This post contains an OCTOBEARPUS! You have been warned.
Continuing from my abruptly cut off last post, it's the rest of my summer toys! I know you're all just dying to see them.
Fall got off to something of a patchwork start here in Iowa. Some trees turned red right away, others settled on a sort of bland yellow, some stayed green, some were evergreens in the first place, etc. Generally, it looks like the Color Kids have been having a feud in the streets. (Indigo, Buddy Blue, and Shy Violet excepted, of course.)
You're gonna need a bigger rake.
This orange tree was spectacular.
On Friday, the sunset covered the entire western half of the sky with stripes of color. This was taken while waiting at an intersection on the way home.
Here's the sky after I'd parked my car in my garage. Is anyone else reminded of Jupiter?
Mike and Judy came over to carve pumpkins Friday night, and here are the results - a tropical beach scene, a masked moogle, and a pumpkin +1. You will a) never guess which one is mine and b) be absolutely shocked that this is the same couple who had Final Fantasy music playing at their wedding.
Lights out!
I realized after I carved it that not only did it look like the beach, but my pumpkin also looked a face. A tropical monster face with a touch of emo pathos. Talk about art.
Three pumpkins meant triple the pumpkin seeds, even if I did have to bag up a vaguely equitable share for Mike and Judy. Yum.
On Monday, I finally got my box that I had been waiting on for absolutely ever from Japan. Inside were my Clamp in 3D-Land boxes, Jinjuu Houretsuden 1-13 (gonna try and work on my Japanese! ...again), and my Junjo Romantica petit nendoroids. They were all in the same box because I bought them through a proxy, as two were from Yahoo Japan auctions and one a CharaAmi exclusive and they won't ship out of Japan.
The nendos I opened at work, on the basis that they were sort of work-related and also because they were destined from day one to join my ever-expanding desk display. Here we have Misaki, Suzuki-san, and Usagi, all looking cute and wearing their corresponding outfits. This lasted exactly as long as it took to take this picture.
(Oh, and in the background you can see a pink pen mixed in with my other pens. This was packaged in my big box, and I was squinting at the logo going "Hmm, it looks familiar. ro-ma-n-te-ka...? Oh, whatever." And then Judy looks at it to see if she can figure out the kanji and immediately points out it's the Junjo logo. Oh. Duh.)
The upshot of the Suzuki-san figure is that I now have a petit nendo-sized bear head. Blue-haired!Miku (whose real name I haven't bothered to learn because she's a fandom-created character and I have no interest in her but came with the set so she's on my desk anyway) is rather surprised by the new member of the audience.
Misaki joined Near, but was only able to hide for so long before getting dragged into the show.
See, "dragged"? Get it? ...Actually, wait, no, he's wearing Len's costume and Usagi ended up with Rin's. Whatever, I hope he knows how to play keytar.
You don't want to know how much these are going for on eBay, by the way. By all rights, I should probably have kept them sealed in the box and sold them next year for great profit, but where would the fun be in that?
OH DEAR GOD WHAT IS THAT I DON'T EVEN.
L's back, but not as you once knew him! Behold! L-Bear! (And his friends, casual!Light and Just-As-Planned Bear.)
Just-As-Planned Bear cracks me up quite unreasonably. Here he is casting judgment notebook jutsu on Sasuke.
The ever-expanding and mixed-up display.
The twins were already my favorite of the vocaloids, but how cute are they in casual clothes? Too cute, says I.
Greg wanted to know if Phillip had staged this because it looked like Roxas was about to shank Mickey. The very idea. Hmpf. (Really, it just turns out Roxas is really good at holding pushpins, so he is.)
Back at home, it was time for the MOMENT OF TRUTH!
The Yahoo listing for these specified seven blind boxes, with one already opened and containing Kazahaya. Now, normally each box comes with 10 blind boxes, and you're pretty much guaranteed to get two of each character to make up two complete sets of five. I was a little worried about if I might be missing anyone, since three boxes were missing and I had no way of knowing which ones those were, but figured at worst I'd only not get one character - assuming all of the blind boxes came from the same bigger box originally.
