Just a ‘lil update… currently working on a lala review.  One of my lamps is on the fritz so I had to improvise with another from the living room.  Unfortunately I kind of have to hold it to get the results I want, which is annoying.  But on the other hand, it’s neat to experiment and vary/customize the conditions for each shot.

Wish I didn’t get the glare in her eye in the shot below.  Otherwise kinda like how it turned out.

Went to jtown for ramen and manga for the first time in over a month.  Man, how I missed the ramen.  Finished every last drop.

Was disappointed that kinokuniya didn’t have k-on! …really wanted to start reading orz . Will have to wait for my order to come in.  They were also missing the first volume of saki… figured I’d give it a try since I was watching the anime…

Despite their lack of stock, did end up with some gets:

kiss x sis 2 & 3, rosario & vampire 2 vol 3, haruhi 8, nanoha a’s 1 & nanoha strikers 2

Was kind of hoping that the art would be a step above the anime but alas, nothing special imo…

Ah well, can’t win ‘em all.

Would’ve picked up ikkitousen 15 but I couldn’t remember if I had bought it or not.  And I think I saw ToLoveる 13? Or was it 12?  Couldn’t remember how many of those I had either so held back.  I’m currently on volume 9 but that’s not gonna last me very long ^^;

Speaking of ToLoveる … service festival! (nsfw pics scans ahead!)

Haruna’s friends love groping oppai it seems.  Where were these girls when I was in school? -_-

haruna: kyaaaa!  yamete yo risa!! (stop it risa!) [sound effect: munyu munyu]

New characters are quick to be disrobed ^^;  If, when reading manga, you often think, “damn, I wish I could see her oppai,” then this is the manga for you.

Rito’s one of those annoying characters who gets all nervous/embarrassed all the time but at least you can always  count on him stumbling into oppai situations :P

Poor haruna.  Always seems to be on the wrong end of a tentacle.

yami-chan kawaiii~ now i’m glad i have both figures ^^;;;

Not even yami-chan is spared some oppai moments ^^;

yami: haa (ok…)

lala: tanoshimi da ne~ (can’t wait!)

haruna: sou ne (yeah)

sound effect: pasa…

lala: mada ka na~ yami-chan (yami-chan, are you done changing?)

rito: ima haitta bakari daro! (she just went in!!)

Alrighty, enough toloveる service shenanigans, back to the review i was working on ^^;

以上！

Was digging around the タユタマ (tayutama) game site and found they offered 1920×1200 wallpapers!

My current wallpaper ^^

You’ll want to head to the official page (that page should be sfw, but navigate the rest of the site at your own risk. *cough* character pages *cough*) for the original bitmaps, though if you can’t be bothered, you can click the image for a jpg.  Decided to browse some other visual novel sites for more wallpaper and wasn’t disappointed.

Sadly none of the other lumps of sugar game pages seemed to have anything and I ended up at UNiSONSHIFT’s product listing.  Not bad… pretty much all the games had 1600×1200 offerings.  (gonna be a mix of sfw and nsfw links probably, all visual novel games pages, so definitely even the sfw links are in danger of being nsfw ^^;… and as such, gonna stop bothering to label links from here down).  Click the links below and scroll down to find a bunch of 1600×1200 wallpapers for the corresponding game.

Alice Parade

ＡＬＩＣＥ♥ぱれーど

ChuxChuアイドル

ChuxChuアイドル

Flyable Heart

Flyable Heart

Unity Marriage

Unity Marriage... where's the figure for her? :P

ＷＡＧＡ魔々かぷりちお

If you're tired of Melissa, here's Emile Maybe

What do you look for in wallpaper?  I generally like… mmm… how to describe it?  Simple designs?  Pure?  err… minimalist?  Basically I want the art to be the focus… not any text or extraneous stuff… though with official wallpapers I’m a little more forgiving.  Speaking of simple, after watching haruhi, I really wanted a wallpaper of just the H with haruhi’s silhouette that appears in the ED… yet at the time I couldn’t find it anywhere.  In the end I took a screenshot, blew up the image and made my own:

The silhouette is a little rough ‘cuz I didn’t take the time I shoulda cleaning it up… but was good enough for me ^^;  Simple and elegant.  Had it on my work computers for awhile (lots of “what is H?” questions ^^;;).  Anyone know of an official version? ^^;

If you’re going on your own wallpaper hunt at the official game sites, simply look out for one the following words:

ダウンロード – だうんろうど – daunro-do – download
オマケ – おまけ – omake – freebie/bonus/extra
壁紙 – かべがみ – カベガミ – wallpaper

I’ve included both katakana and hiragana for completeness.  Or another good trick is to check the url of the link… they’ll often use an english name for the page (i.e. download.html).  Happy hunting ^^

In figures news, yami’s hand arrived!

Three cheers for Hobby Search!  Handled with the kind of professionalism I expect from a business.  In case such an unfortunately event happens to you, here’s how easy things are:

1. Open package and orz when you notice a part is missing.

2. Send an e-mail according to their FAQ guidelines.  If you check the FAQ link, you’ll be presented with a link to a “form” to fill out – basically just a link that opens up an e-mail with a specific subject line to alert them to your problem.  In my case I provided my name, order number, and some pictures of the item to illustrate the part was missing.

3.  They responded in a day or two saying that they were contacting their product representative and apologized for the inconvenience and late response (after my dealings with kid nemo, the 1 day turn around was blazing fast and I was actually surprised to hear from them so soon).

