Animatic Figmation

C.C. 1/8 PVC (NSFW?)

Persocom — Wed, 23 May 2012 06:48:38 +0000

Good evening folks! I ordered pizza this afternoon when it dawned on me, there’s a 1/8 PVC that I’ve neglected to blog about up till now sitting around waiting for the spotlight. Now, I’m going to be honest, I had this idea ages ago but I’ve been holding back on using it, and even now I’m not entirely satisfied with the results. But it’s time to share. Quite some time ago, an ex-figure blogger was selling off some used figures cheap, and I bought a couple of them. I reviewed the other many moons ago, but for some reason C.C. got neglected. I have no box, no base, and she’s missing the blanket that came with her. How could I review an incomplete figure? Who cares!? So this post borders between figure review and just a fun shoot. C.C. is made by Alpha X Omega, and I’m pretty sure this is the only figure I’ve ever owned by them. This figure may be a bit sexy and moderately ecchi, and there may be a pantsu or butt shot here or there, so I would label this as borderline NSFW, but there’s no naughty parts showing. Should you actually happen to read this before scrolling down, be warned just in case. Read on for a not-so-wall-of-text-review!

Since she doesn’t have a box, nor her base or blanket, I can just get right down to the pictures of the figure itself. I’m not really familiar with Alpha X Omega quality, and this figure was released in February of 2008, for around 5,500 yen. I paid about $25 if memory serves me right. There’s really no real good reason that I’ve waited until now to take some pictures of C.C. either. I enjoyed Code Geass and R2, and I enjoyed C.C. as a character.

You might wonder, what about all that grease, what about this, or that? Who cares! It’s art my friends. In all honesty I wish I hadn’t let the pizza get down to less than half of it left before remembering my old plans with this figure. In fact, I might do a take 2 next time I get pizza, because I don’t think this was sloppy enough. I think I was also a little bit worried about Pizza Hut getting on my case about using their boxes in the picture, but hey Code Geass promoted the crap out of Pizza Hut not only in the anime but in various other ways. I’m only taking pictures and sharing them with people without making profit, nor even saying anything about my opinions of the company.

So C.C. is wearing only a long sleeves button up shirt that’s half buttoned down, and a pair of panties. Due to the figure’s age and having been previously owned, I can’t really complain about the little paint damage here and there, because I don’t know if it was like that upon first opening or if she’s just acquired battle wounds. I’ll say this though, her quality is quite nice considering the fact that not only have I had her for quite some time, but she’s lived elsewhere. Her eyes are very nice looking, the hair doesn’t seem like just a big chunk of plastic, and though there’s no way to move her head, her hair pieces are just flexible enough to have her empty hand appear to be holding some of it.

I don’t think anyone could complain about getting a figure for less than half of it’s original price, even if it’s missing parts. I find C.C. good enough all her own without the blanket and base. She’s a great companion to have when you’ve had your fill of pizza and need someone to help you finish it off. I’d say Alpha X Omega did a good job for a figure from 2008, and it’s a great representation of the character. Now where the hell is the new Code Geass stuff?
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Sword Girls Online

Persocom — Mon, 21 May 2012 08:16:48 +0000

Sword Girls Online is an online collectible card game that can be played right in your browser. For the past month or so it has been an ongoing addiction. It’s easy to play while multitasking and I’d say it’s almost meant for that. Sword Girls originates in Korea, where it’s been around for some time now. Only recently the open beta of the North American Sword Girls opened its doors. I was a bit late to join the party, but I got in early enough to take advantage of a nice event for Morning Characters. Anyway, I will be reviewing this game since I’ve fallen for it and do believe it’s relevant to my readers due to the style of artwork that it uses.

Sword Girls is a unique take on online card collecting and game playing in that every card (save for a few extremely rare occurrences) can be crafted with materials you get from within the game through regular playing. Granted, like any other online game, if you want the best of the best you will indeed do quite a lot of grinding. The game is free to play and you can either play it through Facebook, or right off the Sword Girls site like I do. There are 5 channels to play in, and the only differences between them are the people who play on them, but you have the ability to switch channels at any time (like when people get annoying).

There are two basic methods of playing, PVE (player vs enemy) through dungeons, to obtain boss character cards and unique materials for crafting cards, and PVP (player vs player) through Fight mode, which helps you gain accessories that also help craft better characters and cards. You start out with a pre-built starter deck that you choose upon starting the game for the first time. Once you pick your deck, if you feel like changing factions or what not, you can work on creating the cards you want or spend around $5 for one of the other faction starter decks, which also come with some extra accessories to help you craft more. For those feeling more adventurous, for a mere $12 you get all 4 starter decks on top of the one you picked out to start with, and a few bonus cards. Decks consist of one character card and 30 other cards.