The first box opened revealed... Syaoran! Yay! (Again, you do not want to know what this two-inch tall piece of plastic is going for on eBay.)
My second box happened to be the opened box, and it did indeed contain Kazahaya. Yay! I now had the two figures I most wanted (so as to complete other sets). Things were looking good.
My third box was... Kazahaya! Hmm. Well, had to get a duplicate of something, right?
Uh oh.
Three Kazahayas? Obviously these did not all come from the same original box. What if... What if they were all Kazahaya? (Except for the already-opened Syaoran, of course.) If I got any more duplicates, I wouldn't have a complete set. :(
::drumroll::
.
.
.
Whew. The other three boxes contained Yuko, Chi, and Sakura, so I did indeed get one of each (plus two extra Kazahayas). Which means my Clamp in 3D-Land set is now officially complete! Hurrah!
Don't even dare mention the mail-away figures, Yoshiko.
In celebration, I have photographed every single one of the little figures, from sets 1-8. Enjoy as I show off my collection comprised of characters few of you will recognize!
Sadly, the Lorax probably doesn't approve of the display he's sitting on top of, but at least I haven't chopped down any Truffula trees lately, and I do recycle my chocolate wrappers.
The gaps are not because I do not have enough books to fill in those gaps (hooo-boy, do I have books) but because those series are currently on loan to my brother.
Card Captor Sakura. Syaoran's easily the best figure of set 1, he really is. So cute and detailed.
Clamp School Defenders Duklyon, the series that gets no love. Poor guys. I like them, even if Tokyopop did let their books go out of print before the license had even expired.
X. Sadly, Fuuma's started to have a little trouble balancing on his stand, so I usually lean his swirly feathers against the the books or Kamui for support.
RG Veda, which I should really finish sometime, depressing ending or no. Ashura's figure has one of the best likenesses in the set.
Angelic Layer. This is the only figure I didn't buy as part of a set, because when I bought set 2 I only got four out of five of the figures because that was all the guy at the convention booth had. Hikaru came from a LiveJournal seller, and her base got just a bit bent in the mail, so she's got a bit of cardboard tucked under to keep her balanced.
Tsubasa. Perhaps I've mentioned this series?
xxxHolic. Another unknown.
Yuko also has some troubles balancing because of all the different details that are on the base. I should be able to fix her with a little pressure and some very delicate application of heat if gravity doesn't do it for me first.
Legal Drug. Rikuo had been looking sad all by himself, so I'm really glad I finally got him Kazahaya to go with him. (I debated giving him the whole harem, but I'll be selling the other two so they're staying their plastic.)
Clover and Wish. You know, Suu and Kohaku could totally be friends if it weren't for... circumstances.
I assume these two are R!Syaoran and R!Sakura and C!Syaoran and C!Sakura were in the previous group shot.
This Sakura is actually the reason I didn't get set 1 way back in the day when it first came out. The preview photos of her looked a little off to me (even now, I think she kind of resembles a chipmunk), and I wasn't big on Chi, so I was like "Enh, I don't need any figures." This continued several times, and then suddenly it was "Ooh, I want figures! ...but now they are expensive."
And that is why I encourage people who think they want things to just pre-order them.
From left to right, Kobato, Miyuki-chan in Wonderland, and The Legend of Chun Hyang. I should probably actually read the Kobato manga now that the anime's over, but the first volume (aka those random one-shots they did for Newtype when it got serialized) wasn't all that exciting so I haven't gotten to it yet.
Magic Knight Rayearth, which I also need to finish.
Man of Many Faces and Suki. It's a little obvious as you get to the bottom bookshelf that all my favorites got eye-level places and my not-favorites didn't.
Clamp Campus Detectives.
Chobits. I actually did finish Chobits and liked it, but I'm a little disappointed in how Chi's iconic white outfit came out here. I think the problem is in the pose.
Tokyo Babylon. Too depressing, so it got tucked away in the corner. I should really move Subaru up by X or something, so he and Kamui can commiserate about what it's like to watch your world crumble in a flurry of feathers and blood, but then I wouldn't have all my figures in their appropriate sets by series.
