Hello again. Time for plastic and jpegs. This go around it’s Yagyu Jubei from Alter and Hobby Japan, the first in the Hyakka Ryoran series, featuring a quartet of legendary warriors turned girly by Nitro+. Jubei is a standard release figure, but some of the others in the series are Hobby Japan exclusives. Nitro+ designs usually translate very well into figure form, so I’ve been looking forward to these figures.

The individual design elements are appealing. Her swords mounted on rope belts around her thighs are ridiculous, but they look great. A skirt would just get in the way, so Jubei’s smart not to wear one. Function should win over modesty in these situations, after all.

The sculpt, by Mirano, emphasizes triangles to keep the eye looking over the figure. The wide hips are a triangle pointing up and the neckline of her shirt a triangle pointing down, where the two points meet in between her breasts. There’s a couple other natural triangle patterns that have been emphasized and put to good use, which helps give the figure a good visual flow overall.

While I love the decent sized hips, full size boobs, and the face/eye design, Jubei looks slightly off in her proportions. It could be the chunky shoes elongating her legs that’s throwing me off, but her torso feels a touch compact. Also, from some angles the placement of her neck/head gets thrown off by the drum on her back.

I had a good impression of the figure when I took it out of the box. Although, there are a couple of things that dampened the sweetness, I still have a favorable view of the figure after a longer look. It looks like Foobarbaz, gave Jubei 3 out of 5 stars, which I could see, but I think I like it a little better than that. Could just be that I like the designs and it’s tilting me a little.

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Post tags: 1:8-scale, Alter, anime figures, Hyakka Ryoran, Nitro+, pantsu, swords

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Everyone has a top 5 list, but Stripey tacks a question on it and it’s an easy post, so I bit; what does your top 5 anime list say about you? I’ve not thought about what my favorites are for a while. Thinking about it for a few, today my top 5 are:

1. Cowboy Bebop
2. Princess Tutu
3. School Rumble
4. 5 Centimeters Per Second
5. FLCL

From the list above, I guess I like anime where the dream ends or the wish didn’t come true. School Rumble might be the odd one out as a comedy, but I think there’s enough bittersweet, misconnection, and this bird has flown to fit, though I’ve only seen up to the end of the second season. Besides, Harima is too funny not to put Rumble on the list. All the shows pretty much have a catchy tune in there as well.

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Post tags: 5cm, Cowboy Bebop, flcl, Princess Tutu, School Rumble

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The familiarity with the English language makes it easy to get tired with the repetition of “idiot.” I wonder if Japanese people get annoyed that heartbroken female characters in anime have a vocabulary of ten words, nine of which are “baka.”

Like in Honey and Clover, episode 3. Ayumi spills out her frustration with Takumi and calls him an idiot like three times in two breaths. Sticking with “idiot,” for every time the Japanese repeats “baka,” does the English language version a disservice. It’s actually that scene in Honey and Clover that triggered this thought. I heard dozens of anime girls at the same time, rather than Ayumi in that moment. Ironman deserves better than that.

Still, I wonder if it gets translated as “idiot” all the time because people would complain if any other word or expression were used? I doubt it, but wouldn’t be surprised. There’s probably a good real reason for “baka” = “idiot” 88.37% of the time, like the lip-flap constraint or not wanting to use words that would date the translation, but I really wish there was an additional word for “baka.”

Though these days with slashed budgets, I’m just happy there’s any English dub at all, just to put this whining in perspective.

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Post tags: English-dub, Eureka-7, Honey and Clover, loser fan

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This time it’s LianYL who needs to unload some gear. Check it out. There’s some OOP print stuff that you can get your hands on. It started a few days ago, but it looks like there’s still a number of things available. Okay, that’s the end of this segment of help a brudda out.

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Post tags: help a brudda out

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Now, I know this series gets a lot of love amongst blogos and after watching the first two episodes I’m into it, but I can’t help but wonder if the only reason I’m enjoying Honey and Clover is because it feels different, like an anime not made for otaku. This makes it refreshing (as an anime), though Hagu feels a little borderline otaku-bait to me, at least so far.

If this were live action would I care or like it? I’m inclined to say no, but since it’s animated I can watch it. In an anime, it seems perfectly fine that people would be a-ok with some dude disappearing for weeks at a time and returning with random pieces of food that they’ll eat without a second thought. Plus, they do something crazy like wait for the guy. That’s kind of what makes an animated world fun to watch. Passing thoughts that disappear from our heads as soon as we think them get taken up by animated characters. Normally, I don’t think much about “if this were live action,” even in other shows that don’t need to be animated to properly tell, but the thought popped up in my head a couple of times.

I do like the bike wheel thing going on.

