Knackered

It appears that I am having a fatigue of some sort recently. The fact that I have to sleep in early should be some sort of tell-tale signs for me. This is a reason why I don't get to catch up reading on other blogs yet. I hope I can get to do it next month.

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Purchases from ACGHK 2011

Just a quick update here. I've bought a few things from the ACGHK 2011 event which is currently ongoing until Tuesday night. More details after the jump!


Black★Rock Shooter Artbook. A compilation of artwork from the original character designer and illustrator huke, along with many other artsists. Apparently it's identical to the one that is sold in the recent Comiket C79 event but localised, however I need to check on this.


HGUC 1/144 RX-78-2 Gundam Ecopla, basically a Gunpla kit made of recycled plastic, hence the black for most stuff except for the beam effect of beam sabre. Even the polycaps are black as well. There is also a special decal sheet with lots of "GUNPLA" signs on it. This is no new kit, but it's not the most common kit out there for sure. Will most likely do a post for it once I get around to build it.


Gundam Legacy manga. There are only 3 volumes in total, which makes it pretty short. It appears to be a compilation of several short stories involving side characters (from one of the anime series or those who appear exclusively in games). The seemingly heavy depiction of grunt units over Gundams is surely what tickles my interest ^^; Speaking of buying manga, I think the last time I've bought manga for myself was probably sola way back in ACGHK 2009.


As for the coverage photos, I need some time to sort them out. I hope I won't procrastinate and take too long to get the posts out!
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ACGHK 2011 Preview

It's that time of the year again. The annual animation, comic, and game convention ACGHK is just around the corner.

Date: 29th July - 2nd August 2011
Time: 10am - 9pm daily ; closes at 8:00pm on 2nd August
Venue: Hall 1, Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre
Area: 150000 sq ft

As the title of the event suggests, ACGHK envelops animation, comic, and video games under one convention. This does not only apply to Japanese media, but also to Chinese ones as well. Some elements of doujin work will be available in the event too.

Japanese artists that are coming to make appearance in this event include Tokyo Brass Style, Nakano Fujoshi Sisters, ViViD, Wakeshima Kanon, and Nakajima Megumi. Numerous artists from Taiwan and China are also coming to this event.

Like previous years, the entries for Gunpla model competition will be displayed in the event, and the winners will be announced on the last day of the event. I should do a post for them as usual.

As for event exclusive items to be sold by Bandai:

HGUC 1/144 Unicorn Gundam (Unicorn Mode) Pearl Colour Ver.

HGUC 1/144 ZZ Gundam Clear Colour Ver.

MG 1/100 ZAKU II CLlear Colour Ver. (MS-06J Ver 2.0)

FW Gundam Converge Union Flag Custom II vs Gundam Exia Shokugan Set (Pearl Colour)

FW Gundam StandART Unicorn Gundam (Unicorn Mode) Pearl Colour

Super One Piece Styling 3 in 1 Special Colour trading figures

I will probably spend 2 days visiting the event, and as usual do a general coverage on the event itself and one for the Gundam model competition entries. I don't plan on buying things over there at the moment, but probably just to walk around and take pictures here and there, like what I have been doing for the past few years :o


Website:
http://www.ani-com.hk/front.htm
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Year of the GM

From the last post one would have probably known that I am a bit big into grunt machines for the Gundam franchise. Looking back at the first half of 2011 so far, it appears that there are a lot of GMs released for the HGUC 1/144 line. It's definitely one thing that keeps me happy at least!


HGUC 1/144 GM Custom, released in January.


HGUC 1/144 Jegan ECOAS Type, released in April.


HGUC 1/144 GM Cannon II, released in June.


HGUC 1/144 GM III, which I have foolhardly bought 9 of them, was released in early July.


And new Gunpla have been announced not too long ago.


HGUC 1/144 Jesta, September release.

I am sure that a lot of people are looking forward to this guy, and it's coming out sooner than I've expected ^^


HGUC 1/144 GM II, October release. I am not sure what colour variation we will get though. It may very likely be the desert colours as seen in the Gundam UC artwork like here.

Maybe we will get a Nemo as well in the future? :o


On the other hand, there is also some kind of derivative of the GM from a different universe: The HG 1/144 Genoace from the upcoming Gundam AGE series. It seems to have some wide waist articulations there. The enemy dragon look-alike transformable unit Gafran actually looks ok, despite the way it does not seem to be like something from the Gundam franchise.


