My Life With Anime Figures - Part 9 (Nendroid Snow Miku 2014)

My obsession with Nendroids started a few years ago when they first came out with a few characters from Sword Art Online (Kirito and Asuna).  After that my husband and I started collecting random ones from other series that we liked, only here and there, because even though these little characters were cute, I wasn't quite taken with their chibi looks and giant heads.  If you look at some of the early Nendroids on the Goodsmile website, you'll see that they have gotten cuter with more detail and more possible poses.  We had about five or six of them by the time I got my first Hatsune Miku.  Actually I got a set of mini Nendroids pretty early on, and then a friend of mine ordered me a Miku in a kimono for a birthday, and suddenly I wanted more of them.

Hatsune Miku (a Vocaloid) has really captured my attention over the last few years.  She doesn't really have a 'story' she's really just a computer generated diva.  And there are so many Hatsune Miku Nendroids that I started finding myself wanting to buy one after another.  The first one that I took great pains to get was the Halloween Miku from 2014 and ordered her straight from Goodsmile.  And I passed up getting Snow Miku of the same year but ordered her from Crunchyroll.  I regretted that decision after I didn't get her until July of the next year (2015).  I was really looking forward to getting some outdoor shots of her with snow and flowers in the late winter, but seeing as though I got her in the middle of Summer, there wasn't much I could do with this little gal without setting up an indoor stage.

But, I can't stand putting so much effort into staging when I have a perfectly wonderful backyard!  So winter of 2015 finally came...but the snow didn't.  It was finally in late winter, in the new year of 2016, that a light fluffy snow finally fell and I had time to take this sweet little Nendroid out for her first snow photo shoot!

This photo to the right is one of my favorites since you can see her clear pigtails, and the snow is just light and fluffy and fresh.  I also got to take her base out and bury it in the snow, so that was fun.

The trees were coated too (although this snow would literally last one day and be melted off the next morning by a warm rain), so I had to act fast that morning.  The sky was bright enough that her pigtails just glowed in the tree and the snow glittered.  I wish that were better captured in this photo, but I liked it anyway.  This Hatsune Miku, after all, is supposed to be something of a snow fairy, so having her up in a tree was sort of a natural setting for her!  Her bunny friend didn't make it up into the tree though, he was waiting patiently below!

Now, unfortunately, even though it snowed so late in the winter that it was getting close to spring, I don't have access to snow drop flowers.  Actually, if you Google "Snow Drop" flowers you'll notice there's a problem with them...they don't look like Miku's flowers!  However, if you look up "Lily of the Valley," the flowers are actually closer.  But...unlike snow drops, lily of the valley don't bloom until the middle of spring.  So, I had to wait longer.

My patience finally paid off!  I planted lily of the valley years ago, probably about four to be exact (long before my Miku was created).  The first few years I barely got any blooms, but this year the flowers sprung up in a big way and had tons of little blossoms!  I was super excited to see them and hurriedly rushed my Miku outside today to finally get her photos with these pretty little flowers.

I decided to take her leaf umbrella out with her today and since she has little water droplets everywhere, I did a little staging and squirted the area down with the hose so there would be other water droplets around.  Unfortunately it didn't make a huge difference in the final photos, but the idea was solid.  This first photo I tweaked only slightly (a few stray water droplets I didn't want) and you can see her clear pigtail.  And the lily of the valley are so cute and small.

For giggles I got a few more shots and decided to tweak the colors a bit.  (Above is in the original colors)  This photo I just liked how green the lilies looked when Miku's hair was blue.  I also liked how tiny she looks hiding among all of the flowers.

Miku's shawl is removable as well, so it fit for the warmer weather and giving her a chance to walk outside in the spring without overheating.  I debated tweaking the snowflakes off of her since there isn't any snow, but it was cute nonetheless.


I will finish up today's blog about anime figures with the last photo from today's shoot.  I really liked this one, and tweaked the color up to show the yellows a bit more.  Hatsune Miku just looked very sweet hiding in the grass as a little winter fairy will do.  She seems pleasantly pleased by the weather and her work on the flowers! I hope you enjoyed today's blog!

Walking the Cat (Short Story)