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Post tags: Honey and Clover, oh the humanity

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Gunslinger Girl: Il Teatrino is an ugly show. Maybe Artland isn’t the worst studio on earth, but compared to what Madhouse built in the first season of Gunslinger Girl, Artland might as well be. But, whatever, the first season supposedly had an insane budget that Artland probably didn’t have, but still, Il Teatrino has some pretty of lousy animation. It also has some lousy pacing, direction, editing, fight choreography, and scripting. I don’t know how much, if any, this is a result of the original manga author Yu Aida getting involved and taking control, but I have to wonder if it is.

(Some mild, unspecific spoilers may be ahead)

Il Teatrino fails because it hangs the cyborgs out to dry in order to keep the main story alive. The A-story of Il Teatrino is a boy assassin named Pinocchio. He is similar to the Section 2 cyborgs in that he was spared death and given a second life as an assassin, a second chance that has bought his devotion, a devotion that creates guilt over free-will issues for those around him. The details are different. Pinocchio doesn’t seem to be a cyborg for one, but he functions as the mirror image for the cyborgs and is Triela’s foil.

Outside of an introduction episode and a few standalone episodes, the series consists of just an A-story. A 13-episode series might be able to get away with only an A-story, but in this case it doesn’t work because the A-story of Il Teatrino seems more occupied with Pinocchio than on Triela or any of the other cyborgs for long stretches of time. The show is Gunslinger Girl, not Knifethrowing Boy. So while he might be an interesting mirror, he’s not the one standing in front of the mirror, which generally is who we follow. I don’t care about Pinocchio as much as I do about Claes, Henrietta, Rico, Triela, and Angelica, the characters this show is supposed to be about. So I find myself not caring for the A-story.

I suppose Franca and Franco could be the B-story of the series, but yawn.

Il Teatrino artificially extends the lifespan of the A-story. The only reason Pinocchio is around in the last episode is that Triela and Henrietta suddenly loose 15-levels as soon as they start fighting Pinocchio. I’m not sure if this was because the animation crew just couldn’t animate a bad-ass Pinocchio, so settled on making Triela, who could slam a grown man and send him flying twenty feet into a brick wall, suddenly not strong enough to grapple a non-cyborg teenage Pinocchio. Or instead of animating a showdown with Henrietta, just had her stand there like a deer in the headlights while Pinocchio escapes, even though Henrietta is a berserker type with a fast switch. Il Teatrino hangs the girls out to dry instead of making Pinocchio bad-ass.

It probably would have been better after the first Triela vs. Pinocchio fight to not have any direct confrontation between Section 2 and Pinocchio until the final episode, just to avoid the sudden incompetence syndrome. Pinocchio shouldn’t be able to win a direct confrontation if Triela and Henrietta are worth anything as Section 2 cyborgs. Each time Pinocchio doesn’t lose brings the worth of the cyborgs into question, which is why Henrietta and Pinocchio should never have been within melee range if the only option to keep Pinocchio alive to the end of the series is Henrietta’s sudden incompetence syndrome.

I think a better animation (budget) would have made it more entertaining and relieved some of the issues by creating a Pinocchio that could believably drive Triela to the edge of her enhanced capabilities. I just couldn’t buy any of his victories. A Henrietta vs. Pinocchio battle could have been a real showdown instead of a convenient way to give Henrietta screen time and give Pinocchio a way to get another episode of life.

I’m guessing, but sure, it’s just following the manga, which makes a case for not being a slave to the source material in an adaptation. At least, improved animation would have made it fun to watch, even if it didn’t make the adaptation any better.

One disappointment was seeing Angelica survive to Il Teatrino. It’s part of the original manga, I guess, but I loved the final episode of the first Gunslinger Girl series. Claes, Henrietta, Rico, and Triela in field on a winter night as meteors shower the earth, sing the Ninth while the light in Angelica’s eyes fade away as Marco reads the story they all made for her. There was something pretty about it. Ah well, now my misinterpretation of the scene is gone and replaced with something else.

To end on a positive, at least the cyborgs seem happier in their daily lives this time. Some of the episodes outside of the main plot were good, even the Angelica episode. Some people might not care for the Claes episode, but I find the Claes episodes in both seasons thoughtful and her back story poignant. I also liked the episode where we learn how Triela was given her second life.

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Post tags: Artland, Gunslinger-Girl, Madhouse, story development

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The DIODER is meant to be a shelf or cabinet light. When I first saw them my brain lit up. The compactness of LED makes it useful for toy photography purposes. The downside is the power output of the lights is pretty low, so not yet ready for main setup purposes.

As a spotlight in an otherwise dark and shadowy set, they’re good enough, as I found while using them in the Narika shoot. They also make great fill in lights. For the Narika shoot I used it a lot as a narrow fill light, providing another fill option to use in conjunction or instead of a reflector.

