Mai Marketing Scheme

Tis the season to be jolly… at least for those with steady incomes and good financial management. For everyone else, well it’s still the season to be jolly but also a time to see how long you’ll be eating only Cup of Ramen due to holiday spending. For me, I think I only have to live off the stuff for half a year to recuperate from this year’s lost.

Recently got CMS’ release of their Mai-Otome trading figure collection this week. As per the usual when posting about gashapons and trading figures, I’ll be giving play-by-play responses as I test my luck once again with these small figures.

The standard shot of all 12 boxes. You know thanks to Really? Really! and Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu, I can only think of Phoenix Wright when I see characters in poses like Natsuki’s. Strange but true.

The scariest and hottest yuri female of the year, Shizuru on the first go.

Shizuru’s self-denying partner in crime, Natsuki as the second.

Pondering over her horrible sense of style in Mai-Otome, Nao in the third try.

Everyone’s favorite take-no-shit Meister, Haruka GET.

The underrated rising star of the series, Rosary in the fifth.

Boing Boing-chan Erstin to complete the set in the sixth box.

At this point, I started laughing at my “good luck” at how I pulled no doubles in the first six boxes. With six left, I half-jokingly thought I’ll probably get another complete set. I just never thought I’d be right.

Nao-chan the Second.

There’s just not enough Harukas in the world you know?

Sadly Rosary, a sub-character with maybe 5 lines throughout the whole series is probably more popular than fathercest Nina-chan. Sad, isn’t it Nina-chan?

Seriously, did they kill Erstin off only because her seiyuu was too busy to voice her for the rest of the series?

Two Shizurus, Natsuki’s best dream/worst nightmare.

Two Natsukis, Shizuru’s fantasy come true.

All six figures put together. Now that I look at the photo more, doesn’t it seems they’re in a sentai like pose? All that’s still needed is the mandatory special effects and the HiME of Justice

Overall they were, for once, pretty easy to put together except Shizuru thanks to her weapon. Compared to putting together other gashapons and trading figures, Shizuru was still easy as pie but it took me a bit to figure out which way the weapon goes on. I blame my inability to read the included picture correctly. Also, as per the problem with CMS line trading figures, guessing what parts to use for the stand sucked. Luckily most of them needed just one pole and a foot/waist stand although balancing Shizuru and Haruka took a bit of luck. What I wouldn’t give for CMS to include instructions on how to correctly stand their figures!

And speaking of CMS products, now with the extras from this collection, I have a mini-tower of 11 boxes of extra trading figures. The second complete set of six for this series plus five extras from the Mai-HiME Collection v2.5. I should really try to sell them shouldn’t I?

One more bit about the Mai-HiME/Mai-Otome franchise, which I think R8 can heartedly agree to. Looking over all my Mai-whatever related purchases, I’ve come to realize they’ve all been a bit pricey compared to similar items from different series. Especially the games; they cost an arm, a leg, and a lung yet are all mediocre at best. The figures fair a little better in terms of what you get for what you pay but still, they aren’t exactly cheap. I don’t know who is to blame, but I swear anything associated to the Mai-universe will instantly be more expensive than it should be. I guess this is the power of popularity and milking its fans?

In other news, been recently playing Gundam Seed Destiny Union vs. Z.A.F.II Plus and Really? Really!. Both on the projector to boot.

Gundam Seed Destiny Union vs. Z.A.F.II Plus is basically like all recent Gundam games released on the PS2. Action/strategy game where you pick a pilot and mech of your choice and run through the various scenarios for the game; some “original” while others straight from the anime. Really, you’re just destroying all opposing mechs while seeing your favorite mech use its special weapons/attacks and hearing your pilot say various lines. I know my Lunamaria brother-in-arms Zyl would like this game, if anything else, since you can pick Lunamaria fully voiced by her seiyuu Maaya Sakamoto. Actually, all the characters are voiced by their original seiyuus which I’m pretty surprised about. There are about 30+ pilots you can pick from plus the rest of the characters of the series as your mission briefer so to get all of them voiced is great. The game is straight forward but can get pretty hard as my brother and I found out this weekend. Once you beat one of the main routes, new random ones unlock so being the geniuses we are we tried one of them. Crazy, to be blunt. The route we choose, I think Route G, basically had us fighting random mechs every time even if we died (i.e. normally when you die and start again, its the same mechs)! Some of the insaner battles were fighting like two Destroy Gundams, two Infinite Justices, Meteor Justice/Freedom, two Destinies, etc etc. It’s a lot of fun, definitely, but man the number of mechs you can potentially fight is crazy if you’re not prepared. Decent game overall but definitely more fun with two players who actually know the series.

And for the record, I usually choose a Gundam mech piloted by Lunamaria, Lacus, or Cagalli (Lunamaria 90% of the time)

Really? Really! from Navel is the third PC game in the Shuffle line. Focusing on Kaede, the game has Rin and the gang going through Kaede’s mixed up memories due to an explosion of magic with you trying to fix them all. I’m probably going to ruin any decent review of the game, so before I go any further, I would highly recommend checking out DarkMirage’s and lolicontrol’s reviews instead. I don’t have anything to really add that the other two haven’t already mentioned, but I will say it’s good hearing the seiyuus in their Shuffle roles again. I still haven’t finished the game yet but am on the last (fourth) day, so hopefully I’ll have time next weekend to finish. I’ve enjoyed the game so far, the ero scenes being pretty standard fare with the normal (wrong) scenes being the best. A female Itsuki? Nekomimi Asa? Kaede’s “mom” as a magical girl? Just pure awesome. Also, Mayumi rocks. Period.

To wrap up this rather random and pitiful post, here’s a random shot of the recent Sonsaku Hakufu figure from Wave. It’s small, about gashapon/trading figure sized but the detailing is a bit better. Still don’t know if it was worth the 30USD I paid for it now that I have it. I honestly thought it would be a bit bigger. Oh well just more money I’ll never see again