Hi there, todays post is about the anime shows of the winterseason 2012 lineup I recently started and enjoyed so far. Without further ado here are my short impressions about each show.

Another– P.A. Works – 04/12 episodes

Another is a suplimal spooky horror anime, with a deep and slightly scary atmosphere.
Im glad that it is done in a sublime way without *in your face* horror and silly emo faces.

In the spring of 1998, the 14yr old Kouichi transfered from Tokio to the rural town, Yomiyama.
He had the luck to be put in the class of weirdos who seem to hide a creepy secret from him.

One day he meets Misaki, a mysterious girl with an eyepatch, she tells him that it won’t be good for him to get in contact with her. But Kouichi feels attracted by her and uses every chance to talk with her. Because of the suspicious behaviour of his classmates and Misaki, Kouichi tries to gather his own informations his aunt also provides him with informations. As if this was a good idea…
Soon some mysterious deaths occur in the town, even people close to Kouichi will be involved.

The animation quality of Another looks really good only the opening by Ali Project is shitscary.

Amagami SS plus – AIC – 04/12 episodes

It’s the second season of the very popular Amagami SS franchise, it continues where the different arcs from last season left, each arc contains 2 episodes about Junichi and one of the 6 heroines.
Amagami SS plus delivers the same, friendly, cozy and especially romantic atmosphere as its predeseccor while taking the relationships between the couples to the next level. It’s so nice.

Ano Natsu de Matteru – J.C. Staff – 04/12 episodes

Make a figure of her like this, onegai!

The red haired Ichika is an alien and accidently crashes into the life of our male protagonist Kaito and starts living at his house, the fact that Ichika is an alien wasn’t noticed by anyone so far.
She gets easily accepted by Kaito’s lively friends and all spend their summer holidays together.

What might turn out as a bit annoying in the progress of the story are the overlapping love intersts inside the group of friends, that can only go wrong. Shows like Persona 4 show that platonic relationships between both genders work yet it’s so rare in anime :(. There will probably be a romantic development between Kaito and Ichika even though both seem to be a bit dense in that regard. Aside from that the comedy is very good and the animation quality is quite appealing.

Highschool DxD – Genco – 04/12 episodes

Highschool DxD is a straight action anime with lots of (uncensored) fanservice. This kind of anime became really rare over the last few years, UNFORTUNATELY! The main character Issei is an hot blooded, testosterone guided high school boy. He has no luck with girls, but one day a cute girl approaches him to ask him about going out with him. Issei is overjoyed, but on the day of his first date his girlfriend turned out as a sadistic fallen angel and Issei got killed by her. Fortunately Issei got resurrected by the demon Grimore Rias and became her demon servant. He also became a member of Rias demon team family. The story so far is solid and the characters are also likeable.

Inu x Boku SS – Studio David – 04/ —

This is one of my favorites so far, main heroine Ririchiyo is a half breed between human and a supernatural creature, she never received earnest love from someone, not even her parents. Because of her difficult background, Ririchiyo developed a facade to protect her fragile self.
She speaks in an abusive way towards other people, so that they won’t get close to her.

Ririchiyo left her family and moved to Ayakashi Kan, a mansion for half breeds and Youkai.
As special service of this residence the inhabitens get a special agent who takes care of their needs. At first Ririchiyo is irritated by her agent Soushi, who shows dog like admiration torwards her, but because of his kindness and charming personality she keeps him as agent. The show follows their daily life, the ‘s backgound of the girl causes some drama but also good comedy is included, so far the balance of both is very well done. The animation style looks very well-

Nisemonogatari – Shaft – 04/12

Araragi is back, after the great success of the Bakemonogatari anime in 2009, Shaft blesses us with a continuation of the stories. At first it isn’t clear which way the new story will take but the reunion with all the characters we loved in Bakemonogatari is really nice and entertaining.
There is quite an amount of high quality fanservice included, that lucky Araragi is such a player.

