It has been a while since my latest figure review because most figures released lately weren’t falling in my DO WANT category. Unlike this figure here which was pretty much love at first sight. After several months of waiting (including  2 months delay) Kiriko finally arrived here last week.

The original character was obviously designed by Shunya Yamashita for an anime/manga/figure/ novel/drama-CD project called “Enka Ōdō Dai Shōgun” from Studio Anima. Studio Anima did the animations for Metal Gear Solid 4, Valkyria Chronicles and Ninja Blade so this could turn out quite well.

More details can be found on the official homepage which is unfortunately only available in Japanese. http://www.studioanima.co.jp/dai-shogun/

The didn’t go with the original, purple colour scheme and used a light-purple-ish one instead. I guess this works far better for such a large figure after all.

The sculpt for Kiriko was done by Yoshizawa Mitsumasa better known as “Reflect”. (He is currently working on a really awesome Asuka figure by the way!)

Kiriko is manufactured by Yamato. Now this can be a problem quality wise, as some of you might know. Not this time! The quality is really great and justifies the 145€ (+shipping & customs) I spent on her. The retail price is 11,800 Yen but even a few days after the release Kiriko was already sold out at most online shops, so I guess by now she will be worth a zillion Yen already.

If you didn’t notice it yet: She is really standing ~340mm tall from head to toe.

After comparing her to some other figures, I guess Kiriko is around 1:5.

Some comrades over @ tsuki-board where worried that Yamato would frak up her face, but it looks like they did a good job after all. Isn’t she gorgeous?

What I really like about her is that she doesn’t need to flash her panties, she doesn’t need DFCs or F-sized oppai to get your attention like all those other bitches half-naked figures. Nope, Kiriko just needs to be herself, a classy Ninja girl. ^_^

Quite a simple pose but I guess it’s exactly that simplicity that  gives her some sort of elegance.

Although some said that her bottom isn’t fat muchi muchi enough for them, I don’t see a problem there. She is a ninja, ready to rip your head off before you even notice it which means her body is thoroughly fit. Nothing wrong there.

Rawwr, great looking ponytail.  Her hairpin can be removed by the way.

Kirikos armour is quite well done. Love those read bits mixed with the black armour.

Her sword comes separately and needs some squeezing to put it in place.

While the tassels (Have those things a certain name?) are made of PVC the cords are made from real fabric.

The base comes with a nice iMac-effect mirror-effect, great to observe some figure panties on the shelve above her.

Unfortunately nothing is 100% perfect in the 3D world.  There is a small problem with that base. Kiriko doesn’t stand completely upright. It actually looks worse on the picture but she is slightly leaning to the right. I’m wondering how I should fix this, maybe glue her to the base?

The first promotional pictures showed her with a wooden base. Maybe she would have been more stable with that?

Overall this figure will be among my all time favourites from now on for sure. At first I was little bit shocked when I unboxed her cause the armour had some white smudges. Turned out to that this was just some white dust, so I guess it was something left over from the the production process.

Yamato and Reflect did a great job and I’m really looking forward to see more from Enka Ōdō Dai Shōgun. Wondering when we will here some news regarding the anime.

My next blog post should follow in a few days and contain a certain black box, a high-tech Japanese cooling solution, a just released Gigabyte main board and more. Yes, it’s finally time to upgrade my rig!

Already got Mio yesterday from Hobbysearch thanks to EMS shipping. She is nearly sold out everywhere unless you are willing to spend 8000 Yen. O_O

Didn’t come up with a Nendo-Story this time cause I was busy fraging random folks @ Modern Warfare 2 ährm… studying Kanji.

(Sorry for the bad image quality but if you are willing to donate 500-600€ for a new camera feel free to do so. ^^;)

Mio on stage!

Watch out!  The cable! … Oh crap…

Shimapan exposure!

“Hug me!” Probably the cutest of her expressions. <3

After some hugging and different other actions Mio is back on stage. Wearing a Miku wig. ^^

Thinking about her next song?

That’s the stuff that comes with Mio. The stand isn’t your usual Nendo-stand. Instead GSC came up with a nekomimi design for it and added a joint to the stands arm too.

Quality wise this Nendoroid is really good. Didn’t notice any flaws so far. Now I’m doomed to buy the rest of the K-ON band members too!

Just another really short update.

First: I could NOT resist and ordered a quite pricy but awesome figure:

Enka Oudo Dai Shogun Hattori Kiriko Ninja Version

Preordered for 11.400Yen / 83€ / 123USD from Hobbysearch.

Standing 340 mm tall, sculpted after a Yamashita artwork. She will be released in late January 2010. Being a Yamashita fan this was an instant GET for me. ^_^

I’m wondering why they didn’t use purple for her suite though. Would look a little bit better in my opinion.