LEDs generate so little heat, they’re perfect to light up display cases full of PVC figures. When you’re done taking pics, you can mount them in your growing collection of display cases. They are so thin that even mounted under glass shelves (like in a DETOLF) they won’t attract too much attention to themselves with strategic placement.

Okay, now that we’ve got our little disc of light, we need a snoot to make a spotlight. A snoot is simply an obstruction to prevent light from spilling all over the place so that it casts a narrow beam. With the size of the DIODER, constructing a snoot shouldn’t be a problem at all with cardboard. Luckily enough, the box from a bar of soap is just the right size to fit all around. Just pre-form the box a little to make it easy to slide the DIODER in, tear a little slot for the cord, and there you have a spotlight.

You could probably get the same effect with a pocket flashlight and wrap some cardboard around the front to create a snoot for your spotlight. The nice thing about the DIODER is that it’s got a diffuser built into it.

It’s not the greatest thing ever. There’s a ton of actual lighting equipment that will do a better job, but I look for things that can pull double duty or just using things in ways they weren’t meant to be used that work anyway. I was happy to find this for my display cases. At $40 they might be a little too expensive to get just to play around with.

Using the DIODERs gives a little tighter control versus just a desk lamp. The shot below was with the swing-arm desk lamp on for a little ambient lighting to cut the contrast a bit. The basic setup of the shot is above. The lamp isn’t positioned exactly, so you’ll have to play around with it. The DIODER isn’t a strong light, so holding it through the soap box a few inches away wasn’t going to blow out the figure with enough surrounding light to soften the contrast.

The purpose of this “tutorial” isn’t to get you to buy these lights or to show a neat trick, though it’s there. What I’m trying to illustrate is re-purposing things opens avenues, so keep an eye open for those opportunities in all things you do.

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Post tags: lighting

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Summer is way too slow a time for figure collecting. Given the heat and the low melt point of PVC, there’s probably a good reason why July and August feel like all the figure companies went on vacation. Commerce happens year round, so it probably has nothing to do with that and I’m just linking two coinciding patterns that have nothing to do with one another. Still, this time of year it always feels like I’ve stopped collecting figures. Thank goodness Narika arrived to push the summertime blahs away.

The Narika figure from Alter comes from the eroge Beat Blades Haruka, a game from Alice Soft, who know a thing or two about this type of character design. Obviously, the figure depicts Narika in battle gear. It’s eroge battle gear, so not all that practical for anyone but those looking at Narika.

Narika’s battle suit contrasts elements to frame her slender assets. She’s got a giant snowboard blade thing and ballooned out MC Hammer pants. Color-wise the battle regalia uses highly contrasty red and white to flank her pink hair. These high color and high detail areas create a couple of voids to draw the eye to her face and then to her bikini area, which in case you get lost along the way have a couple of line elements pointing straight to it.

I’m real happy with the figure. Alter’s Narika has invigorated my anticipation for the impending fall figure onslaught. What I like is how the twists of Narika’s slender body contrast with the overlarge battle gear elements, that and there’s a pleasing amount of detail rendered in her costume. The sculptor (Aketagawa Noboru) also managed to create some subtle muscle mass in her arms and torso while still keeping her slender looking. Sometimes these thin pettanko characters lack that nuance and have very basic limbs and torsos to maintain the illusion of slenderness. There’s also a pretty pronounced detail in the bikini area, but Narika comes from an eroge, so that’s fine and expected. I’d only consider that kind of detail a bad thing if the character comes from non-eroge roots. Of course, that’s a detail that some find distasteful regardless.

She’s got an ABS leg that connects to the white diamond-shaped base. It’s a very similar mount to the Haruka figure from last year and that’s held up perfectly. The big blade is mounted via a peg on Narika’s back. The right forearm and hand are made from a very flexible plastic so that you’re able to easily get the blade into position and her hand around the grip.

Narika is a great figure. Kodomut has some pics where she’s all wet, which is a nice effect. It was a fun figure to take pictures of simply because it’s just an awesome figure, plus red and white always make a striking color combination.

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Post tags: 1:8-scale, Alter, battle suit, gloves, Highly-Recommended, pink-hair, thigh highs

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The pose and the costume struck my fancy, what with the skirt being short, the legs being long, the butt being nice, and some things being striped. I like it. Still I know, she’ll likely hit the bargain bin and could have waited, but I’ve never been much to wait on a bargain with figures. I probably should. Every time there’s a big figure sale I can’t buy anything since all that I wanted I already have.

So yeah, summer was good, especially since it wasn’t very hot at all. Now it’s time to brace myself for the onslaught of the fall figure releases!

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Post tags: 1:8-scale, GoodSmile, nice butt, pink-hair, thigh highs

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