...And that cheerful note finishes out the collection! Here's a last look with all of them haphazardly clumped on my card table.
I went with the revoltechs after all for Sengoku Basara, and they are currently doing battle where my One Piece manga volumes used to be. I'm still not as good at posing revoltechs as I'd like to be, but figure I'll get better at it. They're really too much fun not to.
Once I get my One Piece books back, I think Yukimura and Masamune will probably be getting into a sword/gun fight with Vash and Wolfwood here.
(Why are there mushrooms growing in the desert? Because nothing says "theming" quite like an oversized mushroom statue, that's why. It adds local color.)
Between two Anime Expos and one eBay auction, I picked up all but one of this Naruto set. Each one's a 3D representation of a well-known Naruto illustration, and they're really good. (Negi and dog-guy are off to the sides so you can't see them here, and I'm missing Kakashi but won't be going out of my way to get him.)
For whatever reason, each one comes with a card to display with the figure, so I've dutifully put them all up. I think they're also intended for photos and the like, and the Gaara and Negi ones can hold pens and little photo stickers respectively.
Just last week, I got my box of Kingdom Hearts 2 trading figures. I got the whole set plus an extra Sora, and lost no time assembling them and putting them up.
I really like the dynamic poses and the playing with perspective in this set, but that was just a bonus to what I considered the real draw: the fact that I actually like all of these characters. Usually, there's a character or two I don't really care about, but in this case? Well, I'm not Mickey's number-one fan, but Riku and Roxas in one set? Sign me up! (Which I did, obviously, because I bought them.)
Here's Mickey about to do something I'm surprised Disney approves of these days.
Namine, idly destroying Sora's personal identity.
Riku! Riding on a glider for some reason! Ah, who cares, I finally got a KHII Riku that didn't cost $129.
Roxas! Not only is he my favorite character, but they did a really good job on the base. This is about as artistic as blind boxes get, in my opinion. There's even a sunset on the back of the clock tower.
That wraps up my summer (and partial fall) of toy acquisitions!
Fall got off to something of a patchwork start here in Iowa. Some trees turned red right away, others settled on a sort of bland yellow, some stayed green, some were evergreens in the first place, etc. Generally, it looks like the Color Kids have been having a feud in the streets. (Indigo, Buddy Blue, and Shy Violet excepted, of course.)
You're gonna need a bigger rake.
This orange tree was spectacular.
On Friday, the sunset covered the entire western half of the sky with stripes of color. This was taken while waiting at an intersection on the way home.
Here's the sky after I'd parked my car in my garage. Is anyone else reminded of Jupiter?
Mike and Judy came over to carve pumpkins Friday night, and here are the results - a tropical beach scene, a masked moogle, and a pumpkin +1. You will a) never guess which one is mine and b) be absolutely shocked that this is the same couple who had Final Fantasy music playing at their wedding.
Lights out!
I realized after I carved it that not only did it look like the beach, but my pumpkin also looked a face. A tropical monster face with a touch of emo pathos. Talk about art.
Three pumpkins meant triple the pumpkin seeds, even if I did have to bag up a vaguely equitable share for Mike and Judy. Yum.
On Monday, I finally got my box that I had been waiting on for absolutely ever from Japan. Inside were my Clamp in 3D-Land boxes, Jinjuu Houretsuden 1-13 (gonna try and work on my Japanese! ...again), and my Junjo Romantica petit nendoroids. They were all in the same box because I bought them through a proxy, as two were from Yahoo Japan auctions and one a CharaAmi exclusive and they won't ship out of Japan.
The nendos I opened at work, on the basis that they were sort of work-related and also because they were destined from day one to join my ever-expanding desk display. Here we have Misaki, Suzuki-san, and Usagi, all looking cute and wearing their corresponding outfits. This lasted exactly as long as it took to take this picture.
