Newtype February '11

In a whim, I ordered Newtype February '11 issue at Hobby Search.

I usually don't buy Newtype. I hardly watch anime nowadays, so if I buy a magazine is usually Comptiq or Comp Ace.
The main reason was because it included a T-shirt featuring Irisviel and suit Saber drawn by Takeuchi:


There is no new information about TYPE-MOON projects because it was already revealed in the TYPE-MOON Ace 6 (that I didn't received yet because the package is still held for customs clearance).

The anime of Fate/Zero (yay!) will be airing this year. The animation studio this time will be ufotable (double yay!)

The character designs are pretty close to Takeuchi's originals. I always thought that the designs for the anime version of Fate/stay night were a bit off, without being a Shingetsutan Tsukihime level...

Girls' Work will be an anime, too, with Takenashi Eri as the character designer. I'm not sure if the visual novel will be also released along the anime or the VN was canceled and re-launched as an anime...

The epilogue chapter of Kara No Kyoukai and the limited BD box set was already released. I expect to receive my copy today or tomorrow morning.

The ova Carnival Phantasm will be released this summer, and if we judge with the picture will be loosely based in Takenashi Eri's anthology manga Take Moon. Is true that Phantasmoon originally appeared on Take Moon, but Magical Amber not (that version was drawn by Takenashi for the Character Material) and Magical Caren an Kaleido Ruby are not even designed by her...

Figma Makinami Mari Illustrious New Plugsuit Ver. by Max Factory

Received a while back, today I opened Figma Makinami Mari Illustrious New Plugsuit Ver. by Max Factory.

Mari appears in the Evangelion movie with too different plugsuits; a green one at the beginning and a pink one at the end. Max Factory opted to start the Evangelion figma line with the newer character with her newer (and more stylish) plugsuit.

Mari's accessories consist in three faces (smiling, grinning and a "beast mode" face), 11 hands, two different sets of twintails (one normal and the other with the tails in front of her shoulders), a set of small parts to change to green the red parts of the plugsuit, and the most impressive part is a complete interior of the Eva cockpit.

The control levers are movable, and the legs zone can move horizontally as well. There are two figma bases included, one to use with the cockpit and one for the figure.

Most of the figma is made of rubber like plastic to be more similar to the synthetic-like textures of the plugsuit. The neck is, like Rider figma, double jointed and hidden in part by the neck part of the plugsuit.

The worst part of the figure is the torso area. The breast are separated from the rest of the body in order to move, but leaving a massive and clearly visible gap making an ugly "flying breast" effect.

Smiling face.

Grinning face.

The glasses are attached to the hair part, but can be easily removed.

The Beast mode. Green eyed yelling face, the dot of the plugsuit can be turned green via a very small piece, and the wrist parts can be changed with alternate parts with green dots instead of red. The hair part is the alternate one, too.

Ghost Trick

Last weekend I bought Ghost Trick for NDS, and a couple of days ago I finished it.

In summary, Ghost Trick is a visual novel with a puzzle segment in each of the 18 chapters, but the puzzle is mostly cosmetic since the story is the main focus.

You play as Sissel, an amnesic ghost with a special power to manipulate small objects and go back in time 4 minutes before the dead of any recently deceased person besides himself. With that power he must find who is and why was killed, and he have time until dawn before disappears from this world.

Is hard to not compare it with the Ace Attorney games, not only because the developer of both series is Takumi Shuu, but also because like the AA games, the main charm of the game is the quite unique characters, each with distinctive quirks and behaviors, and see how interact with each other in a seemingly unconnected way, until you see the full picture in the last episode.

The story is pretty good, with several plots twist. Some of them are pretty evident (I figured Sissel identity at the end of the chapter six, and is one of the last revelations in the game) but some of them are totally unexpected (like the identity of the ghost that explains your powers at the beginning).

When a characters speaks, like most of the visual novels, a 2D image of the character is shown, but when appearing "on screen" they are modeled in 3D with astonishingly fluid animations. This aspect and the stylish character designs gives a really edgy feel to the game.

