: about 6 or 7 sampler manga, all the Bleach things (including the game), the Square Enix fan that has the words "I'm a fan." printed on it xD, and other little trinkets, including some very cool pliers from some booth selling a lot of Revoltechs, even though I don't have any Revoltechs just yet the pliers work very well with Figma parts, quite useful when you're trying to be gentle pulling out joints and such.

Sorry about taking so long to make this post, I got kind of busy yesterday and had a hard time finding the time to finish taking the pictures. Finally got them though. Also, I found a program called IrfanView to do batch resizing and renaming of pictures, very helpful.

Now, here is a closer look at the rest of the loot. I didn't take individual pictures of everything, so if someone wants to know about something in particular, let me know. ^^

Here is a close up of the manga, we mostly got volumes to finish off series that we had already started.



My first two figmas: Haruhi.



And Yuki. Finally got them!



Woo, Nendoroids, they're so cute. xD Haruhi.



Yuki.



And L. This one is mostly my sister's. I think it's a cool figure and all, but no where near as cute as Haruhi, Yuki, or Misa Misa, to me.



I gave in to the fan-boy side of me and bought 2 shirts (got a third for free) from the J-List booth. xD I also got to meet Peter Payne, he runs J-List and the J-List side blog.

Miku.



Haruhi, this one supposedly says "I would die for Haruhi". Still learning Japanese, so I can't read many things. I went through a bit of trouble (because it was fun xD) and romanized what's on the shirt: "Haruhi no tame nara shineru". Shi is a kanji so I had to do some googling, as I know no kanji at all.



This is the shirt I got for free, I think it says "looking around, looking around", romaji is "kiyoro kiyoro", I do believe.



Ikkitousen poster I bought. Who else likes Ikkitousen? I always hear both, negative and positive comments about it. Most negative comments are in regards to all the fan service, I never found anything wrong with fan service, as human beings we all have our carnal desires, there is nothing "wrong" or "dirty" about it in my mind, and fan service is, well, a service to that. xD



A cool Haruhi poster I happened upon, just saw it when I was walking by a booth and bought it.



Another one that's mostly for my sister, the guys from Tsubasa Chronicle and xxxHolic, both are CLAMP series.



These next two are actually scans of freebie posters we got, I couldn't manage good pictures of them and they were small enough to scan. I had to scan both the top and bottom, then photoshop them together since they were too long for the scanner.

Haruhi



Soul Eater



Freebie Afro Samurai poster.



Code Geass wallscroll.



xxxHolic wallscroll.



And now, the freebie bags. You can't walk away from Comic-Con without getting at least one or two HUGE bags. First up is the Astro Boy bag, I had to have this one so I ended up standing in line for it.



Bag for the comic book series Watchmen, now being turned into a live action movie. Does anyone read American comics? Personally I only read Japanese manga, something about American comics just doesn't appeal to me.



Bag from the Viz Media booth. Viz is the American distributor of series like Bleach and Death Note.

(Read the rest of this post here.)

Comic-Con 08: Part 1

Some storm troopers wouldn't let me pass, I had to use my Jedi mind control on them. ^^

Well, as I mentioned in one of my previous posts I was attending this year's Comic-Con for two days, held at the San Diego convention center.

It was quite fun, a ton of booths with all kinds of different subject matter, from video games, to comics (of course), to anime/manga, gothic clothing, figures, statues, the PC magazine "Maximum PC" even had their own booth, they always give out a TON of free things. There were WAY too many people though, every single day was sold out and they estimate that they served about 200,00 unique people over the course of the 4 and 1/2 days. x.x

Anyway, without further ado, here is my coverage from Comic-Con. Another post with my loot to come soon (I.E. once I take all the pictures). xD

Here are some of the original Japanese Bleach manga panels drawn by Tite Kubo. He was also doing an autograph signing there, but that was impossible to get into, only 200 autographs signed over the 4 days. =/















Some manga and posters of the latest from Yen Press at the Square Enix booth. Sorry about the out of focus and shaky pictures, I'm still quite an amateur when it comes to photography, getting better though. :p



























And now some figures from the Kotobukiya booth, once again sorry about the shaky and out of focus pictures.









A huge Hulk. xD




Some cosplay pics now, the first is out of focus but the rest aren't too bad.











This one was very cool, it was taken at the Broccoli Books panel, they brought in the author of Fairy Tail (フェアリーテイル): Hiro Mashima and after answering some questions and talking about his manga he drew this up for everyone to see. He was very quick, he did it in about 2 minutes time, quite amazing. I have a video of him actually drawing it but the video is quite horrible quality, I'll upload it somewhere anyway if someone wants it. Let me know. :p



Here are a couple of pictures from outside, they had the terracotta statues from the third Mummy movie set up outside: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, very cool.




And to finish up here, some pictures of the bridge leading to Coronado island where there is a US naval air station along with some pictures of the boats parked right behind the convention center. These were taken from the top level of the convention center.

(Read the rest of this post here.)