With Gundam 00 over, a lot of grunt units from Universal Centiry are getting materialised into Gunpla kits. While I do dig into a lot of grunt machines more than Gundams these days, I don't intend on buying multiple numbers of all units ^^; For example I got the GM Kais while leaving the GM Customs or GM Cannon II behind; I don't have that much space to make up a whole arm force unfortunately ^^;;

But I must say that being a fan of grunt units, it's just great to see that some of the dreams do come true eventually~ It has been a "Year of the GM" so far! ^^

Pictures are from Hobby Search and Cybergundam Blog
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What's in the bag? II

It's been more than a week since my last post. It has been a rather busy and tiring week, and I don't really get to surf the Internet much too.

But I do have done something terrible again. It's another bag that looks like a bin liner. Looks familiar? You'll see what it is after the jump.


HGUC 1/144 GM IIIs. There are 7 boxes that can be seen in the picture, and I need to get 2 more. That should mean 3 teams of GM IIIs in total. They will complement my sole Stark Jegan, of which the shoulder missile armaments are based on.


And oh yes I've also got myself a little Gashapon Senshi NEXT Unicorn Gundam. After comparing the first series with the one from the 3rd series (pictures and reviews can be found on hacchaka), I've decided to get the one from the first series. A bit of touchup will be nice, and it will complement my little Kshatriya which I've got with AstrayP03 in December during Gundam Expo Hong Kong 2010.

This year really is a year of GM for the HGUC line. Some of the mobile suits are finally getting materialised, fulfilling the dreams of grunt fans like me. With my liking of grunts and liking to have units of them, this is becoming somnething like a bad habit of some sort. ^^;
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Three Years of Daybreak

Before I knew it, the blog has now turned 3 years old. o_o

To the new visitors, I welcome you and thank you for stopping by.

To the returning readers, I thank you for coming back to my humble blog.

To be honest it's a little hard for me to imagine that I would manage to continue blogging for this long. Looking back retrospectively, this blog was (re)started during the time when there was a boom of similar blogs as encouraged by Danny Choo to blog for oneself. Not surprisingly, due to various reasons many blogs I follow are slowly fading away, be it that they have lost motivation, real life issues, or that they have moved on to the next big thing out there. Sadly some have disappeared completely without a word. I suppose things come and go, so it's just a matter of time really.

Admittedly, blogging is quite a time consuming activity, and with me being a slow reader and thinker, this makes everything take longer to do ^^; Having to catch up with my various kinds of hobby (from Gundam to little pretty girls aka bishoujos to military etc), as well as the blogs and other news online, it really can be a bit tiring!

But it's nice to share things out one enjoys in the form of personal blogs. You share things you like to people with common interest, exchange opinions, and make friends online this way, some even face-to-face eventually! That's what blogging is about I'd think. And it's nice to keep up this way.


One surprise hit was the McDonald Sasuke Toy post that I have made last September. The popularity of the post is mainly driven by reddit. A big thanks to those who share it out there for me. Put all those view counts and statistics gibberish aside, even though the content is just something I've shared from what I've found, it's very nice and heartwarming to see people leaving comments saying how a post like that enlightens their day or just brings a smile to their faces.

Given the fact that I am now in Hong Kong, it does mean that I have greater access to toys and easier too (compared to the days in the UK). Sure, I don't know how long I'll continue blogging for, but with my interest and hobby still around I don't see myself disappearing, at least in the near future. There are still a number of things I look forward to, be it the new Gundam THE ORIGIN animation, the figma WRS, or Ace Combat: Assault Horizon (yep I've been going into the Ace Combat series recently). This pretty much shows how mixed my interest has really been (despite the fact that I don't talk about some of them like military so often on the blog) - it's slowly turning into a spaghetti mess ^^;

Last but not least, I want to give a big thanks to all those who have continued to support me on the blogosphere, as well as on other medium such as twitter. Your comments, emails, or tweets are really appreciated and valued!
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1/8 GSC Black★Rock Shooter -animation version-

I have meant to do a photoshot for this 1/8 GSC (Good Smile Company) Black★Rock Shooter -animation version- for quite some time, but due to all sorts of backlogs and procrastination, I've only unboxed this figure recently together with my military shokugans (in fact I've got this figure way back in November ^^;).

