Today is a first, since I will talk about Grisaia no Kajitsu a VN from 2010, made by Frontwing,  who got an anime adaption recently, but this was a bit rushed and strange, like most 12/13 episode long VN adaptions, it only showed a glimpse of this awesome game.

https://youtu.be/fLJ3eY-hfc4

A VN is a visual novel, pictures and text are combined into a game. Choosing different answers and sometimes minigames decide about the route the player takes. One route is often dedicated to a certain girl which was introduced during the intro phase.

I npticed the VN, as it was mentioned by fellow blogger and twitter buddy Kai.

Until then I mainly played older VN’s from before 2010, Grisaia is newer and literally made me jawdrop as I saw the elaborate opening. The artwork is pretty much top notch, also in dialog mode everything is a feast for the eye. All artworks are illustrated by Shū Hirose.

best girl (´ ▽｀).。ｏ♡

In Grisaia no Kajitsu we take the role of Kazami Yuuji, a boy with a twisted past and a military background, compared to other VN heroes, he has more depth, through certain philosophical monolouges we learn quite a lot about him, he’s quite eccentric and shows a twisted humor. His smartass act in the beginning is slightly annoying at times, but I got used to it fast.

Due to special circumstances Yuuji Kazami transfers to Mihama Academy, to finallly start a normal school life. It turns out that this school is only partially normal it’s a special school for teenagers with special circumstances. Next to Kazami there are only five female students enrolled. The game has a ridiculous long intro, though I love this part about the game, we slowly get to know each girl before making crucial decisions wrapped up in humoristic communications and highschool life comedy, the chemistry between all characters is very well done and entertaining and we follow Kazami through a quite nice school environment.

these chibi scenes are hilarious

Actually there are five main plot lines that the player will have the chance to experience, one for each heroine. Everyone of these lovely girls appear very normal at first look except Michiru XD, nevertheless every girl has psychologic issues that we discover in each route.

The writer of this story took great care to make these issues comprehensible for the audience, though the backstories often feel a bit extreme, heartwrenching and disturbing, don’t worry no one gets raped or physically tormented, their scars are all on a psychologic base.

Every route is diversified and shows us something new, though some routes are more outstanding than others. The most tantalizing routes are Makina’s and Amane’s. Yumiko’s, Sachi’s and Michiru’s routes are more something for the heart. Kazami often takes the role of the narrator, but sometimes the narrative perspective is switched to one of the girls.

In the route of Makina we learn a lot about military, self defence and the scary pontential of japanese comglomerates and how to have a foul mouth. Makina is the loli type, cute, mishievous and full of energy, I love the way she laughs.

The route of Amane shows us what happens when humans find themself in extreme situations Amane is a naughty girl, but also a very sincere person, taking care of others is a habit of her. This route also considering the end was my favorite.

In the route of Yumiko we learn how bad a family can be, even when they are rich. Yumiko is a stoic person that always tries to keep her distance from others. It’s a cute arc actually.

The Sachi route shows what happens when you don’t listen to your parents, this was the most shocking arc for me, I was like “Nooo, what just happened!” It also has a touching route. Sachi always dresses as maid and enjoys to make errands and maid like things with a smile.

The route of Michiru is a bit mixed up many things were happening. Michiru always acts somewhat silly and dumb, anyway she is among my favorite characters of the game, her outfit is always really chic and she’s a really sweet, cuddly girl.

The VN obviously has ero scenes, but you will have to play a lot more until you see them. It actually aren’t that many scenes, but they often have a two round pattern.
Sometimes it felt a bit unnecessary, maybe the author wanted to brag about his stamina XD

Every girl also has an optional bad ending, when you make a wrong choice, I played two of them, but they were quite scary and disturbing, The Good End stories are already sad enough.

Pro

– Illustration style, character design, simply beautiful
– OST is just great
– great comedy
– elaborate long routes
– a capable alter ego
– characters, all heroines are enchanting

Cons

– No route about princibal Tachibana, for me it was love on first sight, but you can only date the schoolgirls.

