Subatomic Brainfreeze

I Went, I Went To Japan - I'M ALRIGHT, I'M ALRIGHT - Part 2

NEW YEAR:

The New Year is the biggest Japanese holiday. Being in Japan for this would probably suck in most parts of the country, because everything closes... but Akiba doesn't. Nothing is sacred in Akiba.

My hatsumode (first shrine visit) was perhaps the fondest memory of my entire visit to Japan. I walked with all my new drinking friends from our regular bar to the local temple... and I had my mind blown. I understood that the new year was a big deal in Japan, but here in this temple at midnight stood thousands of locals lined up to make their first offering. The place was enormous and naturally beautiful, which are two things that impress you even more when you're very drunk.

On account of the line being so long, we opted to just stand around and enjoy new year's snacks (Yakitori! Takoyaki! New Year's Sake! Asahi!) as we hobbled around the shrine. See a shrine. They are beautiful. You will not regret it. Just don't show up drunk, I figure that's gotta be a cultural faux pas when it's not New Year's Day.

COMIKET:

I actually was only at Comic Market for maybe an hour and a half. I know, I know, this is the biggest comics gathering in the world. But I simply didn't have any plans to buy anything, and I especially didn't want to end up with something that would give me trouble at the border... and you don't know what's going to be in those doujinshi unless you check every page! We saw some friends with books to sell-- including one person we met at the hotel breakfast!-- checked out the cosplay and got going to the life-size Odaiba Gundam. 

You still have to see Comiket, if you're in the area at the time. It is an overwhelming spectacle of otaku crowding. The pictures you've seen cannot prepare you for the actual scale of the thing. It is bigger than the anime convention you are thinking about: lines for a single circle will exceed the lines at a big US convention, with the poor schlub at the back of the line forced to hold a big cardboard sign featuring terrible things being done to Nanoha.

That said, you can just walk on in pretty easily if you don't have to be there as Comiket opens on account of some book that's in short supply. (I heard of a Sword Art Online book that went to 30,000y the day after it was on sale!) We showed up around 2: the crowds were still insane, but it was pretty easy to get around. Again, you should definitely not miss it, if only to understand the sheer size of the event. It is the biggest otaku thing you'll ever see in your life, guaranteed.

OTAKU STORES:

5-foot Great Mazinger outside a figure shop in Akiba.

I actually didn't do a ton of otaku shopping because I knew my budget would only allow so much loot straight-up dropped on toys and such. Also, one floor at Kotobukiya really did me in.

If you're buying anything, go to Nakano Broadway. Damn right I'm taking you out of Akiba. This is the home base for Mandarake, the biggest otaku goods chain. Press through what appears to be a normal, bustling shopping mall for a little while, and you'll start to notice something: there is no end to this place. To call the complex merely massive is a criminal understatement. Nakano Broadway is a black hole of commerce. Get all the way back, and you'll see Mandarake outlets for every otaku and fujoshi niche that it is possible to sell products to. If you were blown away by the shops in Akiba, your head is going to come flying clean off in this place. Everything you were thinking of, from new to extreme vintage, is here and it is reasonably priced. Make it to the top and behold the ultimate vintage robot moonbase, complete with shrine gates, atmospheric noise, and the enbalmed body of an alien. One of the robots was a million yen! The cashiers I bought stuff from were dressed like Quattro and Red Buster. 

There are apartments here, people live here. What a life! They don't have to go far from home unless they get lonely, I presume.

I didn't run through a lot of the stores but I did check out Kotobukiya's entire store. This never comes up on Astro Toy, because we don't do PVC, but I actually really like Koto's stuff: they pride themselves on their quality and it is indeed consistently high. Their store, like so many others, is divided by audience. The bottom floor has merchandise from the major current hits like Eva, Fate/Zero, imas, and others. The next floor up (don't quote me on exactly what the layout was) was definitely girl-ota-oriented, with a general mountain of pretty boys, cute mascots, and JRPGs. The next floor up was the one after my own heart, with robots and tokusatsu stuff. After that I believe there was a misc floor, and the top floor was a temporary exhibit on Sword Art Online. 

Yo, guys, little etiquette. I know SAO sucked-- trustworthy sources told me so emphatically-- but do not leave asshole messages in English like “NOVEL WAS WAY BETTER” (but you've left this message in English!) or “ANIMATE SUCHANDSUCH INSTEAD” on these people's Post-It wall. This makes you unbearablel. People pretend to listen to you in conversation, but they only do so out of politeness.

