Giving to Thyself

Let’s be honest here, the holiday season has nothing to do with the various religious events or good will towards your fellow men normally associated with the times. What the holiday season is really about is spending, gifts, uncomfortable family gatherings, drinking, getting laid, and vacation time from work/school. Simple as that.

Since I’ve already done three out of the five above, I think I can say my holiday break was nice and quiet. Really didn’t do much but that suited me fine considering how crappy the weather is right now (it’s raining in NJ). All I’m dreading now is going back to work tomorrow after bumming for so long

Let me not forget, however, to mention the gifts; self bought unfortunately. Over the past few weeks received for the holiday season four figures, three DVDs, two CDs, and one ero-game. If I had any talent, I would have tried to parody the “twelve days of Christmas” song but I don’t so I won’t. Thankfully.

Rina Rindou, Karen Oltensia, Sakura Matou, and Mazinkaiser.

The Rina Rindou figurine only picked up thanks to super_rats excellent review of it plus TRSI was having a 25% off most figures sale. Felt good to finally pay for a figure at actual market price (US version) versus market price + expensive shipping (Japanese version) I normally do. Got nothing bad to say about this figure at all.

Karen Oltensia by Alter was my favorite pick out of the two or three figurines out of the character already. Very compact and thus light in taking up space, this version of the heroine from F/HA has her sitting in a very lazed/sexy-ish pose with her mantle flowing around. Also cool is the optional hat for those hat haters out there. My only real issue with the figure is the color of the hair; thought it would have been more whitish instead of the mixture of grays and purple(?). Nothing bad really, but I thought it was worth noting.

Swimsuit Sakura Matou by Kotobukiya was a bit disappointing. The paint job was kind of “eh” in some places, mostly with the swimsuit itself like the string/line parts. The sandy base also isn’t anything to write home about as it reminds me of the recent Tamaki one I got (I may be biased against those though). Beside those two major complaints however, the figurine itself isn’t too bad. I was just expecting better.

Revoltech’s Mazinkaiser is just plain awesome. Then again, any mecha done by Revoltech usually rocks. Simple as that

The complete collection of Full Metal Panic: Fumoffu thanks to one of TRSI’s studio sales. I was waiting for the series to be thinkpak-ed as I loved it to pieces but was in no rush to actually buy the discs. Thankfully waiting paid off. I ended up watching the whole series again in one sitting during one of my quieter nights and it’s good to know it is as funny as I remember it as. Also happy they included the two non-aired episodes even if they weren’t that good; good to know it is the complete series. For the series itself, the best episodes are definitely on the last disc without a doubt. Saraga trying to flirt? Bonta-kun army? Monty Python virus? Pure awesome and win!

Haruhi no Yuutsu Character CD Single v4 Tsuruya and v5 Ryoko. As much as I love Tsuruya-san and the great work her seiyuu Yuki Matsuoka does, I have to admit Ryoko’s songs were a bit better just from straight listening. DarkMirage’s (ThePaper) translation of Ryoko’s version of “Hare Hare Yukai” really helped to win me over towards Ryoko’s songs as well. On a sidebar, it seems if you ordered the CDs from CDJapan, they included a free poster that was used to promote the CDs. I got two BTW. I wonder why that may be?

Ironically enough, as I’m typing this entry Tsuruya-san’s song “Megassa Koukishin” has started to play in foobar. Pretty strange huh?

The first (of many?) ero-game I have ever purchased, C.D. ~ Christmas Days ~ by Circus. I haven’t played the game too much beside the Da Capo route, but the game seems to be a fandisc featuring five of Circus’ more popular ero-games. Thankfully there’s no choices involved, at least in the DC route, as you simply click through the various scenarios (voiced just like in their original games) featuring the most popular girl of the game as the main heroine. Pretty straight forward and definitely for fans of the various games included. Honestly, I only bought the game because DarkMirage mentioned it. Oddly enough, he himself did not buy the game.

Included extras since this was Limited Edition. Basically some Ads, the manual, and a cool 6-set chain key/cell phone thingies featuring the main heroines of the games on the fandisc. Definitely debating whether or not to use any of them

One random extra I found on the disc itself is a set of 10 4-koma (mostly involving the DC II cast) voiced! Took me a few minutes to find out the comics were voiced but damn, you can bet I was crying tears of joy as it gave me a slight chance to vaguely understand them!

And is it me, or is Sayaka Aoki in a lot of Circus’ produced games? I knew she was a character in DC II, but didn’t know she was Miharu in DC! Also currently playing 最終試験くじら route and she seems to be the seiyuu for the main girl as well! Is she like the “go-to-girl” for Circus when they start looking for seiyuus for their games (she’s also in the Circus produced Mai-HiME PC game)?

… and if you’re wondering what I gave my family for x-mas, gave my parents size-able amount (at least for my current finanical standings) gift cards to places they shop and my younger brother Gunbuster from the SOUL OF CHOGOKIN line of toys. Good stuff.