As I mentioned in my tweets, I had recently gotten my hands on some pre-ordered items, specifically Nendoroid Sebastian Michaelis and Nendoroid Saber Lily. I got Sebastian because I wanted a butler for my office desk. He’ll be in charge of making sure stuff’s clean and everything on my desk is well-organized. But of course, he will have to deal with Gloomy first. Continue Reading

Yes, I can hear the Nanoha fans jumping with glee. They’re so happy that they can still own a Subaru Nakajima action figure despite not being able to afford the ActSta version. For fuck’s sake, Max Factory, will you please roll out figmas from some other series?! Do you not have enough money to deal with other animation studios and purchase permits to create action figures from their line of characters? I am honestly sick and tired of seeing another Nanoha figma release and I’m not even a figma collector!

On a different note, we see the Tsumugi Nendoroid master on Mikatan’s blog. Although I never watched the series, I did read some of the manga. It’s primarily Mio Akiyama fanservice, from my perspective, really. But I did pre-order all the Nendoroids from this line simply because I wanted the band setup. That one was awesome and it would be interesting to have my other Nendoroids use the band instruments.

Also, a couple of pics of Sebastian and Saber Lily on my office desk soon. I’ve yet to find time to think about what shenanigans they should be up to. Maybe have the mini Kyoukas, Sebastian and Gloomy have an encounter.

I got a nice surprise from HR when I arrived in my office yesterday. There was a small token that was being given out to those who had been with the company for 4 years and we were to go pick it up from the HR office. Continue Reading

This definitely made my Friday. Probably one of my most looked-forward-to Nendoroids, Nendoroid Drossel is absolutely charming. But above all the hubbub about Drossel and gripe about how mainstream she’s become, I pre-ordered this Nendoroid for the primary reason that she is the first Nendoroid to have light-up parts – specifically her eyes. And the neat thing about this appears to be that the batteries are built-in (so don’t leave her on the shelf for too long or they’ll leak). If you skedaddle over to Mikatan’s blog, you’ll see more photos of Nendoroid Drossel. These photos are the actual merchandise and no longer just the master model so expect her to look like this when she arrives at your doorstep.

I was actually thinking of making mine USB-powered so that she’ll sit at my desk glaring at me with her large blue eyes while I work.

She comes with the parts that you also get when you buy her figma iteration like the visor/headpiece that she wears when she does capoeira or her rocket ears.

GSC seems to be fiddling around with more varied design stands. Mio had the neko stand while Drossel comes with a clamp stand (one that’s far better than the clamp stand that was supplied with Nendoroid Yoko – that one was an utter failure if you ask me) and a peg that has a Nendoroid joint. I think this is for more dynamic poses when she has her rocket ears on.

So didja get one? Didja? Didja?

In more Nendoroid news, Nendo Saber Lily and my Office Desk Butler, Sebastian, should arrive next week. Pics when I get them~!

I read a good number of webcomics on a daily basis and one of the sites that I religiously follow is Least I Could Do by Sohmer and DeSouza. I like their humor a lot.

Recently, I saw them post an article about getting booted from DragonCon. I don’t live in the US so I have no idea how popular DragonCon actually is but I feel really bad that the LICD people were treated so badly and still got booted from DragonCon. I can talk about how messed up and wrong this whole scenario is but I’ll let you guys just read what the LICD people had to say about this:

Tue Dec 8, 2009 05:06 from Least I Could Do by sohmer@leasticoulddo.com

My mood is less than pleased right now, and I’m going to tell you why.

To start things off, Lar and I will NOT be attending DragonCon in Atlanta this coming summer. In order to understand that, we must go back to a time and place…say, around September of this year.

This was our second year in Atlanta, and it was one of the shows we were most looking forward to. There’s just something about the atmosphere of this show that’s so casual, that you really get a chance to hang out with a great deal of wonderful people.

As last year was so successful for us, we paid for a larger booth this year and intended to do some fun & unusual things with the space. Upon getting to the show, however, someone had setup in our space. Confused, we asked the hall attendants what was going on, and were rudely informed that our booth had been moved.

When I inquired as to where, I was shown the furthest and poorly lit section of the room, with a giant pillar intersecting the middle of the booth. I then proceeded to tell the attendants that this was unacceptable, not only because of the move but because of the new location.

Despite the fact that I had announced where we were setup weeks leading up to the show, I would’ve been fine if we were moved to a location similar to the one we lost. But this was unacceptable.

The attendants, once again, were rude and told our crew that we could take the new spot or we could go home. This wasn’t their problem. Still calm and polite, I asked if there was someone else we could speak to, because we did not deserve to be spoken to like that.

A couple hours later, we sat on the carpet waiting, a minor functionary came downstairs and repeated what the attendants had told us. Again, I asked if there was anyone else I could talk to.

An hour later, one of the board members of the show came down to talk with us.