Anyway, I bought:

Akibaranger DX Moe Moe Z-Cune: this is the gun that the Akibarangers use to transform. There is also a large-scale PVC figure inside! Surprisingly the gun was on half-off sale at 6000y (about $80), but I haven't noticed any serious problems. The insane design of the item demands that you be pretty careful with it, which means don't wave the gun around too much... but what did anybody expect from a toy gun holding a PVC figure inside of it? 

LPs, Galient OST and Orguss drama record. Yeah, that's right, records. Vinyl. Bought for beautiful covers.

The middle poster of this Ideon set. 

Charge Man Ken mug. There was a whole display case full of Charge Man Ken stuff, including stuff commemmorating great episodes like "Dynamite in the Brain!!" and the special "Charging Go!" PVC.

Generic towel with Japanese “Dododododo” sound effect printed all over it, hiding in the Jojo section (fooled me!), Garo bandanna featuring the Horror inscriptions from the show, Zaruba clear sticker to put on my next computer/tablet.

I put away a lot of things that I wished I could afford. I am still sad over Hot Toys Ryo Saeba (10,000y on sale!!), Soul of Chogokin Leopardon (Spider-Man's robot), and a huge, very ugly 600y figure of Guy Shishio from back when Gaogaigar was on TV. Again: when I come back it will be with twice the time and three times the money.

THE GUNDAM:

So the Odaiba Gundam is a mall ornament. This isn't to say it isn't astonishing: it will pull the breath right out from your lungs. But you need to know that it is a mall ornament.

Diver City is a typical and boring mall that would really like you to check it out! That's why they have this “Gundam” thing in the back. They make it really hard for you to actually find the Gundam: it's not even on some of the maps! Facing the main entrance, go left where it looks like there's nothing around. Just keep going that way. You will eventually come upon it, even though nothing really indicates that you will. As a tourist, it's probably a total waste for you to hang out in Diver City-- see the H&M! The Lacoste!!-- though we did have food court udon superior to most I've eaten here.

The Gundam is actual size. Go ahead and gawk, that's what everybody else is here for. Oh my God, holy shit. Wow.

A family chuckled at us as we made fools of ourselves in front of it. The dad was complaining that the Gundam didn't hold a beam saber.

They sell Haro meatbuns and Gundam taiyaki here, and also at a little stand outside the full-fledged Gundam Cafe in Akiba. Both were decent. The girl who took my order there was wearing a Celestial Being uniform. We didn't eat at the actual Gundam Cafe because I heard from a lot of people that it's actually pretty lame, and I'm willing to believe that. Don't waste good meals when you're on vacation!

JOYPOLIS:

If you're in the area of the Gundam you're also right by Tokyo Joypolis, one of Sega's amusement parks. Again, I wish I'd had a couple hours to spend there. We thought it'd be lame, but it's a full-scale amusement park. There's a high degree of interactivity, since it's Sega and all, and nearly all the rides are also games to some degree. We saw a huge amount of “awesome!!-- oh no the line is an hour” attractions and rode none because we had somewhere to be. For gamers and Sega nerds, there's a version of Initial D that lets you ride in full-scale models of the cars from the series, and alternate versions of House of the Dead 4 and Let's Go Jungle that take place in movie-theater-size chambers. And of course there's a Sonic Land. It's definitely a place to spend a day: day passes are 3000y, if I recall.

ARCADES: 

 

This is still a surviving institution in Japan, unlike most places on the earth! When the guys and I were not actually seeing people and doing things, we were probably having fun in the arcades around home base: the three Club Sega locations, HEY, TRY Tower, and Taito Station.

They're all basically laid out like this: UFO catchers and kids' arcade games on the bottom floor, and then progressively more “gamer” things as you go up. Music games, then shooters, then fighters, and after that the really hardcore stuff like card games, Derby Owner's Club, and others of that ilk. Mahjong is usually around there too.

Pretty much any of the places I hung out in in Akiba-- but especially these places!-- would make an arcade game geek from anywhere else in the world weep. The difference is that vast. Games that would be impossible treasures elsewhere in the world (like, say, complete histories of Cave, including footnotes like Batsugun and DDP2) were just sitting around in these joints.

