It’s a FULL MOON Afterall

More blood, sweat, and tears were spent for the all mighty pursuit of anime nirvana.

The Alter TYPE MOON Collection box, which has just become the biggest trading figure/gashapon box I’ve received to date. Eight figures are included in the box, with the collection only being a 6-figure set. The box cost about 6000yen and was well worth the price as the Alter TYPE MOON Collection figures have got to be some of the best trading figures I’ve seen in a long time. They’re even better than some of the regular PVC figurines I have!

All eight boxes that are each almost as a big as a McDonald’s Big Mac box.

Aoko on the first go. I was really surprised at how fricking big and well detailed the trading figure is. Just only opening the first box, and it already tops the also awesome GSC Fate/Stay Night ones I got last year. Detailing is 100x better Yujin’s horrible offerings I got a few months back and size alone, is almost as tall as the Rina Rindou PVC!

Ryougi Shiki on the second. Not as cool as the PVC I also have of her, but not bad. Probably the “worst” figure out of the set mostly because of the insanely long neck she has (didn’t realize it initially until I started to look over the figures in a bit more detail)!

Everyone favorite curry loving senpai Ciel. Really love the dramatic pose she is in though putting Ciel together took a bit thanks to the wind wing thingies attached to her feet. Also the biggest figure out of the set in terms of width thanks to her bent down pose ready to kick some arse with Seven Scriptures.

Arc at the fourth try. The other figure that took forever to put together thanks to trying to attach the blood attack thingie to the figure and base. Only thing I don’t get about the figure are the black snakes attached to her feet. I honestly don’t remember anything specific about them in the series but I guess Alter did it to make Arc look edgier?

Saber on the seventh try. Not pictured are the second copies of Ryogui Shiki and Arc I got before getting to Saber. Great simple pose though I do believe the characters from Fate/Stay Night got screwed in term of action poses as you’ll also see with Rin.

Rin on the last box. Another simple pose, which while not bad I wish was more dynamic like the other girls. For example, Rin using her Jewel sorcery would have been cool. The best would have been either miko or mahou shoujo Rin though

The complete set. Overall an excellent buy that I don’t regret ordering nor minded the delay in its release. I only wish more trading figures and gashapons were of the high quality Alter’s TYPE MOON Collection is. It’s like having six great mini-PVCs at a faction of the cost!

Revoltech Ultra Magnus, Orchid Seed Ryomou Shimei Gothic Lolita, and Clayz Saber Maid Version that have been delivered this past month.

I’m a little disappointed with Revoltech’s Ultra Magnus. It really lacks extra accessories besides the standard different sets of hands and one weapon; heck at least Optimus got the Matrix! I also found it funny how the package has Optimus/Convoy on the back doing the different poses instead of Ultra Magnus, even if they are exactly the same figure with different paint jobs.

If I had to give a verdict over the three Revoltech toys I have so far, from best to worst would be Mazinkaiser, Getter 1, and Ultra Magnus. Sad too since I do so love Transformers and liked Ultra Magnus paint job. Maybe I should have gotten Optimus instead?

Orchid Seed Ryomou Shimei Gothic Lolita was a random buy I kept thinking of cancelling as the months went by. I’m happy to say I’m glad I didn’t as the promo photos nor my crappy photos do the figure justice.

Detailing simply rocks as I would not know where to begin; from the various ribbons and laces to Ryomou’s hair everything was nicely done. I can also testify that the figurine is decently solid like a rock as it accidentally fell off my desk earlier today but remained perfectly fine and unscratched as far as I could tell; that’s ~2.5ft drop! Honestly, the only major negative I could find is it may start leaning. I didn’t realize this until yesterday but I’m guessing the figurine is a bit front heavy thanks to the skirt. The simple, and unfortunately more dangerous, solution I found was to have Ryomou stand on the heels of her boot with the front of her boots only being somewhat inserted into the associated pegs. This is versus putting all the weight on the front and the pegs, which so far as worked out well as long as you don’t accidentally knock the figurine or the desk it’s on too hard ^^;;

Clayz Saber Maid Version I was very disappointed in. This is probably the first time where I’ve ever bought a figure that the promo photos are totally different than the actual figurine itself!

One obvious difference is Saber’s maid uniform being black instead of blue, which I don’t mind much but would have liked blue if I had any choice in the matter. The other, and more annoying one taking time to get used to, is Saber is very pale… like Rei or Karou from Evangelion pale. I think this version of Saber will be the palest figurine I’ll ever have in my collection. I guess it wouldn’t be that much of a big deal but the figurine came from Clayz! They usually do pretty well on their figurines and I figured since their Saber from a year or two ago was like totally awesome, the maid version would be as well. How wrong I was. To make matters worse, maid Saber definitely leans to her right thanks to not-so-great pegs shapes and fit (loose).

The only saving graces are the fact it’s Saber and the uniform itself is as nicely done as Ryomou’s gothic lolita one. That’s it, however sad that sounds.

I knew I should have cancelled the figure as Vinn from the AB.net forums did! I even had time since HLJ usually takes a few days after a figure release to get their stock, but no my unfathomable love for almost anything Fate/Stay Night and Saber blinded me to the obvious :aorz:

Beside a decent amount of figures this month, and not pictured since I forgot to take photos, I also got Kanon v1 FP. I won’t go into details about AmJ’s weird shipping methods or their recent inability to process international pre-orders correctly, but I’ll just say it was a slight annoyance getting the DVD. For the DVD itself, didn’t notice any additional footage for the three episodes included which was kind of sad. Then again, I think Haruhi may be the only series Kyoto Animation has released so far where they added a ton of additional footage; I don’t remember seeing any in Air or the various Full Metal Panic releases. Two on-DVD extras, however, included commentary of the first episode by some people I didn’t get the name of (probably important) and a short walk through Kyoto Animation’s Studio (which was surprisingly clean). Other extras included a mini two sided card and a bookmark-ish 4koma. For the 4koma, no clue what’s going on but it looks cute enough. For the card, one side has Nayuki dressed in Air-ish type of clothes while the other side has part of a larger image which I assume you need all eight DVD releases to put together. Not a bad DVD release but after Haruhi, I was expecting more. I guess this goes to show the power of haruhiism huh?

I want to say with the start of a new year expenses should go down as I want to budget my money a bit better. However, how many times have I said those words in the past and actually kept to them? Also doesn’t help that figure releases I have set for one month may get delayed a few months, but I never add the cost to the right date; thus one month can be much more expensive than I had thought thanks to late figure release(s). This really doesn’t help either. Being the (ex-)self-proclaimed “Avatar of the Goddess of Spending” sucks at times, I’m telling you.