It’s yet another prepainted kit from E2046, but unlike the prior two reviews, this one does not come from an anime. Indeed, Jian Xue may be an original figure; E2046 often sculpts characters from existing properties but I do not think I’ve seen this character design anywhere else. She looks vaguely reminiscent of something from Dynasty Warriors, or perhaps from Sana Takeda’s artwork, but I dunno. I do know that this is an outstanding figure.
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It’s Saber clone! Like Charlotte, Sylvia is one of the love interests in the game and anime Princess Lover! but her most conspicuous trait is her resemblance to Saber. Sylvia wears trousers instead of a skirt and wields a rapier rather than a broadsword but the similarity is blatant, even egregious. Homage or ripoff, you decide.
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Charlotte Hazellink is yet another prepainted, preassembled kit from E2046 by way of Volks. One of these days I’m going to try building and painting models on my own. However, that day is not today.
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I spent some time this evening shooting pictures of Tsukino Azusagawa, and I wasn’t really feeling the way they turned out. Guess it’s back to the drawing board there. Since I have no pictures to post, and since it’s been a while since my last preorder outlook post, I figure why not do one of those? As usual all images are shamelessly taken from Hobby Search (a great place to buy figures from) and AmiAmi (I’m sure they would be a great place to buy figures from if they shipped internationally).
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Once when I was a kid living in Seoul, my uncle took my brother and I to a comic book shop near downtown, just a bit west of Gate 1 to Yongsan base. I doubt it’s still there, and I have no idea how my uncle even knew about this shop in that pre-Google Maps era. I was bewildered that such a shop even existed; I didn’t think that Koreans had much interest in American comics (despite being ethnically half-Korean myself, I’ve always identified with being American and I had no interest in Korean culture at that time). I remember the store had a barter system, and my brother traded off some of his books for new ones. I had no comic books of my own so I asked my uncle to buy the comics I wanted for me. One of the books I got was Uncanny X-Men #218, which had some of the female X-Men battling the Juggernaut. I didn’t know much about the X-Men, but one character in particular caught my eye – she wore a tight black bodysuit and a loose green tank top and had an awesome 80s haircut with a white skunk stripe through it. In the issue, she threw a punch at the Juggernaut, took one in return that launched her into orbit, and then she came back for more. It was a great book, and Rogue became one of my first childhood cartoon character crushes.
What? Stop looking at me like that. I know you had cartoon character crushes when you were a kid, too.
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I hadn’t planned on buying Sheryl Nome, but after seeing early reviews of her, I decided that she passed the eyeball test and that I should acquire her. To my consternation, she was sold out everywhere I looked. HLJ and Hobby Search briefly restocked her the day that she was released; she sold out hours later literally as I was removing my credit card from my wallet (one would think that I’d have my number memorized by now). As I resigned myself to the reality that she wouldn’t be entering my inventory, I took a look at BeNippon, a retailer that I hadn’t ordered from before, much less heard of. Hope was rekindled as they listed her as in stock with one unit left, and I quickly paid up and now she’s here.
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Alter’s Narika is a figure that I’ve been anticipating since she was announced. I really like Alicesoft’s character designs and given Alter’s history of producing superb figures, I had high expectations for Narika. As usual, Alter does not disappoint, as they’ve made another amazing figure.
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Up to this point I’ve passed over the figures from Queen’s Blade, but when I saw the promo pictures for Mirim, I knew she was going on my buy list. With a profession given as “Ultra-Vibration Valkyrie,” how could I resist her? Add in a cute outfit and a chainsaw sword and I was sold.
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I hadn’t planned on getting any more of Good Smile Company’s Muv-Luv figures after Meiya Mitsurugi, but I can’t deny that Sumika really is cute. Furthermore, my Rogue preorder at BBTS was scheduled to ship at the end of August, and as fate would have it, that same store had Sumika on sale for a relatively cheap price. How could I not take advantage of such a serendipitous occurrence? It is like the planets have aligned, the cards have turned up just so, fates have intersected at a confluence of capitalism and happiness. It was meant to be, and so I tossed her in my shopping cart, added her to my order with Rogue, and now she is here.
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Saber has been in the news quite a bit recently, so with a bit of a respite before the impending flood of figure releases at the end of this month, now is as good a time as any to go way back in history and take a look at one of the earliest Saber figures. This particular Saber is from Clayz and is sculpted in a mighty 1/6 scale. If I remember correctly, I picked this figure up in early 2006, and even then it was rather hard to find.
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