Year Twelve Retrospective

written on February 23, 2021 by Tier
The president on a horse

Tentacle Armada turns twelve years old today! Obviously there’s been the expected spate of non-posting which has unfortunately become the norm here, but aside from that, the past twelve months have obviously been more notable for a global pandemic unprecedented in the lives of everyone in the United States except perhaps some centenarians who lived through the 1918 flu outbreak. As I’ve mentioned before, the last year actually has been pretty good for me; I’m doing very well in my work, nobody that I know has been infected by COVID, and I’ve mostly weaned myself off of World of Warcraft, which I’ve had a love-hate relationship with for over a decade. The extra time has given me opportunities to indulge my most recent hobby, which is collecting and shopping for wristwatches. As far as games go, lately I’ve been playing Epic Seven and also some Azur Lane, though not nearly as much as I used to. It comes to mind that I don’t think I’ve ever reviewed a shipgirl figure from either Azur Lane or Kantai Collection here, which is a little strange given how dominant both franchises have been in the figure world for the last few years.
Continue reading →

Posted in Random Thoughts | Tagged , | 14 Comments

Cammy from Street Fighter Alpha (Bishoujo Alpha Costume Version)

written on February 21, 2021 by Tier
Cammy from Street Fighter Alpha

Today we’ll take a look at another leotard-wearing girl with an appearance in a fighting game – Cammy, quite possibly the reigning queen of them all. This figure is not new, having been released in March of 2018, but it’s a relatively recent pickup for me; I bought it during Kotobukiyua’s Memorial Day sale last year, partly due to a a moment of lockdown-induced ennui, but also because I’m a big fan of Cammy. I own a bunch of her figures, including her previous Bishoujo figure. I also have PCS’s Shadaloo Cammy and I’m expecting to receive PCS’s super-sized 1/3 scale Cammy soon. I don’t expect to review either statue, since they’re way too big for me to comfortably photograph and I don’t think there’s much interest here for statues meant for Western audiences; therefore, we’ll have to be content with looking at this figure.
Continue reading →

Posted in Figure Review | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

YoRHa No.2 Type B from Nier: Automata (Flare DX Version)

written on February 14, 2021 by Tier
2B figure

I’ve had this figure of Nier: Automata’s YoRHa No. 2 Type B – hereafter called 2B – for some time; since I’m not getting many figures in the mail these days due to the current moratorium on EMS shipments from Japan to the United States, and since this figure recently went up for preorder again, I figure it’s a good time to take a look at her. It’s something of a wonderment that this figure was released at all; I don’t recall that Square allows many of their properties to be adapted into figures, at least not by third-party manufacturers. That they allowed Yoshizawa Mitsumasa to do the design is even more odd, but we’ll get into that in a bit.
Continue reading →

Posted in Figure Review | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Preorder Outlook LXI

written on January 31, 2021 by Tier

It’s been a while since we’ve taken a look at the figures I’m contemplating ordering so let’s do that now. First though, a few notes: first, I’ve historically done a Five Favorite Figures of the Year at the end of the year (or early on in the following year) but I won’t be doing one for 2020 because something like half the figures I bought are either trapped in Japan or are in the mail or on cargo ships and are hopefully not lost. If anyone’s curious, I think the figures that would have made that list include Native’s Fairy Queen Elaine and Chloe (though I’ve actually not heard great things about Chloe, which is unfortunate and disconcerting). FREEing’s Rindo Kobayashi might have also made the list, though I feel a little reluctant to laud any of their bunnygirl figures too highly since many of them kinda look the same after a while.

Also, I hope 2020 wasn’t too terrible a year for anyone reading this though I expect that for many, it was a tough year to get through. For me, I’m a little sorry to say that 2020 was actually a really good year; I’m now in a good position to achieve a lot of the goals I dreamed of completing five or six years ago (and no, I didn’t get in on any of the recent GameStop madness). It feels heartless for me to say that since so many people lost so much but I’m hoping that better times are close at hand for all of us.
Continue reading →

Posted in Preorder Outlook | Tagged , | 16 Comments

Fairy Elf from Mu Origin 2

written on December 25, 2020 by Tier
Fairy Elf from Mu

Happy Christmas everybody. We’ve seen a few figures from massively-multiplayer online RPGs, primarily from the Lineage series, but today we’ll be looking at a figure from the Mu series. Mu Online was originally released in 2001, making it one of the first MMOs to be released after EverQuest, the defining game of the genre. Some years later, Webzen released the mobile games Mu Origin and Mu Origin 2. I’m not actually certain which game this character comes from; Japanese stores say Mu Online, American stores say Mu Origin, and the box simply says Mu. I’m inclined to think that she comes from Mu Origin 2 as her design matches some of the concept art, but being that I know virtually nothing of this series apart from having bought a few Mu comic books about fifteen years ago, it’s hard to tell for certain.

