Tentacle Armada

Here is yet another manifestation of Kanu Unchou, the preeminent poster girl of the Ikkitousen franchise. Some people – probably a lot of people, actually – would say that Kanu is ridiculously overrepresented and that the plastic used to manufacture Kanu figures could be better used elsewhere. Like on that Black Rock Shooter girl, for instance. I wouldn’t be among them, myself; I like Kanu, I’ve liked Kanu since she first appeared in Battle Vixens. I initially thought Hakufu and Kaku Bunwa were going to be the series’ main characters, so I’m quite happy that Kanu has received the love that she has. While there are about a billion figures of her out there, this version of Kan-san is a little bit different than the rest.
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We have here Iroha, another female combatant from a fighting game. Iroha has had a peculiarly enduring presence in the figure world considering her limited exposure in the Samurai Shodown series. Here we have the latest figure in her likeness, sculpted by diskvision and manufactured by Yamato as part of their SIF EX lineup.
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Hobby Link Japan had this free shipping dealy going on a couple weeks ago, and I took advantage of it to pick up Cammy. This version of Cammy comes from the Street Fighter Zero/Alpha games, as does my other Cammy. I like her Delta Red costume more, and it’s a bit curious that figure manufacturers seem to prefer depicting her in her Shadaloo uniform.
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Back to the backlog! This week has been filled with Kanu reviews and here we have another popular subject for figure manufacturers, Rei Ayanami, perhaps the superstar of the figure world. Rei’s legacy is as enduring and persisent as Brett Favre, and with at least two more figures up for preorder on Hobby Search as of the time of this writing, she is not going to go away anytime soon. This particular figure, set in 1/7 scale from Yamato, is inspired from a Shunya Yamashita drawing, and it’s been out for a while. I think I got this particular figure around a year ago, and a resin kit version has been around for even longer than that.
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The first computer I ever used was an Apple II+ clone. By today’s standards, it is prehistoric in performance, with a 1 MHz clock speed and 48 KB of system memory. The particular computer I had featured two full-height 5.25″ disk drives which emitted a particularly loud series of clicks when in operation (I found the noise peculiarly soothing). Its built-in BASIC interpreter was amusing, and I spent many hours playing games like The Bard’s Tale and Wasteland, but otherwise it wasn’t a very useful computer. Certainly it gave me no idea of what computers would allow people to do twenty years later. However, I loved that ancient machine. You remember first things fondly, and sentimentality always cloaks their limitations, deficiencies, and flaws.

Like my old computer, I think this Kanu Uncho figure is great, not because it’s a beautiful figure (it’s definitely not), but because it’s the first one I owned.
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