– After playing all routes the sex scenes get a bit annoying with the same sound effects.
It was always the same patten with Kazami’s sadistic teasing and the girls getting flustered.

I enjoyed this big budget VN a lot, might be easily my most favorite one until now. Visual appeal and an elaborate plot go hand in hand. I consider the long routes as something very positive, even though it took me 1 and a half year to finish all the routes, (I have to admit that I took a few longer breaks ^^) The deep atmosphere in this whole Visual Novel is a great experience.

Another good thing of Grisaia no Kajitsu is that with the phylosphic and psychologic elements you can learn something about yourself.

Have you played the game yet? if so do you have a favorite route?
If not there will be a legally translated version soon.

Hello, today let’s talk about Garage Kits, GK in short. I was always fascinated by GK’s in general they look more creative and elaborate than PVC figures , when done by professionals.

The regular PVC figure buyer won’t be able to create the best results, speaking for myself. I built tanks, helicopters and mechs in the past, but thats a lot different from assembling and painting bishoujo characters, I actually made a little chibi GK of Dead Master last year on my own and it was a pain and the result was so so. I still have Kannagi’s heroine Nagi as unfinished GK at home.

Now I know for sure that I can’t build her, I already contacted an professional GK  service, but what prevented me from sending Nagi in, was 1st the high price and 2nd the fear of being not satisfied with the final figure. I should really think about it again, since it’s a really beautiful GK.
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Here the little Anime special with Airi, she’s a little tsundere, who wants a hug.

httpvh://youtu.be/vXaUFwt18nE

Anyway this post is about Sena Airi from the VN and anime Mashiro iro Symphony.

I always wanted the GK of her, the first time I noticed this certain figure was at a Wonderfestival of 2010 and the wanted GK was sold as Exclusive GK on Volks online shop on the 27 April 2010. I used the help of a proxy service, but in the end I wasn’t able to make my order since it was sold out within a few minutes, what a straight defeat. This always bothered me, but a few years later I should get my chance. In the middle of December 2012 I secured my preorder at E2046 as their partner Company, Gathering offered the pre painted and assembled GK for a fair price.

There is always the term bootleg in combination with GK figures from E2046, they are recasting GK kits from artists and sell them through their shop. It’s a n exhausting discussion if it’s legal or not, but so far no one seemed to sue them so why should I care. E2046 offers are an easy way to get your desired Kits, way easier than searching, contacting  the artist and aquirering the original GK . So I say: if you don’t make it accesible for me I’ll get it somewhere else!

This GK is recast from the kit of the artist Milchestrasse which was made in April 2010.
As mass produced small batch series, Gathering offered the Sena Airi GK for around 131$ .

The origin of Sena Airi is the Visual Novel Mashiroiro Symphony: Love is pure white, it had exceptional cute and appealing graphics and a lovely school uniform design. I played a bit of the untranslated game and later the game got an anime adaption. Sena Airi actually was the lead girl in the game, a proud girl from a rich family who pursued the rough way of independence. In the anime they surprisingly choose another girl to win the “love race” for the main character.

First look at a GK figure 

GK’s are made of resin, which is not as flexible as PVC and so it can happen that they take some damage during the shipment. Sena Airi was packed with care in a especially cut out foam to prevent her from damage, but unfortunately she arrived not completely intact. The big ribbon at her back broke off and one strand of her outer hair snapped. Since the place where the ribbon belongs is hard to reach and the strand broke off in a very noticeable area it was pretty annoying to receive the figure with hard to repair damages. Do you know good resin glue?

Furthermore the GK figure requires some minor assembly, the blue ribbon, the right bush of hair have to be put in place and the figure has to be placed on her wooden base, these are just simple thhings to do before the figure is ready to be displayed. Since Im scared of damaging her during dusting, I rather buy a small glass cabinet soon and make a little Diorama.

This Sena Airi is a regular sized 1/8 scaled figure with 21 cm of height she fits very well other figures of this scale without odd height differences. On first look Airi has a lovely presence thanks to her bright uniform and flowing long hair, lets find out more in the next paragraphs.