Crafting a card requires you to go to the Science Lab, where you can see a list of all the creatable cards available, and click on them to see what other cards or materials it takes to make the desired card. Character cards are the meat of your deck. If the character’s life drops to 0, you lose. Most character cards start out at 30 life, with a few of them going above it. Life isn’t the only thing important about cards though, abilities is where it’s at.

How does the actual gameplay work, you ask? First off, games are started with a character card on each player’s field. In between the two fields a coin flips to determine who goes first. This happens every turn. Abilities that happen at the start of turn happen before the turn officially starts. The coin flips, and the winner goes first. How much interaction is there between you and your cards? You simply place them on the field. Each card has a Size, in the right hand corner in a green circle. Once you place a card, your Size limit changes accordingly, and once you hit 10 total Size, no more cards can be placed in the 5 empty slots on your field. There is a time limit to each turn, so if you’re not paying attention you can quickly get in trouble. There are cards that can change your Size, and you will see that Size is a key component of Sword Girls.

So what are those little numbers on the cards? In order from left to right, they are attack, defense and stamina. Stamina is the life of the individual card, known as a follower. Defense is how much damage is negated from an enemy attack when it’s hitting your follower, and attack is what you need to take down enemy followers. Cards with abilities to strengthen these stats are vital to success. The other type of card besides followers and character cards are spell cards. Spells do many things to the game, from buffing the stats of your followers, to direct damaging the enemy’s character. If the character is the meat and the followers and the skin and bones, spells are the protective gear and weapons. A good spell can change the game in your favor drastically. In many decks, the follower/spell ratio is pretty even. Some decks are better when focused heavily on spells and others on followers, it all depends on your playstyle and character choice. During a round of the game, you simply decide which followers and spells to put out on your field, and they go in numerical order as the empty slots on the field indicate in roman numerals. Thanks to the random number generator or RNG, which follower attacks first and who they attack is very random, though often it will seem that it doesn’t work in your favor.

There are many other things you can do in Sword Girls besides just play in dungeons or fight against other players. You can train followers to gain training points in the classroom, you can try to upgrade them in the gym with those training points (though a failed upgrade will consume a card), you can send a character card to the campsite for 24 hours for them to return when you tell them to stop exploring and they’ll bring back a random amount of ores (used to create cards). You can also transmute cards, turning unwanted or unneeded accessories and ores into the ones you want or need. You can even exchange unwanted cards for accessories, though you won’t get much out of them.

Most unique of features, I think, you can go to the cafe to feed your character cards and get them to transform into better looking versions of themselves with better abilities. Since I finally did this for the first time today, I can explain it a little better.

In this example I made an extra Iri Flina. You don’t use a character that is currently in a deck, because once you start the transformation process you can no longer use that character card to craft other cards with. It will be stuck there until you actually complete a transformation. As you can see, there are a few different version of Iri Flina that you can get from transformation. These rely on the different stats you see, Wis, Sens, Pers and Glam. Possible transformations are Dress Iri, Cheerleader Iri, Swimwear Iri, Lovestruck Iri and Wedding Dress Iri. These aren’t the only versions of Iri out there, but the ones that you could transform her into. The transformation can be tricky, but very worthwhile. You basically feed cards to your character, which does consume them permanently. Depending on the card, you will get some of one of the four stats and a 50/50 chance to get -1 Like, or +2 Like. Once you reach 100 Like, the transformation occurs. The stat that has the highest number determines which transformation your character takes on, and in the case of Wedding Dress forms, you have to have 200 or more of each stat.

Another area of Sword Girls is the Coin Swap. Here you can exchange coins from daily and/or normal quests. Yes, Sword Girls has plenty of quests. These quests can get you materials you need, or blue coins. Blue coins can be traded in for gold and red coins and a few exclusive cards to the Coin Swap. Cards with SG on them are neutral, and do not belong to any faction, and as you can see all the Coin Swap cards are just that.