If you only go to one it has to be HEY (Hirose Entertainment Yard). Their centerpiece, a custom-made Darius II featuring two screens the size of a grown man, forced me to reconsider art and life themselves. I grinned really hard when the line “I ALWAYS WANTED A THING CALLED TUNA SASHIMI” came booming in. Don't take pictures, it's not allowed. Be nice.

Coming down from the station, the third Club Sega (presently it has Virtua Fighter and Border Break signs way up on the building) has a museum floor at the top where techs in Sega jumpsuits keep watch over a historical archive of massive deluxe cabinets. Present is the super-rare F-Zero AX, an Afterburner Climax doubles cab, Ferarri F355, and others, including the humble Super Hang-On sitdown. No Sega fan should miss this floor. On F-Zero and Afterburner, make sure you buckle the seatbelt to activate the machine's motion features. Climax in particular is an exhilarating ride.

The staff got my bag when I lost it playing MJ5 and presumed it lost forever. Nice bunch of guys. I think that by the last day or so they recognized me (you know I couldn't go a day without Afterburner). Thanks.

The most popular game overall is easily Gundam Extreme Vs. (FULL BOOST). The game that started back at Federation Vs. Zeon on the Dreamcast has grown tremendously over the years and I don't think anyone who watched it could question it as a solid versus shooter. Every place has an enbankment of at least eight of these machines, and usually they have two such units.

However, like any arcade fighting game, it's really hard to actually learn anything: multiplayer cabinets will throw you into deathmatches with highly skilled strangers who will combo you into dust without pity.

No joke, I was actually Gundam-bullied. Some guy saw me playing, sat down on the other row, picked Wing Zero, and mercilessly chased me and only me for as many games as it took for me to get up and walk away. What a dick! 

The only other game that was really occupied all that much that weekend was the new Blazblue version, and a little SF4 at HEY. Under-Night was there, for example, but I didn't see a single person play it but me. These didn't really seem like fighter hotspots. Plus, in my experience, people were straight up scared to play with the foreigner. I got through an entire game of Garou on the only free machine in that arcade (TRF) and nothing! 

Fans of “poverty” (lesser-loved) fighting games will want to go to TRF at the top of Nakano Broadway, where guys laugh their way through the incredibly difficult “basketball combos” of Hokuto no Ken and play stuff like Breakers and Chaos Code on the side. This was the arcade most like the American fighting game scene with which I'm familiar. TRF used to have a maid.

The coolest game you'll never play was Gunslinger Stratos, by the Gundam Vs. developers. It's controlled by a 9mm and Magnum (concept by Gen Urobuchi, natch) with thumbsticks on them to move the player. Gunkata motions as seen in Equilibrium are required of the player. Seriously, the guns are magnetic and you have to pose. It's an insane game and according to a friend who's quite skilled himself, “I think you have to be a genius to play it”.

The "variety" order at Baird in Harajuku, which brews its own beer. So does TY Harbor, actually. Don't get the impression that that's common, those are just the kinds of places we drank!

Next post is all mahjong stuff, pictures of the beautiful new set I bought, thoughts on the MJ arcade games. They're pretty sweet!

SO HOW'S THE COLUMN COMING ALONG is what a lot of people say to me lately

So I'll tell you. Doing the New York Otaku column has been a lot of fun and also quite difficult. Coming up with stuff for every weekday is no joke! Anyway, I haven't been linking it out as much as I should be, so I figured that I would go over the past month in the column and point out the ones that were particularly good.

A lot of what I'm doing is just letting my (imaginary) Japanese audience know things that I think nobody would ever tell them. A lot of it is kind of "yeah, I know" for American fans, but there are other things that I think would still be interesting!

Takashi Murakami and "there is no Cool Japan"- Given what I'm doing, I felt that when I saw this interview with Murakami I had to chime in as an American observer. Anime's image here is a hell of a lot more complicated than "Cool Japan", and also Cool Japan is kind of bullshit.

An explanation of the brony phenomenon as the direct American equivalent to Japanese moe fandom.

A story about Pocky and how American anime fans irrevocably tied up the snack food with their identity.

Of course, a piece on the very small trend of Japanese mahjong and American anime fans.

My all-time saddest otaku story. If I ever write a book about this stuff, it's probably going to be the first chapter.

