I just got this really cool e-mail of WordPress with statistics of the past year. It’s pretty awesome and since it has a “Share” button… Here it is

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

About 3 million people visit the Taj Mahal every year. This blog was viewed about 28,000 times in 2010. If it were the Taj Mahal, it would take about 3 days for that many people to see it.

In 2010, there were 30 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 95 posts. There were 352 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 126mb. That’s about 7 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was May 18th with 236 views. The most popular post that day was Fake figma alert! Let’s compare it to the real one~.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were myfigurecollection.net, figure.fm, facebook.com, forums.sgclub.com, and thetsundere.wordpress.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for fake figma, bootleg figma, pasu2k, k-on figma, and new figma.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Fake figma alert! Let’s compare it to the real one~ May 2009
54 comments

Review: #33 Nendoroid Hatsune Miku + Petit Nendo Miku (and eBay bootleg compare) July 2009
7 comments

Review: Nendoroid Petite: Death Note – Case File #01 February 2010
5 comments

Review: Nendoroid Petit – Fate/Stay Night July 2010
7 comments

Review: Moeru! Pro no Susume Shaman Suplex July 2009

I told myself to never get a Fraulein Revoltech, because almost everyone agrees the figma versions are usually the better version to get. The Fraulein-series has pretty much died off in the past year, while the figma series just keeps expanding. Now, Revoltech is coming with a new line of action figures called the SFX-series. Action figures with sound effects? And they have a Buzz Lightyear, too? This must be awesome, right? Right?! No.

Before I go into all the bad stuff and frustration this figure has cast upon me today, let’s take a look at the box. It’s actually quite nice! The front folds open like a book and you can see Buzz Lightyear held in place with metal wires like those Barbies and Action Men of a long time ago.

Buzz Lightyear, which I’m pretty sure you all know of the Toy Story movies, comes with some extras, including 3 army men, wings, an extra face and this weird bar with his name on it.

It looks like those things you put on desks so people know your name, doesn’t it?

The army men are pretty cool. The only problem I have is that one of them keeps falling over. I guess they were in a fight and the one with the rifle downed the one with the bazooka and the one with the binoculars declares the winner? Sadly, they’re the coolest thing in the box.

You know how figma’s have those real nice plastic bags to store the extras in? Apparently Revoltech figures come with this teeny tiny box, which has room for the extra face and one army man. Maybe you could fit in his name bar as well, but a bigger box for storage would’ve been nice.

Alright, I can’t avoid it any longer. Let’s talk about the figure you should have bought it for: Buzz himself. First problem: he can hardly stand up! Sure, other figures are usually hard to put on their feet, but they come with a stand, like the figma figures. Even the Fraulein Revoltech figures get something similar to help them stand up! Also, even though the line is called SFX, they figures do not make sound effects. SFX stands for Sci-Fi here. What? SFX stands for Sci-Fi, which stands for Science Fiction? What’s wrong with just using Sci-Fi then? And why the X?

It seems his left (viewer’s right) leg is longer. His foot is also a bit tilted. I guess it’s a problem the joints aren’t fully inserted, but I really tried to fit them in further, but I just couldn’t.

Also, and this is supposed the be the selling point: the joints suck! You know how figma joints bend smoothly? Revoltech joints click in certain degrees. Let’s say I want to bent an arm 5 degrees, it wouldn’t allow me, because it would either stay at zero degrees, or click right on to 15 degrees. This is why I can’t get his left foot flat on a surface. It’s very, very annoying.

His arms work okay, though it feels kind of weird to move them. His elbows have the Revoltech joints, but his shoulders do not. At first, I thought I was breaking it, like twisting it out of its socket, but it’s supposed to be that way, I guess.

Weirdly, you can extend his arms! This was done for more ‘posing options’ but his hands could reach each other already anyway. This just looks scary.

His hands are pretty bad as well. The thumb is posable (hardly), while the other four fingers are connected together. This makes posing hard, and it allows only for a gripping pose, or a fist. Replacable hands would have been nice.

