Flandre Scarlet Nendoroid review

So I got my Flandre figure sometime last week, after completely forgetting I even ordered it. My bad memory is good for surprising me! Her box isn't as pretty as Remilia's. She has the same design, but instead of a pretty pink box she has a yellow box. Oh well, not too big of a deal.

Seems cute enough, right? I've noticed that she comes with a small piece of paper that I don't recall being in my previous Nendoroid boxes. I'm too lazy to check though, it's possibly just my memory messing with me. As you can see, she has one normal face, one happy face, and one cynical looking face. Her Leviathan is okay, but it's kind of slippery in her hand. It's a bit difficult to keep it in place.

 And Just like Remilia, her stand has a special design on it. Again, I liked Remilia's more, but I still like Flandre's. I'm wondering if Goodsmile plans on doing this with more Nendoroids. It's a nice little touch, in my opinion. I could easily see some Miku ones with cute spring onions on the bottom and such, accompanied by musical notes or something.

One thing I noticed about Flandre and Remilia is that they have the same looking faces. I mean, obviously they're siblings and such, and they do have different expressions, but their eyes, eyelashes, nose, etc. are all identical. As such, you can easily swap their faces and it wouldn't really look out of place (except maybe putting Flandre's closed eye'd smiley face on Remilia). Their eyes are the same as well, with that same design on them.

See? Look at their faces? All the same. Now here's some Scarlet sister cosplay.

And all was fine and dandy, until Takoluka came to play.

Won't you give her a hug?

 So Flandre doesn't really come with too much. I think I enjoy Remilia more, but it's nice to have both of them standing side by side. You can't really see in the pictures, but 2 of Flandre's extra hands come with her sharp claw-finger hybrid things, those are fairly nice. Her hair kinda came to me with a QUALITY mark on it. Good thing her cap covers it, and even without it it's not too noticeable. Still kind of annoying, but what can ya do, huh? Nothing else seemed wrong with her. The bottom portion of her seems a bit loose, not too sure why, and her hat was harder to put on than Remilia's, but in the end I got to fit it nicely.

By the way, I had a problem trying to figure out what part goes to what box after I was packing up their extra parts again. Stupid identical sleeves and faces. I'll forgive you only because you're cute figures.

~ Kirari ミ★

999 Review

Visual novels tend to be too niche of a market to be successful in the west. So, obviously, there are rarely any translated VNs, and certainly not ones that are on game systems. Well, Aksys loves bringing over stuff from Japan, so they took a shot at bringing some over. 999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors is for the Nintendo DS, and it's actually part puzzle and part VN. Now, when I say that, I don't mean the puzzles seem like they were tacked in as an after thought, or it just has a puzzle minigame or something on the main menu. The whole game does revolve around you solving these puzzles in order to progress, and the story is centered around these puzzles.

The puzzles aren't anything depressingly difficult though, so they won't really prevent you from moving on with the story. Some of them may get you stuck for a while trying to solve them, but you should be able to get them eventually when looking at all the clues presented to you. Before I explain how the puzzles are set up, it'd probably be better if I talked about the general story.

Small bombs.

9 people are kidnapped by a mysterious person that goes by the pseudonym of  "Zero," and are placed in a sinking ship with 9 hours to escape before it completely goes under, and given strange bracelets with an assigned number on them, all for some experiment with human guinea pigs. Obviously it's not as easy as just finding a map of the ship and running to the lifeboats. Most of the doors are locked, and can only be opened by solving puzzles within the rooms, such as finding the key by gathering clues and combining them, or finding out the password for the door by looking around the room and such. So to solve puzzles you need to investigate the rooms thoroughly for clues and use them to find a way out. Some of the puzzles are really well thought out, and it's always satisfying when you find the answer.

But what really shines in this game is the story and characters. The 9 kidnapped people have to work together in order to escape the ship, and almost every one of them has something likable about their character. The story itself is actually written by one of the writers of a popular VN, Ever17. Some parts of the story really do have that Ever17 feel to it as well, so it shows. Like Ever17, there's plenty of pseudoscience themes going around, and tons of bricks to be shat in the final path. The multiple endings will give you clues to the truth of what's really going on, and I enjoyed trying to put together the pieces before getting the full explanation.