And in which I out my friends on owning Japan-priced anime and get to talk about Akibaranger.

Akibaranger comes recommended. I thought it was going to be obvious, weak parody of the most-parodied subject in otaku-land, but it's really funny, not totally self-deprecating, and unexpectedly sharp. Give it a watch.

THANKS FOR COMING TO THE PANELS AT I-CON. ALSO I'M SICK

Hi, everybody, it's me, convention-sick Dave, and bluuuuuuuuuuuuuugh, I feel like shit.

But yes, if you're here from any of the panels, thanks for coming. If you aren't here from the panels, and that's the more likely case, I'm going to tell you what I ran.

MD Anime was gdgd Fairies, Idol Fighter Su-Chi-Pai, and the dubbed first episode of Garzey's Wing, which was dropped on the crowd Tomino-style with no explanation. All of these went over really great! I wasn't completely sure that people would be into gdgd's style or see the same mockumentary (BUT REAL OFFICE DESPAIR) appeal of the Suchie Pai stuff, but they loved it! Garzey's Wing, of course, I had full confidence in.

I used some tokusatsu intermissions for this panel to break it up: the first fight scene of Goggle Five and the Battle Fever J scene where the heroes first put on their suits... and dance.

MD Anime 18 was a guided tour of the Blood-C TV series, and after that the full length of MD Geist. Very simple panel, very effective. I combed through Blood-C for both its most boring parts and its most disgusting parts, and by the end the audience had both begged for mercy from the rampaging vampire hordes... and from Saya's songs about what she did this morning. Both the MDA panels were huge raving successes and again, thank you all for letting me entertain you.

The Game Center CX panel was okay? I actually spent the most amount of time on this one, and I think to the crowd it looked like the one I spend the least amount of time on. On a third straight hour of paneling with little sleep and too much caffiene, I actually felt myself crashing during the panel. Worse still, my presentation wound up shorter than anticipated, Media Player Classic started to crash on certain files... basically I could have done a hell of a lot better.

The mahjong panel I was late for. Really late. I apologize. First time I've ever been late to a panel. Blame me for going for a nice breakfast and not realizing exactly how long that takes in Long Island! I ran the panel at super-speed to a tiny but surprisingly interested group. Thanks to the people who stuck it out, and I'm so, so sorry to the people I abandoned. Won't happen again.

Other than that, I-Con was a good time as usual. Thanks to staff for arranging things: you all work too hard and I appreciate it.

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU UP TO, DAVE? A NEW COLUMN IN JAPAN AND A CONVENTION IN LONG ISLAND

Hey, guys. You've likely noticed that the blog's been alternating between Tenhou recaps and posts about how great Kamen Rider Fourze was this week. The truth is, I've been very busy elsewhere this week.

First, I have a new column at animeanime, a Japanese industry news site, called "Letters from the New York Otaku." This is a daily column that attempts to explain the American anime fan subculture to the mystified Japanese observer, or merely present perplexing things and leave the reader to scratch their head. I want to restate myself there: daily. That is going to be hard. No way around it. I've put myself on a killer schedule, but this is an amazing opportunity and I'm going to take it. Right now there's a deep backlog for the column. Expect stories explaining such topics as the failure of Gundam in the States, American anime fans' attachment to Pocky, and of course the bronies. I'm extremely excited about this column, and I hope you are too.

Will anime coverage at this blog decrease? Will I be writing less for Colony Drop? I'm just going to guess yes to both. I'm working on projects for both sites... but that stuff's definitely on the back burner right now. And when this week's stuff clears up I will be getting back to the Kawaiikochans' exciting adventures in gaming kingdom!

Second, I-Con 31 is this weekend at Stony Brook and I apologize for not mentioning it sooner. It snuck up on me just as fast as anybody else: this week has been writing the column, doing Astro Toy, and assembling my four panels all at once. I will be running:

-Most Dangerous Anime (and 18+)

-Riichi! (the Otakon mahjong panel)

-Old Man Vs. Old Videogames: Game Center CX (this is new)

And I'm putting the finishing touches on all of those panels as we speak, at the same time. I barely have time to be writing this blog post!

So yeah, I'm busy but I'm busy on the internet, so you're going to be hearing from me plenty no matter what. See the "my gigs" column in the upper left. I recommend you follow the Twitter (@sasuraiger), where I am rarely absent.

