It’s time for dakimakura cover show and tell, and today’s pillowcase features a character that needs no introduction at all.
This particular dakimakura cover is made by the prolific dakimakura-making circle Evening Call. Both sides are drawn by an artist named pen, whom I’m not at all familiar with; I do not know whether the artist is male or female or even whether he or she has a webpage or Pixiv account. He or she has collaborated with Evening Call before; he or she drew the art for their Nagisa pillowcase, and has also contributed art for upcoming dakimakura covers of Hitagi Senjougahara and Rias Gremory.
Like many doujin-made pillowcases, this dakimakura cover measures 160 centimeters by 50 centimeters and is made of roica, a synthetic spandex fabric. Although it is fairly elastic, it feels thick, durable, and smooth. Conversely, I recently received Cospa’s dakimakura cover of Horizon Ariadust from Horizon on the Middle of Nowhere and it feels much thinner and lightweight, and the print quality isn’t anywhere close to the caliber of this dakimakura cover.
The construction of the pillowcase is high quality and so is the image. This pillowcase follows the front-view-clothed, front-view-unclothed motif, which I’m less fond of vis-Ã -vis the front-view-unclothed, back-view-unclothed arrangement. However, both images are so attractive and nicely-done that I don’t mind. The clothed side shows Rin in her usual outfit, albeit with her shirt more closely conforming to her body shape than usual. She also wears a rather shy expression, which is very appealing. She also shows off some of the trademarks of her character design, such as the command spell markings on her hand and of course, her bare upper thighs, the absolute territory that she has made so famous.
The reverse side shows Rin still wearing a shy expression and not much else. I love the artwork on this side though I have to admit, the position of her arms reminds me a bit of the Japanese good-luck cat statues you see in many Asian homes and businesses.
Her stockings are a bit torn up, adding a bit more drama and spice to the image.
And well, this is her crotch. Uncensored, of course. Not that that is ever guaranteed, when it comes to dakimakura covers – I got a whole bunch in the mail a few days back and one of them actually has mosaic censoring over the character’s genitalia. That revelation was quite unexpected and more than a bit confounding.
Rin’s dakimakura cover has no such issues, however, and I think it looks absolutely fantastic. Evening Call is probably my favorite dakimakura-making circle and they’ve made a great pillowcase here. Also, one of the cool things about them is that they are now apparently happy to accept orders from international customers. Unfortunately this largesse doesn’t extend to making available an English-language version of their website, but it doesn’t look too difficult to muddle through with machine translation. I haven’t yet tried ordering anything from them myself but their Milla Maxwell dakimakura cover looks great.
Great Dakimakura cover for sure, Rin really deserve more merchandise love than what she is getting. I think I came across this daki cover on some online site I think?
She doesn’t get nearly enough love. Or at least, she doesn’t get quite as much love as Saber does. Though admittedly, of all the Fate/stay night girls, I’d like to see Rider get more figures and pillowcases and dolls and stuff. Speaking of dollies, I wonder if Azone will do one of Rin?
Woah! such a lovely face expression, the whole illustration(s) looks high quality.
I like the crinkles on her shirt and her cute boobies on the other side (â´◡`â)
Mhh, the Rias Dakimakura isn’t bad either, a nice transparency effect.
There are more nice ones from Evening Call haha they even have literature girl, Saya and Dizzy quite alluring overall. Well, but I doubt that I’d buy something like that for myself for the time being. Anyway I hope you will keep showing us your Dakimakura purchases 😉
That’s the plan! I’ve got a bunch in the drawer; I probably should take some pictures of Tsugumi Aisaka, I really like Shikibu Fusataka’s art style. Even if it’s a bit similar to Tony Taka’s (or perhaps because of that).
Rias looks very nice, too. I’m quite tempted by that one, particularly since I’m enjoying High School DxD. Too bad it’s going to end before the other characters can be introduced, Zenovia is pretty cute.
Man, now I really regret missing out on this one. Even with the unfortunate clothed/nude arrangement, pen’s art is still fantastic. I didn’t notice the cat-statute modeling until you mentioned it, but now that I look at it, it’s really cute… is that strange? >_>
I know we’ve discussed this before, but Evening Call is definitely one of my favorite circles. The only circle I think I’d (sometimes) put above it would be Anko Koubou, but offering direct shipping to foreign fans builds a lot of goodwill. It’s interesting to note that there has been a debacle the last few months regarding the manufacturing companies of dakimakura covers.