Walking the Cat
A Short Story

     Mraow!  Mraow!  Meeeeoooowww!  The sound reverberated through the house and the small cat bounced off chairs and over the couch and landed squarely on the rug in front of the door.  Out!  Out!  It seemed to say, no, she did say, as she bounced back the way it came as I walked toward the back door where her leash was.  I'd had the windows and back screen door open all day and after just a few attempts to scale the screen mesh, the little bouncy creature had mostly left the door alone.
     But now, now that I had my shoes on, she wanted out.  I reached for the leash and then went through the motions for the next few minutes of chasing the little cat around the kitchen until I could finally grab the thing, little gray hairs flying all around us as I scooped her up and wrestled the harness over her head.  "Gotta put it on if you want to go outside."
     The rules were the rules.  Too many idiot drivers out there to let the cat go out on her own.  First moment she'd step into the street and she'd probably become a cat pancake.  Just thinking that thought, and it was punctuated by one of the insane drivers out front barreling down the street with an engine that sounded like it came from an old Army Jeep that had too many miles on it and not enough oil changes.  It passed around the corner of the house and I could see the Jeep in question, covered in mud, revving around the neighborhood just to make noise.  He came to a sudden stop, turned around, and sped off down the road again.
     "See?  You could have been a pancake just now."  I plopped the cat, newly harnessed, onto the floor and opened the screen door to the back porch.  MRAOW!  Freedom!  She took two steps, plopped down onto the paver stones and rolled around.  Got up, moved another few steps, plopped over, licked the harness, stared up at me as I closed the back door and meeeeeoow!  I'm outside!  Yay!
     And I followed the little shedding beast through a similar routine for the next five minutes or so around the back patio.  Plop, lick, meow, roll, walk, plop, lick, meow... over and over until she finally decided to venture into the dead winter grass.
     Only on days such as these where it reached over sixty degrees, and today it had gotten to at least seventy, only a week into March... no, global warming...never.  El Nino, maybe.  My mother kept quoting the one newscast she heard sometime early during winter, "It's a strong El Nino this year," she mused, "Didn't even get much snow up here in Michigan until January, 'cause of El Nino."
     Didn't matter much to the cat though, she just wanted to be OUT.  Didn't matter what the temperature was, but I didn't like to stroll along behind her when I could lose the feeling in my nose after a minute or two.  We didn't exactly cruise around the yard at top speed or anything.  A leisurely -5mph maybe, if she didn't decide to backtrack.
     Already she was headed around to the gate, so I headed her off, opening it before she'd slip through the slats and we went up to the front yard.  Quiet night thankfully.  Trains and loud cars tended to cut our walks short.  Didn't the first year, she didn't seem to mind the train at all, but something spooked her on year two and since then she'd stare out the windows of the house at the first sound of the train horn and just stare and stare... like at any moment that loud beastie would come right off the tracks for her and get her.  Nope, on days when we walked and that train would blow its horn, I'd have to dash after her as she high-tailed it to the nearest door to the house.
     Quiet today.  She only stopped about five or six times to roll around on the driveway before making it to the sidewalk, then only another ten or so times down the sidewalk until we made it to the long stretch around the house.  Eventually cutting over and walking back down the fence line to the back of the house.  Made it, only had one or two people notice that I was walking my cat on a leash.
     Kid on a bike said something like, "Nice," and another car passed by, but I don't think he even noticed the cat.  I would have thought after two summers of regularly walking my cat around my yard that someone would have said something about me, that maybe I'd be mentioned in the neighborhood social group that there was some crazy lady who walked her cat.  But, nope.  Not a word.  A few kids noticed from time to time, either welcomed by my cat for pettings, or shunned as she would poof tail and head toward the nearest exit, aka. the back yard.  No one walks cats, right?  Dogs, sure, tons of them, every breed in this neighborhood, but not one cat, except mine, of course.
     Safety of the backyard again and we cruised the patio, watched the birds at the feeders, trailed off to sniff at the cat poop in the backyard - from one of those neighbors who didn't care if their cats became pancakes - and then down the other fence line.
     At first I didn't even realize what I was hearing.  A few neighbors screamed at each other regularly, so I was rather used to that sort of thing, I suppose.  Screaming.  Maybe a loud TV.  Maybe something... my cat stopped dead in her tracks and so did I.  I came out of my thoughts; which weren't a whole lot seeing as though you can't really think about much while walking a cat.  Screaming.  A woman's voice.  Then dogs barking.  Babies crying.  My eyes lifted from the fence line and my cat, the foot I'd just stepped down onto the pricker plant that I'd have to weed from the lawn, I stepped on it with my foot and was thinking about when I came back out again, and oh I needed to scrape the bird poop off the fence too, it was piling up in little hard mountains where they'd sit between raiding the bird feeders.
     "OH MY GOD!!!"  And then it came again, "OH MY GOD!"  And again...again...over and over.  Screaming.  Blood curdling baby cries.  Dogs barking.  Some out of fear of the screaming, some from something else...were there two dogs?  My attention snapped up to the house next door to ours.  They were always quiet, always calm, barely making any noise or even talking to us much at all.  We'd seen the husband, and seen him with his wife.  He used to have a dog, a pretty spotted thing, white and black.  But then they'd had a baby boy, and the dog disappeared.  And then they had another boy.  And then someone, not sure who, moved in.  And then a regular visitor who had scrubs.  And a black dog that she'd throw his poop away in the trash container that now permanently resided between our houses.
     More screaming and I picked up my cat and thought to walk back into the house.  Didn't need to hear this...did I?  Yes, sort of, I did.  I hear more screams, baby crying, and suddenly the voice turned into, "I need help!  My dog bit my baby!"  An address, oh, called the squad or 9-1-1.  The dog's barks had calmed down but the baby still was crying.  I knew now why, but how?  I wasn't sure.
     It was an odd situation, these neighbors.  They seemed to be our age, but not very friendly.  The first 'wife' we'd seen with our neighbor was definitely different than the one with the babies, and this one just looked different.  But who owned the dog?  Couldn't have been the one with the baby...or were their two babies?  A second one from the woman with the dog?  I wasn't sure, I'd never be sure.  I went inside and told my husband about what I heard.
     We waited to hear sirens.  A paramedic showed up and two men went in to attend to the baby.  I thought about what I would have done with a baby bit by a dog.  I unharnessed my cat who MRAOWWWW'd her dissatisfaction with our short walk.  She followed me around the house as I watched to see if they'd send out animal control or something to take the dog away.  I realized that if my dog bit my kid, if I'd had a kid, I probably would have just taken him to the ER rather than calling for a paramedic.  Just imagine the bills...  No one came, no dogs were taken away, but no one else showed up either.
     I sat down at the window, wondering if the guy who was watching someone down our street would show up again.  He was there yesterday as I sat at my computer with my cat in my lap, then off my lap, then on my desk, then plop, lick, mraow, back down on my lap again, fur everywhere, and I wondered about this man out in the car in front of our house.  I could only see his hands and occasionally a phone and then a notebook.  That was yesterday, and today there was a different truck out front, that one had tinted windows and I couldn't see anyone in that one, but when I opened the windows I could hear the engine running.  It drove away and was replaced within a minute by the original guy.
     The first guy had shaggy blondish hair to his shoulders.  Did he have facial hair?  Maybe.  I wasn't sure, the glimpse I got of him was brief.  He did the thing with his phone again, grabbed his notebook out, and then sat with his hands on his legs as he watched someone down the street.  I hoped it wasn't my house.  I wouldn't know what it would be about, but ever since my own brother had been the object of surveillance outside my mom's house when we were still living there, I was paranoid about stuff like that.  The government wants you to think that they can't watch you and dig into every aspect of your life, but they can.  I remember seeing that dark car parked across the street with that little red light and ever so often someone would light up a cigarette and flick it out the window.  And I wondered why the heck someone would be watching our house because we were the whitest straight family...
     At least until I'd moved out and the year I got married the FBI busted down my mom's door and dragged my brother off to prison for 25 years over child pornography.
     I was still paranoid that something could be happening under my nose and I'd never know it.  So what was this going on now?  Drug ring?  Pedophilia?  Illegal immigrants?  Something else? They guy drove off long before I was willing to take the cat out for her walk.  If I were a different kind of person I probably would have gone out to ask him who he was watching.  Maybe he even would have driven away before I finished approaching the car.  But I didn't take the chance.  I wasn't that kind of person.
     I was the kind of person who would rather have cats than kids.  I was the kind of person who freaked out when my cat fell down off a shelf and limped for a week, and took her to the vet to have her checked over.  But I was also a person who probably would have blamed the kid for stirring up the dog to bite him.  I would have scolded him, wrapped up his wound, and taken him to the ER myself if, and only if, it was deep enough I would have thought it needed stitches.  But that crap is expensive, insurance or Obamacare or not.  Band-Aids and Neosporin, that was the way of it.  And if the kid would be afraid of dogs for the rest of his life, good!  At least then he wouldn't stir the stupid thing up into biting him.
     My cat looked up at me solemnly from the rug by the front door.  "Not going back out there again tonight, too dark," I told it.  She MRAOWed, not happy, made some kind of meow-grumble sound as she walked out of the room and I grabbed a cookie out of the container on the counter.
     I was the kind of person who took my cat for a walk outside on a leash.

My Life With Anime Figures - Part 8 (Nendroid Kitchen)

     I'll be the first to admit, I'm pretty jealous of some of these figure photographers I've been following online.  If it weren't for the fact that I just don't have the funds (or time) to do the amazing stuff they do, I'd probably start my own Facebook page and try to get a following like they all seem to have.  And maybe eventually I'll have enough photos to try to do it myself.  Perhaps even enough to produce a book and try to get it funded.  Nah...  Well, a girl can dream, right?