Now on to the next topic:

It’s actually the first time that I’m watching an animu in the cinema. I’m so exited!!! \o/

There occurred two problems though:

1.) We (Raito-kun, dobbey and myself) need a environment-badge thingy for the car if we don’t want to pay 40€ for a traffic ticket. Problem solved thanks to DeJaY. Germany is weird!

2.) Not enough power connectors built into docbey’s car! We will have an iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, a new iPod Nano (evil grin), two cameras and a netbook with us.

Is anyone interested in some video footage from the event and such? No, not from the movie. ^^;

Let me know below and be sure to follow me on Twitter to stay up to date!

As some folks keep asking me what happened to HoiHoi-san, I decided to post a quick update on the building progress.

Started to build her after checking out the manual for a few minutes. Maybe an old habit, cause I came across some quite weird manuals when I was building tanks, planes and such many moons ago. But as it is a manual from a Japanese company you don’t have to worry. Just start right away!

HoiHoi-san pantsu shot!

If you follow the manual you will start with her leg parts as those are the easier ones. Nothing special just take care when you have to mount her legs into her pantsu-part. I had to use some force to mount them.

Next are her apron, her upper body and her arms. Again nothing worth mentioning. You need some glue only for two small parts by the way. Everything else fits well together without falling apart.

If you have never never built some sort of kit HoiHoi’s head is probably the most “complicated” part.

Don’t use too much force. Make sure you assembled the top-skull-piece (the one with the two holes) tilted like shown in the picture above.

She looks kinda scary that way, don’t you thinktoo? @_@

Zomg, finished her on the next day, overall building time was ~3-4 hours I guess.

I just have to paint her accessories now. Actually all of them are already done, besides her katana. I’ll get a smaller paint brush tomorrow for the details on the swords handle as I couldn’t find such a small one among my old plamo tools.

Expect to see her in action in the following days over here!

Believe it or not but sometimes a Monday is fine too!

Got a bunch of boxes today. Not all of them filled with otaku-ish merchandise though.

From left to right: HP ink, Kokonoe Rin 1/6, the Otaku Encyclopedia, and some rori vampire mango. ^^;

Unfortunately my HoiHoi-san didn’t arrive yet. According to the Japan Post EMS tracking service she is already on the road somewhere between Vienna and me.

Oct 4, 8:07 Awaiting presentation to customs commissioner
Oct 5, 6:48 Departure from inward office of exchange

But let’s take a quick look on the items:

Kokonoe Rin, 1/6, MaxFactory/GSC. Got her from comrade Melonpan. Took over one week from Switzerland to Austria. Postal service fail! But she was worth the wait. Argh… Rin is so cute. I’m wondering if Nendo-Rin want’s to do a photo session with her onee-chan?

“The Otaku Encyclopedia: An insider’s guide to the subculture of Cool Japan.” I guess the title says it all. I have to admit that there are a few terms in there I didn’t knew before. o_O More info about this book can be found here.

The manga are volume 1 & 2 of “Dance in the Vampire Bund”.  The plot is as follows:

After millennia in hiding, Mina Tepes, the Princess of the ancient covenant and ruler of all vampires, wants change. Using the vast wealth of the Tepes line, she has paid off the entire gross national debt of Japan and in so doing, gained the authority to create a “special district” off the coast of Japan that is to become the future haven to vampires the world over. Now, on the eve of the landmark press conference announcing the existence of vampires to the world, terrorists and rival factions plot to assassinate Mina before she has a chance to make her world-changing announcement.

Oh and btw: Mina is lolicious xD  Wouldn’t you like to put sunblocker on her too?

Does anyone know when the anime is scheduled to air? There was a promo-trailer @ the C76 but I didn’t find a specific date yet.

Hobby Link Japan is currently NOT charging your for EMS shipping costs to promoted their upgraded check out system if you pay via PayPal.

Original text from their homepage below:

We’ve just upgraded our checkout system to make it easier than ever to pay with PayPal! In order to showcase the safety and convenience of using their service, HobbyLink Japan is offering free express shipping on all orders placed and paid for with a PayPal Billing Agreement between now and September 28.

Once you set one up, a PayPal Billing Agreement lets you pay for all your HLJ orders without ever having to visit the PayPal website yourself.

For more information head over to their info page.

Unfortunately HLJ does such campaigns always shortly after I spent some moolah elsewhere!

CONSPIRACY! I guess the NHK is involved too but I’ll have to investigate this a little bit further.

As my bank account is still suffering from purchasing a certain lolicious figure I couldn’t get all those lovely, shipping-cost-free waifus I wanted so bad… (ToT)

But I was quite lucky to come across this figure which I had to get!