From what I understand, Seiren suddenly decided they weren’t cool with the level of explicitness that some circles were going to; I’d seen different accounts on what exactly the problem was, and the way it translated was usually either “juice” or just detailed netherparts in general. This screwed Evening Call (and all other circles that used Seiren) which caused them to decide whether they wanted to censor their images a bit or go with another production facility. Evening Call went with Matsumoto, who produced a fabric called Matsumoto Spandex Lycra (essentially roika, and I’m pretty sure roika is just a Japanese phonetic way to sound out lycra), and it’s the material that this Rin actually uses if I’m not mistaken. I recently received their Kyouko and while I didn’t do a direct comparison to their previous covers, I’m fairly certain it feels almost exactly the same as Seiren roika.
Anyhow, there was recently a problem with Matsumoto that caused them to halt production entirely, which put Evening Call in a fairly interesting position. It’s a shame, because Matsumoto turned out to be a pretty good fabric and it kept costs down without the need for censorship. There was a news post on their site a few weeks ago that said they’d be switching back to Seiren for the time being, and I believe they had said that Seiren would allow them to keep their current images as they were (without censoring) but obviously any future work would need to meet their new guidelines. But it seems as if their newest cover will be made by P80, and you have a good range of options to choose from (SK Suede, Smooth Knit, Roika, Tricot.) The only downside to this is that the price for roika has increased a bit (to 13k), but I think it’s the best choice overall at least until Matsumoto starts up production again.
The material and print quality of circle covers are definitely higher quality than Cospa/other company covers, in general. I’ve always been pleased with the quality of Evening Call covers especially, and there are always lots of minor details that just make the cover special. I definitely want to buy that Milla if I’m able to; I really love TID’s work and she looks absolutely amazing.
On a dakimakura related note, it looks as if HOP/Ask are reselling quite a large selection of their goods on Toranoana. I’d really like to get the chunky K-On sheet and a few of their other products (I like the Nanoha and Vivio you have, and really like the Fate other than that horrendous censoring…)
http://www.toranoana.jp/mailorder/cit/pagekit/0000/00/04/000000049790/index.html
It’s interesting to note (if I’m not misinterpreting things) that I checked HOP’s site the other day, which led to me following them on Twitter. Shortly after I did so, they sent a message that, when translated, included both the words “foreigner” and “follower”. Couldn’t really interpret any meaning from it, but there was also the word “embarrassing”. I have no idea what was said and I doubt it was directed at me (they only had 10 followers total at this point), but it still made me quite curious.
I didn’t notice the paw pose at first either, though I think it mainly comes to mind since my parents have had one ever since I was in elementary school. I remember I wanted one but my mom wouldn’t give me one. She probably knew that I’d just break it somehow.
Yeah, I remember that manufacturing issue, and I wonder if that might’ve affected HOP’s Fate pillowcase. Though I think Fate’s release preceded that problem. It’s unfortunate that their new supplier has had an issue; hopefully it’s not a big problem for them.
The pronunciation does seem very similar to “lycra,” and I wouldn’t be too surprised if that’s where the name is derived from. The company that makes it does have it trademarked as roica though, and apparently that’s the name it’s gone by since 1980.
That’s pretty hilarious; I wonder what they were saying? It appears the HOP person also asked whether it’s safe for foreigners to buy dakimakura covers, because of concerns of customs people finding loli pillowcases.
Is it wrong if I say I prefer the clothed side than the un-clothed side? Not that there’s anything wrong with the latter. I just find the front side leaves more to the imagination.
I’m quite impressed at your dakimakura photos, the lighting, angle, quality looks like an actual scan rather than a photo.
I think I’ve asked you this before, but I can’t remember, but how many actual pillows do you have? Which covers do you keep “stuffed” or do you go through some sort of rotation process? =P
Nah, not wrong at all; Rin’s costume is so iconic that seeing her without it looks a bit odd, maybe even off-putting. I think it’s not too surprising that her Fate/extra counterpart’s costume was hardly changed.
I thought that photographing pillowcases would be pretty easy, but it’s actually a cosmic pain in the ass for me; I’ve found it really difficult to get adequate lighting and a correct white balance. A lot of my older dakimakura posts have a very warm tint because the white balance was off. But I learned how to set a custom white balance on my camera just last week XD (I am smart! I learned how to rip DVDs just a couple weeks ago, too.)
I only have one pillowcase, and I rotate covers on them. I have Rin on it right now, and I had Dizzy on it before. The rest of the pillowcases rest comfortably in drawers.
She’s surprised that I’m surprised!
