This week I will host a guest post on my blog, it’s the first actually. I would like to present a post written by my valued fellow blogger Kai of Deluscar, who just celebrated his blog’s 5th anniversary of blogging! Thank You to Kai for providing an new article to my humble blog.

Deluscar is an editorial-orientated blog, that focuses on reviews, impressions, commentaries about anime, manga, visual novels, video games and other things from the Japanese visual culture as well. His posts are often of very thoughtful nature and entertaining to read, be sure to make a visit (*＾▽＾)／.

Hello everyone, Kai of Deluscar here. I’m here to talk about impulse buying, something I’m sure most of you figure collectors are pretty familiar with.

tfw impulse buying

Impulse buying, I mean come on, everyone’s done it in one way or the other. Sometimes you see something you like but probably don’t really need. But it just looks so aesthetically-pleasing, and it seems to be made in such high quality in closer inspection. Finally, the decent price for such a high-quality item sealed the deal for you, and thus, you take out your wallet and the deed is done — only to regret it (or not) some time later. This apply to just any kinds of items, but especially true in figures. The “buy first, think later” is an especially popular mindset behind figure collectors.

The Shinkai Shoujo Miku figure. One of the most aesthetically-pleasing Miku figure I ever came across — and my dream figure which I will never get.

While figures can be expensive, for one thing, figures rely heavily on aesthetics to attract customers, and I’ll be damned if some of these figures don’t look good. There are quite a lot of good figure companies like Good Smile Company, ALTER and so on that just so effortlessly came up with countless good figures. Each and every single figure they made are so intricate and detailed. Furthermore, types of figures like nendoroids and figmas help bolstering expressions too instead of -only- just aesthetics, with the ability of changing different faces and body parts. As far as anime decorative stuffs, they are arguably the best.

Because of that, impulse buying is a very common urge for figures collectors. Though it may sounds weird for me to say this now after everything I said, but I don’t really have much of this problem. I think it may has to do with the fact that I have always seen myself as more of a casual collector. If anything, I’m good at “limiting” myself, and my mind quite naturally adapted to a personal policy whenever I’m buying figures.

For one thing, buying figures for me is an emotional investment to a series and characters I like. That means I will only buy figures of characters I actually recognize and like, and figures of characters from shows I don’t know and even figures of original characters are something I wouldn’t spend hundreds of dollars on no matter how good they look.

My glass cabinet in question

Of course, my ideal room would be that it has to be neat and have a decent amount of figures on display. I don’t want to buy so many figures to the point that figure boxes would be sprawled all around as if my room just got struck with a tornado. All my figure boxes are packed up nicely in my cupboard, and the figures that I want to display are done so in a glass cabinet. I’m running out of space though. My room’s pretty small to begin with and while I would love to buy another glass cabinet, there’s just no space anymore. I can just toss my figures and boxes haphazardly around the room, but aforementioned, I don’t really like that.

I know some people also adapted a constant buy-and-sell cycle, so that they can make new space for more figures. Not something I personally want to do, like I said, buying figures to me is an investment to the series, an investment to the characters — a form of fandom engagement. Furthermore, my figures are my sweat, tears and blood… and also money and empty room spaces (yes, my room spaces are important). So I’m not selling them anytime soon.

It’s an odd mindset, but I’m glad I have it-at the very least, it’s great for controlling my impulse buying. Though when all the pieces fall into place, and there’s a figure of a character I really, really like, I still fall into the pitfall of impulse buying — as it was the case with my latest Miku figure (because come on, it’s fucking Miku!).

At the end of the day, all I want to say — consumerism is a bitch. If you’re a victim of impulse buying as well, especially of figures, what do you do to control it?

Or do you just let your impulses RUN WILD?

Welcome to a new post, no figure review but a crossover exchange of some sorts.

Crossover what? … A few days ago, after a little twitter communication I and my much valued fellow toy photographer buddy Pinkcheeks decided to exchange a few of our unprocessed pictures, we both had some that we hadn’t really published in a post.

I’ve send Pinkcheeks safe ^^ pictures of Orchid Seed’s Super Sonico PKG version and I received pictures of ALTER’s beautiful Kongiku and two bonus pictures.

Pinkcheeks posted the pictures she processed here on the facebook page.

Wieselhead.de isn’t on Facebook yet, I post my edited pictures here, click to enlarge.

I was very happy to be able to work with these wonderful pictures, since it’s a figure I unfortunately don’t have in my collection and also because I admire Pinkcheeks photography.

