Tag Archives: Random Thoughts

Year Six Retrospective

Azone's Inori Yuzuriha 50cm doll

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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My Five Favorite Figures of 2014

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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Preorder Outlook XL

It’s been a couple of months since the last preorder post and I was a little worried that this post would be overly long. To my surprise I only found six figures that have gone up for order that I am interested in, or at least interested enough in that I’ll pay a full-price preorder rather than wait for a price drop. I figured I’d get this post up anyway, though, and then I’ll post the long-delayed favorite figures of last year post early next week, and that will be followed by some porny Tony Taka figure reviews, of which quite a few are in the queue.
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Preorder Outlook XXXIX

Happy Black Friday to everyone. Unfortunately for me, the most attractive deals I’ve found have been discounts on character services for a couple of free-to-play MMOs, which is a little depressing. Nonetheless, that doesn’t mean that I don’t have anything to spend my money on, and so instead of pursuing instant gratification, let’s take a look at some upcoming figures that are available for preorder.
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Preorder Outlook XXXVIII

It’s the end of the month and that means it’s time for me to think about which figures I am contemplating ordering. I didn’t think there would be too many candidates this month but to my surprise, the figure companies have been very busy. There’s Daisy’s sister, a girl in a dominatrix pose, a girl with no name, a many-tentacled god, and of course, a couple of Kantai Collection figures, though it’s a little discouraging how few of them impress.
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Preorder Outlook XXXVII

The hope was to get a figure post up before the weekend but since paint and plaster take way too long to dry, we’ll talk about some upcoming figures that I’m thinking about ordering instead. We’ve got a few figures from the big new sexy thing – Kantai Collection, of course – and a few from some storied, old-school series. The great thing is that most of these figures are pretty big; I think there’s only one 1/8 scale figure on this list, actually. Let’s take a look at them.
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Preorder Outlook XXXVI

This past weekend was Wonder Festival and San Diego Comic Con weekend, which means a lot of cool new stuff was shown off to the world. Accordingly, it seems like a good idea to look at some cool new figures that have gone up for preorder in the last month. Sometimes I include figures in these posts that I give only a marginal chance for me to order, but this month, I’m quite fond of all of the figures listed here, and it’s going to be difficult to pare the buy list down.

A programming note: reviews have been very sparse here the last couple of months. That’s partly due to my innately lazy nature but it’s also due to some real-life issues that unexpectedly popped up early last month. That caused a great deal of stress but fortunately things seem to have stabilized. Unfortunately I have less time to do figure reviews now than I used to, which means that I’m not going to bother with elaborate backgrounds for a number of my figures. This is the way I’d prefer to do it, anyway, since complicated backgrounds introduce a number of problems in taking pictures and divert attention from the figure, which is something I’ve never liked. With this in mind, I’m hoping to get around to some reviews for some older figures; there are a bunch where I had some ideas in mind, but I don’t think they are practicable, and I might as well unbox them and get their photos done already.
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Preorder Outlook XXXV

It is time for that monthly examination of figures that have recently been put up for preorder. It’s a mix of figures this time, with a few of the usual companies – Kotobukiya and Max Factory in particular – unrepresented. Hopefully they have some neat stuff to show at Wonder Festival, which is just a few weeks away already. Where does the time go? (Spent slacking off, in my case.) Anyway, let’s take a look at the upcoming cool things.
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Preorder Outlook XXXIV

It’s time to take a look at some upcoming figures that I’m contemplating ordering. The trend in pricy figures unfortunately seems here to stay, and there are a few figures (such as Max Factory’s Kongo) that I would buy if they were cheaper. I suppose that’s what the bargain bin is for, though. Let’s go ahead and examine the figures that I think are worth full price.
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Preorder Outlook XXXIII

A number of figures have been announced recently, including many that we saw at last month’s Wonder Festival, so let’s take a look at some that I’m considering ordering. Most of them are very pricy, which unfortunately seems to be the norm nowadays, and for some reason most of the ones listed here have ship dates crammed into August. Happily for me, I’ve got some credit card points and a larger-than-expected tax refund to draw from, and that should cushion the checking account shock a bit. Meanwhile, let’s get going with the post.
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