Dear Toei, WE HAVE TO TALK ABOUT YOUTUBE

If you didn't know, Japanese media giant Toei requests more takedowns from streaming video sites than anyone else in the world does. This has a lot to do with the fact that they produce extremely popular anime like Dragon Ball and One Piece: in fact they just tried to sue a bunch of Americans over torrenting One Piece, a ridiculous case I doubt will go anywhere.

But I don't even want to get into the full-episode thing or online streaming. One Piece is streaming online, after all, and there's no reason Toei shouldn't ask Youtube to take down the full episode downloads that probably pop up constantly on the site. Toei doesn't just do that with their properties, though, or they wouldn't be the #1 requesters of Youtube takedowns in the universe.

Toei does its damnedest to erase any trace of any title they have the rights to from the internet. As watching Kamen Rider Fourze and Kuuga has gotten me more interested in Japanese superhero shows lately, I found out very quickly how impossible it is to find things like the openings for the shows on Youtube. And I don't just mean the current season shows, I mean any of them. Toei must have some kind of automatic deletion system going, because only the worst copies of those videos make it through. Like you might find a guy taping his TV, or a severely aged VHS copy, or something with Indonesian fakesubs on it. Search "Kamen Rider" on youtube and all that's left are the theme songs (audio only) and toy reviews. It may as well not exist.

The last straw that made me decide to write this post was when I noticed that a lovely subbed video of the opening to World Ninja War Jiraiya was removed from Youtube. Really, guys? Why? This show's gotta be thirty years old, it's not like someone's going to rush to the store and buy a $50 two-episode DVD or whatever!

Also, and this is a complaint that extends to the anime business, what possible harm is there in that 90-second sequence-- the sequence that was created specifically to advertise your show-- being freely available online? That's how people find out about shows, that's something that catches their eyes. It's supposed to. Ask fans of robot anime, we've all seen every single robot OP ever, even if the show's not available in English. I use Sasuraiger as a handle online because it sounds good, and I really love that opening scene.

The Toei thing actually gets worse, though. Toei actually has a Youtube channel where they post a large amount of full episodes their back catalog, mostly 70s and 80s stuff with a few Rider shows from last decade in there. When I saw that they were doing this, I subscribed. Well, guess what? The channel is region locked. You can't watch any of that stuff outside Japan.

So let's look at what Toei expects of you if you are outside Japan and interested in Riders or Super Sentai. Don't pirate the shows online, that'd be illegal. You want to watch them, though? Uh... go to Japan, watch them on TV, buy them on video for ludicrous prices (which is the sales model for super-fans who already saw the show on TV). If you don't want to do that, well, Toei says, our superheroes just don't exist. Please ignore the anniversary celebrations, Christmas trees, any action figures you may have on preorder, and 5 yearly team-up movies. We're in a global culture and the best thing to solve that problem is to just pretend stuff doesn't exist.

Meanwhile, import sites routinely sell out of cheapo toy henshin belts at ludicrous prices (I have an Astro Switch here, and I'm pretty sure it's just a repurposed printer ink cartridge) every god damn season, but Toei doesn't believe there's a market so you're all boned. Toei's a big, old company, and they're probably so big that people at the company know this and can't do anything about it... but policies like this don't benefit them. If anything, they are actively stunting the growth of both their existing audience and their potential audience. Youtube and other streaming sites have been powerful tools for the promotion of obscure and cult movies especially and this "it doesn't exist" strategy is a joke. We're fans, not suckers. Don't treat us like the latter.

In conclusion, I really wanted to put up some of Fourze's goofy scenes... but Toei would just have my Youtube account deleted. That's a shitty relationship to have with your fans! Instead, enjoy this Friends mashup on a site that Toei does not yet bumblingly police.

Astro Toy goes to Year Three: WHAT I THINK ABOUT JAPANESE TOYS AT THIS POINT

I've been nerding on Japanese toys for a long time, but the Astro Toy gig has really forced me to look out at lines beyond my particular interests and all around the business. It's been really interesting! Originally that last post was supposed to just be a listing of what I thought of the respective lines, but it really quickly turned into a "how and why" of the column that was much too long not to run on its own. So here's the post that was originally intended, as a part two instead. This might also function as a buyer's guide.