The puzzles consists most of the time to save a character from his/her death, manipulating the objects that you can possess. Even if you fail, you can go back in time 4 minutes and redo the situation, but the puzzles are fairly obvious, with only one way of solving them and usually you can do it with the first attempt. As usual with this kind of games, it rather short (about 10 hours) and have zero to none replayability value.

Since most of the fun is to know the truth at the same time as the main character, I won't spoil all the characters, only the ones you'll find early in the game.

Sissel

The main character. He regains consciousness and find himself as a ghost, dead and without any memory of who is he or how was killed. Despite his looks, he's not as sarcastic as Phoenix Wright and usually is pretty naive.

Lynne

The main heroine is this vivacious detective that have a more than passing resemblance to Gurren Lagann's Yoko. Seems to be the the only witness of Sissel murder, and is the first person that you need to help to literally escape from the death in hand of a hitman.

Kamile

Known as Kanon in Japan, she's a little girl living with Lynne. She's pretty smart for her age and is the second character that you need to save.

Missile

Kamile and Lynne little dog. In order to help his masters, he becomes one of the main characters later in game.

Valkyria Chronicles 2 finished

Today I completely finished Valkyria Chronicles 2, after 4 months.

The main game doesn't take much time (I finished it in late September), but in the post-game you need to do A LOT of grinding in order to get all the medals. I also got all the potentials for the 62 characters available, all the titles (except for 3 that needs the multiplayer mode), all the 197 missions A ranked and with at least one of each enemy ace weapon, including the DLC ones.

That medal made me suffer a lot...

Comparing it with Valkyria Chronicles, the gameplay has been improved mostly because you can choose the leaders, the tank is much more customizable (and you can choose to not deploy it), there are 20 3rd tier classes (albeit some being way more useful than others)... However, VC1 had little to no grinding, while VC2 has way too much: you'll have to grind to get enemy ace weapons (each can have up to 3 different drops, 2 of them weapons), you'll have to farm the credits to class change each character, and the worst of it is to farm materials and weapons parts to build weapons in R&D (there are weapons parts that are dropped in only one mission, and you need to beat it over 15 times in order to get all the parts required).
At the end the game gets very repetitive and tedious, because not only you need to repeat the same missions over and over but because the non-story missions are very similar and in the same few locations...

There's also a problem with the character models. Despite the game being good looking for a PSP game, the character models uses only one male body and one female body regardless the height and weight of the character, with terrible results:

Selvaria, a busty female with a height of 175cm, shares the exact same body with Aliasse, a 150cm flat-chested loli.

The reward for all the grinding are two characters. The first one, acquired once you get 20 medals, is Juliana:

Unlocked Juliana (blue) versus Story mode Juliana (red). The pinkish shield is way more fitting for the character.

The reward for getting all the medals is Leon Hardins, the missing older brother of the main character:

Despite being the "ultimate character", is a rather mediocre lancer...

Finally, this is the top 12 in my deployment list:

Not counting the main characters Avan and Zeri, the first male character in the list is Largo, at the 23th place.

Next step: wait for the upcoming Valkyria Chronicles 3, that supposedly will fix all the bad traits of this game.

Christmas presents

A bit late, but this is the otaku related presents that I received for Christmas:

• Weiss Schwarz Melty Blood Trial Deck
• Weiss Schwarz Fate/stay night Booster Box
• Weiss Schwarz Fate/hollow ataraxia Extra Booster Box
• Final Fantasy IV for NDS
• Odin Sphere for PS2

Final Fantasy IV is a remake of the original FFIV, but with the same graphics used for the remake of FFIII . Next year they will release another port of FFIV for the PSP, but I think I'll pass this time....

Odin Sphere was a totally unexpected gift! I recall saying to the person that gave it to me that Odin Sphere was the spiritual successor of Princess Crown (a game that I never had the chance to play but I liked the visuals a lot) and I would like to play Odin Sphere sometime... but I wasn't begging for it or anything!

Unlike the games, WS cards were pretty much expected (I asked specifically for them).

The Melty Blood Trial Deck contains "5 trial deck only cards" (the last 5 in the pic) unlike the other Trial Decks that I purchased, that only had 2.

