Bionic Joshi Kousei from Arms Note

Bionic Joushi Kousei from Arms Note

In the last couple of years, society in the United States has been riven by cultural and philosophical divides, with little hope of either compromise or reconciliation. But perhaps all sides can agree on one thing: there is nothing so quintessentially American as a school shooting, and on that note, we take a look at this figure, which depicts a heavily-armed high school girl ready to get down with some extracurricular warfare.
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Dakimakura Review – Mercy from Overwatch (NSFW)

Mercy from Overwatch

So once again I have lied; I had hoped to get a few figure reviews done this month, particularly Olga and a couple of other Native figures, but that hasn’t happened, partly because of Azur Lane (I’m trying to get Baltimore), partly because of me watching the debates (I need to see whose doll I should next get), and mostly because I am lazy. Rather than skipping this month entirely, let’s take a quick look at a pornographic pillowcase, since we haven’t done so in quite a while (not since Olga, ironically enough). We’ll take a look at this depiction of Mercy, which seems apropos since playing Blizzard games is one of the major reasons why updates on this site have slowed down in the last few years. Though not so much because of Battle for Azeroth; that expansion is just dreadful.
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Preorder Outlook LIX

And it’s time for another preorder outlook. This list is shorter than I thought it would be, being that it’s been three months since the last post, but I really don’t mind considering that my bank account needs a break given the number of figures on my preorder list that are being released this month and next. I’m planning on photographing Olga Discordia in the next few days, just as soon as I can figure out where to put her, and I’d like to get some America-themed figures reviewed (perhaps Iowa and Ms. Marvel, amongst others) next weekend, being that it’s the Fourth of July holiday here in the United States. For now though, here’s a quick run-through of some of the figures I’ve got my eye on.
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Anzu Yamasaki from Gantz: O (Sword Version)

Anzu Yamasaki from Gantz: O

The series Gantz is experiencing a somewhat unexpected revival, not with respect to its original manga or anime adaptation but rather at the hands of figure and statue companies. Union Creative released two figures of Reika Shimohira a couple of years ago – one dressed in a black bodysuit and the other wearing a much more abbreviated version of that outfit – and FREEing is due to release their 1/4 scale version of Reika in a bunnysuit soon. In addition, the Japanese statue company Prime 1 Studio will be producing two versions of Reika, one called the Black Version and the other called the White Version, for reasons that are obvious to anyone who glances at each statue. And then we have this figure here, which came out late last year, if I recall correctly. This figure is the counterpart to Union Creative’s Reika, as she and Anzu seem fated to be paired together forever.
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Satsuki Amamiya from Comic Aun (NSFW)

Satsuki Amamiya from Comic Aun

SkyTube figures are always a lot of fun to review, so let’s take a look at one of the newest characters in the lineup. This girl is Satsuki Amamiya and she comes from the artwork of Misaki Kurehito, whose portfolio has provided SkyTube with numerous muses for adaptation into three dimensions. As is frequently the norm with SkyTube’s products, this figure integrates an attractive and sexy character with an impressive level of technical excellence and an outrageously lewd presentation which, in this case, has Satsuki apparently sucking down a glob of semen. It’s an interesting design choice, to be sure, and one that might be difficult to explain to most audiences.
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Preorder Outlook LVIII

It’s been a while since the last post, and it’s been a great deal of time since the last preorder post, so it’s a good time to take a look at some of the figures I am considering preordering. It’s a long list and the unifying theme here is eye-watering prices, as figure and statue prices continue to rise unabated. Having recently resolved to upgrade my car within the next few years, this trend is sort of a problem but being that I don’t spend much money on other things, I guess I can deal with it.
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Year Ten Retrospective

2B and a friend

Tentacle Armada turns 10 years old today! When I published this site’s very humble first post, I did not imagine that I would keep this site going for another decade. Yet here it is; not as frequently updated as I would like but with 345 figure reviews in the archives, on top of a number of dakimakura cover and doll reviews, I don’t feel that this site has ever lacked for content.

Here are the site stats for the ten years of this site’s existence. Pageviews are off by maybe a hundred thousand due to a several-month period where views were being counted twice. It’s funny; I remember obsessing over site stats for the first few years but I don’t pay a lot of attention to them now. For one, there’s not much point in doing so; also, a lot of internet activity is tied up in social media, from which I generally abstain from participation, and thus never promote this site to new visitors. I do have a Twitter account that I infrequently post to, but I stopped using my Facebook profile a dozen years ago and – perhaps strangely for someone who runs a photography-based blog – I have never had an Instagram account.