     Anyway, today's "My Life With Anime Figures" surrounds the creation of a little kitchen for my Nendroids.  Why a kitchen?  Because I could get decently sized furniture from the Calico Corner toy series, and the kitchen set was adorable.  Plus, I love miniature food.  Today you won't see all of my collection of tiny food, but will probably bring out the rest eventually in the upcoming months as I try my hand at more of these.  I also have more Nendroids to photograph and will probably do more changes to the furniture itself in the future too to make it more unique.  But for now, these are mostly test shots as I decided to build a 'stage' for my figures.

      

    So I had furniture, food, and figures, but I didn't have a room.  I considered making a room out of a cardboard box but I realized over time it might break down from use and I also wanted something stable enough that I could move it out of reach from my cats.  After some hunting I found a sturdy unfinished bin I was able to cut the front off to give myself two corners of a room.  I've seen some setups with only one corner, but I wanted to have some opportunities to switch sides of the room (which you'll see in the photos to come.

     Now that I had a blank room, how to decorate it?  Paint it?  Cut holes for windows?  I finally landed on scrapbook paper since I could tape it on and remove it as I pleased.  I found an adorable set of paper called "Olivia's Kitchen" at Hobby Lobby that had plenty of old fashioned food themed papers and also had some types of repeating patterns that would look good for flooring.  I settled on the checkerboard design because even though my Nendroids aren't in the old days, I like the old fashioned style look in kitchens.  Plus the furniture, especially once I get it painted, will probably look more old fashioned anyway so it will all fit in.


     Unfortunately I don't have any photos of the room by itself with just wallpaper and the window, or with furniture installed but no Nendroids.  But I'm sure you came here to see photos of the figures anyway, so here's one of the first setup photos as I was testing lighting.  I realized pretty early that because of the three walls there wasn't going to be a really good way to get natural lighting in this space.  The flash washed it out terribly, and closeup photography kind of needs natural lightning.  I tried turning it to the window, but the shadows appeared in strange places.  So I pulled out a couple random lamps, one from IKEA which gives a sort of natural glow and another LED spot lamp that was just too focused.  But I do think perhaps it might be of some use in the future.

     As you can see in the photo of Umaru on the right, the soft warm glow on the right side of the room was from the IKEA lamp sitting inside the room.  The light focused on the fridge is the LED light that was just too hash and pinpointed.  I think maybe it'll be useful for the glow from a computer screen or something, so I'm keeping it nearby just in case.  Unfortunately no matter where I put the soft light of the other lamp it just didn't light up the room as I wanted.  So I snapped various photos while moving it around to different positions and then headed to bed that night.  During a bout of insomnia, it finally hit me that I could 'float' the lamp above the box if I built a strut-like system on top.  (Again, I'm glad that I splurged for the wooden container as opposed to a cardboard box which wouldn't have held the weight of the lamp and strut system).

     Here's an unedited photo of what the room looks like lit with the lamp from above.  I also added a fun window and painted clouds and gave it a night shine.  Attached it using double sided tape, so again, I can change it and move it where I want.  The lighting it sort of like you'd see in an old kitchen like this where they really didn't put many windows and there was usually only a little tiny light above.  I'd love to add upper cabinets someday, but we'll see.  I also added a second "wallpaper" to the right side of the room to make the seating area a bit different.  Eventually I'll fix the seam, but for now it does the trick.

So now that I've got half-way decent lighting, I have a kitchen, if not completely finished, and I've got some Nendroids hanging out, I thought I'd have a little fun with it.

Umaru raids the kitchen!

Hanging out by the cool fridge on a hot summer day (with Nyanko-Sensei)

 Snow Miku (2015) Hangs out in the Dining Room.

Tsukiko is munching on steamed buns she brought over.

And finally... Umaru raiding the kitchen in the middle of the night!

     This finally photo was actually my favorite because I got to play with Photoshop and do some color changes to make it look like it was night.  I'm very excited to be able to do more with this kitchen as time goes on and hope to expand it by adding photos and curtains and other fun things as time goes on.

     I hope you enjoyed today's blog!  Please feel free to comment below and follow me!  ^_^

My Life With Anime Figures - Part 8 (Room for Improvement)

I wasn't exactly sure if I'd have enough topics to keep this series going more than a few parts, but in today's installment of "My Life With Anime Figures" I decided to cover a question that I know any collector will normally hit upon from time to time.  It's one of the most important questions, second only to "Should I take a figure out of the box?  Or should I keep it pristine in the box?"  And obviously this question will only arise if you have taken said figure out of the box:

"Should I modify my figure in any way?"

Today's installment will go over the three main questions that I hear about figure modification:

1.  Should I glue my figure together?

2.  Can I modify or paint a small part to fix it?

3.  Is it okay to completely remake a figure into something else?

In the spirit of pros and cons, I'll first cover a few brief points on whether you should even take a figure out of the box.  Here's a few points you should think about before you take a figure out.

Will you want to re-sell the figure at some point?

Do you want to play with your figure?

Are you only collecting or are you enjoying the figure?

How will you store the figure in the box?  Do you have room?

Can you even see the figure inside of the box to enjoy it?

Okay, mostly people who keep figures inside of the box plan on selling them some time in the future.  Most likely they are perfectly content on just owning the figure, and are too worried that dust or handling will somehow diminish the value of the figure.

To those of you who are in this category, this following blog is not for you.  Most likely you will cringe with what I'm about to show you because to me, figures are not about re-selling, but playing with, enjoying, etc.

Okay!  Now that we have that out of the way and your figure is out of your box, what will you do with it?  Put it on a shelf, or a desk, or somewhere you can look at it and smell the plastic of your new treasure.  Maybe you bought a cheap figure that you had to put together (like a gatchapon) and you're having trouble keeping it together.  Mind you, most well made figures will not have this problem, but sometimes figures like Nendroids and Figmas will have parts that loosen after being played with for a bit and you might find yourself asking this question:

1.  Should I glue my figure together?

        No.  Well, that's the short answer, because most of the time you're going to get glue everywhere and all you'll see is glue everywhere and you won't be happy with your figure after that and it'll get stuck up on a shelf somewhere because you glued it to the point where you can't play with it anymore.  Now you can't re-sell it even if you did want to get rid of it because no one's going to want to look at that icky mess you just created.

       Yes.  That said, there are times you might have to glue it.  For instance, you may have played a bit too roughly with that Figma and an arm fell off.  Oops.  Okay, pinning and gluing might be necessary to make it fine to play with again.  Watch videos on YouTube and practice gluing without getting the glue everywhere - use tiny amounts!

       Maybe.  Occasionally I say you may just want to glue the whole bugger together if it won't stay together long enough to even stand on a shelf.  If, for some reason, your figure was one of those less than ten dollar figures that came in a bunch of pieces, most likely you'll need to glue it at some point just to keep it together.  Just watch how you do it and be careful you glue the pieces together correctly or you'll get something that looks like it's out of a Picasso painting.

2.  Can I modify or paint a small part to fix it?

        Possibly.  This question also goes back to whether you feel like what you're doing to the figure will make it better or not.  I've had a few figures over the years that bothered me to the point of 'fixing' them with paint.  Below I've included a couple of pictures to show you a Vash the Stampede (from Trigun) figure that I bought and 'fixed.'