As the name of this figure suggests, this figure was part of the Black★Rock Shooter campaign by Good Smile Company, with an OVA to top things off which was greatly hyped at the time. So, is this figure worth the hype as well?


Front view


Side view with the ★Rock Cannon in sight. It's quite a dynamic pose as if she is charging forward.


The other side view showing more skins than the cannon itself.


Rear view


The base has an interesting look with uneven and worn checkered floor, and chains protruding on the sides. The chains are not too easy to put in (and the instruction manual does not really show you where to put them very clearly), and I've actually damaged one of the pegs on the chains slightly while fitting them in.


Face with the blue flame on the left eye. The blue flame is stuck on the hair piece itself, and there is an opaque surface on the underside of the blue flame to cover up the left eye.


The uneven twin tails flow quite nicely along with the body. One of the thinner chains are supposed to be pegged onto the longer tail, but it does not appear to stick in the hair piece well at all. It's not a huge issue though as the peg and the hole are not so obvious.


The ★Rock Cannon is huge; it's as long as the figure itself. The granite feel of the surface and the shadings here and there are quite nice; you can almost display the cannon just by itself.


The long, slender legs are always a plus in my book.


One of the two scars of Black★Rock Shooter can be seen below the waist. I personally think it's a the red colour of the scar does not fit too well with the pale skin of the character, and something along with that of the figma would fit better.


Another scar can be seen just underneath the chest, and yes flat chest is flat.

There is a defect where a white star is missing on the left hand side (our right hand side) of the coat. It's one of the rather embarassing error as all figures were missing this. As a result, the hobby company has supplmented stickers free of charge for compensation.


An alternate hair piece without the blue flame is also available. Both with and without the flame looks good, and while I prefer having no blue flame on my figma, I think having the blue flame works quite well for this figure, especially with the trailing look of the flame to go with the figure's in-motion dynamic pose.


I remember seeing a sample of the figure back in CGM Night event in Tokyo last year. The overall size of the figure is not too big, so I initially thought that the box itself would be quite small too. I was wrong, and my eyes nearly popped when I've realised that the box was more than twice the size of the figure itself on the day I collected the figure from the shop. Heck, the bootleg version has managed to pack the whole thing in a smaller box!

What's worse is that despite the large size of the box I've still managed to have it buried by my 1/144 Gunpla boxes, and have it completely obstructed from view. -_-;


As for the stuff GSC has sent to me for compensation, there is a set of 8 white star stickers as well as 2 postcards - one that follows the pose of the figure using the OVA art style, while the other with Dead Master drawn by the original artist / character designer huke.


The white star is a paper sticker, not one of the decal stickers or anything too fancy, but I guess it does the job. I did consider snatching one of the spares from my military shokugans but they were a bit too small for it ^^;


I have not done a photoshoot like this for a very long time since the Sega Miku figure, and as I'm still very casual on things I hope you don't mind too much on the improvised setup and quality there.

First things first, I do say I like the pose of the figure, not the least to say that I somehow do like the character design a lot too. While I don't have many static PVC figures, this one does seem to take more fiddling to do to set up, especially with the base (they really should show some more pictures as for where to put those pegs clearly). Some people have complained about the fragility of the hair, or how there are minor colour differences with the white colour, but those are not too much of a problem to me.

The missing star is seemingly one of the bad trend this company is having with the declining quality of PVC figures recently, as observed from other figure review blogs in the past. It's also one of the things that seem to cause this figure to be rather unpopular, and there are still many shops have it in stock and are selling it for a price much lower than the official retail price (9800 Yen, which is quite a lot I have to say). The mixed reception of the OVA would likely affect this too, which can kill the hype quite a lot there (I personally think that they really shouldn't bother coming up with an OVA in the first place for something that is originally just a character design and later an FMV sung by Hatsune Miku).

Overall, this B★RS -animation version- figure is a nice figure in my opinion, with a very nice dynamic pose and the big ★Rock Cannon as the strong features. The defect was something of a big gossip at the time of the release, and perhaps was what made the figure rather unpopular, but it's perhaps a figure that is overshadowed by it the and the way the franchise has been overhyped and expected by the fans. It's really not as bad as it is, so for those who really do like this character or the pose, this figure is still worth considering in my opinion.
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