This site hasn’t changed much over the years. Sometimes I think about giving it a revamp, perhaps switching over to a more slick and contemporary WordPress theme rather than the rather dated main-box-and-sidebar blog layout that I’ve been using for this last decade, but I’m not motivated enough to do that much work, and I actually like how this site has maintained a consistent look even as self-published blogs have become less of a thing over the years.

There are some other things that date this site, both obvious and less so. A very obvious one is the ex-president doll that I have used, who has kind of become a site mascot, particularly with the more lecherous figures I review. It would certainly be more appropriate for me to incorporate a doll of the current president in my photos, but somehow, I don’t think he’d be very popular here.

A less obvious thing is a post I never actually created. One of the prevailing ideas when I started this site is that you needed an expensive camera to get good pictures. I therefore resolved to do a series of photo shoots using a very inexpensive compact camera, knowing that I could get good results with my standard lighting setup. As usual, I waffled and procrastinated on actually doing the required work, and much to my surprise, the entire compact camera industry collapsed a few years ago, extirpated by smartphones. That was certainly something I did not see coming.

I’ve seen a lot of figure sites come and go over the years. I did take down the blogroll section because almost all the figure review blogs I liked to visit are now defunct (Wieselhead is the only one that is still maintained). That’s unfortunate, I suppose, but for myself, I still enjoy running a figure review website and I have no plans to cease updates. Therefore, here’s to another ten years of figure reviewing and pillowcase photographing (still one of the more popular aspects of this site, peculiarly enough).

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My Five Favorite Figures of 2018

Chronic illness and laziness have delayed this post for weeks longer than I had planned, but better late than never; here is the traditional list of my five favorite figures of the previous year. It was a great year for figures, I think, aside from rising costs and the continuing trend of manufacturers selling their products outside of the normal web stores, thus driving up the price of their figures even more. Such is the price we pay to be collectors. At least the figures have usually been worth it.

I should note that I’m only including PVC figures in this list; usually this list includes everything I’ve bought, but given that I’m a big proponent of larger figures, it’s not really fair to compare a two-foot tall, $700 statue to a typical 1/7 scale, $120 PVC figure. If I were to include statues, Aspen and the gigantic 1/3 scale Kitana that I got a few months ago would be on this list, probably at the top. A 1/3 scale statue really needs to be seen to be believed.
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Pet Fairy Renge from T2 Art Works

Pet Fairy Renge from T2 Art Works

Between some unexpectedly time-consuming work obligations and a two-week encounter with bronchitis, this month has been a total bust as far as personal productivity is concerned. That said, I try to do at least one post per month, and luckily I’ve had these photos of Alphamax’s Renge stashed away for a few months, waiting for a length of time where I couldn’t do a normal post. Normally I’d have my five favorite figures post ready to go on this day but that’ll have to wait a couple more days, particularly since I am not sure which figures out to take the fourth and fifth spots (the top three have been locked up since summer). In the meantime, we’ll take a quick look at an older figure that I still quite like.
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Preorder Outlook LVII

November has been a spectacularly unproductive month for me, for a variety of reasons, most of which stem from the fact that I am unrepentantly lazy. Regardless, it’s been a couple of months since the last preorder post so here is a list of figures that I am thinking of ordering. Unlike most of these lists, where I don’t actually order most of the figures I write about, I’m actually thinking of ordering almost everything on this list; the only one that might not be purchased is Asmodeus.

Reviews will resume very shortly, as I have a stack of figures that have arrived recently. First up will probably the one half-naked Gantz girl and I’ve also got a figure of a half-naked loli (and another girl who could pass for a loli) waiting next.

Also, I have quite a few 1/4 scale figures from FREEing – mostly bunnygirls from To Love-Ru and Muv-Luv, but also their Elizabeth Mably and Angela Balzac figures – and a few Western statues that I had planned to review but now am not sure if I will. I have the feeling that people are not that interested in them and I’m curious to know whether anyone would be saddened if did not review them. Throughout the lifetime of this site I’ve taken the stance that I plan to review every figure that I buy, but being that they seem not that popular, I wonder if that uncompromising principle may be outmoded.
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