Bit of a short post this week but I thought it would be a good idea to break up all the Ignis updates, so I thought I would post my summer spending since I had a few figures arrive in the past week.

Yes, your eyes do not deceive you, I have 2 Rize figures! Due to a bit of a clerical error on my part, I placed 2 orders for Rize on HLJ while they were (most likley) going through some maintenance. so the 2 orders got merged into 1 and I received 1 order confirmation which I never bothered to check. Memo to self, check order quantities from HLJ at all times from now on.

Expect to see one of her on ebay or the like fairly soon.

Meifeng is the re-release and she takes my Shuraki collection up to 4. I purposely missed out on Nida cos, to be frank, I didn’t like her. Much like the Aya Hirano Fanbus, I chose not to jump on the Shunya Yamashita fanbus. He’s good, but not *that* good! That pretty much ends my dabbling in buying PVC figures as there are none on the horizon which has grabbed my fancy. There are rumblings of a shuraki second series of figures, but with most of the main cast now covered, there’s only Monica (a goth loli) and Mizuchi (a miko) left who have an active role, the other characters introduced are mainly background players, unless they introduce new characters and a whole new plot…

The Striker pack MG kit was one I have been meaning to buy for a while, but since it only comes with 1 strike gundam in the box, I bought a second Aile strike gundam so I can pose all 3 packs together with my previously purchased Aile. Why buy another Aile? Simple, it was cheaper!

Those 2 will most likely be OOB (Out Of Box) builds with no paint job because their appearance would jar with my aile strike, which was built before I started painting my gundam kits to remove the plastic look. it it’ll be all minor mods and panel lines only.

And finally, I bit the bullet and bought a figure from the e2046 gathering section. The figure I chose was the first Asuka Langley Soryu on bike, sculpted by Vispo.

Actually, she was on preorder for quite some time. In fact, I had almost forgotten about her before I got the email saying she was in stock. Given how so many figure collectors rave about gathering figures, I was expecting some great things from my first purchase. So what do I think? A very clean, very neat paint job which suffers from a few niggling issues and personal preference conflicts. I’m not going to throw praise after praise on the kit, but at the same time, I can see why a lot of figure collectors fell in love with the gathering series when it was announced (although I think it has now become too bloated, they should cut down on the figures in the service).

But they really pack them carefully!

I’ll do a full review at a later date, though I’m only just noticed that, due to my one post a week, format, I actually have a fair backlog of figures who are waiting for their time to shine. I should really get on with it…

I got Asuka because

1. the kit is very impressive and I liked it, a lot
2. I’m too lazy to do it myself for once as the bike alone is ridiculously complex. I’d have no problems doing just Asuka though.
3. as well as laziness, I also fear this kit to a degree. It’s a know fact among model builders that kits with large “accessories” like a bike are some of the hardest figures to build as they are sculpted separately most of the time so the 2 will not fit perfectly. How badly it fits depends on the figure, I heard some real horror stories regarding mahoro on bike and Misato on scooter (both are now available as PVC figures so the pain is now gone)

Having said that, due to several factors, I don’t think I’ll be getting the accompanying Rei figure for a long while, even though I much prefer Rei to Asuka.

Edit:Looking at the vispo site, it looks like his next project is going to be a version 2 of Rei. Here’s hoping that it’s better than his Asuka R2…

And the new anime season is apon us… Busy busy for once, even if the only show I really care about is Sekirei!!

A relatively minor update this week due to a variety of issues such as 1) me going through a state of mild melancholy, 2) hayfever is a bitch and makes it hard for me to focus 3) you guessed it, more MGS4!

Having said that, it’s still a milestone for the kit as there isn;t that much left to do now, just weapons and the head. Oh, and the mother of all cleanups!

On a completely different note, these recent changes to wordpress are godawful! Bring back the old style dammit!!! I don’t like the built-in uploader!!

Back to the model, I think I must have some some kind of talent to overestimate what I believe will be hard and completely underestimate other parts of the kit. Cos the skirt is was an absolute disaster!!

I wasn’t expecting it to be this hard but the folds and overall shape of the parts made it really hard to paint the white outlines correctly. Mental note - don’t rely on Masking fluid!!

