1/8 Scale Matou Sakura Battle dress Ver.

Alter 1/8 Matou Sakura Battle dress Ver.

The other day I was contemplating what to spend a gift card that I got for my birthday on.  I ultimately decided on more figures   HobbyFan had some figures on sale, and the one that caught my eye in particular was the 1/8 Scale Pre-Painted Figure of Matou Sakura Battle dress Ver. from Fate/hollow ataraxia.  I’m a big fan of Fate/Stay Night though I haven’t read/played Fate/hollow ataraxia before.  However, Matou Sakura was also in Fate/Stay Night so it was essentially the same to me.

I have only purchased one other figure of this scale before which was Tohsaka Rin from the Mon-sieur Bome Collection so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this figure.  The figure was produced by Alter which is a familiar name to me but I haven’t actually had much experience witih their products.  At first, I was surprised to find out that the figure itself was composed of multiple parts much like many of the smaller scale trading figures.  However, due to the high level of detail and the way all of the parts connect, you can’t even tell that it is not all one piece.  The figure comes with another angrier looking head that you can easily swap out as well as a clear base.

Overall, I was satisfied with my purchase.  It was on sale for $15.99, a huge discount from the standard price for 1/8 scale figures which is usually around $40-$50.  At that price, I simply couldn’t pass it up.

Hibiki’s Magic

A few weeks ago while I was on Spring Break, I came across a manga called Hibiki’s Magic while I was browsing through manga at a book store.  I pulled it out of the shelf and lo and behold, it turns out the manga was illustrated by none other than Rei Idumi, one of my favorite manga artists.  She is known for illustrating the .hack manga series as well, which is how I first became a fan of her work.

That aside, Hibiki’s Magic is a fairly decent manga.  It seems like it is aimed for a younger audience judging by the fact that the main character is quite young and the general overall cute feel to the artwork but I felt compelled to stick it out just to see what it was like.  The premise is actually quite interesting.  Basically a young girl named Hibiki works as an apprentice to Shirotsuki, a master sorcerer.  She has some magical abilities but usually ends up caring for Shirotsuki by performing other, non-magical tasks such as preparing tea, which she is quite proficient at.  However one day, thieves come in while they are performing a magic experiment involving the transfer of souls and are interrupted in the process.  As a result, Shirotsuki’s soul is transplanted into the body of an animal used in the experiment.  Hibiki travels to the city to become more proficient at magic and to hopefully find a way to restore Shirotsuki back to his body.  The bonus story at the end though really tugged at those heartstrings though…

Overall, I enjoyed it very much, most likely because I’m a fan of the artwork and kind of cute magical stories with some depressing stuff in there as well.  Two volumes are out in the U.S. so far so I’ll probably go pick up the second volume when I get the chance

Snake in a Box

Well to kick things off I’ll write about one of my hobbies, making paper models. This was my first pepakura (or papercraft) project I ever started. I picked this model for obvious reasons… because it’s fairly simple! Plus I’m somewhat of a fan of Metal Gear Solid. I’d been interested in building paper models for a while but I never actually bothered attempting it until I actually got off of my lazy butt one day and bought some cardstock, an X-Acto knife, and some glue. And this was the final result! Pardon the image quality though, I took it with my 1.3 megapixel camera phone.

I was pretty pleased with the result considering I was expecting to come out with an unsuccessful mass of paper and glue. With the success of this model, I went on to make one more which I might blog about later and another that I’m currently working on although I doubt I’ll finish any time soon since I can’t figure out how to put some parts of it together and I’m too scared to proceed in fear that I’ll make an irreversible mistake and have to print out pieces again. Anyhow, if you’re even remotely interested in making paper models I would highly recommend trying it out since there’s this feeling of great accomplishment after finishing a model Not to mention there’s some pretty amazing things you can make with just some paper and glue.

Ceremonial First Post

Well, this would be my first post. I’m going to blog about all sorts of things, games, anime, maybe stuff that goes on in life, although a melding of all of those elements probably isn’t too appealing.