A 1:1 HoiHoi-san from KOTOBUKIYA sold for 3000Yen! You might want to get yours ASAP as the are already running out of stock! HLJ product page link: http://www.hlj.com/product/KBYKP-98

She is partially pre-painted and according to comrade Rob only her weapons need some paint.

When I tweeted about my purchase a few hours ago a lot of comrades seemed to have no idea who she is. And so I decided to share some knowledge with you.

Ichigeki Sacchu!! HoiHoi-san (= One-Shot Bug Killer!! Interceptor Doll HoiHoi-san) started out as a manga published in the magazine Dengeki Dai OH.

The setting is in year 20XX at a time when insects are immune to all insecticides, so Japanese pharmaceutical companies have had to come up with the next level in insect extermination: small but heavily armed robots.

Hoihoi-san is the bug killing robot of the title, a 10.5 cm tall doll like robot that comes with a wide range of weapons. There are other robot models called RRX-7.8 Combat-san and PEST-X-san but I don’t want to post some spoilers.

Quite awesome, eh? As if this scenario alone wouldn’t be already enough there are a lot of weird things going on in this story.

Btw: Did the name “RRX-7.8” ring, a bell? Gundam’s aren’t that cute though ^^;

You can get a torrent for the manga over here.

In 2004 a short OVA was produced, feel free to check it out below.

Love her walking sounds xD Would be great if my 1:1 HoiHoi-san would walk around like that too!

There was also a PS2 game which got re-published three times!

The game, released 2003-11-27, is a third person shooter where the main aim is to complete levels defeating hordes of various kinds of insects, while avoiding collateral damage to furniture and other household items.

If you want to download and play this game on your PC check out my blog post over here.

Some game footage below.

Unfortunately the manga wasn’t continued (besides HoiHoi-san Legacy which got never translated.) I would like to see more adventures of HoiHoi-san and her “sisters” but I guess this won’t happen. Hopefully KOTOBUKIYA releases a Combat-san (edit: some sculpt was already seen on the interwebs!) and a PEST-X-san kit in the future.

Isn’t she cute? Can’t wait to receive mine.

I’m wondering if you liked this not so usual post as I tried to cover a topic which wasn’t all over the interwebs. It’s kinda boring to read about something you have already seen several times elsewhere in my opinion, right?

As I’m already talking about random stuff:

How do you like my new blog design? Any suggestions?

And random blubb 2: Happy Birthday, Blowfish-san! Party hard with your waifus!

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As I promised yesterday, here is a review of my latest figure, Arisugawa Shii. She is a pre-painted, 1:7 scaled cold-cast figure from Gathering. Shii is 26cm tall and weights ~0,72kg. I guess only my 1:4 Freeing Mikuru  is heavier.

(Writing this review while listening to my personal “music stream” generated by the AWESOME new feature “Genius Mixes” from iTunes 9. I won’t cover yesterdays Apple event over here as I already wrote an article about it on figure.fm. Feel free to check it out.)

I bought her from comrade Melonpan two weeks ago and she arrived with some other stuff last week from Switzerland. Was quite a good deal cause she was sold for ~130 USD back then in 2007!

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She is sculpted based on this artwork by Yamashita as the Yamashita fans among will know of course.

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I think this figure meets Yamashita’s artstyle quite well, cause her proportions seem to be a little bit more RL–like.

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E2046 added an so called “Gathering Surprise” in form of an semi-transparent mini skirt for those who like their  figures to be a little bit “safer”.

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I’m in an pinch when it comes to my opinion of the skirt: They added an magnetic feature which is awesome but on the other hand they used way too cheap looking PVC…

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One reason for me to get her when Melonpan MSN-ed me, was that she fullfills a nice amount of fetishes.  A sword wielding, megane-, stockings-, shimapan- and seifuku-wearing Japanese girl with twin tails isn’t a bad combination, right? ^^;

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Those of you familiar with this figure (and I guess a lot of you are) may have noticed that my Shii is standing on an wooden base.

Melonpan-sama added this one for free, because…

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…the original mirror acrylic display base had an unsightly  scratch. Works still well to look at some Nendoroid pantsu though ^_^

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.Rin looks cute in every scene. I think that’s why she is Danny’s MPL (multi purpose loli) too, eh?

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The details of Gathering figures are really awesome. The painting is quite good too with a few flaws on her sword hand though. Even after 2 years she is like new.

According to Melonpan some of his older PVC figures look already quite unlovely while his cold-casts look still perfect.

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Her biggest flaw is this gap on her head though. Didn’t expect that from Gathering!

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Overall I would give her 8 out of 10 points. Considering her original price such manufacturing failures shouldn’t happen.

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As I mentioned at the beginning of this review Melonpan added those items he had lying around:

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A Kudryavka.. ährm… fap-box cover? Health care supply upgrade? How are those called?