During the dynamic dialogs we learn a few things piece by piece that slowly develop the first arc, which is about Araragi’s sisters. Not that I would miss Senjougahara, but so far only had few screentime and in the time she had she did not appear like a girlfriend someone wants to keep. Haha the other girls were way more appealing so far, I would choose Kanbaru with her grown out hair she is quite pretty and she’s a wild one ^^. Nisemonogatari still has lively and fast dialogs, but the fast bombardment of text screens from Bakemonogatari seems to have stopped.

Papa no Iukoto wo Kikinasai! – Feel – 04/12

Yuta lives his newly started College life. One day Yuta’s visits his big sister, Yuri  and her daughters Sora, Miu and Hina. The main reason of the meeting is that Yuri wants to go on honeymoon with her busband and so her brother should take care of her daughters for a few weeks. On the first day Yuta and the girls have a lot of fun, but destiny strikes and the flight of the parents went missing. It is assumed that they are dead.

After the funeral the relatives want to seperate the girls, because none of them has enough space or don’t want to take care of all three girls, which is just cruel after they lost their parents a few days ago, Yuta doesn’t want this to happen and suggests to take care of all 3 girls, the relatives don’t really agree on that, but in the end Yuta and the girls move in his small appartement without real permission. They start to live in the small apartment, and the reign of chaos begins.

The end of pisode 02 was rather depressing, the mere thought of young children loosing their parents gave me the creeps. I wasn’t able to watch the next episode for some weeks. Nevertheless I picked this show up again. The anime is labeled as comedy but it won’t be overly light hearted I guess. It will be quite difficult to raise the girls with part time jobs and no support from anyone. it keeps me worried. Papa no Iukoto wo Kikinasai! has a interesting and heart warming story. Its nice how Yuta tries to take care of them and how the three sibliings interact.

Rinne no Lagrange – Production I.G, Xebec – 04/12

This appears as a happy toned mecha anime with enchantingly cute female pilots and very good visual effects. In the calm, placed next to beach, city of Kamogawa the bubbly Madoka likes to play hero and saves people in need whenever she can. One day an unknown girl named Lan takes her along to the hangar of a special agency, because of her abilities she is chosen to activate and pilot a certain robot. Without further ado they put her into cockpit to repress an incoming mech from outer space. It appears that Madoka will get support from Lan and another pilot, called Muginami in fighting against the bishounen aliens who are after the robot called Vox.

So far I really enjoyed this anime, it’s funny and nicely animated, also the characters are interesting and most of all likeable, there might occur a darker development in the future, a 2nd season is already announced.

Tantei Opera Milky Holmes Dai 2 Maku – J.C. Staff – 03/12

The cute yet stupid detectives are back, the season starts where the last one ended, Cordelia, Hercule, Nero and Sherlock still have no Toys and have no privileges in the academy, they have no own rooms, not good food, their treated really badly to sum it up. All the characters from last season are back, Arsene, her silly trio and the incompetent G4. Arsene desperately wants that Milky Holmes gets back to their old selves and triggers certain events. Tantei Opera Milky Holmes is a show from lunatic for lunatic. It has a special kind of humor which won’t be everyones taste.

The animation style is not that appealing, but decent it has the appearance of an anime for kids, even though it is not suited for this audience. Anyway, what I can say for certain is, that the girls are cute. Hopefully the girls will get their tools back this time and keep them eventually.

Zero no Tsukaima F – J.C. Staff – 04/12

Im a big Zero no Tsukaima fan and I like the character of Louise a lot, I also have a huge wallscroll of her over my TV ^^. The fourth and last season of  Zero no Tsukaima finally started. Unlike the final season of Shakugan no Shana, the begining of Zero no Tsukaima was better made. There is something wrong with Shakugan no Shana Final *sob* what have you done to my beloved anime.

