Tentacle Armada

With the exception of a brief moment of weakness during the recent Star Trek Online beta test, I’ve been MMO free since kicking the Warcraft habit a year and a half ago. I don’t miss the games at all, but I still like looking at the character designs that populate the various games in the genre. Apparently E2046 does as well, as they’ve turned time and again to MMOs for inspiration, and so here we have Zabrina, their latest figure.
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I own a lot of perverted figures and I’ve staked out a niche in the figure reviewing community as someone who likes perverted figures, but this figure might be the most perverted one I own. I wasn’t sure if I was depraved enough to buy this figure, and judging by the dearth of reviews, I suppose not too many other people were, either. With time running out in Amiami’s half-price shipping promotion, I finally caved in and tossed her in the shopping basket. Of course, Amiami extended the discount for an entire month the next day. That’s the way life goes, I guess.
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So I wanted to buy this porno manga. The first place I checked was Amazon JP but unfortunately they’ve labeled this item as adult and thus will not ship it overseas. Undaunted, I next hit up J-List, knowing that they have a selection of h-manga. Unfortunately, this isn’t one of them. I looked up Sasuga Books but they didn’t have it either. Then I found out about Rakuten, saw that they had it, and was delighted to find out that they ship internationally. Delight turned to dismay as I found out that this isn’t one of the items that they’ll ship internationally, but they did provide a link to Tenso along with a recommendation to use them for items that can’t be shipped outside of Japan.
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It’s been a while since I did one of these, so here’s a few wallpapers for anyone who likes to decorate his or her computer with pictures of cute plastic anime girls.

Narika

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KOS-MOS

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Dizzy

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Yoko Ritona

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Metatron

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Rei Ayanami

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Kureha Touka

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Seena Kanon

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Sora Kasugano

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Over the past few years, I’d given thought to starting up a figure blog, but when I actually kicked it off, I figured that the most likely result would be that I’d have gotten bored after a couple of months and called off the entire enterprise. A year later, I’ve somehow kept up with it and nobody is more surprised that this thing is still going than me.
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Having become intrigued by Keumaya’s figure lineup, I put in a bid for Violet on Yahoo! Japan Auctions only to lose out in the last hour. Undaunted, I run a search on eBay and Violet shows up the next day. After a very brief moment of hesitation, I punch in a bid value and put the mouse cursor over “Place Bid” and then …

COMMON SENSE: Hey man.
ME: Oh for the love of basketball, not you again. Don’t you got anything better to do?
CS: This is my job man, I’m here to stop you from doing stupid things. And I had this feeling that … wait, what’s that up on the monitor?
ME: This? This is Zanjibaru.
CS: No, not your porn game. Wait, that’s eBay! You’re buying another perverted girly figure again, aren’t you?!
ME: … Mebbe.
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The Ikki Tousen franchise is a licensing juggernaut, and with five Kanu Unchous in my collection, I am scarcely immune to its wiles. However, while the manga fields a bewilderingly large cast, for years my only non-Kanu figure was Griffon’s awful Ryofu Housen figure from way back. Now, with Daiki Kougyou’s Ryomou Shimei in my collection, that count increases to two.
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Curiously, figure manufacturers don’t often look to fighting games. I’m not sure why; fighting games are rife with awesome and awesome-looking characters. Okay, Iroha briefly achieved it-girl status and Mai Shiranui, Cammy, and Mina Majikina get figures every now and then, but there’s nothing from Tekken, nothing from The Last Blade, nothing from Virtua Fighter. Even the Dead or Alive, Soul Calibur, and The King of Fighters series – which feature some of the most iconic fighters in video games – are barely represented in the figure hobby. There are no scale figures of Helena or Lisa, Sophitia or Seung Mina, Kula Diamond or Mars People.

Above all of those, I’ve wanted a figure of Dizzy. She’s my favorite character in all of fighting games, but apart from Max Factory-produced figures of a Shunya Yamashita-inspired I-No and the transvestite Bridget, there seemed to be no inclination on the part of figure manufacturers to look at Guilty Gear X. But fortune works in strange ways, and thanks to the popularity of the Queen’s Blade series, there is now a figure of Dizzy, the Guilty Gear X character who was adapted into a Queen’s Gate book, which is itself an adaptation of the Queen’s Blade series, which is itself an adaptation of Scottsdale, Arizona-based (of all places) Flying Buffalo’s Lost Worlds game books. Strange ways indeed.
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While Western popular culture features a number of parallels to its Japanese counterpart, one aspect that does not have a corresponding analogue is doujin, the vast conglomeration of self-published comics, video games, music, and more. Doujin is such an integral part of both the culture and industry that such works can command influence and popularity far beyond their humble origins; for example, the Touhou Project started as a series of 2D shooting games but has since grown into a powerful franchise complete with its own fan-made doujin works, and its significance as a cultural phenomenon is probably greater than its importance as a video game.

When one thinks of doujin, one often thinks of comic books, and probably pornographic ones at that. Certainly fan-made comics are a huge part of this mass of culture worship – the attendance figures of Comiket are proof enough of that. However, doujin encompasses all forms of media, including figures. There are numerous fan-made figures, usually sold in very limited quantities as resin model kits. Preassembled figures, however, are quite rare; while it is not technically complicated to create a comic book or a music video, manufacturing a complete, painted figure seems to be beyond the means and ambitions of many creators.

However, there is one doujin circle that is known primarily for their PVC figures. Keumaya has been making their own figures since 2006 and selling them at conventions and on Toranoana. They’ve carved out a comfortable niche as an independent figure creator, which is quite impressive even without taking into account the quality of their products.
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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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