The endings are determined, of course, by the choices you make throughout the story. However, the major plot changing choices would have to be deciding what door you want to go through. You see, there are 9 doors with different numbers painted on them. The doors are locked, and can only be opened when combining the numbers different characters have on their bracelets. Only those that opened the door may enter, meaning the groups have to split up every now and then. This is one thing I'm a bit nitpicky on. It makes it so that the most important choices in the game are decided on a gamble. There's no real way to tell where the doors will lead, and there's no hints that a certain door may lead to a BAD END. You simply go through doors until the very end. But it's just a slight annoyance, I like having the ability to prevent bad ends based on logically thinking through the choices presented to me, rather than having to rely on luck. Though it's understandable why they did this. After all, you play as one of the people trapped in this boat, and the person running the experiment obviously doesn't want to leave huge signs around hinting to what doors are the correct ones to enter. It's made for you to go through it using trail and error. The true ending can't even be unlocked without doing at least one other ending first.

It's still a really enjoyable game, with some interesting puzzles and a nice plot. It's not even that long either, it can easily be finished in a week or less. If you don't have a DS, or just don't want to spend money, there are other ways of playing this if you catch my drift. So if you're looking for something new to read, you might want to pick this title up.

~ Kirari ミ★

Dead Master -Original Version- Review

 So, I'm awakened today by a door bell. I go to open the door and see a package at my feet with nobody in sight (do they deliver those things and then teleport or something? There wasn't a van or anything anywhere). I see SAL on it saying Plastic Figurine ￥7,280 and I knew exactly what it as. I guess my figure came before Amiami got to respond on whether or not it was shipped. So I get the package and place it on a chair in the living room while I go to get my camera. I come back and

Get down there, you don't belong on the box, that's just silly.

So I gave him a treat to get off the box.

Glorious.

I was surprised the box didn't even have bubble wrap, and the figure box fits perfectly in. No noticeable box damage though, but the box is freaking huge.

The box was sealed with 3 strips of tape, which I find annoying because I risk ruining the box if I peel them off. So I take a pair of c and try to work under the tape without damaging the box, and then slowly peel away using the tweezers. It's a really nice method, and if the tape is too stuck to the box (like the first strip) you could always use the tweezers to swipe the tape in a clean cut. Mine are sharp enough to cut tape but won't leave a mark on cardboard unless I pressed hard.

Such a large box, and most of it is filler space. Well, at least her accessories are under like 3 sheets of plastic to try to save space.

She comes with her chain (kinky) a scythe (even more kinky) and a skull with alternate thumb to hold it in her hand. The chain looks a lot like the one that came with Black Rock Shooter's Figma, but I believe Dead Master has a thicker chain. I didn't compare the two, didn't seem too important. The chain is my least favorite accessory anyway, but I might find some creative use for it.

Hey Reimu, look what I stol- er, found! Da ze~

Scythe can make a nice accessory for my other figures! Or maybe just another piece of not-so-useless junk for Marisa to throw in her pile. I really like the craftsmanship on her scythe, it's really nice. The texture of it is good, it has a nice feel to it.

The stand is beautiful. I really like the look it has to it, think it's creative too. As you can probably tell, it's heavy. This is probably the piece that contributes the most to expensive shipping on this thing! But it looks really cool. It really adds to the overall atmosphere of the figure. there was one slight annoyance I had though, but I do understand why this was done.

Her wings are seperate. Not too much of a bother, but they're kinda hard to fit in, and because they feel delicate (look at how thin they are!) they feel like they'll snap if you force them in. Anyone that's getting this figure should take caution when placing her wings into her back. Take your time if you have to, really. I have small hands so it was easier for me, because I could fit my fingers between hard to reach places and get a better grip on the base of her wings. When they're in, they fit snugly and don't feel like they're going anywhere, so don't worry too much about them falling out when you move her around.

She's a bit taller than my Sega Miku, but she's cheating with that huge base of hers and her horns.

Dem eyes

 I really like her pose, and she has lots of delicate little details. Her drills in particular looks really nice. And just look at her cute stance!