It took some time for the fourth season, but its nice to see all the old characters again and hear the nice background music. The 4th season also radiates the essence of the previous seasons and it still has the action, comedy and romance mix. In terms of Saito you’ll notice some development, putting all the bumping in harem girls aside (I think they should stop the harem thing near the end), he sets most of his attention torwards Louise. A letdown is, that Louise always gets interupted by the other girls when she wants to be alone with Saito.

Louise  still freaks out on the next possible ocassion and uses her “explosion” spell on Saito, which is somehow sad after three seasons of Zero no Tsukaima. I finally want my romance.

The setting and story of Zero no Tsukaima had always been good, but the end and also the impression of the whole franchise will depend on Louise and if she will finally fully accepts her feelings torwards Saito. I would be really dissapointed when they’d end this with an open end.

So thats all for now, the anime of this Winterseason 2012 turned out better than expected at first. Shows I would suggest to you giving a try are: Another, Nisemonogatari, Inu x Boku SS, Rinne no Lagrange and Papa no Iukoto wo Kikinasai!

picture are from Gelbooru, Konachan and shuushuu

Hooray today I can present you a new figure review, this time its about the Morishima Haruka – School Swimsuit Version figure which is produced by Max Factory, she was released at the end of April. Her scale is 1/7 with a height of 195mm. The origin of Haruka is the popular dating sim, Amagami SS which recently had an anime adaption that aired from July till December 2010.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpgY_jXeRKk

Intro

To describe it shortly Amagami SS is a 25 episode long romantic comedy anime, where each girl from the picture above gets a 4 episode long romantic short story with the main character Junichi. It was a very well made show, all the girls had likeable and  interesting personalities.
In my opinion it is one of the better game adaptions out there and I enjoyed it a lot.

As this figure was announced, and I saw the cute face and of course her appealing pose ^^, my first reaction was Woah! Sweet! where can I order her!? and  I preordered as soon as possible, unpatiently waiting for her arrival. Maybe this is the time tell something about her character.

Haruka Morishima (surname: Lovely) is a third year student and the idol of her school, she likes to have fun and likes to do exciting and crazy things. She can be quite eccentric I would also say she’s a slightly crazy weirdo ^^.  She isn’t really conscious about her attractiveness and so Haruka is fooling around with the guys. but it is not out of bad intentions, she doesn’t know it any better. Her best friend is Hibiki who sometimes has to upbraid her from doing inappropriate things haha she is quite strict with her. Here are a few impression from the anime.

The pose  didn’t exactly happened like this, it’s more a combination of the second and third episode. In episode two she borrowed this normal school swimsuit because she felt like swimming, but Hibiki kicked her out of the swimming hall before she could enter the pool XD.

In episode three the male main character Junichi had promised to take her to an unusual spot during the lunch break, as reward he was allowed to kiss her, if he would choose a very unusual spot for the kiss, he decided to kiss her at the back of her her knee. So the flushed Haruka bend over and with her hand, she pressed her skirt tightly onto her body, somehow that sounds  like stolen from a cheap erotic novel, but lets put that aside, the scene was hilarious and also a bit sensual. So the sculptor took the outfit and the pose from these two episodes and created this alluring Haruka Morishima figure in this tight swimsuit.

Main Part

So after the long Intro part, lets see how this figure actually turned out, her hair would be a good point to start. In Amagami SS no crazy hair colors appear, everything has more natural look, so the lovely Haruka  has dark brown hair, for the most part her hair is downright, only at the ends it is curled. Her pretty face is framed by her bangs and strands. Her face shows an expression of insecureness and a little bit emberrasment, but nevertheless she also wants to show you her best possible side in this situation. By changing her position, her face expression changes a bit, when you rotate her a bit more to the right she even shows a quite saucy face expression.

The part around her eyes and the eyes themself are nicely painted. Maybe they were a little more blue in the anime, but just by a small degree. For the shading of her blush marks a light orange colortone has been used, it is the same color like for the shading effects on her body.