She is ecstasy for my eyes! Great find Tier! b^.^d DOUBLE THUMBS UP!
She is! It’s a great pillowcase, probably one of my favorites in my collection.
On the clothed side, her left breast is oddly egg-shaped. Implant malfunction? Without the clothes, everything is fine though. It’s also pleasant to see a nice cameltoe for a change (As opposed to those – how did you put it? – “anatomy lessons”). Don’t get me wrong, I tolerate any level of explicitness, but I also appreciate the sheer beauty of the female body without exploring every orifice in depth, so to speak…
Her arms seem to be in a natural enough position to me. I’m not aware of the mentioned statues, so I don’t get any sublime messages.
I can imagine you unpacking your dakimakura parcel, unfolding the stuff and going “WHAT THE ….?????!!!!!!!! It must have been a major letdown. Is there any chance to return that thing? What will they think of next? Printing “Sample” across the goodies? Hey, I’ve got an idea: Review it and show the world what pussies they are.
Yeah, it’s sort of oddly-formed; I like to think maybe someone is using magic on her. I figure Fate/stay night is about magicians and spellcasting and penis-shaped larvae so it’s a plausible explanation.
Yeah, her arms are in a natural position, I think; the look just struck me as humorous since I’m sure it wasn’t intentional. The shocked look on her face makes for a humorous contrast to the typically calm look a lot of those cat statues have.
It was pretty disappointing, though it’s not hugely noticeable unless you’re getting your nose right near it, so to speak. Still though, it came as a rude surprise as I’d never seen mosaic censoring on a pillowcase before; it seems a lot more common to simply smooth over the crotch like a Barbie doll if the maker wants to censor the image (I greatly dislike that mode of censoring as well). The funny thing is that I’ve got three pillowcases by the artist and the circle, and it’s the only one that has censoring; the other two are quite explicit. Really weird.
Honestly, the only dakimakura cover censoring I’ve experienced myself has been on covers that were officially released by their company. I have two that there definitely should be something there and they went the Barbie route (along with many others where the area is obscured by hair/clothing/etc) and one that has mosaic censoring. All of the source material is eroge and they were released by the company.
Mosaic/Barbie doll censoring on circle covers is just plain weird. You would think that if they were going to censor that they’d just have the image be slightly tamer. I really like HOP’s work but actually don’t own too many of their covers; I think I may have two. Neither are censored, but I have a friend who has another one of their covers and it has a slight bit of mosaic censoring; not as bad as the Fate, but definitely noticeable up close.
I really like this case. To be honest I knew nothing about Rin Tohsaka until I purchased Fate/Stay Extra on PSP for my wife. I saw that Fate the Fact booklet that came with the limited edition (with her on the cover) and decided it had to be in the house. I like the front, especially with that watercolor type look that it is designed with. I also love the back, but feel that it is missing something. To me she seems so plain, like maybe her skirt should be on but pulled up, or maybe have some type of cross necklace (like the emblem on her top), or have one of the stockings off. Then again maybe it just needs her shirt laying on the bed somewhere. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this dakimakura though. I think the only thing that really looks off is her right wrist which looks like it was photoshopped on (slightly askew) from the pics. I know it probably doesn’t look like that in real life, but it looks weird to me.
I don’t know if that circle ever does follow-ups but I would love to see this:
A side: Her front. Shirt pulled up or ripped to expose breasts, skirt lifted and bottoms pulled down. Same pose even with stockings on.
B side: Her back side. Fully nude of course with clothes on the bed. I am not a fan of them twisting to expose their breasts from the side (usually they appear to get much larger than other angles), but think it would be fine.
I don’t know how rare this is but I may have to think about picking it up because I like it that much.
Fate/extra was sort of a terrible game in terms of gameplay but I enjoyed it a lot; the repetitiveness of the dungeon running didn’t bother me and I liked the characters. Rin was pretty hot, too; I’ve been hoping someone would make a figure using her Fate/extra design, particularly of her “true” form.
I can think of some additions that could give the back side a bit more stuff to look at XD In the interest of staying classy I will refrain from listing them, though.
I don’t think they do follow-ups, though both of those ideas are pretty good and I’d definitely love it if someone would incorporate those ideas in their pillowcases. Perhaps with Fate/zero resuming soon more makers will chuck out pillowcases of Rin (though hopefully not in her loli form).
It may be fairly rare, though I am not certain of that; I think these pillowcases are typically made to order, though they pop up on Yahoo Japan Auctions from time to time.
