I’d planned on wrapping up my reviews of Alter’s Ikki Tousen figures by doing a writeup of Kanu Unchou, but then I got Seira in the mail and I figured that the world doesn’t really need another Kanu review right now. Accordingly, I decided I’d photograph Seira first, being that I’m still trying to think of a way to shoot Kanu without making it look utterly boring.
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Being someone who dislikes world PVP combat in MMO games, I didn’t have much interest in playing Lineage II when it first came out. However, I loved the character designs, particularly the female dark elves, and eventually I gave it a shot. I liked my dark elf fighter’s starting costume very much, but even that wasn’t enough to overcome the monotony of the gameplay and I called it quits after my free one-month trial period.
I still like the character designs though, and I’m glad to see several figure manufacturers bringing sculpts bearing their likenesses to market. Orchid Seed is the latest to do so, and here we have the elf. No name, no character class, just Elf – although one can infer from her staff that she is some sort of finger-waggling, babble-chanting spell-flinger, as these sorts of conventions are eternal in this genre.
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Sometimes I buy things for the most gossamer of reasons. Example: one day, I loaded up Tsuki-board and the random header generator rolled up this picture. I thought to myself, “Fate has a nice ass.” Then I looked again and thought to myself, “Fate has a nice rack.” And really, do I need any more reasons to buy a figure? So I hit up eBay, type in the magic words, get one listing back from a seller in Japan with a buyout price. I log in, click the buyout button, bam, package gets mailed the next day, bam, mailman drops her off a couple days later, bam, done. Isn’t the internet awesome?
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Way back when I was in college, I was interested in making electronic music, and being that I did not and still don’t have any musical talent to speak of, I figured the easiest way to do it would be via computer. I had a copy of ReBirth for drums and a MIDI controller that I could use for basslines, my roommate played the guitar so I could ask him for samples, but one thing I didn’t have was vocals. While I might have been able to fake some sort of musical ability with instrumentals, there was no way I was going to embarrass myself by trying to sing. One day, while reading the news from that year’s NAMM on Harmony Central, I learned that Yamaha had developed voice synthesis software intended to provide musical vocals. They had a couple of voices, and I listened to the samples; one of them was of a voice called “Miriam” singing old traditional songs like Auld Lang Syne and Scarborough Fair. They were interesting and innovative in an academic sense, but they were still rather rough and being a broke student, I couldn’t buy the software anyway, so I quickly forgot about them and the whole enterprise and went back to doing my homework.
Fast forward years later; I’m out of college, I’m buying figures, I see a ton of people talking about some young green-eyed girl in dire need of a haircut. Wondering what anime she was from, I Google her name and find out that she’s from “Vocaloid.” How curious, I think, that an anime was named after voice synthesis software. Then I find out that she’s not from an anime at all; Yamaha made a mascot character to ostensibly represent one of their voice packs and it succeeded beyond their wildest expectation. I’m not certain if this whole phenomenon is an ingenius example of marketing or a demonstration of how simple it is to get money from anime fans.
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Sometimes when you first see a figure, you know right away that you’re going to get it regardless of price or difficulty of acquisition. You religiously scan all the figure news sites for the latest scoop, you load up Japanese pages and run them through Google Translate and do your best to interpret the results, you count down the days until its release date, and above all, you fervently, feverishly pray to all the gods above and below that the manufacturer please, please, please doesn’t screw it up. How many times have you’ve seen a figure’s prototype shots, excitement building unabated, and then, when the production sample photos come out, felt anticipation displaced by distress, lust metamorphosing into ire as you wonder, “How the hell did this happen?”
Then, when you get your shipping notice, you hope that maybe you overreacted, that your concerns were unmerited, and that your pretty little anime figure will rekindle the love for it that you first felt.
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MMORPGs seem to be quite popular in Asia. This is particularly true in Korea, from whence a dizzying array of titles have spawned. Some – such as Lineage, Aion, and RF Online – have been published on this side of the ocean. Others – principally free-to-play games – haven’t received a formal release in the United States. Red Stone falls in the latter category, and I hadn’t ever heard of the game before I saw pictures of this figure. While I have minimal experience playing Korean MMOs, I do like their character designs, which are almost always awesome. The lancer girl passed the eyeball test with little difficulty, and now here she is.
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It seems like this has been a quiet month for figure releases. I think Saber Lily was the only newly-released figure I bought; I guess I also got Nana but she’s a couple months old. Black Rock Shooter and transvestite Yoko have been kicked to next month, and I don’t doubt that November’s releases are going to play the slippity slide game as well. Orchid Seed’s Seena has already been pushed back to December, and does anybody really think Alter’s Mio is going to be on time?
So anyway, without much new stuff to cover, let’s look at some older figures. Actually, Kyou isn’t that old; she was released back in August, and I’ve had her for a couple of months now. I’ve just been pretty lazy about taking pictures of her.
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Everyone has her.
Words are so many mayflies.
Tier should shut up now.
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Those in this hobby know that if you sleep on a figure, you can miss out. I had already preordered Kotone Ousaka from a domestic retailer, but with no assurance that they’d be able to fulfill my purchase and encouraged by the spate of reviews popping up on Japanese websites, I went ahead and picked her up off of eBay. Reactionary? Certainly. Worth it? Oh hell yeah.
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HARUHI: Alright, since our last movie was so great, our next movie has to be even better! And we need to make sure that it appeals to the Americans.
KYON: Why America?
HARUHI: Because all the best movies are big in America! If we can make a movie that hits it big over there, we can expand the SOS Brigade overseas. We’ll start the SOS Brigade North American Division! I’ll still be the leader, of course.
KYON: … I see. And just what sort of movie are you planning to make?
HARUHI (pacing in a circle): It has to be profound. It has to speak to the cultural sensibilities of Americans. It has to emphasize their rich history, their resiliency, their unshakeable passion for freedom and their love for life. And it has to have sex. And lots of violence. And sex. (looks up) I’ve got it!
KYON (thinking): Oh no.
HARUHI: The movie will be called … “Mikuru Asahina in Escape from Guantanamo Bay!”
MIKURU: No!
