End of year loot

On X'mas day I met with a fellow TYPE-MOON collector from Finland, and showed him Shinkyogoku-dori and Teramachi-dori. I seized the opportunity to buy in Animate some stuff that was released that day:

Fate/stay night Vol. 8 by Nishiwaki Datto.
I think this manga is the most uninteresting of all the officially TYPE-MOON related, and don't know how long will be, since is a mix of all three routes from the game...

Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya Vol.2 by Hiroyama Hiroshi. This is the last volume and is a pity, because it was pretty interesting and I was a follower of the author in his circle KALMIA.

Gekijouban Kara no Kyoukai Comic a la Carte ~ Kakusei-hen ~ . Comic a la Carte are anthologies of the one-shots that appear in Comptiq and Comp Ace magazines. In this case is based, as the name implies, in Kara no Kyokai.

Fate/stay night 8 and Fate/Kaleid Liner 2 both came with a shop extra, that small postcard (?) that appears on the pic.

Comp Ace February '09 (yeah, at the end of December they release the February issue). This number was largely based in TYPE-MOON, and came with a Fate/Zero Drama CD.

And lastly, Kalafina single fairytale, the latest ending song from the latest Kara no Kyokai movie. As a bonus, they gave me a nice poster:

(the photo sucks, but this is actually the best one out of 5 retries)

And yesterday I received thanks to a friend a doujinshi that I was looking for:

KALMIA ARCHIVE by Hiroyama Hiroshi of circle KALMIA.Yes, is the same author of the Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya, and contains his works in the 2005-2007 period.

Fate/unlimited codes

Last thursday I received Fate/unlimited codes SP-Box for the PS2.
I don't have a PS2 here, but now I'm thinking in buying a second hand one (but first I must purchase a TV, too...)


The box is rather small. I kinda expected a monster size box like the limited edition of Fate/tiger colosseum Upper.


The only extra besides the box is Figma Saber Lily.

I don't like to play with the articulated figures, so I usually keep them always in the same pose...

Doujinshi purchases Part 3

The last stop in my Osaka trip was Toranoana Nanba.

They had a bargain sale, with a lot of their used doujinshi at 100 yen each (105 tax included). I didn't expected much since Toranoana is not specialized in used doujinshi (is kind of a "multi-purpose otaku shop") and usually the 100 yen corner is filled with leftovers that nobody wants.

I ended buying:
Applause, a Fate/hollow ataraxia fanbook, with several pin-ups from different circles.

Momiji-iro No Tsuki by circle Nanairo Koubou. Nothing to say about since I don't know the circle. Nice parody of Tsukihime.

Man in the Mirror by circle Black Dog.
He is known by his recurrent theme of "Sailor Moon team gang raped in a train", but in this doujinshi changing the "Sailor Moon team" part by "Kagami from Lucky Star". Despite beign repetitive, his drawings are top notch.

Outlet 3 by St. Different. I was fooled by the different To Heart cover, so I ended buying the same twice. Not familiar with the circle, and a bit dissapointed with the contents.


And 8 doujinshi by Neriwasabi, an old school author (active since the 80's) that changes the name of his circle forth and back (usually Jack-O'-lantern, Dedepoppo or Narusawa Hatsudensho).
He usually draw -among others- parodies of To Heart and Square-Enix games. Lately is very focused on Final Fantasy XI, so I lost insterest (Final Fantasy series is going downhill, and I find myself only playing the remakes on the handle consoles).

They also have on sale a small amount of doujin soft, also at 100 yen each. I found:

Shinuchi Oouso Disc. Contains the early flash works of Namikai Harukaze (circle Shunpuu-tei Koubou).
Before being known for Ragnarok Battle Offline, he was known by his flash animations, mostly Executioner Ciel and specially Glove On Fight, that was later remaked as a fighting game by doujin soft circle Watanabe Seikakusho (now called Frech Bread).

And speaking of Watanabe Seikakusho and his fighting games, I also found THE QUEEN OF HEART '99 and the Second Edition update disk.
Before MELTY BLOOD, this circle was already very popular with their doujin fighters featuring Leaf characters.
In the late 90's, Leaf was the main visual novel studio who set the trend to the rest.
Is evident by now, but before being a hardcore TYPE-MOON fan, I was hooked to Leaf visual novels, specially To Heart (the first one, I never played the "sequel").

Kara no Kyoukai Garan no Dou and Saber by Griffon Enterprises

A break from the review of my doujinshi hunt.
I just received an Amazon package.

Kara no Kyoukai Movie 4 - Garan no Dou, limited edition. I didn't saw it yet.


Saber Armor Version by Griffon Enterprises.


Is not scale, but is pretty small (around 15 cm or so, the same as a Figma figure).