OK, so disaster may be a little harsh but the current result is very messy and I’ll have to really dig into it when I get to the cleanup phase.

The skirt was probably the hardest part so far, but luckily, the rest should be plain sailing. I just have the weapons, a Katana and uzi and the head to do, which shouldn’t pose too much of a problem.

The only other issue at the moment is what to do with the cast off feature. At the moment, I’ve covered key areas with masking tape to help protect the paintjob underneath but it’s unsightly and causes problems with the fit. I’ll have to think of a better way to stop the paint from the clothing from damaging the main body…

The question is, how long will it take to finish? I’m really lacking the drive to paint these days for some reason so picking up my airbrush almost feels like a chore at times. I also find that I don’t ‘lose myself’ in the painting process anymore either.

Hopefully, this is a temporary thing since I would hate to think that I would stop painting soon. I still have several kits undone!!

Hopefully, I should get it finished sometime in July. but in the meanwhile, I have some new stuff on it’s way (and some already here) who are begging for their own photoshoot! It ain’t over yet!

Bit of a late post this week (blame MGS4. Just started playing it after buying it last weekend!)

Anyway, After the fun that was liquidstone fate, I went back to my main project of Ignis. Good thing too, because it wasn’t until recently that I was able to complete enough of her to make sure that these shots would be safe for work (remember, this Cerberus project kit is cast off!)

So this is where I’ve gotten to so far.

After the base, I thought it would be plain sailing. How wrong was I? The legs proved to be much harder than I had anticipated. Primarily because the black buckles made the light stockings a pain to paint (because of all the masking) and the general detailing meant that I had alot of masking fluid to use, which complicated matters when removing it.

The cast off also gave some headaches of it’s own. I had to paint the body several times because the paint kept scratching off. A problem with PVC figures as well, but it’s amplified many times over for this kit, because I can’t do a simple cleanup like I can with Figures like Char, I’d end up rubbing off the paint. big nono!

I’m still not 100% doen with this stage yet. There’s still some cleanup to do. I also haven;t decided if I want the colour of the stocking and breast cover to remain the same. I used a very light blue base and painted over it with white to give a bit of shading to the mix, but the whole thing still looks a bit blue. Maybe more white is needed. At the same time, I don’t want it to be pure white…

Next up, I’ll have to do the skirt to finish up the clothing, another hard task due to the detailing and the fact that the inside colour is completely at odds with the outer one, and then the limbs and weapons. At least they should be easy…

If you’ve come from dannychoo.com, then you may have seen my post where I posted my purchases from WHF Final. One of them was of this;

Normally, I have a rather strict rule about finishing my current project before working on another. The only time I have worked on 2 projects concurrently was when I built WildFalken, but then I knew that it wouldn’t be very long. Technically, I’m working on 2 now, but all my efforts were being focused on Ignis. However, I couldn’t pass up this one so I bumped her up the queue!

For those of you who don’t know a thing about this item or it’s maker, this is a variable pose figure created by a group called liquidstone. They are event only and the group have only made figures for the characters in Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS. This figure depicts Fate Testarossa in her final form, True Sonic Drive

(Mini Translator note: A lot of guys (and fansubbers) translated her form as “New” sonic form or 新 ソニクフォム. But Liquidstone and a lot of other model makers have been using 真ソニクフォム　Which translates to “true” sonic form due to the different Kanji. Don’t you just love how words in far eastern languages can sound identical but have completely different meanings? -_-’

In any case, I’ll be using the translation from the modellers from here on out.)

So back to the figure, If you think fraulein Revoltech or Figma, then you’re half way there. Of course, there isn’t currently a figure for fate in her true sonic form and there are currently no plans, although there is going to be a Fate in her standard combat form from Figma.

So far, so exciting. We’re going to get a movable figure of Fate wielding 2 separate blades and looking really cool, right? Well, time to hold your horses, cos when you open the box, you are greeted with this!

Yup, you have to build it yourself!! plus, the parts aren’t labeled so you need to pay close attention to the instructions to find out which parts are which. It’s a bit of a pain, esp for the small parts. And let’s not forget the separate joint parts too!

OK, if that hasn’t scared you yet, well done. But now the first word of warning. This figure is HARD!! REALLY HARD!!!!