Figma: Boy, I have a lot to say about Figma. This is now the dominant action figure for the modern otaku, to the point where pretty much everything in otaku-world that doesn't belong to Bandai (Gundam, Tiger and Bunny, many others) becomes a Figma. Because they're the winners, it's easier to be hard on them.

Main points: Figmas are small, cheap (but not kids' toy cheap), and while very playable, their design philosophy values looks more than play. Given market trends, subjects are mostly girls. The line is perfectly average: like Revoltech, you can tell there were times when the people making the toy gave a damn (Golgo remains the best Figma I've looked at for the column by a long distance) and times when they didn't really.

Right now the review of Figma Guts is up and I found it passable by Figma standards. The reader response has been "No way! Look at that face!" There are a lot of elements that are a little cheapo-looking on that figure-- legs, detailing on the stuff strapped to the body, the mechanical arm-- but all of this falls under typical Figma for me. I don't expect amazing detail from a Figma, and as much as people don't like that face I think it's one of the better Figma faces considering how spotty they usually look. I have to wonder if my eyes are just gradually getting used to the line's middling quality.

Nendoroid is really straightforward: it's less an action figure and more a display figure that you put together. Kaiyodo used to do an Eva line like this, but it wasn't super-deformed. Pretty simple, and I can't even imagine how you'd get the idea wrong. These are fun to do columns for, but because they're so limited I try to buy two or find ones with lots of extras. Only drawback is that the stands are complete shit.

If you want to buy Figma or Nendoroid or any other Good Smile product you'd better be happy with what's out right now, because GSC's business plan is to make everything in small numbers and only do one production so that fans are compelled (or, in many cases, forced) to preorder if they want the figure. Online buyers in particular get screwed, as really popular characters like Homura sold out to preorders months in advance and were then never made available again. Figmas aren't good enough to pay insane collector markup (I've seen them go for $200) so seriously, don't even bother looking. I'm just glad I got the Kaiji figure while I could.

Revoltech: Revoltech is kind of the anti-Figma: toy first, everything else second. Heavy on visible joints and action features, something meant for the owner to actually sit and play with rather than set up for display just once. Mostly male characters and robots, given the nature of the toys. However, sculpts on these can get really ugly, especially lately. The "Fraulein" line exists but was, by all indications, a failure.

I admire these toys for the purity of their vision (Kaiyodo also sells a completely original line that's a clear attempt at Microman in an age when there are no kids left to buy that stuff), but that isn't necessarily folks' priority. Note, however, that I haven't bought a Revoltech in months because Figma has all the popular characters. This will change later.

Bandai stuff: Obviously Chogokin is my favorite. The modern Chogokin stuff strikes a balance between obsessively faithful detail, high-quality construction and playability that's just unbeatable. Every one of these I see is top-shelf, even in the scaled-down Super Robot Chogokin line.

Figuarts is a line that wildly varies in quality, to the point where I would only be able to recommend pieces individually. It is hard to believe that Figuarts' terrible figure of Kazuma from Scryed is in the same line as the wonderful Tiger and Bunny figures, for example. I'd be careful with these and take a close look before buying, but they seem to do costumed heroes (sentai and Kamen Rider) better than other stuff. They're fun to buy for the column because I have no idea what I'm going to get. I have Figuarts Fourze on preorder for my own personal enjoyment.

Bandai has a direct ripoff line of Nendoroid that's been coming out in force with Tiger and Bunny characters but I haven't had space to look at it, and it also kind of looks crap.

We have barely even done Gundam in two years. It's like this: most good Gundam stuff is in plastic kit form, and, real talk, they don't pay me enough to put in the hours involved in putting together a kit. I used to do Gunpla, and I know it won't even look good unless it's painted! Maybe if some nice diecast comes out for AGE (nice diecast Unicorn sold out a while back) we'll talk. The SDX figures are awesome though.

Myth Cloth is a pretty cool line but I doubt I'll be able to ever slip Saint Seiya into the column again, just sayin'. The huge Sagittarius figure is completely out of our range, even though it's 40% off at Amiami right now.

Other lines: Medicos' Jojo line does everything possible better than comparable lines for the same price. I was amazed to see how well-served Jojo fans are by the figure business: they must buy a lot. I keep trying to see if Griffon's Figutto line will get better, but they're basically medium-grade 1/8 PVCs with joints. Nowhere more evident than with that Marisa figure.