Dat ribbon~

Overall, a great figure. Bit on the expensive side, but it has really nice craftsmanship to it. The pint job is nice, I love how they captured the eyes from Huke's illustrations so vibrantly, and the skull is also a great touch. My little brother thought it was cool and wanted me to put her next to his Halo Reach figure set for a picture, but I'll probably do that later. 

I'm still thinking of a place to put her in my room. Might place her next to my Sega Miku she was posing with easier, or maybe I'll put her on my computer table, but then she'd take Black Rock Shooter and Metagross' spot. Oh well, I'll place her around a bit until I find somewhere fitting.

~ Kirari ミ★

Oyasumi Punpun!

Here's something unexpected. I picked up this manga today because I've heard about it from multiple sources. Oyasumi Punpun (Goodnight Punpun) starts out as a cute and funny story with a quirky looking main characters. At first the series seems like it'll be a gag story with the surreal imagery shown. In fact, it even looks like it'll be a kid's story because of the main character, but the story actually dives into some rather real issues. It's a coming of age story about a kid that learns soe of the harsh realities of real life. The story itself is filled with lots of symbolism and metaphors, but you don't need to read deep into the story to enjoy it. Despite the main character and his family being simplistic figures, the overall art style of the manga is really well done. Asano Inio is a really great artist, that can really go into detail and draw some nice panels in his comics.

As I said, it's a coming of age story. It goes into some rather depressing topics about human nature and such, and I feel it's something that some here can relate to in one way or another. I spent most of my day reading this, with breaks in between. I'm currently up to about chapter 45 as I type this, with a tab right next to blogger opened with my current page.

I'm definitely recommending this to anyone looking for a new manga to pick up. I have a hard time writing about stuff without spoiling it, and I feel my "review" doesn't really touch on what really makes the story feel good. I came for the cute Punpun humor and stood to see what becomes of poor little Punpun as the years pass.

~ Kirari ミ★

Thoughts on Ougon Musou Kyoku

Yeah, been sitting through my backlog for a while, and by the end of the day being too lazy to make any posts. I thought I'd just break back into blogging again with something simple. One game from C79 I've been investing a lot of time into is the new Umineko fighter, Ougon Musou Kyoku. I've blogged about it before its release, because I was excited about it. Figured I'd give some of my impressions about the game and such.

Me playing online with someone, we disconnected at this scene.

First thing I want to say is the animation and overall quality of the game seems really nice. The art style of the sprites reminds me a lot of Blazblue. I've seen a lot of people saying how characters are too similar, but I don't see this at all. Speaking of characters, this game has a rather small selection of them.

There has been a sprite of Bernkastel found in the game data, but nobody knows if she was a tossed concept, or if they plan on adding her later. The cast is small, but this is a fully voiced doujin game (the same seiyuu for the anime were used for the characters). I'd imagine sometime like this took a lot of time, and they wanted it out by C79, so they had to make do with this small list for now. I'm sure they'll have updates along the way. Melty Blood was missing a lot on its first release as well, and look how far it's gone.

Matches are fought kinds like Versus games. You pick a pair of characters, and you hold one in reserve while one fights. You're also able to switch between your two characters every now and then. However, unlike the Versus series, you can't use assist attacks, and every character has their own individual special bars.

The matches aren't composed in rounds, rather it's one long round (you have 3 health bars) to determine the winner. It kinda reminds me of Darkstalkers. One unique mechanic this game has is the "meta world" activation. Every character has a passive ability while the meta world is activated, and every character has a specific special that can only be used while meta world is active. You activate it by pressing all 3 attack buttons at the same time while having a full meta meter. Your opponent can cancel yours out if they're not stunned and also have a full meta meter. It's interesting, because you not only gain a bonus from your main character, but your partner character as well. This means you can mix and match characters to have nice bonuses, like extra damage plus lowered amount of hits needed to break the opponent's guard; you'll be dealing out some decent damage even if they block, and their block will break faster than normal.

Other than that, the game doesn't seem to have too much depth. Most characters have fairly simple combo strings, but dash canceling seems like it'll be a big part of this game (I just recently learned when to dash cancel on Eva Beatrice to make her combos long and keep pressure). But it's fun, and I doubt it's near completion yet, with revisions along the horizon. 

