Ugh. It’s a customary thing to celebrate this site’s birthday on February 23, but given the dearth of updates over the last year, there does not seem to be much cause for ceremony. Regardless, tradition is what it is, and I scarcely need an excuse to take a photo of one of my big-ass dolls wrapped up in tentacles, so I will pay the proper respect to the occasion, as unseemly as it might be.
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The week after New Year’s is the saddest week of the year: the lights go out, the trees get thrown in the garbage trucks and hauled away, the sales go quiet, and it’s months before the next fun holiday. Nonetheless, 2015 has dispersed into the ether of yesterday but before we look forward, I will observe my annual ritual of decreeing which five figures I liked the best from this past year (only a week and a day late). As I always say, the ranking here is based solely on my own preferences, with absolutely zero regard for whether a figure was popular with the masses or came from a popular show or was made by a popular manufacturer. Popular opinion does not move me much.
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As usual on February 23, today we celebrate the anniversary of this website – Tentacle Armada is six years old today. It’s sort of an anticlimactic anniversary, as I have been far from diligent in keeping this website updated. Oh well. On the other hand, just the fact that this site has been around that long is a decent feat, I think.
Usually I try to include some sort of thematic photo up at the top of this post but I couldn’t really think of any auspicious way to denote a six year anniversary, so instead there’s an unrelated picture of Inori wrapped up in tentacles.
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Here are my five favorite figures of the previous year, fashionably late. The tardiness is only partially due to laziness; I don’t think I felt as excited about many of last year’s figures as I did in prior years. Maybe I’m just getting old or something. I did see a number of figures that I liked in all the Wonder Festival (also known as KanColleFest) coverage this past weekend, so that’s a good thing (most of those figures were from Alphamax/SkyTube, curiously). As usual, the ranking presented here does not reflect the popularity of the figures or the characters they represent, it doesn’t reflect preorder hype or community consensus, and it doesn’t mean that I think the number one figure was the very best figure released in the last year. This list solely expresses my own thoughts and preferences.
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Tentacle Armada is five years old today! Hooray! Time sure does fly right by. I don’t know of too many figure review sites that have been updated continuously for five years, and with 263 figure and doll reviews currently listed here, I don’t know of many that have been as prolific, either. I don’t often talk about the state of the site but today I indulge myself: as usual, this post is the post where I pontificate about where this website has been and where it is going.
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2013 is on the verge of twerking its way into memory and of course, that means it’s time for a customary year-end list. Such lists often purport to rank the best things of the nearly-departed year, but that’s not the case for this particular list. Rather, this list contains my favorite figures, which means I speak for nobody but myself and I rate solely by a single criterion: how much I liked the figure. Hype, popularity amongst the collecting community, and manufacturer reputation count for nothing here. We’ll also talk a little bit about the year that was in figure collecting; without further ado, let’s jump in.
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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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As is traditional during this time of the year, this post will list my favorite figures of 2012. Unlike previous years, it wasn’t easy for me to come up with this list; in fact, I changed my mind once while taking photographs of these figures. Usually, there’s at least one figure per year that I really love, the sort of figure that, if it were to be damaged, I would move the heavens and earth to find a replacement for it. That figure is usually an Alter figure; in fact, Alter has made my favorite figure of each of the last three years. What about this year?
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This site is three years old today. Running this site has felt a bit like real life: the first year was like college, where I did a lot of dumb things and generally didn’t know what I was doing. The second year was like transitioning from school to work, where I was happy to be making money, particularly happy to be spending money, and discovered new interests, met new people, and started trying to make sense of where I was going. The third year was a bit like a job; this site is just what I do now, and I do it without really thinking a lot about it. That’s not a negative thing, mind you – this site is far more fun to run than my day job. But though it’s fun, maintaining this site is a routine to me – a comfortable routine, to be sure, but it’s not as surprising or novel as it was during the first or second years.
I don’t talk a lot about me on this site – at least, I don’t think I do, although I suppose I wouldn’t know if I do – but today I indulge myself, and I’ll write a bit about what it’s like to operate Tentacle Armada.
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For most of us, the process of taking pictures is digital from start to finish. The picture is captured by a digital camera, uploaded to a computer, optionally imported into Lightroom, Photoshop, or some other processing application, and then is typically viewed on a monitor or a device LCD, probably in a browser window. However, there’s something really neat about seeing a printed version of a photograph. Even though I scarcely used a camera during my childhood, I was always thrilled to see pictures after my dad brought them back from the one-hour photo processor (unless the pictures were of me – I hated having my picture taken). Now, it takes a bit longer than an hour to get prints delivered – unless you go to a local Costco or other print shop – but it’s no less delighting.
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