The Amagami SS anime has slightly ecchi moments, but never crossed the line, it’s nearly the same with this figure, her swimsuit sits very tightly and follows her curves very accurately, but it is still on the more tame side because there aren’t implied nipples or details at her *meow* area.
( I shouldn’t forget to clean my mouth with soap afterwards^^).

Apparantly the sculptor put a lot of love into sculpting her lovely shaped butt, in comparison with other figures her buttocks stick out a bit more and look great in this black swimsuit. The main selling point of Haruka is her alluring pose, where she puts her butt on display. There are also other angles where she looks good, the side for example.

The position of her arms and hands fits very well to her

pose, Haruka’s gently impresses the area where her left leg begins with her left hand, with the small finger of her right hand she slightly lifts up her swimsuit to adjust it. As the beautiful girl Haruka is, of course her legs are pretty as well, they are longer than her upper body and the head together.

Haruka wears the default school swimsuit, not the more cooler looking ones from the swim club team, so here she stands with her charcoal colored swimsuit, it is a rather plain swimsuit, but it has some realistic looking seamlines on it. The tight sit accentuates her body proportions very well and compensates for it’s rather unspectacular design, even though I really like this swimsuit.

The base is a clear round disk with the Amagami SS logo on it. With the two pegs under one foot and one peg under the other foot, a safe stand is warranted. Oh nice she also has painted nails.

In terms of quality this figure turned very good, there are no visible seamlines from the mass production process and also the sculpting looks very clean and well made. Also the paintjob looks nearly flawless, even though there isn’t much place for messing up regarding the number of colors that had been used. When there is one thing I don’t really like about this figure, it would be the color of the blush marks, I had preferred a more pink colortone instead of an orange one.

Side Notes

The small inflatable swimming pool which you can see in the pictures was a nice buy, I had a hard time with thinking about a way to create a pool scenery, taking Haruka to a real pool was no option, bringing a camera to a public pool is a really really bad idea, I think.

“Catch the pervert over there! he has a camera!”
XD really no option. So I chose my own garden for the shooting, there I can’t get arrested.
Just a small size comparison, Seena (she looks very cute here btw^^) is also a 1/7 scaled figure because she is standing straight (235 mm) she appears bigger then the bendover Haruka (195 mm), I guess Haruka can be still considered as a 1/7 scaled figure.

Final Words

Overall Im very satisfied with this Haruka, she looks like in the preview pics which were shown on Mikatan before. Haruka comes in a quite unique pose with her butt in the center of attention, but she looks also good from many other angles. Another charm point is Haruka’s beautiful face together with her half curly hairstyle. When taking a look at her face it appears like this figure is more sculpted after the Haruka from the game instead of the one from the anime. The swimsuit of her might not appear as flashy like a colorful bikini, but honestly I’ve seen enough bikini figures recently and so this black swimsuit is a nice change, I really like it. Do you like swimsuits, too?

At the moment I have enough space for all of my upcoming orders, but for how many new figures, how long can I keep ordering like this, that’s a real pinch for me, because more nice figures will appear this year. I came to the conclusion that I can’t have every figure I own on, the best solution is to put a few back into their boxes for a while and let them change places from time to time. The badass way would be to sell some figures that aren’t my favorites ^w^.
How do you deal with your growing figure collections, are you a bit concerned about it?

Don’t be afraid, it sounds like I will stop collecting figures, but that won’t happen in the near future, Im enjoying my figure collecting hobby, I like taking photos from my figures, I like reading about figures as well as writing reviews about my figures and I also like to discover new figures.

So after all the whining now I will head to the main topic, my new preorders, I will start with the figure Im looking forward the most. I haven’t added the Suruga Kanbaru figure from (GSC) yet because I couldn’t bring myself to order her until now. I have too many preorders atm, but I will order her soon ;D Or maybe not if other, even nicer figures will be announced for summer.