The sculpt is by Kato Taichi, but the selling point of the figure is that is designed by Harada Takehito, known by his works in Disgaea series. The original drawing is this:

Doujinshi purchases Part 2

Following yesterday's post, my next stop was K-Books Nanba.
K-Books was my favorite shop in Akihabara, and perhaps is my favorite from Den Den Town, too.
There are 2 shops, one male oriented and the other female oriented (except the first floor).
The doujinshi selection is well assorted and easy to check.

It seems that in mid November they dropped the prices of the stuff of some circles, so it was worth checking, although I supose the real bargains were long ago sold out.

I bought:

(Kyaa! Sorry for the flash!)

Junk 3rd by Fukami Naoyuki from circle Chill Out.
His drawings are nice, but the themes are way to extreme from my tastes: scat, cum belly, inflation,... focused on humiliating girls from fighting games and with special predilection with the poor Nakoruru (Samurai Spirits/Shodown).
I bought it beacause it contains a rare 5-pages collaboration by Takeuchi Takashi ( from TYPE-MOON) and because it had a discount of about 50% the regular price (but even with the discount it was still expensive...)

And Ayanami 1 Gakuseihen by Mogudan from circle Nakayohi Mogudan.
Mogudan is rather famous, and his Ayanami series needs no presentation.
He was a member of circle Nakayohi with Izurumi, but when he left formed the circle Nakayohi Mogudan.
His style changed a bit with the time, and his voluptuous characters became slightly disgusting titty monsters. I prefer his older works, when Ayanami was still proportioned.
Again, it had a 50% discount.

More to come...

Doujinshi purchases Part 1

Yesterday I went to Osaka all day in hunt for doujinshi.

For my comments, it's like I'm a regular doujinshi buyer, but is not true. My collection of -physical- doujinshi is only of around 130 or so, very focused on a few circles (about half of them are from only 3 circles).

Buying doujinshi outside Japan is almost impossible. The only doujinshi that you can find at Yahoo! Actions are from very popular circles (and using a bid proxy is really expensive, so I use this method only to keep updated my CRAZY CLOVER CLUB collection); at eBay you can find a bit of doujinshi, but with awkward prices and random availability; and finally, the doujinshi stores have usually only mainstream stuff, so is hard to find old doujinshi or from not-so-popular circles. Also, the huge amount of doujinshi available makes impossible to keep all them in a database, so they usually put on-line a small amount of them.

So at the end, the only way to buy doujinshi is to stay in Japan and search for them in person.

Back to topic, I went basically to 3 shops: Mandarake Grand Chaos, K-Books Nanba and Toranoana Nanba.

Mandarake Grand Chaos is in America-mura, kinda far from Nipponbashi, where the rest of the otaku interests shops are placed. Is one of the 2 Mandarake in Osaka (the other one is near Umeda station).

There I bought:
INAZUMA Warrior 1 and 2 and UNDER 300M by INAZUMA (Sato Shouji) from circle Digital Accel Works. Warrior 1 and 2 are compilations of his works until 2005. Under 300M was released last year.
He is also the author of the commercial manga HIGHSCHOOL OF THE DEAD, that I don't read but lately is getting a few figures...

MuchiMuchi Angel Vol.7+ from circle MuchiMuchi7.
This circle consist of several authors, some of them quite good but some of them rather mediocre. I liked the works of the main author, Terada Tsugeo, but I don't like his recent style. This doujinshi is the revision of a 2003 release, with a few new pages. Sadly, the old pictures are retouched with his new style, and I still prefer the original one...

And finally, Koyoi Konban Serio-san and Herion, from circle King Revolver. In a previous entry I spoke about this circle and my intention to get all his works. Now I'm missing only 2...

That's all for today. I will put my lot from K-Books and Toranoana later.

Hiroyuki doujinshi

Today I went in a hurry to Shinkyogoku-dori (where Melonbooks Kyoto and Animate Kyoto are placed), to find a suposedly very large doujinshi shop.

The shop is called Manraku, and it's between Shinkyogoku and Kawaramachi, just in front of the popular Loft store.
It's rather big, but half of it is fujoshi related.
The men's side was correctly labeled and organized, but it had little to offer.

After a fast but exhaustive research, I bought a couple of doujinshi.

(crappy photo taken with the phone)

Len - Hiroyuki Tsukihime Doujinshi Soushuuhen and Saber - Hiroyuki Fate Doujinshi Soushuuhen + α, by circle Jishou Seijunha but most known only by the name of the author, Hiroyuki.

Both are compilations of his works, and with them are compiled most of his doujinshi and one-shots that appeared in anthologies.

Hiroyuki needs no presentation; stuff like "A cat is fine too" and "JAM IT IN" comes from his works.
Besides popular memes, he is the author of a couple of manga, Doujin Work and his most recent work, Mangaka-san to Assistant-san to.

Ryougi Shiki by Good Smile Company.

The other thing that I received on friday was Ryougi Shiki figure from Good Smile Company.
The detail and the paint job in the kimono is simply astonishing.

There is a subtle pattern in all the kimono, too.


The figure is sculpted by Nanashi based on the drawing by Takeuchi Takashi for the cover of re-edition of Kara No Kyoukai novel.