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Lucky Star purse and a Win2k-tan sticker. Thx Melonpan! Wondering if there’s already an Windows 7 –tan out there?

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That’s it. Hope you like my review. Was quite a busy week and I already know what my next post will be about ^_^ Hikky off.

The vote for the next figure photo session ended yesterday evening. (You may take a look at the results at the end of the post here.)

The winner is: KOTOBUKIYA’s Nanako Nekomimi Limited Black Version 1:5 – A moe overdose limited to 1500 pieces. She’s just like a figure from an Eroge should be.

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Let’s switch to Nekomimi-modu. Decided to do a outdoor shot this time. Nanako-chan became my faved figure right away, she deserves it.

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Isn’t her coquettish pose cute? Although some can’t stand nekomimi. Don’t know why cause I’m loving ‘em.

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You can nearly imagine her doing a “Nyaah” sound while she is blushing.

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Hawt legs are hawt. Those pillows are included btw.

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She is (was) available with a blue and a white sukumizu. Decided to go for the classic blue one. Just can’t think of another colour for a swimsuit and I think it goes better with her stockings.

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The nice thing about large scale figures are the details. Just look at those wrinkles. Looks quite realistic, at least I think so. The folks thinking about her design must have done some research. Don’t know if I would like to know the details. o_O

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What are you looking at, eh?

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You may have noticed that her skirt is pulled down and is clinging around one of her legs.

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But it can be removed in the blink of an eye.

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Can be done in a sexy way too of course…white tights…

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Woah, hawt legs are hawt, wait didn’t I say that before? This figure is completely pedobear approved.

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But heard some complaints that her hip-line is too feminine, considering her age. What do you think?

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Let’s move on to
some other details.

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Love her red hairpin-thingys. Wonder if there are actually girls who wear criss-crossed ribbons.

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Her wristbands are made of soft-and fluffy material too.

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Not interesting for comrades who like big eyes. Oppai pic go!

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But can you call this oppai pics? ^^;

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Does every loli com with a collar? Fetish anyone? Let’s turn Nanako-chan around to take a look at her backside.

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“Nyahhh…”

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Nanako-chan has a fluffy tail too.

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Interesting backside view xD. “What, what are you looking at, Oni-chan?” … “Just a little…” … “Nooooooo…don’t… “

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We have to stop at this point if we don’t want to have trouble with some strange government guys ^_^

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I hope you liked the the photos. Maybe it was a little bit too ecchi this time. The next photos are  just around the corner and they will contain four meidos. Ehehe.

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A small mid-June loot arrived on my doorstep today.

Contained a  free Kousaka Tamaki figure, the NHK ni Youkoso Novel and a older Megami issue.

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Eh what? A free figure?

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Tamaki was bought with Archonia Points.

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You get a certain amount of those with every purchase @ Archonia and they can be spent on a few items on the bargains-page.

Not the best Tamaki figure out there but I don’t mind if she comes for free xD

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Rawwrr~ Some Lucky Star fanservice inside the Megami Vol. 91 (December 2007).

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LOL, looks like the Novel is NSFW. Wonder how the Novels quality is compared to the manga and anime which are both awesome in my opinion.

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As I’m kinda lazy there are a few outstanding figure photo sessions by now.

I’ll let you decide which of my waifus should be my next photo model. Vote is up until Wednesday 22:00 UTC+1.

Feel free to join the IRC / live-stream as usual.

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EDIT: The vote has ended and the Lolicons are one vote ahead of the Meido-fetishists.

Photo session will be up in a the next days. The next one will be a ueber meido session with four Meidos as Saber (ALTER Maid Ver.) and the GSC Maid Set got 5votes each. Kousaka and Jibril will follow next week.

Looks like I’m blogging too much lately ^_^

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A parcel worth of 200€ from Archonia arrived today. ~money need~ They re-used a Monsieur Bome box this time.

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Three new waifus and I’m running out of space. Looks like a few more figures will have to stay on my desk.

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A roricon’s dream:  KOTOBUKIYA Nanako Nekomimi Limited Black Version 1:5 – limited to 1500 pieces. The details are awesome. xD

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Ready to clean my… room:  ALTER Saber Maid Ver. 1:6 re-release.

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Ero-Angel: Griffon Enterprises Jibril Holy Angel Ver. 1:7

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Had an accident while unboxing the figures live on my ustream channel. As Jibril is a cast-off, her upper body was a little bit lose and it fell down. One of her wings broke off! Comrade De-JaY who was watching nearly had an heart attack just like myself.

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Thanks to nanomachines and a bit of superglue Jibril’s body was restored. Looks not as bad as it does in the detail-pic above.

For those interested in my fingerprints: Take a look at her wings. （⌒▽⌒）

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Detailed photo sessions shall follow in the next days. Stay tuned.