I am really looking forward to what Sentinel does going forward and I have a few things of theirs on order for the column (one is sitting next to me, actually), including an obvious and popular character I absolutely can't wait to get.

If all goes well with it, I'm buying something from CM's for the column soon. They only do stuff from old robot anime so it was really hard to find something of theirs for Astro Toy!

Evolution Toy's Squid Girl is the only time I've bought something so bad for the column that I'd never trust the company that made it ever again.

Astro Toy goes to Year Three: THE GUIDELINES

It's been two years on this column! I'm sort of shocked it's gotten this far, and we don't do anniversary celebrations or anything like that, so I thought it would be fun to just talk about it on the blog for a while.

It was a complete happy coincidence that ANN found me, but I've been buying toys from Japan for long before I took up this column. I was into Gunpla back in high school, but eventually I didn't have room for a "workshop" anymore as those kits required to look good. That led me into Japanese action figures, and because I love robots and wanted high-quality stuff, I was led towards the high end lines like Chogokin and so on.

The last thing I bought before I stopped buying toy robots was a Max Factory Gaogaigar. At that point I was completely satisfied. By the time I started this blog I was more or less done with figures, so there was never anything on here about it.

And then a couple years ago I was recommended to write Astro Toy, and by sheer coincidence I happened to have a history with the subject. My shelves have been cleared off, and most of my old toys put in boxes to be sold off one day. My shelves are stocked again with "keeper" toys and the rest are in more boxes to be sent off to ANN or given away at cons. I'm more involved now than I was before.

Couple things about the column, straight up: I'm free to pick what I want for the column, but my choices can and do get rejected every once in a while when management doesn't think the audience would go for them. (if you've ever seen me post a figure a lot on Twitter or something and it doesn't turn up in the column, then, well...) I aim to balance a couple of factors:

-quality of toy. No gashapons, no trading figures, no cheap stuff! This is important to me because this is inherently a nitpicking column, and the low-grade stuff usually doesn't deserve to be nitpicked. Yes, the sculpt on that gashapon set is poor. The paint doesn't hold up to inspection. Of course they're crappy, the figures cost 300 yen each! "Look at this crap" is only fun when it's something egregiously terrible, like a bootleg or something.

-popularity of character. If there's a decent, Figma-or-higher piece of a character from a really popular show coming out, we're always gonna buy it. However, it must be something decent. The popular Jump series are perfect examples: yes, you can easily get a figure of Ichigo or Naruto and yes, those guys are about a thousand times more popular than anything I post about on Astro Toy. It's probably a piece of crap six-dollar toy you distract a small child with, though. If it doesn't make for an entertaining read, or if it's obviously a product that isn't worth the money (I've mentioned the Alucard Revoltech in the column: I'm still considering buying it for the column but it really does look terrible), I just don't buy it.

-features, playability. This is pretty much why we don't do fixed-pose PVC on the column. It's not that I dislike them at all, I've got quite a few: I'm just expected to write a good-sized article, and there's little you can say about PVC other than the obvious comments about sculpt and paint. Heisei Democracy did great, insightful PVC reviews and they did them in 400 words. I have to say a lot more than that. Nitpicking a PVC just isn't a full article, and stretching out your nitpicking just to get more words on the page is one great way to write a shitty, boring piece of work.

I want to avoid, by all means, the column becoming an endless, boring parade of Figma, Revoltech, and Nendoroids of popular characters. It's not that those lines are bad, it's that they're very consistent at a certain medium level of quality, and there's only so much to say about one toy line no matter how many characters it produces. Readers will get tired of it, I'll burn out on writing it. I already repeat myself so much as-is, you know?

We all have to have fun here, myself included, or what's the point of doing the column? Unusual and lesser-known toy makers and lines, classic and cult characters, figures with fun gimmicks, and sometimes indulging my own weirdo personal tastes: all of that stuff is important to mix things up, and I do go out of my way.

This makes certain purchases obligatory (the great action figures for Tiger and Bunny, the wave of Madoka figures from Good Smile, big-in-the-West properties like Trigun) and certain figures infeasible no matter how much I like them (most super robot toys, the upcoming Saber and bike PVC).