Don’t even think about getting one unless you’re fairly confident about your modeling abilities. Especially
regarding drilling holes and pinning! The reason I say that is because you will be expected to drill holes in the parts to fit the joints in. The parts are also resin, not plastic so plastic glues like Poly cement won’t do anything here. Some parts are also incredibly fragile! You are also expected to cut some of the joint sections to allow for a clean fit.

Long story short, I didn’t do a particularly good job. My main problem was that I didn’t have the correct size drill part. I bought a new one, but the diameter was 3mm while the joints (and by extension the required hole size) was 2.9mm. It may sound like a small amount but it makes all the difference. In the end, I had to fill the sides with some putty to make the fit, but it meant that the joints aren’t as strong as they should be. This is definitely one thing which would benefit from a streamlined production method.

But wait, there’s more!!! And it lets me get something off my chest… I HATE WET TRANSFERS!!!

anybody who collects games workshop models or the older gunpla will know exactly what I mean. Wet transfers are effectively stickers which require you to soak them in water to loosen the adhesive before putting them on the surface. Then, when the water dries, the adhesive sticks to the new surface.

Here’s the wet transfer for one of the eyes. I had to cut it pretty close to the detail, or else it would make things difficult when I put it on the new surface.

So after soaking in water, you should be able to see that the transfer is sliding off the paper.

After that, it’s just a matter of putting it on the surface and positioning it correctly. Sounds easy right? It’s not!!

First and foremost, the transfers are very hard to position and have a tendency to stick to your finger very closely, if you aren’t careful. Just a small amount of contact is enough for them to latch onto you! The second thing is that they are very fragile and easily damaged. The figure came with 4 sets of eyes and eyebrows. During the course of putting them on, I destroyed 2 of them! There’s a reason why you are given 4 sets!!

but enough of the whining, I’m sure you all want to see how she turned out right?

The above pics just show a standard pose with her 2 zanber forms. If you look closely, you can still see the putty around some of the joints. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I was unable to remove them completely, but on the plus side, they aren’t visible all the time.

Front and back shots so you get an idea on the details. You may also be able to see some of the parts damage I spoke of earlier. With regards to the joints, I was pleasantly surprised about how inconspicuous they are (aside from the shoulder joints). They’re not as invisible as the Frauleins but the pose options are better and they look a damn sight nicer than the figma disc joints imo!

The figure came with 2 interchangeable heads which you slide under the hair and attach to the main head but I tend to stick with the one on the left.

Another cool feature which I completely missed at first is that the swords have a built in mechanism to replicate the Cartridge system from the anime. It’s a minor touch but it’s appreciated.

For a size comparison, you can see that the liquidstone figure is quite large. Next to Fate is Fraulein Asuka. I don’t have a figma to compare at the moment. I’m waiting for my Nanoha.

Pose-wise, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. You can coax quite a variety of poses with a little… OK, alot of effort.

The main problem comes with some of the more dynamic ones, although my, less than stellar build is also to blame.

The main problem is that the swords (esp the oversized single zanber) are quite heavy, so the parts can sag quite easily. It probably wouldn’t be as much of an issue with a perfect build, but even then, I think there will be some issues with the single zanber blade at the very least.

My attempt at copying the pose on the main box. The stand was “borrowed” from Fraulein Asuka

Despite the failings, I still really like this figure. It’s the only iteration of Fate in true sonic form (my fave form) so far and it was a very interesting experience to build.

Had this been mass produced, it would have been one hell of a product! It can easily stand up to revoltech and figmas with a good build and the right tools. In fact, I would say that it kicks their asses!! I really do wonder why this series probably hasn’t been as popular as I think it deserves. Oh, right! Aside from the event only availability, there’s that little pesky pricetag.

But if you want to oggle the rest of the series, you can find them on the liquidstone website.

Would I recommend getting one? Not unless you’re pretty skilled and confident. Or you can find someone willing to take the plunge for you. For most ppl, I think Figmas would provide a more convenient (and cheaper) alternative which will be more than sufficient. But if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll try and hunt down a liquidstone nanoha…

I finally had a chance to sit down and properly play the next game in the SRW series, although I say that with a pinch of salt since, as well as not being developed by banpresto, the game has almost no connection to any of the other SRW games aside from a few character names and some plot threads.