Buzz also comes with wings, but to place them in his back, you have to get the folded versions out first. They’re so tightly in place and you can’t really firmly get a grip on it, so I couldn’t get it out. So that’s another waste.

Isn’t there anything nice? Well if anything, it’s nicely detailed. We have the ANDY marking on the bottom of his foot, like in the movies.

We also have all the buttons with the tiny text on it. Sadly, they don’t make the sounds they usually would.

Lastly, the faces are nice. The expressions are very similar though. You can move the eyes on the backside to make him look in another direction. Don’t move his eyes to far though to a side, or you won’t be able to place it back into the head without moving them… This also happened at the pose in the header of this post. I just couldn’t be bothered to fix it again after 3 tries. I think the flaws there fit nicely with the whole figure.

Here’s where I usually tell the people who might be interested in this to buy it. Today I tell you: don’t buy it, even if you’re a Toy Story fan. Posing this figure is extremely hard because of the ‘special’ Revoltech joints and it has trouble standing up anyway. This version of Buzz is also about half of what he is in the movies, so it’s not a 1:1 conversion. I saw 1:1 Buzz figures in the local toystores that could do more than this one for the same price! If you are inclined to get a Buzz figure, just look there.

Hey guys. So it’s been 6 weeks I’ve updated, huh? Well, stuff happened. Just when I thought everything got in line, it got a bit worse and I just haven’t felt like doing an update. I won’t go into details that much, but what it comes down to is that my money has to be spent elsewhere, so I won’t be able to get things I like that often anymore, like video games, Pokémon cards and, of course, figures. I did get a few ‘new’ ones over the past 4 months that I haven’t talked about yet, as you can see above. I’ll try to pump out some new reviews over the coming weeks ’till new year and I’ll have to see then what will happen Let’s hope for the best! The order in the photo is also more or less the order I’ll talk about (from right to left, top first). At least I can tell there’ll be a review for Buzz up tomorrow!

Thanks for your patience and continued support! Despite not updating, september and october of this year were my busiest months yet! That, and your comments and feedback is what makes blogging so much fun!

Pasu

It’s been a while! Life hasn’t been good lately, stuff has happened which made me in a very bad mood for the past month. It also made my birthday the worst birthday I’ve had so far. Anyway, time to move on, nothing can be changed about it. Let’s take a look at the birthday gifts I got, which were two

I’ll warn you in advance the photos aren’t really of the best quality. Like, worse than normal XD; I kinda had to use my camera in the shots so I had to use the next best thing, which sadly is my old iPhone 3G Orz

First of all, I got these extremely awesome cookies! Shipped all the way from the UK by the very very sweet Christa :3 I ate one every evening and shared the last one with my sister and mom~ They were DELICIOUS <3

The other present was a Gorillapod SLR Zoom! What is a Gorillapod, you ask? It’s a special tripod with bendy legs! The legs are made of a row of balljoints that you can move individually. Every ball has a ring of rubber to make them stay in place perfectly.

Like a real gorilla, it can hang from any tree or branch… or a streetlight in this case! This model, the SLR Zoom, can support a weight of 3kg, so keeping my camera (of 0.75kg) straight at this position is no problem at all!

It can be a cheeky monkey though! It seems to have a dislike to Kyon, much like everyone else around here.

Not to worry! Help has arrived!

Gorrilapod captured! Who is this young helpful lady? I’ll tell you all about her in my next review

I figure (ohoho) it’s time I review another one of my figures! I received this one not too long ago via eBay, because it’s hard to find her another way. I’m talking about the special release of Aya Kagura, figma SP-10, the “Morning Coffee” version!

What’s this? It looks more like a dating sim than a figma box! Well, that’s because it is. The game is called se.kirara, a dating sim by Max Factory, the same company that produces the figma action figures. If we flip the box around…

…We see it’s a combination of a game and a figma! As most SP-release figma, it is combined with a game, so you won’t be able to find it seperately.

The game is available for free online (yes, legally), but of course you won’t get the awesome disc or the instructions manual/artbook! Yeah, it’s nothing real special, so let’s just take a look at the figma!