Now, while Sword Girls is a free to play game, and just about everything can be done in due time without spending a cent, there are a plethora of features for people who prefer to spend money and get things done quicker. If you’re in a dungeon (and they can get up to 40 floors) and decide you don’t have the time to finish it, you can save for a mere 2 tokens, which is equal to 2 cents. When you start out, there are actually a few quests that award you with tokens, but there are so many temptations to spend them you’re likely to not save them long. Beginner booster packs for a mere 5 tokens, that only last until you’ve played a certain amount of battles, normal booster packs that cost 25-35 tokens, the starter decks, features in the classroom and campsite to speed things up or give you better chances. Heck, you can even buy sleeves for your cards if you get bored of the blue default backs. One thing should be noted though, booster packs in Sword Girls only give ONE card per pack. This is very different from most games that I know of, which give anywhere from 9 to 15 cards in a booster pack. There’s also a feature at the end of each battle that allows you to pick a 2 token, 15 token or 35 token prize. The 2 token prize is a random accessory, and many people find this is worth it. 15 and 35 are random cards, with 35 supposedly having a better chance of getting a rare. Few people actually use these, but even I myself have spent some on 15 token cards. The problem with these are the prizes are random factions, not always cards you’ll be using.

Ok, before I end my post, I should tell you a little bit more about those 4 starter factions. I’ll go in order from left to right, based on the very first picture at the top of the post. The factions are Darklore, featuring Iri Flina as the character. Darklore is based on vampires, witches, and other such creatures of the night. They are for people who like sneaky and risky play, often manipulating the field and using underhanded tactics, like sapping your life in exchange for a little of theirs, or buffing their followers up to be massive monsters. This is my favorite faction, and the one I started with, as I love the character and the creatures of the night. Next up is Vita, lead by Sita Vilosa. Vita faction is the most underrated and unloved due in part to the fact that the starter deck isn’t very good. But, I quite like Vita because with a little bit of effort they can be quite effective. Vita is based on a school named Vita, so the followers are student council, library club, tennis players, cook club and the likes. They win by mostly defensive, yet sometimes aggressive play style, and have some nice life gain options.

Academy faction is led by Cinia Pacifica. Academy is made up of rich ladies, maids, and occult members. They are classy and their main strength is debuffing, killing off enemy followers by making them weak and then stepping on them with heels. Academy is quite a force to be reckoned with. Lastly, but not least, Crux. Crux is led by Luthica Preventer, and is made up of nuns, priestesses and knights. They are the law of the land and win by buffing themselves up and often have high defense and stamina. Crux can quickly go out of control with their massive stats.

One last thing to mention, is the music and the art. The artwork is what sucked me in and got me interested in the first place. Much like Magic: The Gathering did many years ago, artwork is probably the working force behind this game for me. The main appeal here is that the Sword Girls cards are anime styled and as an anime lover I just can’t get enough of them. There’s even a tad bit of ecchi and cards for yuri fans. Nothing that would be considered hentai though, this is a safe game for people with a taste for art. The music is good, but too repetitive. I almost always have it muted, but keep the sound on to hear coin flips and such, as I often play this game while doing other things.

So there you have it. A rather lengthy review of Sword Girls Online. I don’t like rating games on a scale of any sort, but I’ll say that I’m currently loving the game. The cash shop features are nice, but not necessary, the events are decent, and the game is constantly being updated to catch up with it’s Korean predecessor. We even get a few cards that are exclusive to the North American version. I’m a fan of TCG games, and though this game is strictly a CCG, with no option for trading, I’m not bothered by that at all. Sword Girls is a fun way to pass time, and easy to play even while multitasking, once you get the hang of what you’re doing. There’s more to be said about the game, but I believe the best way to learn more would be to visit the official Sword Girls site instead of reading my long rambling. You’ll find plenty of information there and on the forums. I think this is the longest game review I’ve ever done, so sorry for the length, but I feel it was needed to properly explain everything. See you soon!
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Zielbellen Amethyst – Busou Shinki

Persocom — Tue, 15 May 2012 03:33:38 +0000

It’s time for another Busou Shinki review. This time around I’ll be reviewing Zielbellen Amethyst – MMS Type Fencer, a WonFes Limited Edition Busou Shinki that released last Summer, in bundles with exclusive goodies and such. This particular one though, came with none of the extras. I bought her from BigBadToyStore, an online store here in the US, that I’ve never had problems with before. I was quite surprised that they carried her, as it’s quite rare to find Busou Shinki in stores from the US at all, let alone such hard to find limited editions. The price was a steep $137.99 USD, but that just goes to show how much I wanted her. Unsurprisingly, she is no longer in stock at the time of writing this up. I also have the original version of Zielbellen, which I haven’t yet reviewed (nothing new there, right?) but I’ll save her for another time. Read on for a detailed review!

Zielbellen’s box isn’t that big compared to many other Busou Shinki. She’s considered a light armor because she doesn’t have nearly as much gear as the full armor girls. She’s also on an MMS 3rd Tall body. She has a few more pieces than her original version, and she comes with her own parts container for the smaller bit and pieces. Her character design is by the famous Humikane Shimada, well known as the father of Mecha Musume and creator of Strike Witches and Sky Girls.