        For those of you who have only seen the Trigun anime, you'll probably wonder why in the heck Vash has black hair.  Without going into too many spoilers from the manga to the anime, between the original Trigun manga and the Trigun Maximum manga, some of Vash's hair turns black.  I'm a fan of Trigun Maximum, and the image this figure comes from has Vash's hair black in the back.  The original figure did not.  Because of this inconsistency, I took it upon myself to fix the figure to correct it.

      As you can see, it didn't really diminish the look of the figure, it just changed it to look more like the original image.  And really, if this figure is going to be yours forever, or as long as you care to own it, why not like looking at it?  Why not do something you think you'll be proud of?
     Sometimes you'll also see problems in painting that you could fix, or perhaps a part of the figure has been scratched, or broken and can be fixed by a slight modification.  Always be prepared before you attempt to do something like this, watch plenty of videos (there are a lot of them out there) and make sure you've got all of the correct supplies.

3. Is it okay to completely remake a figure into something else?

     I've seen this particular thing done on various levels.  Most of the time those who do a modification or complete re-do will start with an inexpensive figure.  I worked on some smaller collectibles first such as My Little Pony Blind bags.

     Then I worked my way up to complete over-hauls (although this one could almost fall under the 'fix' category.  Princess Celestia appeared the first time as completely pink in pony form, so I completely repainted all but a few key areas (namely her eyes and cutie mark).

     Of course, now you're going, but what about anime figures?  Should I not touch those?  Well, it all depends on you.  Have you had experience painting in miniature?  Do you have skills with molding?  Start with a garage model first before you try to start something from scratch, otherwise you might regret something and you'll have ruined your figure.
     I have a coworker that re-makes POP! figures into other figures that they don't make (although I'm sure that's hard to do since there are so many of them) but giving them different color hair, clothing, etc, sometimes will improve a figure that you otherwise were "Eh" about.
     Take for example, my newest figure acquisitions which happened to be cheap, "backpack charm" figures of Hatsune Miku.  I don't have a picture of them before, except to say their hair colors were wrong, way more blue than aqua.  They were cheaply painted and I got doubles on accident which really got me angry seeing as though there are 6 varieties, I bought three, so dangit, I should have gotten at least half of the different types, right??  I spent a absurd amount on them - $7.50 a piece (if they'd been open package I wouldn't have spent more than $5).
     However, being enterprising and already out the money, I decided to fix them up.  The two below are cases where I did little tweaks and decided to slap a bunch of pearl glaze on them to shine them up a bit:

      As you can see, I used my manga for color reference.  Originally their hair was way more to the blue side of turquoise than it was aqua.  I fixed up some black splotches of paint on the right one's hand (from a bad paint job) and gave stripes to the left one's panties (because I'm obsessed that way).  I didn't do the pearl coat quite as smoothly as I should have, but now I think I'd be willing to go outside with them strapped to a bag or purse.

     The last figure which was a duplicate of the left figure, I decided to do a complete overhaul and completely take the backpack strap off of her and make her into a mini figure.

      I was a bit too heavy-handed with the paint on her face unfortunately, but I just didn't like having duplicates.  I completely sprayed a base coat on this figure and painted her from scratch, top to bottom.  Took a few days thanks to cat interruptions and the fact that I was working with such a small figure and had eye strain.  She only sits less than 2 inches high.  But, I think it turned out pretty cute, even if the only clear glaze I had at the moment was glitter glaze, so now she's sparkly, but Miku looks okay sparkly in my opinion.  I need more practice at painting faces, but I don't think she turned out too poorly.


THE VERDICT:

How much or how little you feel there's room for improvement in your figures, make sure you plot out your plans in advance.  Do you feel that you'd be happier with a changed figure than the original thing?  And will you deal with the consequences of not being able to sell it (unless you modify figures for that purpose and sell them in which, go you!)  Think about your choices and then stick with them!  Sometimes we all need a little improvement to make us feel better about ourselves.

The Reality of Fantasy (Short Story)

     I've realized lately that as a writer, I haven't written much in the way of anything creative.  In the past I used to fill journal after journal with short stories and even tried once to collect them and sell them to publishers.  That didn't happen.  I got discouraged and no one ever asked to read what I had to write.  Eventually I just sort of stopped writing all together.  That's not to say that the stories aren't in here somewhere, but they rarely make it to print.  Anyway, today's blog is actually a test of whether I could write a complete story and get it finished in a little over an hour.  I'll give Stephen King his due because after reading some of his newer short stories, I realized how much I just like writing short stories myself.  Here's an attempt at something new for my own sake.  If you like it, I'm glad.  If you don't, don't tell me, I don't want to know about it!  *smirk*  I just think that it's time I write something of my own once in awhile.

The Reality of Fantasy

     It hardly felt worth getting on the computer anymore.  She would sit down and scroll through the endless feed from her Facebook account, or occasionally Reddit, and eventually realized how much time she had wasted looking at all of the fake ads and the numerous silly photos of cats.  Not that she didn't like looking at cats, that wasn't the point, but the original reason she had started into computers all of those years ago was so that she could write.
     Writing had been an early love, since she started out learning cursive in third grade, but unfortunately for her, she realized just how much she copied her favorite books  No one had even suspected when she'd written a brilliant tale about some unicorns and dragons in third grade that it had been almost a direct ripoff of a book she'd read over and over from the school book fair.  Originally she had told lots of stories about unicorns and the such to the point Miss Williams even bought her a specially made book with unicorns on the cover since she figured that's what she'd be writing about.  But when the time came to fill the empty book with stories of these fantastic creatures, her mind drew a blank.  She couldn't write an original story, so she took a story she liked, changed it just a little bit, and passed it off as her own.  Miss Williams didn't even know the difference.
     And so it went from early on; she was always better at writing reports than writing original stories.  But eventually they came to her.  Eventually she could focus her attention on fantasy, and even though years later she would see resemblances to certain novels she no doubt read at the time, they were more or less her own.  But those feelings resided in her for years because the more she read others' work, the more she thought everything that she wrote was also a rip off of something else.
     It got really bad once she started writing fanfiction.  Because fanfiction was something that blatantly took someone's work and made it into your own.  Sure, it could be written very creatively, and she could put her own characters into the world and make it however she wanted.  But at the very base of it, she was taking someone else's work for her own and that discouraged her from writing.
     Once she refused to write fanfiction anymore, the writing stopped completely.  Well, she admitted to herself that as long as she wrote about her own life, in her journals and personal blogs, that possibly it was her.  She wasn't ripping anyone off because it was actually her own story.  And for a short time this made her happy with herself because she could feel free.  But the idea of imagination and the idea of creativity, it felt far away and sad now.  She would start to write something that had been inspired by someone else and she realized that this was just going the same way as how things had been before.  She wouldn't, no, couldn't allow herself to get this way again.