Most people who know of this game have probably purchased it already but if you are one of those on the fence, I would say rent first, else give it a miss.

Bit harsh but I was rather disappointed with it when I played it.

The good/neutral

• Nice graphics. Plus lots of fanservice in the battle animations
• Voice acting!!! Lots of Engrish!!! YAY!!!
• Battle themes and dungeon music are all remixed versions of popular SRW tracks.
• This game doesn’t use any touch screen features at all!!! Kudos to the developers for not using a feature just because it’s there!

The bad

• This game is a 100% traditional JPRG. That means wandering about on a map with random battle encounters. Not exactly a game breaking problem but I wish they did something different. A valkyrie profile system for the map would have been good (but then, i say that about a lot of games since VP is all kinds of fantastic). But even a simple system where you could see the enemies would have been preferred.
• The combat system! This is where I get the daggers out. Endless frontier was co-developed by monolithsoft, who are famous for their Xenosaga series but they also made Namco X Capcom, a game which, while severely flawed was great fun and tried to do something different with the combat methods by getting the player to interact during the actual fighting. While some of their idea does come out in endless frontier, the execution is sorely lacking. And a good combat system is the basis of a good rpg. If the combat is rubbish, nobody wants to slog it out for the whole game!!

Going into more details regarding the combat system, for namco X capcom (which was a strategy RPG), once combat started, the player had a single attack button to start his attack with the chosen character. once that attack has hit, he could press the attack button again and chain them together to form a combo. The player could also mix it up a little by pressing one of the directional buttons with the attack button to perform different attacks which presented different chain opportunities. This kept the battles fresh (somewhat) as it altered the timings for when the attacks were most effective. The game also got players to use all the different attacks by allowing the player to use a super attack once they have used all the different attacks twice.

Going on to endless frontier, they have kept the idea of choosing the timing for the attacks, and not much else. All attacks are done in sequence using a single button so all the player has to focus on is the timing, which is very lenient.

The player has 2 options during his combo. Either let the attack finish completely, in which case the enemy is pushed back or up and bounced back to the player for another hit or he can cut the attack short and gain a boost for the super attack bar for later use. The super attacks themselves are the ones
seen on the promo vids with all the cut-ins and they end the attack immediately, so you can’t chain anymore after that.

To try and compensate, the game allows the player to call forth a support character in certain situations (usually enemy is up in the air and can’t do anything) to attack or call forth the next attack character to continue the combo. But that just ends up feeling like artificially extending the attack more than anything else. It doesn’t make the battle any more interesting…

Personally, I think they should have kept the NxC battle system more intact but there’s no point in crying over it now. I’m still trying to get through the game but I’m already getting a little bored of the game, which isn’t a good sign. It may improve later but looking at the foundations I have already seen, I don’t think so.

It’s not a particularly bad game, it’s just not a good one…

It’s been a while since I did a simple progress post, but I have been working steadily on my cerberus project Ignis so I thought an update would be good.

And so I came to realize that the 1 thing which I was fearing regarding this kit as a major obstacle was, in truth, rather easy… It was the other parts I should have kept an eye on…

Anyways, here’s a look at how I did the base!

When I started it, I had no clue as to how I was going to get my desired effect so I simply painted the whole thing in a deep red colour. I figured it was a good base to work on. I also lightly sprayes dome pink on the tongue-like tentacle thinking that I would eventually need to distinguish it from the rest of the base. The horns were covered in masking tape as it would be easier to paint over the primer than the very dark colours which the rest of the base would eventually become.

Next I sprayed the whole think with a thin layer of purple. Hey, purple seemed appropriate for the base (in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I was totally winging this up to this point)

But there wasn’t much difference after the purple spray so I decided to go further and add some dark blue into the mix.

Getting closer, but it was still lacking something. But at this point I got stuck. So after scratching my head
and getting rather annoyed I went on a bit of a self destructive (and somewhat crazy) idea. After finding a bottle of black wash (really really thin paint basically). I thought I would liberally apply it to the base. By that time I didn’t really care how it turned out because I was just messing about and planning what I was going to do on my second try. The Black wash was a pretty damn bad idea though because it clumped together and just became a black blob which covered everything, so I decided to rub as much of it off as I could. Then something cool happened…

Yeah! now that’s more like it!!!! At this point, I thought it would be a good idea to spray on some glossy varnish onto the thing.