428: Fuusa Sareta Shibuya De

I received 428: Fuusa Sareta Shibuya De for the Wii on friday.


Is a visual novel, but with real actor instead of drawn characters.
By the critics, it's seems to be a great game, even Famitsu gave the game a perfect score, but I can't judge by myself because I don't have a Wii -I don't even have a tv-.
I bought it because of this:

The game contains a bonus scenario written by Nasu Kinoko and drawn by Takeuchi Takashi of TYPE-MOON. That shows how much of a hardcore fan I am.

An anime is planned for 2009. Here are a few screenshots from the trailer of the extra DVD:

EDIT: I uploaded the trailer in YouTube

Comic Market 75 catalog

Today I went to Kyoto Station to buy the shinkansen tickets to Tokyo. I'm going there for the Comic Market 75. On the way back, I stopped at Melonbooks to buy the catalog, that was released today. As a shop extra, it came with a nice Melon-chan mousepad.

(As an unrelated note, I think the previous user of the desk was a plamo hobbyist, since is badly damaged with several box cutter's scratches like the ones in the picture)

They had a lot of new items since the last time I went, for example Touhou Project keychains of several characters. I'm not a big follower of the Touhou universe because I don't like shooters games, but the characters are pretty charismatic.
I bought a keychain of Flandre Scarlet (my favorite character) and I put it on my electronic dictionary.


Friday, I received a package from Amazon.co.jp, but I will review the items later on...

Rider by ebCraft

Yesterday I received ebCraft's Rider from Fate/stay night.

Is an overall good looking figure, but with a problem: the hair.
The hair is made of a rigid plastic, different from the rest, and because of that it have pretty visible seam lines and a different color.

Like other French Doll's sculpts, the face is not perfect but is still pretty nice.

And came with a detachable mask...

Nanael by Megahouse

Yay, today I received the latest part of the prize that I won at dannychoo.com, courtesy of J-list.

And the item is... Nanael 1/8 figure by Megahouse.

Hard to see in most pictures, but her wings are not symmetrical.


This is part of the Excelent Model CORE series, well known for his cast-off properties.


The sculptor is Kibayashi Norio, that already did a few characters from the Excelent Model series and is specialized in cast-offable figures

Nanael is from Queen's Blade, a series of all-female characters combat books. Supposedly you can play with them a kind of simplified roleplay, but the selling point are the risque pin-ups drawn by prestigious authors.

In the case of Nanael, the author is Kuuchuu Yousai, mostly known as the illustrator of the Front Wing eroge Djibril and Megachu!. In fact, Nanael is just a more angel-looking version of Djibril.

Doujinshi purchases

An acquaintance said me that in Teramachi-dori is a second hand doujinshi shop, but I was unable to find it. Now finally I was able to get in.

It's a shop called a-Too, a "media recycle shop" with a corner for used doujinshi.

It's on the second floor of Wanpaku Kozou videogame shop (were two days ago I bought Chrono Trigger) but until now I never went upstairs, so I was unaware of it .

The doujinshi selection is not very big, but is unorganized and mostly unlabeled. I spent a couple of hours checking the doujinshi one by one. This is the result.


Kurusugawa Ayaka by circle King Revolver. Now I'm only missing 4 from this author.

Geki!! Evangeline Ikka by circle BIG･BOSS. It was a rather prolific circle focused on Akamatsu Ken's works, but he doesn't release anything since 2005.
I don't follow Negima, but I like Chachamaru's strong resemblance with Serio.

And AVALON, a Fate/stay night fanbook released to commemorate the PS2 version of the game, with several pin-ups from different circles.

Chrono Trigger

Really nothing new to write about.

Yesterday I bought Chrono Trigger for the Nintendo DS.


It's been a long time since I played the original, but I still remember it as one of the best RPG ever.

Kannagi

Today I went to Animate Kyoto, and I bought the latest tankoubon of Kannagi.

Volume 5 was released at the beginning of September, and was one of the first things that I bought at my arrival. Volume 6 was released last week.

Kannagi is actually one of the few mangas that I follow in Japanese, and I basically got interested because the relation of the author, Takenashi Eri, with TYPE-MOON.

I must say she is not a member of TYPE-MOON, despite many fonts claims the opposite.
She did a couple of funny anthologies, TAKE MOON 1 and 2 based on TYPE-MOON works, she did the SD characters of Fate/hollow ataraxia map, an Akiha wallpaper in Tsukihime Plus Disc, the pics of Caster's Team in the Toraburu: Hanafuda Douchuuki game and the designs of Phantasmoon and Magical Amber for the Character Material book.
She is in really good terms with the TYPE-MOON staff so she does collaborations with them, but she's not working there.

Lately, Kannagi is getting quite attention here. Not only because the anime is airing right now, but because in the latest serialization in Comic REX, is revealed that Nagi had a boyfriend, causing rage in the otaku community claiming that Nagi is a “second-hand” girl.