Hair & Face

Aside from my ugly provisonal glue mark, the figure has cleanly sculpted hair with a number of single strands. The haircolor turned out a bit more yellow compared to her hair color that she had in the VN, it still looks very nice, the applied brown shading does a good job in that regard.

Actually I was super scared that the face turned out bad, since the face is the most important part on a figure for me. I nearly had nightmares shortly before she arrived here. The more surprised was I when I carefully opened the box. She has a beautiful face to be honest with beautiful, detailed eye decals and subtle applied rosy cheeks. Her lined mouth shows a subtle smile that gives her face a kind expression. Even though the material is different Airi’s skintone and texture doesn’t look much different  from PVC figures, maybe a little smoother actually.

Outfit & Body

Airi’s pose captures her in a sweet and playful manner with one foot in the air and her flowing hair. With one hand she is playing with her hair while the other one is holding her skirt.

Like I already said, the shool uniform has a beautiful design, Airi is wearing a black shirt with a cream white blazer above. Her rather short skirt has nice brown lines and a black outer rim.
As demure student she is wearing white pantsu. There are a number of details that make the whole outfit even more appealing, like the huge ribbon at the back or the black one in her hair.

I really love these long sleeves that slighly cover the figures wrists, it’s so cute ^o^

This figure is attractive, since Airi is a pretty girl, but doesn’t have much direct fanservice, except the tightness of her blazer or the short skirt, she mainly has nice and pure bishoujo appeal.

 Painting

As far as I know Sena Airi is a completely handpainted figure, a very clean painjob on top of that. The design outfit of her relies a lot of fine lines and that makes it even more astonishing, this would easily something to be messed up on a mass produced PVC figure. The lining looks really impressive overall with next to zero overpainting. There is no visible shading on her outfit,  the wrinkles and folds don’t necesssarily demand it, since natural light already creates appealing shadows that make the figure look  nice and convincing. If there is one thing to criticize, I would say that glossy color of the ribbon around her neck disturbs the overall appearance a bit.

Final Words

So the impression of my very first Garage Kit turned out quite positive, after I was really scared of receiving something I wouldn’t be satisfied with. The outfit looks beautiful and the figure has a pretty face. It was very nice that Sena Airi turned out like the promo shots implied, Gathering seems to have a very good quality assurance. The two damages of her, that possibly happened during shipment were a bit dissapointing, but actually the overall impression outweights it by far.

Do you have any experience with bishoujo GK’s ?

Do you actually have painted them on their own? I’d love to be that talented

Hi mina-san today I will show you a review about a figure which I was searching for a long time. As I started with collecting figures my sources for figure related news were very limited and so it was no surprise that some nice figures slipped under my radar. After some time I was able to find  more sites with figure related news and data, like nekomagic and myfigurinecollection.

Often old figures turn out as hard to get especially when you are very interested in them, well you sometimes find these coveted figures for crazy prices at ebay, or if you are lucky you can get them for reasonable and even cheap prices. The sale feature at myfigurinecollection.com is also a good place to aquire rare and older figures. Luckily so I was able to get nearly every old figure I wanted, like  Alter’s Reinforce II, Alter’s Al Azif and last month I was finally able to get the lovely Melissa Seraphy from Good Smile Company which I always wanted to have in my collection.

That was the intro part lets start with the main part now, Melissa Seraphy was manufactured by GSC and released in August 2006, yes this figure is that old, her sculptor Muraki Akihide only had his fingers on this single figure, what is a bit strange when you look how well this figure Im talking about is done. The price at that time was about 5500 Yen, I had to pay 14476 Yen to persuade the seller to hand out her Melissa Seraphy figure XD. Well I don’t regret anything about the deal, I had enough time to deliberate about whether I really want this figure or not.

The origin of Melissa is Wagamama Capriccio, a visual novel game released by Unisonshift in 2005. There she is one of the three main heroines, Melissa is a princess from the underworld. I don’t have further knowledge about the game, but the CG looks nice ^^ From the official site I could just gather some informations about her body measurements, she is 1,48m in height weights 40 kg and her three sizes are 72–47–74, haha sorry for such useless informations ^o^.