While I did something indoors, Pinkcheeks took pictures within a beautiful forest.

I don’t know how you think about it, but for me post processing pictures is a pleasant activity and I really enjoy it when the steps don’t consume too much energy and workload.

I really, really like how my Sonico pictures look after Pinkcheeks postprocessing now they look like what I had in mind when I took these pictures.

Don’t forget to take a look

I hope you don’t feel like I did something horrible with your pictures Pinkcheeks XD I applied the changes to make the pictures look like I wanted. After all I feel like buying  Kongiku haha.

Thank you for exchanging pictures with me, it was a lot of fun, maybe we can repeat this fun exchange once again…

Today I’ll let down my pants, only in the figurative sense, of course

Inspired by Adam’s Figure Financials posts I decided that I wanted to create something similar by the end of this year. I’m fully aware that a detailed look at the figure expenses of this year might be a shocking experience, but join me  and face the ugly truth in this post.

Let’s take a look at the things I’ve bought this year, overall it were 27 figures that I’ve purchased and received this year, 1 less compared to 2011. Since I already sold 2 figures I end up with a number of overall 25 collected figures in 2012, it was one of my goals to stay under 28 figures.

monthly figure expenses

In the diagram below every bar shows what I’ve spent each month, surprisingly I ordered nothing in February and May. With 4 figures, I kind of overdid it in June and October, it were expensive months, but this also partially happened because of unforeseen events. In November I also ordered 4 figures, but these figure were from the aftermarket and comparatively cheap.

I won’t write down the entire sum I’ve spent this year, it would be a too big shock for me XD

manufacturer appointments

It looks like I chose ALTER for most of my purchases, their figures really caught my interest even some older figures from them. Surprisingly GSC, which I really can’t stand or better said it’s the constant hype about their products. Anyway I went out of my way and ordered four of their figures, I really like Sayaka and Shinobu. I also got really nice figures from Max Factory.
For some reason I only ordered 3 (4) Orchid Seed figures, maybe that will change in 2013.

I also tried different companies, that I’ve never bought from before, like Alpha Max, Native, Daiki Kougyou, PLUM, Phat Company and Volks who will relase their Nagisa figure soon. Unlike my bad experience with Griffon, these companies provided solid quality and very good figures.

Shop appointments

new exclusive and old figures comparison

Aside from 15 new figures, I bought 5 Exclusive figures (Sonico – Bath Time version,
Noel Vermillion, Miku Hatsune – Cheerful Japan, the Sonico Nendoroid and Nagisa).
The 7 old figures were Max Factories Tamaki Kousaka and Haruhi Suzumiya Gekisou version, Echidna from Megahouse. From ALTER I ordered the Louise Francoise – school uniform version, Fate/Hollow Ataraxia – Saber Maid R and non R version and Fauna at last.

I spent a lot for the Tamaki figure, but in other cases there were a number of significant price drops at Mandarake and AmiAmi preowned in this year, these prices were so low that I couldn’t resist these figures I always was slightly interested in. Asida from Echidna, who had a stained butt (it wasn’t me XD) I made no bad experiences with these aftermarket figures.

additional costs

When looking a these numbers I’m quite surprised that the custom fees only take ten percent of the spent budget, hehe four times my packages weren’t charged. 17 percent for shipping also appears lower than expected, this year I used more SAL shipping and domestic shipping, when more figures arrive in one month it makes no sense to use EMS for all orders. I used EMS 11 times, SAL 12 times and domestic shipping for local shops was used 4 times.

favorite figures of the year

Ok, enough of these dry statistics lets end this post with my personal favorites of the figures I’ve purchased this year this year.

Bakemonogatari – Oshino Shinobu (Good Smile Company)

This was my first GSC figure that I actually like a lot. The donut eating loli vampire Shinobu from Bakemonogatari was very well recreated in this figure, be it the adorable and cute face, the petite appearance of her body. Also the outfit with the cool motorcycle helmet and the light looking summer dress are also a convincing part of her. While not being sculpted perfectly sharp, the donut bed like base with it’s overload of details is a nice addition to the figure.

Another nice detail is that she can be taken off her base and be placed nearly everywhere.

Ikki Tousen Xtreme Xecutor – Kan’u Unchou (Daiki Kougyou)

I saw, drooled in excitement and ordered ^^. This figure appeared convincing for me from the day she was announced. I like Ikki Toussen quite a bit, but I never bought a figure of it before.