     It was a shame really, what happened next.  At least, that's what she felt when she opened her news feed one day and looked at the local television station's Facebook page.  Fantasy... it had to be an early April Fool's joke...right?  There it was, printed in full color, but the revelation that there really were fantasy creatures.  They'd discovered a unicorn in the ice in Greenland as one of the glaciers started melting.  Here was proof.  Sure, there were plenty of skeptics online and plenty more stupid people who thought it was absolute reality, but this wasn't one of those online ads.  At least it didn't seem to be one of those fake hoaxes because they had sent some of the top researchers out and started testing the DNA already.  Apparently it was an anicient breed they assumed had been the originating species of both horses and deer, even though they did admit this wasn't what scientists had thought originally.  More tests had to be run, but they were even thinking perhaps the DNA could be used to recreate the unicorn using horses to birth them.
     The news was so sensational for the next few weeks she really thought that it would turn out to be a hoax.  But eventually things wore down and as the years went on, they really did bring a unicorn back to life and eventually even started raising them and selling them.  The unicorns weren't magical, of course, but they grew horns just like in fairy tails, and they used them to break ice to get to water, fight for mates and gather food from trees.  After the winter months passed, however, they shed the horns and would regrow them again in time for winter.  The first few years theses horns were scarce and the Chinese tried to sell them as herbal remedies which made them even harder to come by.  Then some naturalists got hold of the unicorns and decided that they should put them in sanctuaries and raise them in wildlife preserves.  After that a unicorn horn could be found in just about every hunting shop alongside the antlers of various other animals.
     Sooner than not, people went on to the next awesome thing, the next gadget, and girls didn't dream about unicorns in the way they used to when she had been growing up.  The unicorns were just another animal.  Albeit now, instead of pony parties, there were unicorn parties.  The beasts were just about as fragile as a deer or small horse, but for the most part they could be tamed and it made for better entertainment than a clown for most girls during those years.

     Was it ten years, or twenty?  She couldn't remember now, but she hadn't written a unicorn story since that time, nor had she picked up her writing tablet for anything.  She went to work at her retail job, she loathed the coming of the holiday season again, and she didn't try to write something creative.  Her husband tried to encourage her from time to time in attempts to help get her writing, but because he didn't spend any time asking to read her old stories, or even attempt to read her journals which she left lying around the house, she didn't feel any real need to write.  Fantasy for her had become reality.  It was depressing.  Although, when they added a unicorn run near the bison park ten miles away from her, some days she would go out and take pictures of them.  But the stories and fantasy of these magical creatures never once came back to her during this time.  It was as if something inside of her had gone away.
      So, it was a complete surprise the morning she got up early one November morning and the sun was still dark, and there in the backyard was a large, white shadow.  At first she thought it was the reflection of herself in the patio glass in the dark she saw, but then she turned out the light and went over to the window.
     Standing in her backyard, helping itself to seed from her bird feeder was a unicorn.  It looked young, a small horn was peaking out of its head, so it was definitely not a deer.  Perhaps one of the young from the pen at the park got out?  Or perhaps someone having a unicorn party didn't get it locked up again?  She wasn't sure, but when it noticed her looking at it from the patio, it turned and walked up toward the porch.
     "Tame then," she murmured to herself as she bent to retrieve the wood bar from the patio door so she could open it.  The unicorn stood, harmless and quiet on the back patio stones and waited as she opened the screen door.  "What are you doing out here?  I'm sure you aren't wild... someone looking for you?"  She slipped on her Crocs and slid out onto the porch.  It was briskly cold that morning and she could see her breath as she closed the patio door behind her.
     The unicorn came up slowly, timidly, snuffling for food, an apple or something.  She couldn't remember what unicorns ate, but probably all of the same foods as horses or deer.  Turning, she looked over at the fence gate and found it open.  "Didn't think you could jump as high as a deer," she murmured, realizing she must have left it open the other day when she was doing yard work to finish up things for the winter.  The unicorn snuffled up closer to her and she held out an empty, flat hand.  It lipped her fingers, searching for food and then snorted and backed away, realizing it wasn't getting a treat.
     "Hold tight, I have apples inside," she said finally, and backed away, hoping not to spook the animal.  Perhaps if she kept it in one place for long enough the owners would drive by looking for it and maybe she could find out the story of why this unicorn had wandered into her backyard.
     Getting inside without spooking the animal, she went into the fridge and pulled out an apple. Thought twice, grabbed a knife and sliced it in four, and then also took her coat off the hook and pulled it on.  With the apple in hand again, she returned outside and the unicorn looked at her expectantly.  "Here you go, sweety, I hope you eat these."  She put a slice of apple in her opened hand and the unicorn huffed it once and the slurped it down with teeth and tongue.
     "Oh good," she said under her breath, "Guess you were hungry, want another?"  The unicorn came over and knelt down before her at that moment.  Her heart started to pound at that moment, because all of those stories from her childhood came rushing back to her.  Were some of those unicorn stories true?  Were they all just made up from real stories in the far distant past and just handed down until all of the unicorns were extinct?  She could feel her heart pounded out of her chest and she hurried to sit down on the porch step to give the creature another apple slice.
     No one had mentioned this in the articles about unicorns on the web.  They were pretty much just like any other wild animal who gets tamed for humans.  They were a bit more like deer than horses, but overall they didn't do anything out of the ordinary.  Except for this one.  Maybe it was trainable.  It was young, after all, the horn was quiet short, she noticed, as it ate down the third slice of apple and licked its lips.  She supposed perhaps they could be trained, but maybe like a cat, they did what they wanted when they wanted and perhaps this was just an effect of giving it an apple slice.
     "Here's the last piece," she said as she mulled this over and the unicorn huffed in the cold air and crunched down the last of the red delicious.  "I wish I knew where you came from though, it would make for an interesting story online.  Might even go viral if I were to video tape you."  She shook her head at that and lifted her hand toward the unicorn.  "Can I pet you at least?"
     The unicorn, at this move of her hand, lowered its head into her lap.  She gasped slightly, and then stroked the forelocks and mused at the small spiral of horn on its head.  It was like all of her childhood dreams come true.  All of those stories and all of those moments where this, this, was what she wanted to have happen when she was young, when she was just a virgin, when nothing else really mattered.  But unicorns weren't real.  These weren't just beasts you could rent for the day... at least, not then.  But now.  Now they were real and here was one with its head in her lap and almost purring as she petted its mane and ran her fingertips over its soft furry ears.
     How could she not write about this moment?  This was it... she was so much older now, in her forties, but this was the moment she had waited for since she was a little girl.  She wanted to share this lovely moment with everyone.  It was a shame her camera wasn't on her.  She wasn't like her husband, carrying around his smart device with him everywhere he went.  That watch of his probably could have taken the photo at a quality almost as good as her five year old smart phone.  She sighed, oh well, this memory was better than any photo, even if no one believed her.  She smiled and stroked that soft mane and realized that it wouldn't be much longer and she really did need to be getting going to work or she'd be late to open the store.
     The twitch of her leg at this thought brought the unicorn's head up.  It stood abruptly and she held out her hand as if to say, don't go, but she couldn't get the words out.  Or maybe she did, she couldn't hear them at any rate because at that moment a shot rang out.  She saw a small red circle form on the unicorn's chest, the blood filled the white chest moments later and the animal dropped to the stone patio.  It twitched, legs convulsing as the hot red blood spilled onto the ground.
     Staring in disbelief, her mouth hanging open, it felt like an eternity, watching this beautiful creature die in front of her.  She couldn't move, couldn't breathe, her hand still stretched out in front of her.  What...why...how?
     "Oh hey, thanks for that.  I've been chasing him down for over a mile now."  The voice came from the fence line over her shoulder and the guy in the dark camouflage walked down the fence and into the backyard.  He'd been sitting on the opposing neighbor's porch moments before the shot and had waited for the unicorn to get away from her.  "Rabies, you know...  Can't be too careful around these things, they catch it like wildfire."  He slung the hunting rifle over his shoulder and proceeded to grab the unicorn by it's back legs.
     "Sorry about the blood, didn't mean to scare you, you okay, lady?"  He started to pull it toward the fence.  "My buddies are bringing the truck around, they'll help you clean up the blood.  Thankfully the fresh stuff washes off patios like this in no time."
     "Oh...okay..."  The words came out of her mouth with a whisper and she finally lowered her hand and realized just how cold it was.  The light was getting brighter, the sun was starting to come up.  The unicorn's blood steamed in the cold air off the patio stones.  "You were tracking it down for rabies?"
     The hunter lifted his head from his task and then looked over his shoulder.  Two guys in a big-wheeled truck of some sort pulled up alongside the curb.  One of them waved to him and rolled down the window, "Oh you got him!  Terrific!"  They came out of the car and helped carry the unicorn and lift it into the back of the truck.  The one driving came over to the back fence at the word of the first hunter and excused himself, said he was going to borrow the faucet on the back of the porch to clean up.
     "Sure... there's a bucket..." She sniffled, her nose was running from the cold.  Not quite believing what she had seen, the hunter proceeded to dump buckets of water across the patio until she couldn't see any trace of what had happened.
     "Sorry about all of this, miss.  Hope it didn't hurt you... nasty buggers these.  They get real fiesty during mating season.  Thankfully this one was young so no worries.  We were worried he might have rabies though.  Someone reported him a few miles away busting through a house.  Thank goodness he stumbled into your yard though, they're awfully fond of the ladies."  He waved at her and closed the gate behind him, hopping into the truck his buddies said something about getting a reward and they drove off into the morning sunlight.
     Numb in both mind and body, she walked back into the house.  Her husband was coming down the stairs, rubbing his eyes, holding his robe around him.  "Did you hear that bang a bit ago?  What was that?"
     She shook her head, rubbing her cold, probably red nose.  "Nothing...  Nothing at all."