Speaking of MMOs, I’ve been playing World of Warcraft as my primary game for the last eight years but I think I’m close to throwing in the towel; Shadowlands isn’t really appealing to me and I’m not enthused by Blizzard’s current game design philosophies. These days, I’m mostly playing Epic Seven and I’m enjoying it quite a bit more than Warcraft.
Continue reading →

Posted in Figure Review | Tagged , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Jibril from No Game No Life (Bunny Version)

written on November 27, 2020 by Tier
Jibril from No Game No Life

Happy Black Friday to everybody. After far too long of a break, we’ll take a look at yet another bunnygirl. Truth be told, I don’t particularly like taking photographs of FREEing’s bunnygirls because they’re too large for me to easily photograph them, and yet I keep buying bunches of them, and this discontinuity is in some part responsible for the lack of reviews in recent months – though admittedly, the larger part of this dearth is due to me grinding in Epic Seven and spending far too much time watching the news. The former activity is still ongoing with no end in sight but I don’t need to obsess over the latter nearly as much now. Anyway, with those excuses out of the way, we’ll take a quick look at Jibril here.
Continue reading →

Posted in Figures | Tagged , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Missing Comments

written on October 6, 2020 by Tier

It’s an indication that I should look at my own website more often being that I did not notice that post comments have disappeared from view until just a moment ago. I think the WordPress 5.5 update broke something with the way this site’s theme displays comments, but they’re still uploaded to the database whenever anyone posts anything and I can still read them in the admin dashboard. Unfortunately I’m at a bit of a loss as to how to modify the theme to fix the damage the core update has caused. I’ve given some thought to changing the site’s theme to look more modern, and while I’m not entirely enthusiastic about it, I guess this is as good a time as any to find a newer theme.

Edit: I think I found a fix for my old theme. Can anyone let me know if comments display properly now?

Posted in Random Thoughts | 6 Comments

Narika Shihoudou from Beat Blades Haruka (Stand Pose Version)

written on September 29, 2020 by Tier
Narika Shihoudou from Beat Blades Haruka

First, a couple of random thoughts: I recently logged in to my Hobby Search account and saw this, which has caused me to consider whether I want to continue receiving figures while Japan Post is not dispatching parcels to the United States. Second, I recently turned forty, which ought to give me pause and compel me to think about the direction my life is going, including whether I am wasting too much time and money on pervy plastic anime figures and gacha games. I’ve actually found that getting older has made me more comfortable with who I am, though; I’ve found myself being less unsure of the path I’ve taken and more content with where I am. The lack of updates here has less to do with me falling out of love with this hobby and more to do with me being lazy and having photographed some uninspiring figures that I don’t feel that compelled to write about.

And that leads me to talk about this figure: this is Narika Shihoudou, one of the three main heroines of the eroge Beat Blades Haruka. I’m always happy to see a figure from an Alice Soft property, even if it’s not executed particularly well, which is unfortunately the case here. And while I enjoyed Beat Blades Haruka quite a bit, I’d probably say that Narika was my least favorite of the ninja trio, and I don’t think I actually ever went through her route. Nonetheless, let’s go over her very quickly.
Continue reading →

Posted in Figure Review | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments

Magic the Gandhi from Rance 10 (NSFW)

written on July 31, 2020 by Tier
%3

We’ll pick back up with another Native figure, this one considerably smaller than the last one we looked at. This haggard-looking young girl is Magic the Gandhi, an unlikely-named character from Alicesoft’s famous Rance series. In normal times she’s a magician, a princess, and a romantic interest of the series’ titular anti-hero. As can be surmised, the circumstances she is depicted in here are not indicative of normal times.
Continue reading →

Posted in Figure Review | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Erika Kuramoto from Zettai Junpaku Mahou Shoujo (Bunny Version) (NSFW)

written on July 2, 2020 by Tier
Erika Kuramoto from Zettai Junpaku Mahou Shoujo

Despite being an avid consumer of all manners of news concerning the coronavirus epidemic, somehow it escaped my notice that Japan Post has suspended the delivery of parcels via EMS to the United States and that means I will not be getting any new figures until perhaps next month. As such, the only thing left to do – aside from abandoning this site, which I already feel pretty badly about and do not wish to perpetuate – is to review some older figures. Let’s begin with one of the biggest and most in-your-face in terms of callipygian excess, Erika Kuramoto from the doujin series Zettai Junpaku Mahou Shoujo.
Continue reading →

Posted in Figure Review | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 19 Comments