The parallel card that I got from the Fate/stay night Booster Box was the triple R "Kishi Ou Saber", and I'm missing 7 cards for a full set.

Illustrated by Fujima Takuya, the author of Idolm@ster Break!

I didn't have the same luck with the Fate/hollow ataraxia Extra Booster Box. Even with the box that I bought last year, I have only 30 out of 45 of the normal ones and 17 out of 45 of the parallel ones. For Weiß Schwarz trades, please visit this post.


Is late to wish for a Merry Christmas, so Happy New Year!

Nendoroid Saber Super Movable Edition by GSC

In mid November I received Nendoroid Saber Super Movable Edition by Good Smile Company, but I didn't open the box until today.

Nendoroid Saber: Super Movable Edition is different from a regular nendoroid figure because has articulation points throughout the body. Neck, shoulders, elbows, waist, knees, feet... a total of 21 points of articulation puts this at the poseability level of a figma. Also, part of the hair and the front part of the skirt are of soft material that can be bended, adding more moveability.

Not counting Saber Lion and Saber Lily, this is the first Fate/stay night nendoroid that doesn't have the SD style from the game. The sculpt job on nendoroids is getting better and better, and out of the 11 nendoroids that I have this is easily the best looking one.

The extra parts included are 3 faces (smiling, yelling and angry), 3 pairs of hands, 3 swords (Excalibur, Invisible Air Excalibur and Caliburn) and 2 scabbards (Avalon and Caliburn's scabbard).
The base is new in the nendoroid line. Is quite ugly but does it's job better than most of the bases (specially the awful saddle-like one of Saber Lion).

Even with all the articulation points, is hard as hell to pose properly due to the enormous head and the tiny arms (the picture is an attempt to do the Triumphant Excalibur pose). The joints (specially the shoulders ones) are extremely loose and tend to pop out at every movement.

The third face is a SD face from the game, officially called Hetare Saber (good-for-nothing Saber). Here is how appears in Fate/hollow ataraxia Illya's Castle mini-game:

Chogokin Drossel by Bandai

One of the figures that I wanted to purchase at the beginning of the year but I gave up because I was short of money was the Chogokin Drossel by Bandai. Once I got money, it was massively overpriced, but I managed to get one from Archonia at more or less the suggested retail price (8,000 yen).

Chogokin Drossel is very similar to the Figma counterpart (both are jointed figures based from the same jointed character, after all) but much bigger (18 cm) and with the inner frame (and some of the external parts as well) made of metal.

Comparison shot with the Figma version.

They have other little differences, some of them because of the much larger scale of the Chogokin Drossel (the written labels and the black paint in the hands), but some of them structural, like the extra points of articulation in the stomach and in the toes.
The base is a single piece of plastic with a single peg to firm the figure, simulating the flooring of the Tempest Tower.

The other main difference between the Chogokin version and the Figma version is the face, much rounder in the Chogokin version. This face is supposed to be more faithful to the original design because the original character designer Fukuchi Hitoshi, was consulted for the production of the Chogokin version, but I prefer the Figma face.
Since the default face contains internal lighting for the eyes, it lacks that cool shinny blue effect, and a noticeable gap between the forehead faceplate (that is removable) and the nose and mouth faceplate.

The light-up eyes are activated via a switch hidden in the forehead faceplate.

The other two faces included have a better eye color, and because the forehead faceplate are not detachable they don't have any intrusive seam-lines. Here is the Obruchev face...

And this is the Belinda face.

Sadly, in some angles even the non light-up eyes are a bit ugly. Compare the eyes in this pose with the figma version.

Like the Figma version, the fingers are not movable but includes 6 pairs of hands, some of them usable only for specific poses from the series.

I don't like to "play" with my articulated figures, but this version is really a blessing for those who want to. The joints are sturdy and since are made of metal there is no risk to break them easily in the process.

The Obruchev unit, includes parts to put it in flight mode.

Back shot.

And in a related note, a second season of Fireball was announced for the 2011, and for now a single image was shown:

A robot that clearly is not Drossel, or she had a massive face-lift...