Zielbellen A has four face parts, which is just great. I love it when figures come with lots of options and four is the golden number for me. Her faces include a normal face, open mouthed blushing face, angry battle ready face and a peaceful closed eye face. She is at the most basic level, just a recolor of the original Zielbellen. However her body looks much different, this one having more of a swimsuit look going on, and she has extra parts. Her gear is quite easy to assemble compared to many Busou Shinki, and she’s perfect for those who don’t like the big bulky and confusing gear that many Busou Shinki girls come with. She’s a fencer after all, so her gear need not be heavy. What really drew me into wanting her was her black hair, and her amethyst purple gear, though I can’t deny I like her swimsuit-like body, it’s especially nice for doing what I like to do to many of my Shinki girls, dressing them up. Also, thanks to her having four faces and two different heads for them, one with hairpiece and one without, you can use the extra head and a face on another Shinki body and make it look like you have twins.

As I said above, her gear is quite simple and easy to assemble, though the instructions on these figures can be a bit confusing at times, Ziel is almost too simple. Her gear stays together quite nicely, the only real problem I have is with one of her legs popping out of place every now and then. It’s not a big problem at all though. Her paint job is mostly smooth and has little flaw, aside from a bit of sloppiness on her hairpiece. Also, as with many MMS 3rds, her chest pieces can get a bit loose when posing if not hooked on properly. I love her semi-translucent amethyst armor pieces, they really look great in the light. Her sword is a bit fragile, and could easily be broken if not handled properly, due to it’s thinness. These things aside, I’m quite happy with Zielbellen, and she’s very fun to have around without lugging heavy armor everywhere and losing pieces. I didn’t have much trouble at all with her outdoors. The only real complaint I would have with her is the price and exclusivity. Konami just LOVES to make Busou Shinki overpriced and hard to get to anyone outside of Japan.

A taste of things to come? I wanted to show how using two heads can make it look like she has a twin sister. Later on when I do the original Zielbellen review I’ll be sure to show her beside this version. Also, it is to be noted that Zielbellen is available on Busou Shinki Battle Masters Mk. 2 the Japanese PSP game as buyable DLC, come to think of it, I might buy her if I still have the PSN points available to do so. If I do, expect more about that in a future post with the original Zielbellen as well. While I would love to recommend people buy this Busou Shinki, I won’t do so due to it’s availability and exclusiveness. It’s bound to be way too expensive to anyone who isn’t obsessed like I am. But hey, there’s always the original version if you must have something close to Amethyst, though she follows a different color scheme. Well, I must apologize for neglecting the blog again, it seems I do this every time I get into playing a game and I’ve had two of them stealing my time away as of late. One of them will be getting a post all its own soon. Until next post, I hope you enjoyed my review!
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Cobalion (Pokemon Plamo)

Persocom — Sun, 06 May 2012 03:43:01 +0000

Time for another Pokemon Plamo review! This time around I’ll be showing off Cobalion, one of the legendary “musketeers” Pokemon from Black & White/Best Wishes, and soon the upcoming movie Kyurem VS the Sacred Swordsman: Keldeo. He’s a Steel/Fighting type Pokemon and supposedly the leader of the trio. The official name for this plastic model kit is Pokemon Plastic Model Collection No.23 Select Series Cobalion, but that’s quite a mouthful, thus the shortened title. It’s another kit brought to us by Bandai. I bought this from AmiAmi for only 555 Yen (not including shipping), and this time around it’s available for back-order. This is another one of the solo Pokemon kits, so there’s not as much to it, but I’ll be reviewing it anyway.

On the back of the box you can see advertisements for both Kyurem and the Hydreigon Evolution set, both of which I have reviewed here. If you’re interested check out Kyurem here, and Hydreigon here. The sides of the box show that Cobalion has a couple movable parts. The full kit consists of 4 plastic trays of parts, instructions in Japanese and a small sticker sheet. It really takes no knowledge of Japanese at all to understand what to do though.

This kit is so easy to put together, I think that the majority of the time spent on it was telling my son to stop so I could get a picture here and there. Definitely beginner level, in fact the more I do these the more I think it’s time for me to try something more difficult. Oh well, at least it’s fun and my son only really needs help with the stickers. It’s great for kids, and I plan to get the other two in the legendary trio to go along with Cobalion. It’s a shame they didn’t bundle them all together though. I guess for 555 Yen I can’t complain. Cobalion can be made to use his back legs for kicking the crap out of anyone who disagrees with his ways, as well as move his front legs up to give other Pokemon the hooves. It stays together quite well, though gluing would likely be a good choice to keep it lasting a long time.