My Life with Anime Figures - Part 7 (Indian Summer)

It's November now, and yet, for this part of the country, it doesn't really feel much like it.  If you're like me, you probably know that things aren't quite the same as it was when we were younger (unless you're young and you remember winters coming later in November and sometimes not getting hardly any snow at all) and even though I live farther south than I did as a child, it's still weird when on a November afternoon I could go outside in short sleeves and bare feet.  I'm not living in the Southern states, I'm in Ohio.  At this point in time we usually could have gotten a snow, or at least a good hard, killing frost that takes out all of my flowers in the front garden and I'm forced to pull in all of my plants off of the front porch.

This year, however, my tomato plants got the small frost that hit, but not the front porch and so I have flowers in my planters on my porch one wouldn't normally see in November.  Take, for example, the perfectly happy petunias you see in the photo to the right.  I kid you not, even though I did take this photo over a week ago, the same plants are blooming like crazy still in their red planter and actually a second round of flowers sprung up in the planter from seed and started blooming as well.  Remember, I'm in Ohio.  It's November.  Let that sink in a bit.  Normally I keep geraniums all year round and I tend to bring them in after the first frost, but it was so brief this year that they're actually doing better than in past years at this time inside the house.  Now, tell me that global warming is not a thing.  Tell me that climate change does not exist.  Maybe you think it's El Nino (which, I heard today, may make this winter the lightest one since our almost no-winter in 2011 where we got less than 12 inches of snow) but no matter what your take on it is, this isn't normal.  I'm not growing these plants in a greenhouse, I haven't taken them inside once, it's just sitting on my porch being happy.

Nevertheless, I won't dwell on that as my topic today because the real reason I'm blogging this evening is to show off my new Nendroid, Noel.  She's from Sora no Method (or Celestial Method if you're looking on Crunchyroll) and she's quite special.  But before I get into her photos, let me do a little setup for you.  Basically I've been starting to collect fairy garden things for my Nendroids.  Not all of them are quite the right size, so you have to be picky about it.  I know that some doll accessories out there will do the job too, but I've been more concerned with finding items that I personally like in order to post photos with my Nendroids.  Some of the other photographers online have entire setups with rooms and accessories, but I'm more of an outdoor kind of person.  So in the photo you see to the left, there's a few pumpkin accessories I spotted at a fairy garden store in Frankenmuth, Michigan.  At the time I didn't buy any of them, but later did when they went on sale (in fact, I found them today at a local garden center that had them on clearance).  It's past Halloween now, so I didn't want to pull out the Jack'o'Lanterns or anything, but I thought since in one scene of the first episode of Sora No Method, Noel is waiting for her friend Nonoka and Autumn passes.  She happens to play with a fox she makes friends with, and I set up my photos thinking of that first Autumn she waits for her friend to come back.

The Nendroid Noel is a pretty awesomely cute little character.  I had to wait an extremely long time to get my hands on her though as I'd ordered her online through Crunchyroll and we're pretty sure they lost our order.  After waiting over a month past her release in Japan, we still had no sign of her showing up.  After finally sending an email about it, she showed up with two other figures we were wondering about.  But the wait was well worth it since she comes with a load of extras, but if you want to see those, go online elsewhere, there's plenty of photos showing what she looks like with all of her accessories.  As for me, I'd rather have her living her life as she waits for Nonoka.  Today she discovered some pansies still growing in my garden out back.  I love how in the Autumn I can cover up her base using a leaf and you don't even know I'm using her stand because it disappears!

Oh hi!  It didn't rain today, but after watering the flowers I realized that some of the drops had gotten on Noel.  Oops.  But it didn't get her down because she found a leaf big enough to use as an umbrella!  This is her largest accessory (well, that and the space ship) and I'm actually looking forward to posing her later with my Winter 2015 Miku figure because they both are holding leaves and looking like little nature spirits.  But that will come later as I think it needs to get a little bit closer to the winter months to do that.  Noel waits quite a few years for her friend returns, so I wonder just how many winters, springs, summers and autumns she has to wait for Nonoka?