There were one or two copies available on YJA last I checked, in the 16-18k yen range. Quite a bit higher than the 12k retail, unfortunately, but that’s usually how these things go. It’s also unfortunate because Evening Call still had some stock up until two or three days ago; I was going to pick it up myself if it was still available a few weeks down the line, as they had some leftovers in stock, but it sold out.
Pretty sure it’s still not possible for foreigners to order from Evening Call’s website, I have an account, and their payment methods are only by bank deposit.
They never updated their FAQ page, but it definitely is possible. Put the items you want in your cart and at checkout there’s a spot for a note, just include something along the lines of “I’d like to pay with Paypal” and submit the order. You’ll get an email when they’ve responded to the request, log into your account, click the order number and you should see a message from them asking you to confirm the grand total (since shipping isn’t the uniform 500 yen per item.) After you’ve confirmed the total amount, they’ll send you a payment link, you can pay, and then they’ll confirm it on the comment page again.
http://sadpanda.us/images/894493-OVY6XKS.jpg
Okay – for some reason, I can’t comment on this blog with my website linked?
Anyway, I made an order. I have a Japanese address registered with eveningcall, but I left a comment saying (in both English and Japanese) that I would like to purchase this through PayPal (just like you did), and that I live overseas. Hopefully they won’t be confused by the domestic address, but I couldn’t figure out how to add my physical address without it returning an error. I’ve already pre-written a response explaining that it’s not my real address, although sending to it would be fine (just more expensive on my part).
Were you able to add your own address to your account?
Yeah, I was, but I ran into a similar error myself. In my case, I think it was due to hitting a character limit of some sort. If it was the same case for you, I don’t really know what you can do to resolve the issue. I kept getting the error when trying to type my country as “United States” but was able to put my address down just fine when I switched to “USA.”
Are they usually slow to reply? They said they could ship overseas on the 2nd, I told them my address, and on the 4th I asked what their PayPal address was and for the total amount, as I hadn’t heard back from them. it’s now the 7th and I’m still waiting…
I only have the one order in myself, and you can see by the time stamps that everything took place fairly quickly. As far as I know, I was only the second foreigner to place an order and the first to pay, so that could be by the whole process was so speedy. I know at least 4-5 other people who have ordered since then, but I don’t know how all of their progress is going.
One guy is about to get his stuff shipped out, and he was the first to order. Another guy I talk to was asking me similar questions about speed, since he hadn’t received an email after a week or so of waiting to pay. I think he finally added another message and they sent him a payment link.
As a bit of an update to this, I hadn’t realized there were two buttons on the order history page. The page where it lists your order, and then has your name, the order total, and a few other boxes. My payment status was listed as unbilled on a translation, but there were two links on the right that I mistook as one. I thought it was to cancel the order, but I just double checked and realized that they were separate links; the top notifying the admin that I had paid and the bottom to cancel. I clicked the top and now my order is listed as paid.
Oh~! An absolute must have! Rin is just too cute and sexy! Where did you find one of these?
It was available from Evening Call’s website (as well as the usual consignment shops for a slightly higher price.) I don’t know about the consignment shops, but Evening Call currently doesn’t have it in stock.
You can view their website here: http://www.eveningcall.net/
If you really want it, it’s available on YJA for 16k bid: http://page2.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/b131146544
Ouch! And it’s not even New! I’ll try to look around, thanks for the info.
Ok seriously, Sashin or Tier… what the hell is a “phonetic last name” and “phonetic name” on about?
Are we really going to have to get the phonetic spellings of our names just to register?
John Smith: j ah n s m IH th
… nice!
Mind you, google translate probably does suck a bit
It’s fairly accurate, but you can’t really apply the concept to English. One of them is name in Kanji the other Katakana (where the phonetic comes in.) Kanji names can usually be read in several different ways, so I’d assume it’s important to distinguish in how a name is pronounced. It doesn’t really apply to us foreigners, and you can just put your name in English for both.
Yeah, I’d guess they’re asking for names in kanji and hiragana; I’ve noticed that in character lists of games listed on Getchu, they always provide the names in kanji and hiragana so that players know how they are pronounced, just in case the kanji can be interpreted in multiple ways. Like me, my last name can be pronounced at least two ways in kanji (my dad told me that my great-grandfather changed the family name to the second pronunciation when he left Japan for Hawaii).
SO SEXY RIN FTW!
I really like the artwork on this one.
Question though, are the characters used in pillow covers officially licensed even though some feature nudity?