He apologized for the situation, note that this was the first apology we had received thus far, and inquired what could to be done to make things right. In the end, he generously offered to repay us for the booth, but still allow us to use. It was a good solution, we shook hands and all was well.

At the end of the show, I again thanked him for taking care of the matter, and we signed up for the next show gladly.

Usually how this works, is at the end of a show, you sign for the next one, and a few weeks later you receive an invoice. A month passed, and we had yet to receive a single thing.

Wanting to make sure everything was fine, Randy began calling them. For 6 weeks Randy called, at least 3 times per week leaving messages for everyone. No one called us back.

Finally, we reached someone, and were told that we were not invited back to DragonCon because of the incident. I was and still am shocked.

We are not allowed to exhibit because their staff was verbally abusive towards us, including profanity. We are not allowed because they moved our location without any warning or apology. We are not allowed because DragonCon shoved us in the dark corner of the show.

Let me be clear. Never did I, or any of my staff, raise their voice or even mutter a ‘shite’ under their breath. That’s not how we behave.

I don’t understand this decision, and no one was inclined to explain it to me, only referring to the ‘incident’.

I am saddened by this, but more so that we won’t be able to hang out with the folks who came out to Atlanta to see us. I felt you were owed an explanation, and there it is. We hope to be able to find a show nearby that we can attend.

As for DragonCon, I will do my best to ensure that this story gets out, so others don’t share our fate.

- Because I can.

Now how is that kind of treatment even remotely just and proper? If an event is being run by elitist douchebags, the attending such events is just supporting and propagating that kind of attitude within the community.

I feel really sorry for the LICD crew. They were badmouthed and mistreated and mislead by making them believe that everything was resolved.

For you guys out there. Don’t be like them douchebags running DragonCon. I do hope this story spreads.

I managed to stop by Greenhills this morning before heading to work. Since Pats had sent over the email informing subscribers that certain pre-orders have arrived, I figured I might as well check the shop out. Coffeebugg also asked me to inquire if they still had any floating Nendoroid Raspberyls that I could reserve for him.

Well, they didn’t. Continue Reading

Mikatan just recently uploaded pics of the just-released Subaru Nakajim actsta action figure. It was nice. The quality of the build seems to be quite close to the master itself (the images in her blog are supposedly from an actual box from the shelves). But I’m not a Nanoha fan. I watched the series but didn’t go so far as to buy the merchandise. Coffeebugg got the Nanoha figmas because that’s what he did: collect figmas. But I was not enticed by the series to go so far as to buy the merch.

When I did see the ActSta series get launched with Subaru Nakajima being the first to get the ActSta treatment, I was really interested in the series considering I have moved from originally building gunpla (which I still do whenever I manage to find time), to collecting action figures. And with the ActSta series, it was interesting to see figurine-sized action figures with the same paint and design quality. Subaru Nakajima was an interesting first-release for ActSta because it allowed for a lot of dynamic poses that she had done in the series itself. But with the deluge of Nanoha action figures in the figma line, I was much more in the mood for a different series to be released for the ActSta line. Bakemonogatari puchi Nendoroids were nice and  I appreciated the interchangeable parts that they added into the set considering they’re Puchi Nendoroids which are most of the time “as-is”. So that was a breath of fresh air for that line. But to release another Nanoha character for a toy line that takes too long to release the next toy, doesn’t really make me feel any fonder of the toy line or the series itself.

Aisaka Taiga or Senjougahara Hitagi ActSta might have been more interesting.

Coffeebugg got a notice from the post office near our building that a package had arrived. He went off to pick it up earlier this afternoon then dropped it off at my desk.

As figma Drossel looked on, I removed the item inside the package that I had been waiting to acquire for the longest time. Now I know a lot of people got theirs many moons ago. I only managed to set aside cash to get one recently and thankfully there was a trusted eBay seller who was still selling this baby so I willingly parted with a good amount of money to have this shipped over to the Philippines. Continue Reading

I didn’t think it was possible until last Saturday evening when I was at an early Christmas dinner organized by my friend, Emrys. One of our friends, Cero/Zero (cue in Bleach reference), was having a field day showing off his origami skills and made a paper crane that was small enough to fit a figma hand. I thought it was neat so I decided to take a picture of it being held by Drossel. Of course, he just had to go and make a paper hat for Drossel as well.

This is the next sentai that will air after Samurai Sentai Shinkenger. It’s been quite some time since we last had a sentai series where the helmet designs had lips.

Looking at their uniforms, it’s like five Zeon soldiers were given a specific color each and turned into a sentai team. But I AM interested in the design as well as the actual concept of the series. No green character this time around and the black ranger makes a reappearance (Shinkenger has a green ranger). Looking at their weapons, the blue ranger gets a bow-type weapon like in Shinkenger. Also, they all appear to have similar shield-like devices that transform into their unique weapons. The guns have that steampunk look to it.