Here’s Aya! She’s one of the girls you can date in the games. Aya’s the only girl who got a special release though. Aya and the other girls will also get regular releases in their normal uniforms, which will the released in the coming months.

Aya comes with some nice extras, like a special hand to hold her cup of coffee.

Also included is a crying face :c

Don’t cry Aya! Here’s a tissue! I’m not sure the box of tissues was intended to be used to dry her tears or for guys to… yknow… [sexjoke]

One thing I hadn’t noticed before on any previews or artwork, is the way Aya tied her hair. It looks really cool, with a cute ribbon at the bottom~ Getting the figma stand in her back is pretty hard thanks to her hair though.

Luckely, you can take out a piece of her hair to put in the stand instead! This is also used with other figma with long hair, like Lucky Star’s Konata and Miyuki, and Haruhi’s Tsuruya-san.

Let’s look at some details~

Feet! There aren’t a lot of figma barefoot. In fact, I think this is the first girl! They look good and a nice change of looking at shoes all the time XD

The paintjob is great. I couldn’t find any bad spots, but I have had figma with some flaws, so I’m guessing I am lucky with this one. Aya’s hair looks real dynamic, like the wind is blowing are she’s walking around.

Her shirt is made of a nice soft plastic. And for those who are wondering: no, she does not have nipples.

I think this is a nice figure. I’m a fan of the colorful eyes of the se.kirara figma’s and I think Aya has the nicest of them all. Should you get this figma though? Personally, I don’t think she’s worth the insane eBay prices she’s going for nowadays. The extra’s are original, but not really special. I suggest just waiting for the fully clothed version.

Pasu Judgment: 6.5/10

About a week ago, I received a package with a boosterbox of the newest Pokémon TCG set: HS Undaunted! I couldn’t wait for this set, because I already noticed some great cards to use in decks! A week later, I’d go a PreRelease. Let me tell you how it was.

Let’s talk about the new set first. It’s the third of the “HeartGold & SoulSilver” series (better known as the “Legend” series in Japan). It doesn’t have much to do with the games HeartGold and SoulSilver, so “Legend” actually would be a better name. The Legend cards are extra powerful cards, but you need two different cards to play it. I won’t go into details of how the game is played, but if you would like to know, Pokemon.com has all the rules!

So what exactly is a boosterbox? It’s a box with 36 boosterpacks, the ones you see on display in stores. Boosterpacks hold 10 cards each, with different rarities always in the same order. I used this image with the first HS series so I can use it again:

The chance of getting Legends or Primes is very, very small. In fact, here’s what I got after opening all 36 boosters:

As you can see, I’m still missing one of the Primes (Slowking), a top and a bottom of the Legends and the Secret card. I did manage to get the Prime and the Secret past week, but I’m still looking for the two Legends, so if you want to trade, here’s what I have to offer

So yes! I went to a Pokémon PreRelease tournament! Unlike most countries, the PreRelease takes place AFTER the release of the set in the Netherlands. Makes sense, right? No? Well anyway…

I went to a “Theme Construct” event. Here, you would get one of the two themedecks seen above (I bought the other one later myself), two boosters (the themedeck also has a booster, so three total) and a pack of Umbreon and Espeon cardsleeves to protect them. Out to those cards, you had to make your own deck. Of course, you could leave the deck as it was, but some players quickly found out most Pokemon of the two decks had a weakness for fire, so everyone who pulled a Flareon out of the boosters, put it in their deck. You could also borrow some energies from the organizers if needed.

Then, the playing began! I got the Umbreon deck myself, which I really wanted for the Dark and Metal energies (which I didn’t have a lot of yet). However, I only won 1 times out of the 4 matches I played. Some of the participants played since the very first tournament and had amazing strategies where I learned a lot from. I didn’t have much luck and I didn’t get to use my Umbreon in any match, and Espeon can be VERY annoying when playing against it and you can’t do much damage. It still was a lot of fun for me and met some new friends, both die-hard players and newbies like myself.