Looking good! Well, all that was left now were the fangs, which were covered up until now. I painted them a cream colour initially but obviously, that wouldn’t look very good against the rest of the colours. So once it was dry, I added brown wash to the fangs and repeated the process which I did with the black wash, namely copious amounts before rubbing the majority off. that gave me something really close to the final product.

But something still didn’t look quite right (and I’m not talking about how the fangs looked like something which came out of someones arse!). So after rummaging around my paint pots, I came across some blue wash and my gung ho nature kicked in again. So I did the paint and rub technique using blue wash over the tentacle and a small area of the base and also, using a bit of tissue paper and paint thinner, I rubbed off the brown wash off the tips of the larger fangs. The result was an appearance of the fangs beng (slightly) cleaner at the tips while the brown “muck” was concentrated on the base (kinda like bad teeth). Then I sprayed the whole thing with yet more glossy varnish.

So, how did it turn out?  You want to know, right? I bet you do…

So that’s how it turned out. Pretty cool, no? After that initial gung ho maneuver with the black wash, everything fell into place. The only issue I have with it at the moment is that the tentacle now is quite close in colour to the armour I’ve painted on Ignis’ leg. But I guess that’s fairly minor.

Though now, I’m very curious as to what Yamato are going to do with their PVC rendition. I don’t think my technique is really suited for mass production. Does anyone have a PVC figure with an extravagant base like this one? How do they normally do things like this?

Sometimes, it’s good to just geek out. Do something rather silly in anticipation of getting something few others will have. Like when a certain big name producer of a big name game for a well known console comes into town to do a signing.

The Game? Metal Gear Solid 4

The guy? Hideo Kojima!

So, guess where I was this afternoon!! And check out what I got…

This is actually my second item signed by Kojima-san. The first was when he came down for the release of MGS3. I happened to be around at the time and snuck in a cheeky sign. That was fun because it was a lot more informal. Security was present but not as tight and the atmosphere was much more relaxed. Heck, I even managed to exchange a few words with the guy back then!

Compare to today, where it was done with almost military precision. The time was much more strict and only these covers could be signed, of which there were only 300 available (just don’t ask how I got mine). We were pretty much marched across and shoved through so the experience wasn’t so great. There was also the equivalent of the Beijing Olympics blue tracksuit torch guards around the guests on top of the HMV guards!!

Anyway, this was part of the MGS4 world tour. Hideo Kojima as well as 2 others came in and did their signing. Unfortunately, I was stopped before I could ask him the question which everyone (i.e. me) wanted to know: Was he making a Zone of the Enders 3??!! Damn tracksuit wannabes…

Aside from Kojima-san, there were 2 others present. One was the chief artist, Yoji Shinkawa:

And the other was a real cutie by the name of Yumi Kikuchi. Unfortunately, Yumi-chan was the last guest to sign and, thanks to the machine which kept everyone moving, I was unable to take any good shots. So you’re going to have to make do with some of the promo pics for when she was announced as the main basis for one of the “beauty and the beast” boss characters…

Damn security guards. Made me miss some good shots…

See?

The weirdest thing? I wasn’t initially going to get MGS4!!! The series lost my interest after #1. MGS2 was just bad and I don’t really enjoy 3 that much but the promise of some answers in the plot for the previous games as well as metal gear online was enough to sway me (I took part in the online beta test. Was pretty fun, even if it did take an age and a half to get login details!). Heck, stranger things have happened. The sole reason I bought MGS3 was because I got it signed by Hideo Kojima!

Not sure if I’ll get the game on release, but I will get it pretty soon.

Hurrah!!! Tis time to celebrate a very special Birthday!!! No, not mine. That was last week.