No worries this year though, it appears that Noel discovered a pretty cool thing - pumpkins!  Now you get to see a bit of the accessories that I discovered at the garden center this year (and a few other fairy garden places) and even though it's past the time of year where people normally think of pumpkins (mostly) I thought it would still be a good time since we're still in the month before pumpkin pie season.  Hee hee.  I'm not sure whether Noel would pick up the kobocha in front of her, or the others that are around her.  She seems pretty excited about her find though.  I wonder what she's going to do with them?  I almost tried getting her to sit on one of them for a photo, but that's when I discovered one really odd thing about this particular Nendroid...she wears no panties.  This is the strangest thing I've discovered (and others have noted it online as well) because even for other figures that have no 'panty shots' in their respective anime... at least they painted the tushies white!  But for Noel, maybe it was a rush or maybe on purpose, we're not sure, but she was left skin color below her dress.  We'll probably never know why this was, but it basically has stopped me from putting her in any 'compromising' poses.

More fairy garden accessories came to play in this photo, but I still love how the leaves cover up any sign of her stand.  And what's that in the background on the right?  Is that her fox friend?  I couldn't quite find one that looked as anime-ish as I would have liked, but I did find a fox that was just about the right size for her.  So at least Noel had a friend to hang out with while waiting for Nonoka to return so she could grant her friend a wish.  She looks so happy out in the garden on a nice Indian Summer day.  Maybe she'll even grant me a wish?

There is something to say about these adorable little Nendroids.  I enjoy their compact size, the fact that they really take on the characteristics of the anime using their various expressions and props.  I did leave one face out of these photos, there's a pouty one that I couldn't quite figure out how to work into these shots, so maybe sometime in the future.

One thing that I do enjoy, is that she came with a background cardboard stand that shows the observatory.  Unfortunately it had already gotten dark outside by the time I realized I wanted to do this shot, so the glare made things a bit odd.  But I liked playing around with it in photo shop and you get so see her fox pal a bit better.  As I said, this one is a bit too realistic for the anime character, but it turned out to be a neat addition in the photo shoot.  And completely by accident as I'd forgotten about the fox until I re-watched the first episode of the anime this evening!  This photo also was something of a mistake because I moved the camera at the last second and it gave sort of a blur effect.  BUT, it came out a lot better than I would have imagined and it fit in together really well.

So, as the last few hours of our Indian Summer wind down to a close, do I regret anything?  I know that now will come winter, now will come the hectic shopping and plans for Christmas, and I really will miss Autumn because it's my favorite season.  These few photos represent my hopes to cling to that season for just a few more days.  I was extremely lucky to have two of the three really beautiful days off to walk around in my bare feet and short sleeves.  One last day in November to pretend that it was still the beginning of Autumn or the end of Summer, because I have a feeling that the Winter, no matter how mild it's supposed to be, will be another hard one on me.

Hopefully my next post won't be all doom and gloom and depression.  But at least I can look back on today's post and smile and remember spending my day outside with Noel.

My Life with Anime Figures - Part 6 (Nendroid Picnic)

After seeing so many different figure photos over the last months, and even videos and blogs, I finally decided that it might be fun to do a photo shoot with a few of my Nendroids.  For those of you who aren't anime fans or collectors, a Nendroid is poseable figure made/distributed by the GoodSmile Company in Japan.  There are literally hundreds of these chibi figures from all sorts of anime, manga and even video game/phone app games.  My favorites are from anime that I've seen.

The figures today are from a picnic scene I decided to create today using the miniature food that I've collected over the years (had some of these before I even had small enough figures to pose with them!) Our story begins with Tsukiko Tsutsukakushi, from "The 'Hentai' Prince and the Stony Cat" - waiting for her friends to join her at the picnic.

Look who's arrived carrying goodies! It's Menma! She's from the series "Ano Hana" (it's shortened from a longer title but I won't bore you with details.)

If you haven't seen either series I won't spoil the details, I just liked how both Nendroids have food items that they come with. I have a collection of them actually, and most of the time they sit in the case having something of a picnic anyway, so it worked out to set them outside to continue the picnic there!

Look who's hiding from the camera!  It's Hatsune Miku!  She's a bit embarrassed she's the only one who showed up in a yukata.  She's ready for the matsuri (festival) that evening and the fireworks that are to come afterwards!  Tsukiko and Menma don't really mind though, and Menma is excited to share her treats with her new friend too.

I had a good time taking these photos even though I'm sure my neighbors probably thought I was crazy lying on my belly taking photos of figures in my backyard.  Maybe no one saw...  Heh heh.  The little red cloth came out of my fabric collection and as you can see, some of the drinks I forgot to blur out the logos...oops, they apparently went to Dairy Queen before the picnic!  Don't think they have those in Japan...  oh well.  I was mostly playing with angles to best cover up the pins and various things that I used to hold figures upright!

Playing with coloration and contrast was also a priority in these photos for once.  Normally I don't touch them up so much, but it was fun making them look more like they were having the picnic at sunset and so I turned up the red a tad.

The next picnic is actually from a single series, Wooser's Hand to Mouth Life.  These Nendroids were a purchase by my husband, but with my food stuffs.  Since the series is about the little yellow rabbit-looking thing, the next photo actually focuses on him rather than the Nendroid Rin that he came with.

Feel free to use this one as a desktop if you like.  I like this photo a lot.  The fact that I had a miniature beer just felt right with all of the sushi and Rin and Darth Wooser just hanging out with him as he's partying at sunset.

This photo gives you a bit more of an 'overall' look at the scene that I'd set up.  It's at the base of a smallish tree in my yard that I've mulched around.  The grass is a wee bit long so I tried to zoom in on most of the photos so you didn't see the scale of these figures as much.  I tend to get distracted by things like that when I'm looking at figure photography.  In this case, I just wanted a good overall shot so I could play with color and also see the way the sun was crawling across the ground as it was starting to set.  It's a rather warm and happy picture I think.

The final photo I played a LOT more with contrast and color balance.  Wooser is just hanging out by himself because he just wants to be alone with his food!  The sun coming through the beer makes it almost look real.

I hope you like my little photo album of the Nendroid picnic!  I have one more to share with Menma and Tsukiko, but it was from a different angle so it looked a bit out of place in the 'story'.

As you can see, Menma came in from a different angle in this one but I liked the darker color, they're just a wee bit more subdued.  Tsukiko looks un-impressed by Menma's cooking!  These two are my favorite Nendroids so I liked being able to play around with them today.  Hopefully I can eventually do other photoshoots like this in the future!

My Life With Anime Figures - Part 5 (The Rest)

I'm a little later on writing this blog than I had hoped; especially seeing as though it's been months since I wrote part 4.  I keep saying that life gets in the way, but I think the truth is I just wore myself out and now that it's getting hot for the summer it's harder to sit at my computer for hours in a row working at editing photos and writing paragraphs about them.  I suppose I really could just post photos, but again, I'm tired of editing, so the post today is going to have a handful of quickly snapped photos from a lazy collector!