(Oh, and in the background you can see a pink pen mixed in with my other pens. This was packaged in my big box, and I was squinting at the logo going "Hmm, it looks familiar. ro-ma-n-te-ka...? Oh, whatever." And then Judy looks at it to see if she can figure out the kanji and immediately points out it's the Junjo logo. Oh. Duh.)
The upshot of the Suzuki-san figure is that I now have a petit nendo-sized bear head. Blue-haired!Miku (whose real name I haven't bothered to learn because she's a fandom-created character and I have no interest in her but came with the set so she's on my desk anyway) is rather surprised by the new member of the audience.
Misaki joined Near, but was only able to hide for so long before getting dragged into the show.
See, "dragged"? Get it? ...Actually, wait, no, he's wearing Len's costume and Usagi ended up with Rin's. Whatever, I hope he knows how to play keytar.
You don't want to know how much these are going for on eBay, by the way. By all rights, I should probably have kept them sealed in the box and sold them next year for great profit, but where would the fun be in that?
OH DEAR GOD WHAT IS THAT I DON'T EVEN.
L's back, but not as you once knew him! Behold! L-Bear! (And his friends, casual!Light and Just-As-Planned Bear.)
Just-As-Planned Bear cracks me up quite unreasonably. Here he is casting judgment notebook jutsu on Sasuke.
The ever-expanding and mixed-up display.
The twins were already my favorite of the vocaloids, but how cute are they in casual clothes? Too cute, says I.
Greg wanted to know if Phillip had staged this because it looked like Roxas was about to shank Mickey. The very idea. Hmpf. (Really, it just turns out Roxas is really good at holding pushpins, so he is.)
Back at home, it was time for the MOMENT OF TRUTH!
The Yahoo listing for these specified seven blind boxes, with one already opened and containing Kazahaya. Now, normally each box comes with 10 blind boxes, and you're pretty much guaranteed to get two of each character to make up two complete sets of five. I was a little worried about if I might be missing anyone, since three boxes were missing and I had no way of knowing which ones those were, but figured at worst I'd only not get one character - assuming all of the blind boxes came from the same bigger box originally.
The first box opened revealed... Syaoran! Yay! (Again, you do not want to know what this two-inch tall piece of plastic is going for on eBay.)
My second box happened to be the opened box, and it did indeed contain Kazahaya. Yay! I now had the two figures I most wanted (so as to complete other sets). Things were looking good.
My third box was... Kazahaya! Hmm. Well, had to get a duplicate of something, right?
Uh oh.
Three Kazahayas? Obviously these did not all come from the same original box. What if... What if they were all Kazahaya? (Except for the already-opened Syaoran, of course.) If I got any more duplicates, I wouldn't have a complete set. :(
::drumroll::
.
.
.
Whew. The other three boxes contained Yuko, Chi, and Sakura, so I did indeed get one of each (plus two extra Kazahayas). Which means my Clamp in 3D-Land set is now officially complete! Hurrah!
Don't even dare mention the mail-away figures, Yoshiko.
In celebration, I have photographed every single one of the little figures, from sets 1-8. Enjoy as I show off my collection comprised of characters few of you will recognize!
Sadly, the Lorax probably doesn't approve of the display he's sitting on top of, but at least I haven't chopped down any Truffula trees lately, and I do recycle my chocolate wrappers.
The gaps are not because I do not have enough books to fill in those gaps (hooo-boy, do I have books) but because those series are currently on loan to my brother.
Card Captor Sakura. Syaoran's easily the best figure of set 1, he really is. So cute and detailed.
Clamp School Defenders Duklyon, the series that gets no love. Poor guys. I like them, even if Tokyopop did let their books go out of print before the license had even expired.
X. Sadly, Fuuma's started to have a little trouble balancing on his stand, so I usually lean his swirly feathers against the the books or Kamui for support.
RG Veda, which I should really finish sometime, depressing ending or no. Ashura's figure has one of the best likenesses in the set.
Angelic Layer. This is the only figure I didn't buy as part of a set, because when I bought set 2 I only got four out of five of the figures because that was all the guy at the convention booth had. Hikaru came from a LiveJournal seller, and her base got just a bit bent in the mail, so she's got a bit of cardboard tucked under to keep her balanced.
