Actually having shame.
Sunday, an old friend came up to town in order to go to our local comic book show. This apparently happens twice a year or so and attracts the few local comics professionals, and he wanted to get some things signed.
I’m not a big comics fan, and not a habitual con-goer, but I tagged along anyway. We collected a third friend, who’s recently gone through a major comic book burnout, on the way.
So, count so far: Three people, of whom only one actually buys comics on a regular basis.
I haven’t been to the local comic book show in quite a while - quite possibly not since 1995. The venue hasn’t changed much - it’s still a bunch of folding tables laid out in the dungeon-like basement of the local convention center, and the overall air of “please buy this crap so I don’t have to carry it home” hasn’t changed much, either. I found that I could get offered an instant discount at most tables just by picking something up, looking at it, and putting it back down.
I had to buy SOMETHING after paying seven bucks to walk in the door, and I didn’t really feel like comics shopping, so I wound up buying a couple of Monsieur Bome figures.
One I quite like:
The Bome figures have been around for quite some while, and this “toramusume” is the second in the series. It might be a little overdone in terms of sheer number of moe fetishes, but I thought it was a really well made figure. Detailed, a neat dynamic pose, and surprisingly stable thanks to a solid base and some clever balance work.
Then there’s this:
Misty May is Gainax’s over-the-top parody of magical girls show heroines, as seen in Otaku no Video, and since I was going on about Otaku no Video a few days ago, I felt compelled to buy this figure when I saw it.
Having brought it home and put it on the shelf, though, I’m kind of regretting that. It’s a well made figure, sure, but, well, the pose is, uh, well, I’m actually a little ashamed to have it on display. I didn’t think that possible, but apparently even I have my limits. 
Photography: Not my strong point.
Trying to figure out how to take decent pictures of toys high quality anime figurines so I can be a right proper camwhore has been bugging me.
Here’s a couple of examples, in this case using a “Shadow Lady” statue. I really don’t remember much about the Shadow Lady manga… there was something about a shy girl with a magical compact, who could use it to transform into a not-so-shy thief who also liked to wear a lot of skin-tight outfits and had a little devil sidekick. Also, I think she may have been in a love triangle or two, depending on which form she was in.
We’re not talking high concept literature here, but I remember it being a pretty fun read, and of course it had that glorious Masakasu Katsura (I’’s, Video Girl Ai, Wingman, so on and so forth) artwork.
I got a bit off track there. Anyway, it was a nice looking figure and had lots of detail to it so it seemed like it would be a good test subject.
Here’s the Shadow Lady figure using the camera’s built-in flash:
This turned out kind of washed-out. I feel like I lost details, and it casts a really harsh shadow. It LOOKS plastic. Of course, it IS plastic, but that’s not the point.
And here’s the figure without using the flash, but with putting a light behind the camera aimed at the figure.
Much less washed-out and I’ve lost the harsh shadows, but at the same time, there’s a lot of grain and the figure is trying to blend in to the background.
So I’m a bit stuck. I think that losing the flash was definitely the way to go, it might just be that I need more ambient light to make that work.
Nekomimi fan-service
It seems like about half the hits I get from search engines are people searching on “nekomimi” - so, in an attempt to give my readers what they want, which is not me griping about school or droning on about what 10-year-old game I’m going to play next, here is a picture of a Hazuki figure I bought in Akihabara on our December 2005 vacation. It was one of the ones that comes in a box with no indication of which figure you’ll get, and I was really hoping for the Hazuki-in-big-flouncy-dress figure, but I won’t complain.
Click picture for bigger version.
You know, when I was taking this, I didn’t even notice the nekomimi-Rei figure behind her. Double fan-service!
About
About the author:
I’m a married 30-odd-year-old fanboy, college student, and software QA guy, mostly recovered from an 8-year long Everquest addiction and trying to catch up on the last decade of videogames as a result.
I’m working towards a BA in Japanese and hope to be done by 2011.
This blog contains an awful lot of posts about games as I finish them, occasional rants about keeping in shape, the odd bit of bitching about the antics of the instructors and students I cross paths with, and every once in a while a post or two related to weird things I’ve seen while traveling.
Oh, and the occasional post about videogame girls in glasses because I like making my wife roll her eyes and shake her head at me.