4. Got another mail the next day… they had the part and sent it out EMS shipping at no cost to me.  Exactly what I wanted.

In the end, just took 1 e-mail and 2 business days later, the part was mailed out.  Very easy, great service.

Love the blade.  So sexay.  ^^  Couple more chapters and I’ll be wrapping up ToLoveる volume 4… I think yami makes her debut in 5 ^_^

Once again… just wanna mention my rss reader queue is overflowing with 367 unread items… been busy lately and haven’t been able to make my rounds as often as I’d like ;_;

以上！

Wish I had more background choices… but in the meantime I guess it simplifies things when I’m trying to decide how to shoot ^^;  Woulda been really hard to see anything on black, so white was a no brainer (well, barring any sort of stylistic shoot ^^;)

For once there’s actually something intersting about the packaging pics.

Can you spot it?

Or rather… what’s missing?  orz

No blade arm!  Gaaaaaaaaack.  Currently awaiting Hobby Search to get a hold of their contact or what not to figure out what can be done.  Alas, I had fully intended to display her with that blade, but guess I have to wait ;_;

At least everything else seemed intact.

Yum.

Though… though I haven’t even gotten far enough into ToLoveる (neither anime nor manga) to see her… she was just one of those characters that demanded a purchase ^^;

Great pantsu pose :P

Just love how graceful she looks.

otto, pantsu shot again ^^;

And a nice cold expression to top things off.

Key points of the figure for me…

Speaking of pantsu…

You can see the results of bad white balance in my now blue background ^^;;  Ah well, sorry but I don’t put too much effort to perfect the low angle shots ^^;

White pantsu.  Futsuu. :P

Figure manufacturers sure are loving on the one legged poses… or maybe it’s just the figures I”m buying ^^;  I’m scared of the fast approaching summer…

Speaking of figures on one leg… discovered my lala had a broken peg in her foot ;_;  Decided to just super glue her to the base rather than risk her being unbalanced and be prone to leaning.

The alpha omega release was gonna be my only yami until my ordered was canceled on me.  Unable to find a store to order from, got this one out of desperation.

In the end I was able to get an order secured… couldn’t bring myself to cancel this one ^^;;

Mmm… everything is kind of simple… yet elegant and well executed.

Really wish I had that extra hand orz

Also absolutely love the way her hair flows around her.

Nicely adds to the dynamism of her pose ^^

Took a group shot… and totally forgot to add in sairenji ^^;;;;

I guess that shows where she ranks in my ToLoveる figure lineup ^^;  Too bad since I liked her a lot in the first couple volumes of manga I read…  But compared to other releases, she just doesn’t have as much oomph.

Great release, very solid in many aspects.  And with the blade arm she even gets that bonus appeal to peeps unfamiliar with her character by just looking badass :P (now if only I had mine orz)

Before closing out, thought I’d post a pic of my super ghetto review setup.

It’s amazing what you can do with the boxes figures are shipped in ^^;

Made up of…

1. Homemade diffuser from cardboard box and tracing paper
2. Reading lamp for overhead light
3. Halogen desk lamp for main light
4. Tons of boxes that my figures were shipped in to serve as a makeshift work surface and get my lamps to the right height, etc.
5. Some poster board for a background and reflector. (Alternately some black satin for the bg.  The satin is approximately 1mx2m and really expands the working area.  )

Now you know why my pics look as good/bad as they do ^^;  Shooting with a Canon Powershot S2 IS and a cheap $30 tripod.  I was hoping to get some full spectrum flourescent lights, but if I did I’d probably have to replace both lights else deal with white balance issues? You may have noticed in lotsa my pics that the bg isn’t quite white… I believe I need better light to fix that… or a gray bg that looks that way to begin with ^^;

Most of this is inspired by super rats lighting tutorial.

Always glad to hear any tips/suggestions anyone may have!  Also been wondering for awhile now where/how foobarbaz gets the bgs he uses… so much more interesting than just plain colors, yet not too over the top so as to distract you from the figure.

Well, that’s it!  As usual, to aid those left unsatiated by my review, here you are:

• foobarbaz – like gekisou haruhi, another rare 5 star rating!
• Exelica Meteor – can’t go wrong with James’ reviews ^^
• Animatic Figmation – haha looks like we’re on the same reviewing schedule ^^;
• Vision of Vixion – hot off the press!

以上！

Alter KOS-MOS, Alpha Omega konjiki no yami and Griffon’s sasara! Of the three, I’m especially relieved to get konjiki no yami, as my original pre-order was canceled on me. Thankfully she turned up at Hobby Search (sold out again almost instantly shortly thereafter ^^;) and now she’s here, taiyaki and all!

As I’ve probably mentioned elsewhere, I’m not much of a Xenosaga fan, but love the idea of KOS-MOS.  Thank goodness for re-releases!

Really had to get this version of konjiki no yami for the taiyaki ^_^

I remember when my collection was starting up I saw len-vesper‘s post at dannychoo.com for kotobukiya’s take on this figure. I commented how it seemed a little much for me – the maid + sukumizugi combo. Seven months later, here I am with Griffon’s version ^^;

All three gals look great, really happy with today’s lewt!

Hope to catch up on reviews during the break (heh, how many times have I said that before… ^^;;;)… right now I really need to pack.

About a week left for the contest, I’m excited to see how this turns out! ^_^

以上！