Strike Witches – Charlotte E Yeager (ALTER)

I never was really interested in owning a Strike Witches figure, in the past I was interested in the Lynette Bishop figure from Kotobukiya, but I noticed her too late so I failed in getting the Lynette Bishop figure, I even missed the re-stock at AmiAmi. While searching through the MFC Database the uncolored protoype of Charlotte E Yeager caught my attention and landed on my wishlist.
As the promo shots of her colored version appeared I was really impressed about how good she looks, the face looks beautiful as well as the hair. I also like her oliv green uniform and that her striker unit resembles a P-51 Mustang with a metallic finish effect. I hope Alter will make a figure of Luchini soon then I would have my favorite Strike Witches couple at home
Charlotte E Yeager is scaled 1/8 and the release date is June 2011

Amagami SS  – Morishima Haruka (Max Factory)

I like the anime Amagami SS a lot so a nice figure of any of the female characters was very welcome, Max Factory started with the slightly crazy,very pretty puppy freak Haruka.
She is scaled 1/7 and the release date is April 2011. The pose is some kind unique and the bendover position is quite appealing and sexy, another important part is her pretty face and the nice looking hair, ok I admit it her backside looks also great and thats another reason why I ordered her. In my opinion this black swimsuit looks so much better than a bikini could ever do. When looking at the promo pictures it seems like this figure will look good from many angles.

Nendoroid  – Hayate no Gotoku! – Sanzenin Nagi (Max Factory)

Next to these two hotties I also ordered a Nendoroid, how fitting XD release date is in February
I forgot to mention Nagi in my last New Preorder post, well I liked Nagi a lot in the show.
Her clothes appear not very interesting or especially nice, but her faces are nice.
Another good point is that she can knee and she comes with a hat, her pet tiger Tama and a PSP

Evangelion 2.0  – Asuka – Apron Version (Wave)

In her promo shots she looked very promising but in the latest pictures she doesn’t look that good anymore she was already shipped and I chose unregistered SAL shipment, honestly I hope the package will get lost and never arrive at my house, Im serious XD Hehe, but I have a little hope that she will look better than in these latest pictures, I pray for it.

In my last New Preorder post I showed a few figures where I was unsure about ordering them, by all of them I decided not to order them, it’s not that I don’t like them, in fact they are really pretty Im just not interested enough to buy them anymore, maybe Fate will be ordered because Nanoha needs a toy…eh I mean a friend

But I have a new unsure about ordering list, I now have set my eye on

Touhou Project – Chen – 1/8 (Phat Company), Fate Testarossa – causual clothes (Kotobukiya), Kotobuki Tsumugi – Waitress Version (Max Factory), Hatsune Miku – Tony Version (Max Factory). Cryska Barchenowa 1/7 (Alpha Max), maybe three or two of them will be ordered, we will see.

In my mext post I will make a review about my Lineage II – Dwarf from Orchid Seed

New Preorders part 4
New Preorders part 3
New Preorders part 2
New Preorders part 1

A Happy New Year to all of you, I wish you all the best for 2011

Some more anime season  related stuff  as little filler until I’ve finished the rest of the shows I’ve started in fall seasons. I think there were some very good openings and ending in this fall/winter season. Opening and ending themes in anime are very important to me they should be catchy and should fit to the atmosphere of the anime. For starters lets have a look into the openings I liked first

1. Amagami SS “Kimi no Mama de ” by azusa
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzKqLOVprhw
2. Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru “DOWN TOWN” by Maaya Sakamoto
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2n29wa-4Fw
3. Sora no Otoshimono: Forte “Heart no Kakuritsu ” by Blue Drops

4. Arakawa Under the Bridge x Bridge “COSMOS vs ALIEN ” by Etsuko Yakushimaru
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKii8YAlXUg
5. Motto To LOVE-Ru “Loop-the-Loop” by KOTOKO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOL6Rvbrw60
6. Yosuga no Sora “Hiyoku no Hane” by eufonius
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzhdL4k-uZE

best anime openings fall season 2010 is coming soon…