I’d break things up into three distinct categories myself:
Officially licensed goods: Things like Cospa covers and such; pretty much the things you’d find on AmiAmi or Hobby Search. The quality varies wildly, but the images are almost always on the tamer end, unless it’s from an eroge company.
Circle covers: These are not officially licensed. They’re similar to all the doujinshi and fan discs you see in Japan. They’re usually accepted as part of the culture, even though they technically violate copyright. These usually have free reign to be as explicit as they want, depending on the preferences of the circle/artist. I’ve heard of very few cases where the copyright holders have gone after circles; the only company I can think of off the top of my head that absolutely doesn’t allow doujin goods and such is Disney.
Bootlegs: Pretty self explanatory here. They simply steal both the images of the official and circle covers and sell them as their own. Quality is usually worse, as I’m assuming they rip the source images from online sites, and those can vary in quality. And their print quality/material quality can also vary wildly.
Small update, they’re reprinting this again: http://eveningcall.net/InformationDetail.aspx?NewsId=212
Seems Evening Call’s offering this reprint at 9800 yen to those of whom previously bought, because they’ve changed the material from Matsumoto Spandex to Pearl Roika, and the image resolution has been improved (?).
Do you use Twitter, Tier? Maybe contact them on their twitter (evening_call) if interested, they will write back in English.
Hmm, thanks for the heads-up; I saw that they were doing another run of Rin and assumed it was just a second opportunity who missed out the first time around. I wonder how much better the newer version is? I’ll have to look at the one I have and see what the printing quality looks like.
Yeah, I’m on Twitter; that’s a good suggestion, I don’t think I was dissatisfied with the first version of the pillowcase but I’m curious as to how much better this new one is. (I guess I’d also have to convince them that I do actually own the pillowcase, since I bought it through Yokatta and so it wouldn’t show up as a purchase on my own user account.)
Yeah, I plan on getting it this time since I missed it the other two times it was available. It still sucks that something happened with Matsumoto; Seiren is pretty good, but the 2-3 Matsumoto cases I have really impressed me. That and there was the whole issue with Seiren in the first place (still not sure what it was exactly) that led them to using Matsumoto for a few months.
You can definitely prove that you own a copy, which should hopefully be good enough to get it at the lower price. If not, you might be able to dig up the Yokatta invoice or have them mail on your behalf, but with the excellent service I’ve had from Evening Call up to this piont, I don’t think it would be a problem.
That’s promising; I might investigate that option, then.
Their Momohime dakimakura cover is looking really promising, too.
Yeah, can’t wait to see the finished product. I’ll probably be putting in some orders soon-ish, but the last few weeks I’ve just been trying to pay down some SMJ invoices. I’d really like to pick up Airi and some of the other items they’re currently offering, but I don’t think I’ll be doing any big orders, like I was able to do previously, anytime soon.
I strongly debated eating a late fee from SMJ to pick up some of the in stock covers they had; I really wanted Liliana, Hitagi, the blue-haired Pretty Cure chick, and possibly Rias. I wanted them in that order, and that’s about how they sold out. D:
I guess the “good” news is that I should be level 3 soon, and from the way I understand the bonus, I’ll have an extra 3 weeks to pay which would definitely be a helpful perk in my case.
I ordered the Carnelian one from the Stylus shop, the one that looks very much like her C81 pillowcase except with miko tabi socks rather than a schoolgirl outfit. I’m thinking about the Evening Call one with, uhh, Arcueid, or however you spell her name, since it looks pretty cute. I feel like I ought to know more about her background but as with everything that involves Type Moon, if I do get the pillowcase and write a post about it, I’m sure someone will come along very quickly to tell me all about the game.
I’ve ordered quite a bit from the Stylus shop as of late; really a shame that I wasn’t more patient with special orders, as I ended up doing all the wedding dress chick and the bondage loli in separate orders (loli bondage opened up the day after wedding dress chick.) I have mixed feeling about the new Carnelian cover. I love her art and it looks pretty good, but short hair is probably one of my biggest turn offs. Still, I’m debating it because I’m definitely ordering the cover I’ve come to name “Cowtits”, and since all of my previous orders with them have been so split, it feels like such a waste to order just the one cover.
Yeah, I like that one too. I think she’s from Tsukihime, but I’m not positive. I’ve heard it’s a good VN, if a bit dated but never got around to playing it. I know she’s also a playable character in Melty Blood, which I’ve wanted to try for some time.
Yeah, it looks great, but though I wouldn’t say short hair is necessarily a turn-off for me, I prefer long hair in almost every circumstance. The one I ordered was the second one down here; I guess both pillowcases have tabi socks.