Today, this blog officially turns 1 year old!!! It was on the 29th last year when I started this blog and opened it with a post about my Bubba Haruhi and 52 weeks later, it’s still going after a “1 post per week” policy (well, except for that time I had no internet for a while). To be honest, I never thought it would last as long as this… When I first started the blog, I thought that it would last a few months with regular updates and then maybe a post when I finished a kit before finally dying of lack of exercise, but it’s still here, with regular updates and no worries about future content (for now)!!!

This part is where I get all mushy and thank all of you, the readers, for making this blog as successful as it is. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that my hobby and works would get as many hits as it does a week. It’s no Dannychoo.com or Heisei Democracy but it’s still pretty good for a little upstart blog about a very niche hobby!

So, in order to celebrate this occasion, I thought I would share a few pics which depict all the figures I have in my current residence (so basically everything built which isn’t in my gundam army collection.

Here’s everything in 1 neat pic. I’ll go through them all in more detail but you can probably already see some familiar faces who have graced the blog already, and others who will be doing so in the near future. The main point of interest would be my glass cabinet. I use it almost exclusively for my painted resin kits, so that hold my entire portfolio, as it were.

I’ll go through the shelves first and then give closeups of the resin kits after the jump.

On the top shelf, we have the large mecha items. From the left, there’s masterpiece starscream, Soul of Chogokin Dancougar, DX aquarion (recently announce to be getting a re-release. it transforms into all 3 aquarion modes, but I like solar the best), Masterpiece Optimus Prime and Soul of Chogokin Gunbuster.

Out of those, I would have to say I like Gunbuster the best. It’s much nicer to look at than the (more expensive) studio half-eye version. The transformation is’t quite as good though, there are lots of extra pieces which need to be removed and added for the full effect. But it can do “that pose!!!”

Next up, we have the Figures shelf. This is home to the non resin figures I have purchased over the years.

From the left we have Yotsuba&! Fuka with the revoltech Yotsuba riding piggyback, non scale mahoro Trading figure, Fraulein Rei & Asuka, Xenosagas KOS-MOS, Tessa Testarossa from Full metal panic!, Revoltech Saber and alter/dark saber from fate/stay night, Exelica from the game triggerheart exelica, Mishiro Akatsuki and Char Rhoussman from the shuraki line and a small Shinku from Rozen maiden.

Mahoro and Shinku were from special editions of the japanese mangas. Mahoro was from a special vol 6 of mahoromatic while Shinku came with a Japanese version of Rozen maiden vol 7. I really should do a resin Kit of mahoro as she is one of my fave 2D girls but I haven’t found one I really like. As for Shinku, we’ll see…

As many of you know, I’m not a massive collector of PVC figures so most peoples collections will be much bigger than this but I don’t regret buying any of these, apart from 1. The Tessa figure. It was made by atelier Sai and I bought it because I’m a sucker for poses which are out of character but not beyond the realms of possibility (that’s why I love my KOS-MOS so much) but the workmanship of the Tessa figure is just shoddy. And the face doesn’t look right!! Buying her just reinforced my dislike of PVC figures in general and also strengthened my preferred manufacturer choice to Alter (and now Goodsmile). Loving my Exelica though, which is dominating the entire shelf.

And in the blue corner, we have the mechas!!! Again, from the left we have; revoltech Dangaioh (<3), 1/144 strike noir from gundam seed stargazer, revoltech Ingram AV-98 from patlabor, Armoured core Crest CR-C75U2 Close combat version, 1/100 Astray Red frame from the seed astray mangas, WildFalken & WildWurger from the super robot wars series, MG Strike Freedom from gundam seed destiny, Lancelot from Code Geass and Black Sarena from nadesico, the prince of darkness. I think regular readers will be familiar with most of these as most have graced the blog before. I’m actually starting to run out of space for mecha as they do take up a fair bit of room, more so than most figures.

And further down, we have my collection pf Pinky:st. Bet nobody thought I collected these!!! I tend to focus on the special versions which are based off well known characters. I don’t go the whole hog and collect the standard pinkys.

Close up Pic!! We have Mai Shiranui and Athena Asamiya from the King of Fighters, Chun Li and Sakura from streetfighter (2 and alpha to be precise) Sakura Shinguji from Sakura wars (fantastic game) and Arcruied Brunestud from Tsukihime. The 2 Tenjou Tenge ones will be covered later

Continuing, Next to Arc; we have Agito/Akito from Air gear, Suzumiya Haruhi and Asahina Mikuru from Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu (man, I love the maid mikuru, even though I’m not a huge fan of the character), and finally 2 versions of Rei and Asuka (If you need to be told where they’re from, be ashamed).