With this figure Daiki came especially close to my image of Kanu. Her powerful fighting pose and the well trained, attractive body were quite appealing. The figure of Kanu has a kinda angry determined face expression, while I prefer cute expressions in general, I was fascinated by the look of this figure. As my first experience with Daiki Kougyou, Im quite satisfied with their work. The sculpting and the painting on clothes and figure turned out very well

Soukou Akki Muramasa – Sansei Muramasa – Maid (Max Factory)

This was quite maid year in terms of figures for me, but Sansei Muramasa throned above all of them. I was interested in her since a certain Wonfes a few years ago. I am totally happy that I was convinced to get her in the end. Her appearance of a grown up and very attractive dark skinned elf is really enchanting. Muramasa has a beautiful face, the eyes are very expressive and also the unique combination of a slightly embarrassed and pouting  face expression are nice.

Her dress is lovely with the detailed ruffles and also the color combination of cream white and silky shine black a quite classy, elaborate look is created. The figure also offers a cool looking base with red floor and a pretty table where parts of the included coffee dishes can be placed.

Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai – Takayama Maria (Max Factory)

Im still not a fan the Maria character, but she’s cute loli anyway. As image for the sculpting and painting Max Factory relied on the illustrator of the Novels, Buriki who has a quite unique style.
I really love how the face of this figure was adapted, she has super detailed eyes, blush marks and a cute open mouth with a sharp little fang. This Maria Takayama is a high quality figure with great looking body sculpting and an overall lively and playful appearance.

The dress is a little odd for a figure of a young girl, but is is very well done with pretty gloss and detailed shading effects. With a happy Maria inside the dress actually looks more cute than lewd.

To Heart 2 – Kousaka Tamaki – (Max Factory AquaPlus)

I saw this figure in the past, but in this year I noticed how appealing this figure actually is and was searching on the aftermarket. friend on MFC helped me and so I got my Tamaki Kousaka.

Not a cheap deal, but it was worth every cent. She looks a little different compared to her visual novel and anime origin, but in this case that is nothing bad.  On her fluffy, round base Tamaki radiates a romantic, cozy atmosphere what is quite charming in my eyes. The long red hair is pretty, the round face with the big eyes, rosy cheeks and the gentle smile on her mouth is really enchanting. The combination of a quite innocent appearance and an attractive curvy body works very well with this figure. Overall, the sculpting and paintjob of her are really top notch.

I still think that her boobs are too big, but with a cute face like this I accept this “minor” detail ;D

Nitro Super Sonic – Sonico –  Bath Time version (Native)

This was my first figure from Native actually, more importantly is that she’s a huge 1/6 scaled Sonico. I liked the creativity of pose and base a lot, these three little bathing friends are really cute accessories. The figure also has a very detailed and convincing face expression. I also like that they added more meat to this sculpt of Sonico like the Tsuji Santa artstyle always implies.

The figure can be displayed naked, not to the extent of most Native figures, but in my opinion  she looks best with one of her towels applied.Minor flaws are too faint blush marks and a  not that sexy looking butt, but nevertheless she is without question one of the best Sonico figures so far with the  Sonico – Bondage version from Orchid Seed following close afterwards.

Senran Kagura – Hibari (Phat Company)

I was quite happy as the cute GK of Hibari was quickly adapted to be turned into a PVC figure.
I didn’t had that much trust into Phat Company to begin with. But after unpacking her I was very much delighted, she looked very well done and came without major flaws. I love the cheerful face of Hibari with her flower eyes and the happy open mouth. I also liked her busty schoolgirl appearance dressed up in cute sportswear, like the jersey and the short bloomers that accentuates her meaty thighs. Her loose socks and the shoes are also a very cool detail.

Since I awaited this figure from Phat Company with lowered expectations my joy about her very good quality and looks were kinda amplified and Im still very happy about her purchase.

Do you have favorite figures from the ones you’ve bought?

Final Words

So far I always planned my purchases on a monthly basis, so that I won’t overstep my budget, in this post it was  interesting to take a look at the overall purchases of my figure hobby in this year. It appears like a lot of money and it probably is, but the truth is that there were more nice and pretty figures that I wanted to get n 2012, but I wanted to show at least a little retention.

Next year will be full of nice figures as well and I already preordered a few things, but lets see what and how many figures I will add to my next orders.

And you, Do you take a look back at your purchases and expenses of this year?

I there anyone who spent more? please let me know.