The cowgirl one is definitely a memorable one. The breasts are a bit larger than I like … okay, a helluva lot larger than I like, but her outfit looks great. Wish there were more dakimakura covers with such. Speaking of which, I have to find some new outfits for my new doll.
I don’t know what it is for me – there are some cases where short hair/moderately short hair looks good, but the majority of the time I don’t care for it one bit. Yeah, as I was typing up my post I figured that’s the one you were referring to, though since they had just added the new Carnelian cover I figured it was worth mentioning. I almost ordered it myself when ordering the redhead, but instead opted for the tapestry since my orders have been a bit out of control as of late.
They’re absolutely larger than I like; hell, I usually prefer the flat side of things. I don’t know if it’s her outfit, her gigantic breasts, her facial expression, or a combination of everything, but the cover just speaks to me in a way that not many do. It’s one of those covers that I just have to buy.
New doll? 😮 I remember seriously considering buying one probably about a year ago, but never made the jump. And just recently I’ve had the urge to buy one again, as hard as it would be to juggle the two hobbies at once. I saw that Real Art Project’s store still has one up for preorder, and I really like the Myu (Miku) that Tokyo Doll offers. And of course the Yamato US store still has a few of their girls available, but I’m not sure if that’s the way I’d want to go.
Yeah, I’ve had some purchases like that – quite a few, actually, where I ought to not have liked a figure or some other hobby product that much, but there was something about it I couldn’t resist. Heck, probably all the Miku Hatsune figures I’ve bought or got preordered could fall in that category.
Yes, new doll! It’s an awesome doll. Though it has some problems in that her bust size is so large that I have almost nothing that will fit her. That is a problem indeed since her outfit does not match my other dolls’, at least thematically. I kinda like the sporty look she has with her leotard and a pair of sneakers, though.
Usually when I want something this badly it’s because it appeals to my tastes so well that I just can’t resist it; the perfect example of this would be one of the new Lilith covers. She’s not as naked as I’d like (though a skintight bodysuit is never bad), but she meets so many other fetishes I have: tan skin, purple hair, small boobies, twintails, etc.. Conversely, I don’t much care for blondes or big boobs (much less massive), but I just can’t resist Cowtits.
Looking good! I do remember seeing that picture on Twitter the other day, I think. Can’t wait to see what outfits you manage to acquire for her. As good as her current outfit looks, I know you’ll end up decking her out into something far naughtier if you can find it. 😀
Yes, that new doll looks promising. The tentacle stand is lurking in the background already… 😀
Indeed! It was kinda funny, I was looking for my little wireframe doll stand that I usually use for these shots and couldn’t find it. Then I was like, “Wait, I got that other doll stand that I paid way too much money for, I can just use that.”
>> Shashin
Curiously, that cover is an example of one of the things I dislike; I don’t really care for tan lines. I’m thinking of getting the pillowcase anyway, though, since I really like Yukikaze’s character design. I’m hoping they do one of Lily Ramses, too – though preferably not a pregnant one.
I am looking around for good outfits that she can wear; I’m wondering if maybe I ought to go one size up and look for Dollfie Dream clothes for her. I don’t have much knowledge regarding DD stuff but I know a few people who can point me in the right direction.
I feel like an idiot for asking, but how does ordering from Evening Call work? Is it like at Mandarake, where they process your order and expect payment after a few days before shipping, or is it more like amazon where you pay immediately, and then the order is processed and shipped?
Neither, in most cases. The majority of orders at Evening call are preorders; generally speaking, you’ll order an item, they’ll request payment, and then the items are set to ship about a month or so after the order’s end date. They do have a limited selection of in stock items, and the ordering process there would be putting the item in your cart, them requesting payment, you paying, and them shipping; in that case, it’s more similar to Mandarake. Both cases will have a payment deadline. If it’s a preorder, the deadline is usually a few days after the preorder period has closed. If it’s an order for an in stock item, I think the payment deadline is a week from the day you order it (assuming they bill you within that time, I’d imagine.)
Those are are the official guidelines on Evening Call’s website, but it isn’t built for foreign orders, really. It looks like the system is mostly automated for Japanese customers, but the process for foreigners requires a lot of hands on activity from the administrator of the site; this can lead to things being a bit slow at times.
Yep, as Shashin says, you pay in full up front and they ship the item out when it is available. It’s most like preordering an item through a proxy service. As he also says, Evening Call’s user registration system is not really geared toward foreigners, but they do take international orders and they are also fluent in English, which helps a lot.