Today's blog finishes out the five-part series of the anime figurines in my life.  Do you collect figures?  If you do, I'm sure you've seen the full range of ridiculously expensive to cheap and bootleg figures.  I've talked about a bit of all of them in this series, and there's plenty of videos out there about figures just like mine.  I don't do un-boxing vids or write about the ways to point out bootlegs all that much, but if that's your cup of tea, feel free to Google them.  My blog today is just a show-off of the range of figures that come from various series that I've seen and liked over the years.

Our first picture is a collection of miniature figures from Natsume's Book of Friends.  I have a larger scale figure of Neko-Sensei, but I don't have it pictured here as he's in a different room.  I liked the look of these figures in the display as they kind of look like a bunch of little dolls.  I'd started watching Natsume probably eight or more years ago, and then started collecting the manga and later figures.  Strangely enough the anime has been re-made and has various incarnations now and you can find merchandise for the series currently.

 The figures to the left are actually inherited through my husband from Scrapped Princess.  For a time during the 2006-2009 period many DVDs came with special figures when you purchased the anime.  (This covers the Read Or Die figures below as well).  I'm still surprised that they were making so much money on these DVD sets that they were able to give away figures along with them.  Once in awhile you can still find sets like this, but nothing like they were back before the Recession.  Anime DVDs peaked at this time period as there were large sections of them in stores and you could get anime just about anywhere that they sold DVDs and VHS.  Series that had multiple releases would come with these figures that you could collect.  The Scrapped Princess figures actually had two much larger scale figures that I don't have posted here as I didn't want to get them down off the high bookshelf.  We also had figures from Last Exile and Death Note that came like this, but I didn't search them out to take pictures this time around.  There were others at the time but we skipped out on some of them in order to get the entire DVD sets without the figures included.

This pairing to the right is a bit strange because they don't come from the same series - I just have them together because I felt like it.  Ranka Lee is from Macross Frontier which is a series that never came over in DVD form.  In fact, most of the Macross world has never been released in English due to some strange licencing issues, companies that bought it and never released it.  I'm sure you could look it up if you were interested to know more.

The bunny girl next to her belongs to Hentai Prince and Stony Cat - one of the secondary characters which I can't remember at the moment what her name is.  (Again, too lazy to do research.)  She wound up on the same shelf so I snapped a shot.

Both figures are good examples of cheaper figures that you can find that are still of decent quality.  Ranka cost around $30, and the bunny girl cost around $15.  It's not unusual to find figures of series in swimsuits and outfits that aren't the norm in the series, so it's fun to find ones that are decent quality and make you remember parts of the show you like.

Another mix-match of series in this case.  These figures reside at the moment in my husband's cabinets and are from Robotic Notes (the girl in front) and World God Only Knows in the back.  I like this grouping because it gives you a good juxtaposition between more expensive figures and the cheaper figures you can find.  You scan see the level of detail changes a whole lot between our girl in the front and the girls in the back.  We got the World God Only Knows figures for about $35 a piece, and over $100 for the other.  She has a handful of little Pocky box accessories that are pretty cool and you can arrange her in various ways, whereas the girls in the back are stationary and have no extra bits.

More randomness coming out of the display cabinet!  Nendroids and scale figures range in the $30-$50 range here.  The Tengo Tenge figures were sold in blister box, and the He is My Master was just a box figure.  Some sold around the same time of this series had soft parts so you could 'feel' them up (yeah, weird, but we do have one figure with soft parts).  The Nendroids in the front are just side characters with Wooser in his mini-series.  In another photo later you'll see them again but I've been playing with the Nendroids and they have other faces.

More inexpensive figures, this time from Gantz.  My husband likes this series a lot - okay, can you blame him? Most guys do because it's got girls who wear skimpy outfits and fight with huge, futuristic guns.  The series is interesting but super bloody and has a manga, an anime and even a couple live action movies.  The figure in the front cost a bit more than the figures in the background and you can see a distinct quality change with how much more detailed her gun and hair is, the shape of her body and the way her shirt comes off of her shoulder.  She also comes with a bit of the orb that they get their guns from in the series.

Switching display cases now here's some more random stuff that I liked.  Can you name the series?  Madoka is probably the most noticeable.  Then two characters from Penguin Drum, Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko, and Sasami-San @ Ganbaranai.

As I said, random.  The types of figures range from two in the back are crane-type prize figures, a scale figure, a Nendroid and a Figma.

 Cuteness explosion shelves!  Again, didn't feel like sorting these out for individual photos and am not using a great photo, but you get the idea.  These Nendroids are having a picnic.  You'll see some creative licensing with one of the Woozer girls has the wrong face, but I thought it looked cute with the swimsuit.  There is also a Miku Figma and some Nendroid Minis too.


I picked up some of the miniature food items from a blind box set that a store in my city carried that had various Japanese food sets.  I get a kick out of mini food so I tend to pick up weird sets like these from time to time.

More cute adorable figures! I call these my 'daughters' from time to time as they're just small and cute and have adorable dresses.  Sakura is the most obvious followed by Menma and the figure I've already posted before from Hentai Prince.  My Shiro from No Game No Life actually goes on this shelf too (hence the wide gap) but I've been keeping her by my computer while I do these blogs to remind me to finish them!  I guess after today she could go back in the case!

 The last two photos I'm going to post (as I'm running out of time for the afternoon and I'm getting hot... 90 degrees is hot in a second story room!) are some of the more recent additions to the family.  Kill La Kill is one of the more popular anime right now and my husband has gathered himself a group of scale figures and Nendroids.  There are obviously quite a few more available out there, but these were some of the less risque ones out there.  My apologies if you are a bit off-put by the skimpy outfits.  There is actually one more photo after this set that I'm going to post below as I like the figures but if you don't like looking at figures who have slightly more skimpy outfits, just stop scrolling.  They're my husband's collection and even though I also like to look at them because of the quality, I'm sure not everyone likes to see stuff like that.  (Don't worry, there's no full nudity - or, sorry, there's no nudity!)

The second photo is from the Monogatari figures from various seasons of the series.  These are my girls as I really enjoy the floaty hair and the strong female characters in this series.  There's another couple out there that I would have liked to have gotten but these three look good together with the school chairs and desk and such.

So there you have a very condensed array of 'other' figures that inhabit this house.  I had some more from Sword Art Online that I wanted to post but the photo quality was poor.  Maybe sometime in the future I'll put more of the figures up that I own, but it gives you a good idea why this introverted cat-mom doesn't have money to spend on girly things.  ^_^  The next blog now could be on anything I can think of... who knows what it will be?




And of course, the last photo that I mentioned.

I guess this photo doesn't really show a whole heck of a lot - I was trying to be slightly careful with my angle of course.  But my husband started collecting these figures with the girl on the left, and then branched out to the others with my permission as they ranged over $100.  There are more figures from this series but after awhile if you don't get them early they cost even more, so these three are it.  Not only that, but the pieces are so fragile and intricate that they actually started to get difficult to put together.  The giant things sticking out of the back on the girl in the back were so tricky that we only move her about once a year to dust her, and even then I usually will have to put her pieces back together!  The figure itself didn't come with actual instructions so we kind of just had to find pegs and holes and see what fit and pray that it would stay together!