The budget is covered by ANN--I would absolutely not spend this kind of money on toys myself-- and it's pretty comfortable, in large part because of the bad exchange rate sending the prices of even average Japanese toys out of control. The added cost of international express shipping  is tremendous too. When I started, a Figma was $35 or so shipped. They're now $50-60. Anything above that level starts to get into crazy land really fast. Barring big sales, really high-end lines like Real Action Hero or Soul of Chogokin are just out of the question.

When there are holes in the schedule, I try to fill them with deliberately wacky choices that the crowd either loves (nobody loved that near-defective Squid Girl, but the article was a success!) or hates (robots elicit near-total silence from the ANN crowd, but I buy one every couple months anyway). Again, I think it's really important to cover this weirdo stuff to give people a view of things that aren't even commonly found in Japan. It also means that since I'm constantly looking through toy listings, every once in a while I see something I really want for myself but can't possibly justify for the column... so I wind up spending my own money on it (Alter's Dizzy, Kamen Rider Fourze). Honestly, though, that's pretty rare. Last thing I bought for myself was Weissritter to complete the set with Alteisen: can't really justify buying the companion piece for the column when the readers didn't care about the hero!

Speaking of which, I'm always curious about my crowd reaction. I don't know anything about my pageviews, so I definitely use the forums as a microcosm of audience interest. Of course, given the very niche nature of the column, going by number of comments isn't a great idea... but when you get a crickets-chirping response you definitely take it into account for later. Only very rarely do I get hostile responses ("this column should be about PVC instead of ugly, boring crap!" was as bad as it ever got), so I think I'm running things alright.

So it's been a lot of fun, and I plan on continuing to run Astro Toy until either I no longer have time to run it or ANN gets rid of me. Thanks for reading the column, and an additional thanks to those of you who actually stuck it out through this mega post.

Treasure Island Sports tricked me into buying an empty box AND I DON'T WANT IT TO HAPPEN TO YOU

Alright, time for a toy public service announcement. After Christmas I found what I thought was a fantastic deal on a Soul of Chogokin Gold Lightan, a figure that's long out of production. $20 for this was too good a deal not to look into for a gold-plated transforming cigarette lighter robot, and so I put in an order on the suspiciously named:

Gold Lightan GX-32 18K Plating Figure Exclusive Wooden Box

The seller was Treasure Island Sports, and not to spoil the ending of this story, but Treasure Island Sports is to be avoided. The photo on Amazon was just a black box with the Saint Seiya logo on it. I assumed it was a placeholder.

Days pass. My buddy Mike Toole decided to go in on this too, and he suggests to me for the first time the terrible idea that this could just be an empty wooden box. This is possible: the Chogokin Lightan figure comes in a display box itself, and while it doesn't make a lot of sense, maybe the seller only has that part of the item. I would consider this a ripoff, but one where the seller could at least weasel into saying "this is what you ordered".

So here's what happened.

That's right, I got that damn Saint Seiya box in the mail. Nothing to do with Gold Lightan whatsoever. So this is definitely the wrong item, but it's still pretty heavy. Maybe there's something cool in there? Maybe I still got a deal after all?

Yeah, it's an empty god damn box. This is a display box for a Saint Seiya Myth Cloth figure. I believe it's a Bandai Hong Kong product, but there is no Bandai logo on this thing and it could well be a wooden box someone made and slapped the Saint Seiya logo on. It doesn't look like official merch, that's for sure. Again, this item has nothing to do with Gold Lightan. Adding insult to injury, the Saint Seiya logo fell off the front of the box the moment I removed it from the packaging.

So now I have to go through the process of getting a refund on Amazon. Unfortunately, Treasure Island apparently has a reputation for not getting back to their buyers, so we'll see how this turns out. Worse comes to worse, I'm sure that Amazon will refund me as soon as I have to bring this story to their attention: they did it for that defective DVD of Hollywood Cop, after all!

So, as always, be aware when you're shopping online. And don't ever buy from Treasure Island Sports.

 

November 20th, 2011: HOW DID KAMEN RIDER FOURZE OWN TODAY?

Yes, another one. Yes, I am writing real blog posts too. No, this is not necessarily a regular feature like the time I blogged Shin Mazinger, and no, I definitely won't be episode blogging anything this long. I really like this show, though.

November 13th, 2011: HOW DID KAMEN RIDER FOURZE OWN TODAY?

An essay in screenshots. I don't normally do this kind of thing, but I would have just done it on Twitter otherwise...

Never change indeed, Kamen Rider Club. You're the greatest.