Tsubasa. Perhaps I've mentioned this series?
xxxHolic. Another unknown.
Yuko also has some troubles balancing because of all the different details that are on the base. I should be able to fix her with a little pressure and some very delicate application of heat if gravity doesn't do it for me first.
Legal Drug. Rikuo had been looking sad all by himself, so I'm really glad I finally got him Kazahaya to go with him. (I debated giving him the whole harem, but I'll be selling the other two so they're staying their plastic.)
Clover and Wish. You know, Suu and Kohaku could totally be friends if it weren't for... circumstances.
I assume these two are R!Syaoran and R!Sakura and C!Syaoran and C!Sakura were in the previous group shot.
This Sakura is actually the reason I didn't get set 1 way back in the day when it first came out. The preview photos of her looked a little off to me (even now, I think she kind of resembles a chipmunk), and I wasn't big on Chi, so I was like "Enh, I don't need any figures." This continued several times, and then suddenly it was "Ooh, I want figures! ...but now they are expensive."
And that is why I encourage people who think they want things to just pre-order them.
From left to right, Kobato, Miyuki-chan in Wonderland, and The Legend of Chun Hyang. I should probably actually read the Kobato manga now that the anime's over, but the first volume (aka those random one-shots they did for Newtype when it got serialized) wasn't all that exciting so I haven't gotten to it yet.
Magic Knight Rayearth, which I also need to finish.
Man of Many Faces and Suki. It's a little obvious as you get to the bottom bookshelf that all my favorites got eye-level places and my not-favorites didn't.
Clamp Campus Detectives.
Chobits. I actually did finish Chobits and liked it, but I'm a little disappointed in how Chi's iconic white outfit came out here. I think the problem is in the pose.
Tokyo Babylon. Too depressing, so it got tucked away in the corner. I should really move Subaru up by X or something, so he and Kamui can commiserate about what it's like to watch your world crumble in a flurry of feathers and blood, but then I wouldn't have all my figures in their appropriate sets by series.
...And that cheerful note finishes out the collection! Here's a last look with all of them haphazardly clumped on my card table.
I went with the revoltechs after all for Sengoku Basara, and they are currently doing battle where my One Piece manga volumes used to be. I'm still not as good at posing revoltechs as I'd like to be, but figure I'll get better at it. They're really too much fun not to.
Once I get my One Piece books back, I think Yukimura and Masamune will probably be getting into a sword/gun fight with Vash and Wolfwood here.
(Why are there mushrooms growing in the desert? Because nothing says "theming" quite like an oversized mushroom statue, that's why. It adds local color.)
Between two Anime Expos and one eBay auction, I picked up all but one of this Naruto set. Each one's a 3D representation of a well-known Naruto illustration, and they're really good. (Negi and dog-guy are off to the sides so you can't see them here, and I'm missing Kakashi but won't be going out of my way to get him.)
For whatever reason, each one comes with a card to display with the figure, so I've dutifully put them all up. I think they're also intended for photos and the like, and the Gaara and Negi ones can hold pens and little photo stickers respectively.
Just last week, I got my box of Kingdom Hearts 2 trading figures. I got the whole set plus an extra Sora, and lost no time assembling them and putting them up.
I really like the dynamic poses and the playing with perspective in this set, but that was just a bonus to what I considered the real draw: the fact that I actually like all of these characters. Usually, there's a character or two I don't really care about, but in this case? Well, I'm not Mickey's number-one fan, but Riku and Roxas in one set? Sign me up! (Which I did, obviously, because I bought them.)
Here's Mickey about to do something I'm surprised Disney approves of these days.
Namine, idly destroying Sora's personal identity.
Riku! Riding on a glider for some reason! Ah, who cares, I finally got a KHII Riku that didn't cost $129.
Roxas! Not only is he my favorite character, but they did a really good job on the base. This is about as artistic as blind boxes get, in my opinion. There's even a sunset on the back of the clock tower.
That wraps up my summer (and partial fall) of toy acquisitions!