Last year, around this time, Clayz announced a figure rendition of an eye-popping Tony Taka original artwork featuring two nekomimi maids (see below). As I seem to recall, it took all of a couple seconds to decide I would be ordering this figure.
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I try to keep this blog tightly focused on figure collecting, frequently at the expense of exploring more general anime culture, but I wanted to stray the course long enough to share the spoils from a few hours at my local anime convention, Anime Weekend Atlanta.
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Periodically, I like to take a look at new figures that are available for pre-order. This isn’t intended to be an exhaustive list, but rather a selection of new releases that I personally find interesting or notable.
It’s been a while since my last preview roundup (over a month!), so this week I’ll try to catch up with all the notable releases from the past month or so.
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The Wonder Festival 2010 [Summer] event, or WF2010S for short, was held today in Japan. Like the Winter session held in February, this event represents a major trade show for the figure hobby industry and, as such, showcased many new products from the various manufacturers. What follows is a selection of figures shown off at the event that I personally found interesting or notable. Continue reading
At the beginning of this year, I had a very clear goal when it came to my figure hobby: to get Good Smile Company’s Black Rock Shooter, the figure I most regretted not purchasing in 2009. This would prove to be a more challenging task than I had anticipated as the popularity of the BRS figure wildly exceeded my–and probably everybody else’s–expectations.
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I wanted to get another review pushed out for this week, but I got distracted by my Steam backlog over the Fourth of July weekend. Oh, well. There’s always next week.
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When Alter announced a Hobby Japan-exclusive version of Hyakka Ryoran heroine Yagyu Jubei clad in revealing swim attire, it didn’t take long for me to decide that Jubei was a character worth at least two figures. Acquiring this version of Jubei was made complicated by the details accompanying the release announcement. Beyond the simple fact that Hobby Japan won’t ship outside Japan, Jubei was also to be limited to 1,500 pieces distributed via lottery. It seems that the old “first-come, first-served” adage need not apply here. The lottery clause effectively eliminated the option of ordering the figure through a proxy service because there was no guarantee that they could fill the order.
I had noticed in the past that the US-based ToysLogic seemed to carry Hobby Japan exclusives from time to time. I contacted them regarding the new Jubei to see if they would be accepting orders. A few days later, I got a response that they would indeed be accepting orders for the HJ exclusive. I was concerned as to how they would get around the lottery problem, but I didn’t press the issue and decided to place my order through them. A box from ToysLogic arrived at my doorstep seven months later.
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Periodically, I like to take a look at new figures that are available for pre-order. This isn’t intended to be an exhaustive list, but rather a selection of new releases that I personally find interesting or notable. Continue reading
Although I feel like I spend a great deal of time and mental energy figuring out how I can save money on the figures I buy, it’s surprisingly rare that I find myself rummaging through the proverbial bargain bin searching for great deals on figures. For the most part, I find that the figures I want to buy tend to sell out before they ever receive discounts of any significance, so feel it’s often more worthwhile to shop around during the preorder phase rather than hoping for hefty markdowns later on. That said, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to pick up Good Smile Company’s 1/8 scale Sawachika Eri from School Rumble when I discovered that she was readily available from 888 Anime for as little as $33 shipped.
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Figyura (フィギュラ) 