Velvet Crowe from Tales of Berseria

written on April 30, 2017 by Tier
Velvet Crowe from Tales of Berseria

Despite being a longtime fan of JRPGs, I didn’t play a Tales game until Tales of Vesperia was released on the Xbox 360. I enjoyed it a great deal, and I was happy that its later release on the PlayStation coincided with a plethora of figures from Alter. That satisfaction subsequently evaporated when they never released a figure of Judith, undeniably the best character in the game. Nonetheless, I’ve since bought a few of their figures, including Milla Maxwell, who looks very nice, and Alicia, whose low-key role in Tales of Zestiria kindled its own form of discontent. I’ve also obviously bought this figure, which is from Kotobukiya, curiously, rather than Alter.
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Posted in Figure Review | Tagged , , , , , | 23 Comments

Preorder Outlook L

written on March 31, 2017 by Tier

It’s the fiftieth preorder outlook post! That number is not of any particular significance other than that people like round numbers like that, but I really did not think this site would be running long enough to get to the fiftieth such post. Nor did I expect that when I sat down to write this post, there would be over twenty figures listed in my notes; it seems like a dozen appealing figures have gone up for preorder in the last few weeks. Therefore, I’m cutting this post to the first ten on my list and I’ll write about the remainder in a week or two.
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Umr from WIXOSS

written on March 8, 2017 by Tier
Umr from WIXOSS

Happy International Women’s Day! These days, the anime industry is the light novel and mobile/web/card game adaptation industry, and thus it shouldn’t be a surprise that the character that this figure portrays comes from one of those categories. This unfortunate reality is a major reason why I don’t watch much anime at all anymore, but at least they typically have attractive characters. Such is the case here with Umr, this unusually-named little girl with a most peculiar sartorial sensibility. We’ll observe this auspicious day by taking a look at this most dignified and well-dressed little girl.
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Year Eight Retrospective

written on February 23, 2017 by Tier
Simone wrapped up in tentacles

Yay! This site is now eight years old. Admittedly there is not much to celebrate once more, since updates have been drastically curtailed. That’s not to say that I’ve stopped collecting figures – in fact, I have so many of them that the unopened boxes are piled meters high. Finding the time and motivation to shoot has been tough, mostly due to the new job, World of Warcraft grinding, and a resurgent interest in watching NBA games (I used to collect basketball cards with the same enthusiasm as I collect figures). Nonetheless the figures are here and as I don’t unbox them before I review them, I have considerable motivation to keep posting, since I’ll never get to display my figures if I don’t. (Well, unless I shut down the site, which I’m not amenable to doing, being that not only do I enjoy running it, I’ve already paid my hosting bill for the next year.)

The site stats haven’t changed much from the last year, or the year before that; the site doesn’t get many new viewers, but doesn’t lose many, either. That probably means that I’m not doing a good job of optimizing this site for web search but one beneficial by-product of not posting as much is that I don’t care about my traffic stats. Regardless, the stats aren’t too bad. For the last eight years, the site has gotten about 1.7 million visitors and 14 million pageviews, which is pretty nice, I think.

One thing that lowers posting frequency is that I don’t do any dakimakura cover reviews or doll posts anymore. The dakimakura posts weren’t personally interesting to do or to write about, but I actually got more questions about them than anything else I’ve ever written about. The doll posts were more interesting but I always had the feeling that they weren’t all that popular. I generally don’t pander too much but their large size made them kind of a pain to photograph, so it didn’t seem worth it to continue posting about them. I wonder if anybody misses those posts, as all I do these days are figure reviews and the preorder posts.

Anyway, new review should be posted soon; I really want to photograph some of these Bikini Warriors figures, and it would be pretty silly for me to not have reviewed any of my 7 Deadly Sins figures by the time the anime airs this summer.