The music is great, as to be expected from an Umineko game. It has well known tracks from the game such as Goldenslaughter, which goes really well with the fighting. As for game modes, there's not much. There's a story mode, where you get different scenes and endings depending on what pair you decide to use. Some of the stories are funny, and a lot of the stuff isn't even hard to understand with some basic Japanese. Some of the stuff is just dialogue pulled from the VN with a few altered parts here and there.

This is canon

 There's practice mode, and then there's versus. Of course, everyone wants to play online, right? When you play a fighting game, you usually don't want to spend your whole time fighting the CPU, right? Most of the time they get too predictable in their patterns and such. This is where the game falls. The netplay in this game is really bad. I mean, it's obvious they only tested their netcode on Japanese internet (which is a lot faster and has superior infrastructure to American connections), but it's simply horrible. The Japanese seem to be having some issues with it as well, from what I've read on their forums. Sometimes lag isn't even the problem, the game goes completely smooth, but the connection simply drops. When playing online, my connection is sometimes good enough with people to get 1 full match after 3 disconnects, but with others it's 1 full match after 10+ disconnections or so. 

I really hope they fix the netplay in this soon. It's a fun game, but it's no fun having to attempt for 20 minutes of failed matches before getting one full match with someone. If you'll excuse me, I'll get back to disconnecting with more people.

~ Kirari ミ★

ｷﾀ━━━━(ﾟ∀ﾟ)━━━━ｯ!!

So the doorbell rings at about 7 PM today. I go to open it, and there's just a package at my feet. I guess the delivery person didn't want to wait for me to open the door, because it's so cold outside. The package was freezing, and what's inside it was even more cold. As for the delivery time, I'm guessing they have a lot of backed up packages from the snowstorm. So what came, exactly?

Look at all this bubble wrap, you can't even tell what's there.

Getting clearer, but that paper has to go.

(´・ω・`)　Magnificent.

 My Danbo figure that I've been waiting forever to get is finally here! After scouting many figure sites for many months, I finally found that it was getting a re-print, and pre-ordered it the first opportunity I got, which was in August. I finally got it now, a month earlier than I expected since its release date was January and I was expecting mid-January or something. Lets have a look at it for a bit.

The box is very nice. It's plain, but extremely fitting for the figure. The Danbo face'd window on the top is a very nice touch, in my opinion. My only problem with the box was that it didn't come with those sticky seal things. I don't think the figure was opened or anything, that's not what worried me. The problem  with that was, in order to keep the box closed firmly without the seal, the lids have those cut things so the carboard stripes slide into one another and keep each other in place. this makes it a pain to open the box while trying to prevent damaging it. I managed to make it work, but it took a while. The figure doesn't come with many other attachments, but it's Danbo, it doesn't need many accessories.

In place of accessories, it has...

 Real lightup eyes! The switch on the side of the head actually works. I can tell this figure was in the cold for a long time, when I placed the batteries inside they were cold as ice.

It seems my figure had a small factory booboo on it though. It's visible in the above image, but lemme give you a closer look.

Orz

It seems my little friend got hotglued before being being packaged. I'm debating if I should request an exchange, but I dunno how exactly I'd prove I didn't glue it myself, and I'm too nervous to make a phone call about it. I think I still have 30 days or whatever, so I'll see what happens after a week or so.

Very sturdy, and ask expected doesn't need a stand because of the flat bottoms of the legs.

Arms fit perfectly into the head well.

Revoltech parts can be swapped with other Revoltech figures!

I know, I know. I'm forgetting something, it's what you all wanna see, right? No figure review is complete without one, and it's what anyone who looks at figure reviews looks forward to. 

Upskirt shot.

The little "flaps" at the bottom actually have small hinges to move around a little with the legs. You can also see the battery compartment of the head here, concealed nicely in the figure.

And as I said before, it doesn't need a stand since the legs are flat enough to support it, but I thought I'd take a picture of it anyway. Enjoy Everything.

Good figure. It doesn't come with much, but for me it's more than enough. Not sure when I'd turn the light on or anything, and since it uses those circular batteries that you put in watches, I'd rather not waste the energy and have to deal with buying another pair of those. The glue on the bottom of the arm is bothering me, but I guess it can't be helped. I should be glad it wasn't splattered on the face or anything, then I'd be annoyed enough to actually send it back.

~ Kirari ミ★