I thought I’d do like I did with Kyurem and show off one of our full art Pokemon TCG cards with you as well. My son actually runs a deck with 2 full arts of Cobalion, as well as 2 normal ones, so you can tell he really likes this Pokemon. Both the full arts he has were pulled from packs too, and he won’t trade them with anyone.

Overall, only beginners/kids/Pokemon fanatics will really enjoy putting a kit like this together. My son put it together with relative ease and I put the stickers in place. I should really fill in the lines by Cobalion’s mouth one of these days with a marker pen or something. These kits are fun, not time consuming, and best of all give me something interesting to take pictures of. I look forward to having the trio together battling against Kyurem.
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Ika Musume Figma

Persocom — Fri, 04 May 2012 03:54:50 +0000

Back in 2010, I wrote up a review of Shinryaku! Ika Musume. Today, I’m reviewing Ika Musume herself, in Figma form. It didn’t dawn on me until writing this up, that I never got around to reviewing the 2nd season of Ika Musume, but I guess that can wait for now. It’s also not too often that I actually review a figure the same day I get it, but it’s something I love doing when I can. I bought this squid girl from AmiAmi for 2,600 Yen, not including shipping. Currently, she’s sold out at AmiAmi, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they have more in stock soon. She was just released near the end of last month and arrived at my door this afternoon. I opted out of getting Nendoroid Ika Musume in favor of the Figma for some reason, and I’m not disappointed, de geso~

Squid girly’s box is nice and colorful, I especially liked the inside part and used it for most of the pictures. There’s the typical Di;Stage thing on it that comes with all Figma the last few years, and the design on the rest of the “backdrop” is just really nice and unique. Ika Musume comes with 3 faces, an alternate head, a beer mug, two dishes of food, 10 hands, an alternate front hair piece and the usual stand with baggie.

Ika Musume is pretty small, standing somewhere in height between Suika and Madoka. Her faces include a happy face with closed eyes, an open eyed mischievous face, and a sad face with tears in it. All the faces are done nicely, and I think they’re great, but I can’t help but feel there could have been just one more face, perhaps one with ink dripping from her mouth. If you’re familiar with the series, Ika Musume can spit up ink, and does so to make squid ink spaghetti in the anime/manga. In fact, this Figma goes as far as to include a plate of the inktastic spaghetti as an accessory, so I think it would have been great to include a face to go with. Her other plate has her favorite dish with shrimp, which happens to be her biggest obsession besides invading the Earth. She even has a beer mug, and can hold it in her extra set of extra long tentacles that can be swapped out with her front hair piece. The beer inside the mug can be removed, giving you more options.

Ika’s skirt is made of a soft rubbery type of plastic, and so is the lower part of her “shirt” which tucks under the skirt. This means her movement isn’t very limited compared to the vast majority of Figma out there. A small part of her skirt appears to be stuck inside her though, so I didn’t attempt to remove it, though I’m sure it’s possible, I just don’t feel like risking breaking it. She’s even one of those Figma that can actually look up a bit. Her hat is not removable, and why would you even want it to be, you evil person! Her “hair” or tentacles have to Figma joints in the back, and though some of the tentacles are unfortunately stuck together, they can be moved around more than expected due to being semi-soft. The two in front are very flexible and the extra long tentacles can be bent all over, perhaps due to wiring inside. I would be a bit cautious to not get carried away with the bending though, as I’m sure they could break eventually, but they’re quite fun to play around with. Her bracelets are removable, and can leave a bit of a blue paint trail on her wrists if kept on too tightly. The same goes for her anklets. The anklets however, do limit her feet movement just a tiny bit, and could possibly cause problems during certain poses, though I had none.

I figured I’d have a little fun with her, so above you’ll see some pictures of her using her tentacles to show Mami Tomoe and Mizuki who’s the boss. Then there’s a picture of her with a Pokemon from Black & White, Jellicent. I know Jellicent isn’t a squid, but a jellyfish. My son just happened to have a squid bath toy, so I took a couple pictures of that too. I also had the urge to take her extra head with the short hair/tentacles and pop it on top of a Busou Shinki body wearing Azone clothes. So what do I think of this Figma Ika Musume? I think she’s squidly great, I give her 9 out of 10 tentacles! The only thing I could have asked for that wasn’t included is an ink face. She’s more flexible than many, not hindered by her clothes much, and has enough options to make her extremely fun to pose and play with. So, while the Nendoroid may seem more appropriate, the Figma is full of fun, de geso~!
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