It’s the end of the month and that means it is time to look at some figures that I am thinking about ordering. This past month’s Wonder Festival saw many great figures make their public debuts, and though not many of them have shown up at retail websites yet, there’s still a lot of nice stuff that is now available for preorder. Let’s take a look at a few of those figures.
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Tentacle Armada is four years old today. That’s 232 figure and doll reviews, 38 dakimakura cover reviews, and one tentacle stand review. I’m pretty amazed that this site is still around, and that I’ve managed to stick to a fairly consistent posting pattern (six posts per month for the last twelve months). As I provide every 23rd of February, here is the usual anniversary wrapup post where I write about my thoughts regarding the past year and what my plans are going forward.
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Guilty Crown is often compared to shows like Neon Genesis Evangelion and Code Geass, but regardless of their parallels in plot structure, characterization, and themes, it seems clear that it is not their equal when it comes to merchandising power. Evangelion’s popularity needs no commentary, and Code Geass just got this pretty awesome dakimakura cover from Movic, but while Guilty Crown came in riding a wave of hype and anticipation, it now seems to be the show that everyone wants to forget. I had thought that Good Smile Company or someone would show a few Guilty Crown figures at the recent Wonder Festival, but I don’t recall seeing any – not even Figmas (quite surprising, being that the bar to get a Figma is set pretty low). On the plus side, Azone’s big-ass Inori doll is looking pretty. Also on the plus side, lead girl Inori Yuzuriha and some of her castmates were popular subjects for dakimakura cover artists, as we see here.
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The latest bunny figure from FREEing is Fate T. Harlaown, Nanoha’s adversary-turned-best-buddy. It was a little weird seeing Nanoha in the skimpy bunny costume, since her sex appeal isn’t typically played up, at least when it comes to figures. However, Fate looks right in her bunnysuit, which is actually not much less modest than what she normally wears to a fight. They look great together, though, and while Fate and Nanoha are meant to be a matched pair (or threesome, if you count Hayate), Fate offers a number of contrasts to her partner that make this figure even more appealing.
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There are scads and oodles of swimsuit figures out there, so let’s take a look at Shizuru Natsuru, one of the heroines from Key’s well-regarded visual novel Rewrite. Rewrite is notable for being an all-ages game, unlike many of their earlier visual novels. However, that isn’t stopping figure maker BEAT from interposing their own bit of raunchiness on Shizuru, as one can easily see.
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