This figure of Melissa comes with a castoffable pumpkin skirt, and a slightly grey transparent base, unfortunately the base only supports her when Melissa wears the pumpkin skirt, since I prefer this figure being castoff, I made a base myself out of different parts, it turned out a bit slope, but it supports her very well. Even when I prefer Melissa being castoff the pumpkin skirt is a great accessory, the cutted halloween face looks very funny and the ribbon adds a feminine touch to it, it is sculpted in a very clean way and has great shading effects as well.

Hair & Face

As you can see Melissa is a blonde, my second blonde figure btw ^^, the bangs and the backside of her hair show a nice level of detail with all these strands, the curls and the shading. Only on top it looks like a helmet, regarding her age her hair is done vey well . On top of her head she has a golden colored crown, how it behooves for a princess. As you’ve might noticed the small ahoge looks a bit strange, as I looked through my pictures I noticed the damage. Maybe I damaged the ahoge or if it was like that before I unpacked her, but I will be able to fix it with some glue.

The face of Melissa is just dropdead georgous, the dark thin eyebrows, these expressive and beautiful green eyes, the natural looking blushmarks on her cheeks and the cute open mouth
with the fang are the details that make her face so adorable. Melissa is so cute ^-^

Body & Outfit

Melissa Seraphy has a rather small and petite body, she’s around the same size as my Itou Noemi and Maaryan figure. At her upper part there isn’t much to talk about aside from her being a DFC type. The figure has a nice belly and the waiste and hip area are making me dizzy, especially in combination with the nice nice small and low cutted panties.

Also the wings are a nice bodyparts of this Melissa Seraphy figure.

In terms of outfit her shiny black top with the skull logo on it looks really cool and I love the design of these shiny black gloves. The single fingers are a nice detail. There is a castoff option, but this figure is supposed to be displayed with her skirt on, because the base can’t support Melissa without the skirt. As long as you don’t want to build a selfmade base for her like I did, you have to live with that restriction. Personally I don’t want to have her best parts hidden :p, maybe some people prefer her with the skirt, but honestly I think she looks great both ways.

Painting

The paintjob of this figure looks fantastic, the shiny parts of her outfit are great. There are stronger shading effects on her skin and on her wings, somehow it gives the figure a Garagekit like look. From some people I’ve heard that they have a copy of Melissa with a shiny belly, but my version doesn’t have this problem, its all nice and matte. The pumpkin skirt also has a great paintjob, it is slightly shiny with dark shading effects on it. There is no noticeable fading on her colors, which is very good for a 5 year old figure I hope it stays like this some more years. Have you ever thought about the lifespan of a figure, I hope the plastic doesn’t get brittle or that the color comes off,someday would be quite horrible

Final Words

Im totally happy about this figure purchase and that I finally had the chance to get this Melissa Seraphy figure. Regarding her age, this Melissa Seraphy figure turned out to be a masterpiece.  She’s exactly my kind of figure, cute, sexy and petite (Ok I also like other kinds of figure) this figure is very well made on top of that. The sculpting of her and the pumpkin skirt looks great and has a nice level of detail even the paintjob is very well done. What I like the most is her beautiful and expressive face, also the outfit with her shiny gloves and the black top really meets my taste. Personally I like the stronger shading effects, on figures nowadays such effects are done in a much more fainter way.  I don’t like the base and took no pictures of it.

I guess the age of this figure can be estimated when you look at the base, it looks cheap in comparison with the figure and the pumpkin. But overall this figure is just awesome even in comparison with new figures. I guess the damaged Ahoge was my fault, but I will fix that as soon as possible.

Do you have an older figure you always wanted, but were never able to find it ?

Thx for your attention I will see you off with this picture of the lovely Melissa, the next review is around the corner, maybe Max Factory’s Mugi Waitress or Yamato’s Soniko Babydoll version.