And to round it off, we have Natsume Maya and Isuzu Emi trom Tenjou Tenge, still in their boxes

Still more to go!!

My Keroro figures. If you get one, you really need to get them all. They appear to be based off revoltechs as several joints use the revoltech joints, although it is not mentioned.

And finally, my 2 AngelXX which were designed by the creator of Keroro and my 3 BOME figures. The Natsume sisters from tenten and KOS-MOS. I much prefer my alter KOS-MOS. Bome just seems rather flat.

Now, on with the resin kits!!!

I think everyone is familiar with these 3. Bubba Haruhi is still my fave kit out of all of them, but I would say that Yoko, my most recent kit, is the best painted. For those that are interested, I have loaned Mina over to Orbital Manga, so if you’re around central Londo, you can see for yourself just what she looks like, without any camera trickery (not that I use any).

Yes, I know!! Ignis isn’t a resin kit. Unfortunately, I couldn’t fit her in with the other figures so I had to put her in the cabinet. She will be moved out as I finish more works, but for now, she shares a shelf with my C.C

And finally, we have my very early works. And by very early, I mean my first attempts at painting with an airbrush. Ren was in one of my very early posts but Saber is probably new to most of you. Saber was actually my first mod. The original kit had her in full armour, but I didn’t like that so I removed all the armour parts and sculpted a hand for the right hand and wrist for the left arm. The right hand was initially an armoured gauntlet with no separate fingers so I had to scrape them in. The wrist was needed as the hand would not hold since the wrist section was initially built into the armoured gauntlet which Saber wore.

And that concludes the collection.  The post Turned out longer than I thought, and it’s only going to grow… Again, I thank all of you for visiting the blog and we’ll see if it survives another year!!

So yesterday, I went along with a friend to the London Expo which was being held at the Excel Center in the docklands. I tend to avoid events like that as I don’t really have that much interest in the special events held and such but I thought I’d go to 1 for the experience and see what they had to offer.

Looks like I didn’t miss much…

The event itself was pretty much for cosplayers who massed outside the event, and I really dislike cosplay. So I hope that people who read this blog don’t get too offended when I start rolling off the bad ones. Kudos for those who enjoy doing it and even greater kudos to those who pull it off well, but the ratio of good-to-bad was not pretty…

There were some really good points tho. For a start, the cosplay of Hard Gay wins everything, without even trying. Like Chuck Norris.

There were some good Code Geass cosplays too. Cornelia and Guilford were the best, but the group also had their shares of not-so-good.

And we have a shout-out to orbital comics!! Rock on guys!! Believe in us who believe in you!!! Rock Haruhi also says Hi.

but what about the expo itself?

The queue to get in was massive so if I were to go to another one, I would definitely order my ticket beforehand. The time spent in the queue was almost as long as the time spent in the actual expo!!!

Inside the venue, there were mainly just stalls selling japanese mechandise, we had the usual suspects like TokyoToyz and gundammad, all with marked up prices. The term “rip off britain” came to mind on more than a few occasions. I understand that the sellers have to make a living but, damn!!! £150 for a PG strike rouge? no thanks! There were some surprises like an Ignis the white for sale. I Wonder if anyone there acutally knows how hard to find that figure is these days. Given the price tag (£81) I think at least one of the staff members does…

There were also DVD vendors such as Up1 and the main distributors like ADV, MVM, Beez Manga ent and Funi. I snagged myself the complete nadesico collection for £25 (still have the old VHS tapes), 009-1 for £30 and Stellvia of the universe for £50. I was quite happy with stellvia as I love that show and the sets are hard to come by since Geneon stopped distributing in the US.

There was one stall which had me a little interested tho. It was from a small group called this is anime. As well as selling the usual standard stuff like gundam kits, PVC figures, etc, they also did something unique in that they also sold prepainted resin kits!!

It’s just a bit of a shame that the paint job is not that great.
Maybe I’m just being a little jealous that they have the confidence to sell them while I don’t think mine are good enough but still…

You guys remember my C.C, right?

