Tentacle Armada

Cuteness isn’t something that I usually account for when I’m deciding which figures to buy. I much prefer sexy to cute, and many of the tropes associated with young, loli-type cuteness in anime – short stature, pigtails, an undeveloped rack – don’t really do much for me. Nonetheless, when MegaHouse announced that they were putting out a figure of Sora, I was captivated by the publicity shots, and I decided right away to put in a preorder.
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We are here today to take a look at a cultural icon, one of the most famous things in its field. Indeed, it is so ubiquitous that some might say that it is overused and overexposed. So without further ado, let’s go ahead and take a look at the Fender Jazz Bass.
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The battle bikini is one of the most stereotypical tropes in fantasy art but if you ask me, it doesn’t get nearly as much appreciation these days as it should. For example, when Sega resurrected the Golden Axe franchise, they did the right thing in selecting Tyris Flare as the heroine but then they revealed an appallingly lowbrow taste by giving her pants. To be fair, her famous battle bikini is unlockable, and since the game seems to have been quite awful I doubt anybody else cares, but the mere option of pants still demonstrates the disrespect this timeless battle uniform receives. Also, when Wrath of the Lich King was released, Blizzard inexplicably made all of the armor sets as puritanical as could be, despite having gone entirely the other way when they designed The Burning Crusade. Now, one could argue that a battle bikini might provide inadequate protection in a frozen wasteland, but I have my doubts that a heavy suit of full plate is any more practical for trudging about in the arctic. Furthermore, if realism were really the name of the game, all of the characters would be wearing fur coats and mukluks, as even a full-body cast iron tuxedo ain’t going to protect nobody when a hundred foot-long dragon decides to step on you.

Fortunately, the beauty, utility, and elegance of this piece of equipment is still apparent and to that end, we have here an homage to the battle bikini in the form of Wind Goddess Rafale. I don’t see anything here that validates her divinity, but I will take the manufacturer’s claim for what it is worth.
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This news is a couple of days old, but in case anybody hadn’t heard, Aksys Games is releasing the strategy RPG Record of Agarest War in the United States in April. This game’s gotten a lot of flak for being softcore porn, but from what I can tell, its suggestiveness is more along the lines of Ar Tonelico or Super Robot Wars OG Saga than Battle Raper. You wouldn’t be able to infer that from Aksys’s pack-ins for the limited edition of the game, though, since they’re throwing in an oppai mousepad and a pillowcase. The latter item unfortunately isn’t a full-sized dakimakura but it’s still looking pretty good.

Anyway, the Really Naughty Limited Edition is awesome but what caught my eye was something in Aksys’s announcement video. It features a white guy acting goofy with the goods and some porno-style music. Towards the end of the trailer, another white guy comes into the scene and you see this:

Pay no mind to the white guy or his funny face and look over to the left. See that? That’s KOS-MOS! The Aksys guy has a KOS-MOS figure! How awesome is that?

Record of Agarest War is scheduled to come out in late April, so Xbox 360 owners should go put in preorders for the Really Naughty Limited Edition right away. Unfortunately, it appears that PS3 owners are going to left in the cold in this respect, so I guess they’ll have to put in their orders whenever the game is available for download on Sony’s network or something. There’s more information about the game over on Ota desho.

One other Aksys note, they’re bringing over the Cave shmup Deathsmiles on the 360. I don’t know much about the game yet but I’m happy to see it make its way over to the US. I still have to spend some quality time with Mushihime-sama Futari, I bought it back in November but I haven’t played it for more than fifteen minutes yet (which is actually longer than I’ve played Dragon Age).

After playing through Sengoku Rance, I decided that I wanted more figures of characters from the game. I wound up getting Kenshin and Isoroku Yamamoto, and if Shikibu had a figure, I’d get that too. Sadly, she does not, and sadly, many other worthy characters from the game haven’t been so honored. Kotobukiya or Orchid Seed or someone should retool to make a figure of each female Sengoku Rance character; the world would be a better place for it.
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It’s been a while since I’ve written up a list of figures I’m interested in, so I figured I’d go ahead and take a look at some of the stuff I’m looking at. Pictures are shamelessly borrowed from Hobby Search which, despite their annoying removal of porno goods from their English website, is still a great place to buy things from.
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Back when I talked about Seena, I mentioned that the promo photos are sometimes misleading, that sometimes the actual figure looks better than what you expect.

The flip side of that, of course, is that sometimes the figure looks as bad as you expect. Or worse.
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As usual, laziness overrides my intentions and instead of Miku, we have here a figure of KOS-MOS from Bandai Namco’s Xenosaga III. I keep meaning to build a nice backdrop for Miku so that I can photograph her, but there’s about a billion reviews of Miku out there already and everyone knows what she looks like, anyway. KOS-MOS, however, is far too large to build a special background for, and besides, while Miku is nice and all, KOS-MOS is one helluva figure.
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My last figure review covered a figure that evoked mixed feelings, so I thought that for my next writeup, I’d look at a figure that everyone can agree is the very epitome of class, a figure that is, without a doubt, fun and appropriate for people of all ages.
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Backstage we’re having the time
Of our lives until somebody say
Forgive me if I seem out of line
Then she whipped out her gun and tried to blow me away!
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