Posted in Random Thoughts | Tagged , | 11 Comments

My Five Favorite Figures of 2016

written on January 31, 2017 by Tier

And here is the much-belated list of my five most favorite figures of 2016. I have to admit that I was less moved by the selection this year than I have been in previous years, likely for two reasons. One, it’s because I’m not much of a fan of Kantai Collection, Love Live, or The Idolmaster, and it seems like there were a ton of figures from those series. And two, I don’t open my figures until I’m ready to photograph them, and I haven’t done nearly as much of that as I would have liked, which means I haven’t actually seen a lot of the figures I own. Doubtless this list will change as I open up figures; I could see that one Dragon Toy tentacle figure jumping on this list once I see it in person. But there’s no reason to wait until then, as this post has already been delayed more than enough.
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Posted in Random Thoughts | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Ran Kohinata from the Art of Misaki Kurehito (NSFW)

written on December 31, 2016 by Tier
Ran Kohinata figure

#BlueLivesMatter
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Posted in Figure Review | Tagged , , , , , , | 51 Comments

Scathach from Fate/Grand Order (Plum Version)

written on December 15, 2016 by Tier
Scathach from Fate/Grand Order

Once upon a time there was a porno game called Fate/stay night. It was very successful, spawning a vast multimedia franchise. Over the ensuing years, its naughty parts were quietly played down. It thus gained a reputation for presenting its plot with dignified, sober gravity, and this story was breathlessly analyzed by its many devotees across an uncountable number of internet posts. Some might label all that as being obnoxiously pretentious but nobody can deny that Fate/stay night is a transcendant title.

That said, no matter how fervent the fanbase, puritanical portrayals don’t move swag. Type-Moon is presumably aware of this, which might explain why the older (in franchise terms) version of Lancer got little love from goods manufacturers while Scathach and a number of new, sexed-up female characters from Fate/Grand Order are all the new hotness. It is perhaps a bit unseemly, but nobody can claim to be surprised, either.
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Preorder Outlook XLIX

written on November 30, 2016 by Tier

Bah. I definitely had intended to post more stuff on this site but life has a habit of getting in the way, so I don’t apologize or even feel too badly about the dearth of content. That’s not to say that the infrequent posting schedule hasn’t had a detrimental effect on my life; being that I have a policy of not displaying figures until I’ve reviewed them, I have stacks and stacks of unopened Hobby Search boxes containing figures from the last couple of years. They’re taking up a lot of space and I want to see the figures that I’ve bought, so more posts will be coming soon.

A lack of posting on a personal website sometimes indicates a downturn in the site owner’s life, but I have to say that life is going pretty decently, aside from the results of the recent election in the United States (though I’m slowly getting over that). I got a new job earlier this year that pays quite a bit more than my previous one, and more importantly gets me away from my former employer’s management, which had driven me insane for the better part of two years (the reduction in posts the last couple of years was due in large part to stress and fatigue from that job). I got a new car last month – it’s literally nothing special but I like it a lot. I recently found out that sports photography is a lot harder than it looks. I’m burning out on World of Warcraft again – despite the recent release of its latest expansion – and that can only be a positive thing in my life. My fantasy football team has strung together seven straight victories after starting the season 0-5 (and losing my first round draft pick to a knee blowout). Life is pretty good, but life is better with new figures, so let’s take a look at some of the ones I’m considering picking up.
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Eleonora Viltaria from Lord Marksman and Vanadis (Bunny Version) (NSFW)

written on October 31, 2016 by Tier
Eleonora Viltaria from Lord Marksman and Vanadis

FREEing has been rolling out the bunnygirl figures, but we haven’t looked at one in a while. Further, today is Halloween, a day celebrated by the wearing of costumes and distribution of sweets, so we’ll observe the occasion by taking a look at Eleonora Viltaria, whose fetching and immodest bunnysuit provides for no insignificant amount of eye candy.
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Preorder Outlook XLVIII

written on September 30, 2016 by Tier

Welcome to the bunny girl edition of the semi-regular preorder outlook. I keep saying that I don’t particularly care for bunnysuits but I continue to order FREEing’s figures (actually, it’s more the gigantic size that I’m partial to – I probably wouldn’t care for them if they were 1/8 scale), and they’re certainly well-represented here; not a good thing at all for my wallet given how spendy they are, but that’s always been something that figure collectors need to adjust to.
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Posted in Preorder Outlook | Tagged , , | 7 Comments