This figure of a disheveled maid in a state of profound distress (and undress) has gone up for preorder recently, and I’m contemplating putting an order in for her. The problem is that she’s currently only available from Native’s website, and that means I’d have to go through a deputy service. In my experience, the markup for doing so is usually around 50%, so at 8000 yen, I’m looking at a final price of around $120. That’s a lot of scratch to drop on a 1/7 scale figure. On the other hand, money comes and goes and comes again but opportunities to get a figure like this are ephemeral indeed.

That said, if I do order her, I’m going to feel rather foolish if she gets a domestic release like Kotone Osaka (NSFW link).

Everyone’s seen pictures of Shoujo M already but in case anybody missed her, more pictures are up on AkihaHobby and Moeyo. Needless to say, both links are NSFW.

A bunch of reviews of Good Smile Company’s 1/4 scale Nanoha went up recently and I really like that figure, and since I like Fate better (with respect to character design, as I haven’t seen the anime), I was looking forward to seeing Nanoha’s counterpart. This image was the first picture I saw of GSC’s 1/4 scale Fate, and something didn’t look quite right with her. I once saw pictures of a strange form of cosplay, where people not only dressed up as anime characters but put on masks so that their faces looked like anime faces. There’s a Japanese term for this practice but I don’t recall what it is. Anyway, that’s what this Fate figure sort of reminded me of; she looks like a female bodybuilder wearing an anime cosplay mask. Maybe I’m seeing things that aren’t really there but my enthusiasm for this figure has dampened.

For someone who spends so much money on anime-related merchandise, I don’t actually watch a great deal of anime. The last series that I viewed in full was Beck, which curiously could lay claim to having both the best half-season and the worst half-season of any anime series I’ve watched, and the only show I’ve followed this year is Sora Kake Girl. I started watching Ga-rei Zero the other day and it’s a fun show so far. The first two episodes were rife with dramatic combat and the wanton spilling of blood and the third and fourth episodes spin the show’s direction into a much more lighthearted study of how the two main characters grew up together. I’m guessing that the show wasn’t super popular, judging by the lack of merchandising. More the shame, that.