Well, here’s their offering. Which would you prefer?

Their Yoko was pretty good though. Working with something that large is not easy as the mistakes show up more, even if you have a larger area to work with.

You can’t see clearly from this pic, but belldandy is about to fall asleep… And I’m sure the Masane figure from Witchblade is a PVC offereing.

No gripes about Kanu tho, Maybe the eyes but that would be borderline petty. Dunno about ers-chan tho.

And finally we have Garnet from rumble fish (pretty poor fighting game from sammy, Mokoto Kusanagi from Ghost in the shell: Stand alone complex and maid saber. Saber really got hit with the ugly stick.

Prices ranged from £40 to couple of hundreds. The C.C was £55 iirc. You can check out their
website for some more of their offerings but be warned. The photos on the site are far from flattering, in fact, they’re more likely to scare customers off rather than sell the item!!! Given the quoted prices, I think it’s safe to assume that the kits are also all recasts and not the genuine article. My C.C cost more just to obtain the uncomplete kit!

But that leaves me with the question to ask you dear readers, How much would you be willing to pay for a (decently painted) resin kit? And would you buy one from these guys?

I think everyone who has seen the nadesico movie have the same opinion of it. (it was pretty poo) but there were some good points. Personally, I liked the Astromeras which was seen very close to the end at the “concert” but the main mecha was, without a doubt, the black Sarena. Piloted by everyones favourite cook Akito Tenkawa (oh wait, was that a spoiler?).

This model was released in March and is part of the Soul Of Chogokin line. Normally, the SoC line deals mostly with super robots but they created a special line for the “real” robots called the SPEC line. Currently, it’s dominated by the Evangelion mecha but they also have Dragonar Unit 1 and SPT Layzner in the lineup as well.

The black sarena is the latest release in the line which offers the same attention to detail and die cast construction one expects from the main Soul of Chogokin line. So how does it fare?

The main selling point of the black sarena is that it allows you to create all 3 forms seen in the movie (and various Super robot wars games), the high mobility mode, The standard combat mode and the “armour off” basic aestavales.

High mobility mode it pretty plain, but then you kind of expect that, since it’s basically a fighter jet. Even in the Super robot wars games, this mode only had 2 attacks, machine guns and “Crash into the opponent”.

The purple parts which make up the main high mobility mode snap together and wrap around the main unit so it’s very easy to switch between the 2, aside from the fact that the 2 modes require different attachments to the base…

Without a doubt, most of the work was on the main black sarena mode. Makes sense, since this is the mode which is the most well known and the most used in the movie.

In total, there are 11 parts which cover up the main aestavales.

Detailing is pretty impressive, with lots of little details and markings around the armour, esp on the shoulders.

One rather annoying thing is that they attached the tail piece permanently to the back, which makes it troublesome to place the black sarena correctly for the high mobility mode, since you need to feed the tail in so it doesn’t get in the way.

Once you remove all the armour parts (which come off quite easily but hold very well when inserted properly), we are left with the trademark pink aestavales for Akito.

Most of the metal parts are in the aestevales and it shows, the thing is really heavy compared to it’s size. Shame that the articulation is pretty poor. Not as bad as the Kotobukiya SRW models but still not good.

The box came with several different hands, one with the guards down so you could do a gekigan flare!!

Also, as an added bonus, they gave an extra head to simulate the last scene in the movie, where oil was collecting in the aestavales eyes and gave the impression that it was crying

But the main question is “is it any good?”

And I would have to say, not really. One thing which may not have come across in this review is the severely limited things you can do with this model. The high mobility mode has no articulation at all, and the main black sarena only really allows you to move the arms slightly.

That isn’t a knock on the work of the manufacturer, far from it. The model itself is really well made and captures the mecha 100% accurately, but that’s the problem!

The black Sarena doesn’t really do much in terms of movement anyway. Having used it in 3 super robot wars games (SRW R, W and MX) I can tell you that it’s animations were very dull, and even in ACE3, the unit moved like a brick! So the problem isn’t so much the model, but the source material.

Still looks very nice tho, and it built very well but not really worth the price tag on it, IMO.