At the end, we all received the special PreRelease card: Leafeon. It is available normally in the set, but this one has the HS Undaunted logo printed on it. Because I was a newcomer to the tournaments, I received 6 old tournament cards as well, how nice!

If you ever want to get (back) into playing Pokemon TCG tournaments, those Theme Construct days are the best! Everyone essentially gets a random deck, instead of you being slaughtered by famous decks like LuxChomp. Oh, also, a last tip I learned on that day: The other two newcomers and I called our defeated Pokémon “killed”, all the other guys kept correcting us as they are actually “defeated”. I guess that’s also how you can spot a newcomer XD

I asked TakeT0mb0 which one I should review first of the July/August loot post. He chose this cute little Nendoroid Petit set, that orginally got sold exclusively in some of Japan’s biggest stores. Luckely for us, some websites like Otacute got some as well, selling them for regular prices ($25) before they get bumped to $80 on eBay. (Sadly, I’m not kidding.)

The box~ I was lucky here, the shipment box got a bit dented, but there was enough space/padding for the content to surive! Weirdly, I can’t see the piece of flooring I could see in the original photos. Where is it?

There it is~! I didn’t realise they used black plastic, since every other figure I’ve had, had clear plastic for this.

The floor has four holes to put the plastic stands in for the girls. This is pretty nice, so you don’t have to display them on this circle-shaped mini stands those Nendoroid Petits usually get shipped with.

They are still included of course, in case you don’t like the floor.

Before we continue, what exactly IS The Touhou Project? I had no idea to be honest, if it’s not based on an anime, manga or dating sim, then what’s left? Help us out, Wikipedia!

The Touhou Project (東方Project, Tōhō Purojekuto?), also known as Toho Project or Project Shrine Maiden, is a Japanese dōjin game series focused on bullet hell shooters made by the one-man developer Team Shanghai Alice, whose sole member, known as ZUN, is responsible for all the graphics, music, and programming for the most part. The Touhou Project began in 1996 with the release of the first game, Highly Responsive to Prayers, developed by the group Amusement Makers for the Japanese NEC PC-9801 series of computers. The 1st game of the Touhou series, released in 1996. It is not a vertical top-down shooter like most other games in the series, and is similar to Arkanoid instead. Reimu Hakurei, the perpetual protagonist, was introduced in this game. Reimu Hakurei enters through the gateway into another world, intent on locating and punishing the one responsible for destroying her shrine. Players shoot yin yang orbs into amulets and the level is over once all the amulets are gone. If the player runs out of time on a level, bullets will rain down until the player completes the level or dies. Bosses are defeated by hitting the orb into them until their life is fully depleted.

TL;DR: it’s a moe style space shooter! Simple enough! Let’s take a look at the girls that came with this first set! You’ve already seen Aya Syameimaru:

Playable character in Touhou 9, main character of Touhou 9.5 (the only one to be the sole main character of a Touhou game other than Reimu), main character of the fanbook Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red, stage 4 boss in Touhou 10, and playable character in Touhou 10.5, as well as 12.3. Aya is a reporter and photographer who runs Gensokyo’s one-woman newspaper, the Bunbunmaru Shinbun. She has a serious character, at odds with her reporting; she loves rumors and her newspaper is filled with gossip about the girls of Gensokyo, sometimes on the verge of being a tabloid. To Reimu’s irritation, however, she rejects the stories of a certain miko saving Gensokyo as unverifiable. Not one to show off, she rarely fights of her own volition, though she has contempt for those she thinks are weak. As a tengu, she has power over the wind and is the most skilled flier in all of Gensokyo. Her bullets are extremely fast compared to most.

This little drunk girl is Suika Ibuki!

A girl who insists that she is an oni, even though Gensokyo supposedly doesn’t have any. Suika and Yugi Hoshiguma were once part of the four devas of the mountains, long ago before the oni retreated underground. As an oni, she loves drinks, feasts, and competition. Despite her small size, she is strong in strength, speed, and mystic powers; she is also several hundred years old. Using her ability to control density, she can gather people to form a banquet, or she can scatter herself to become mist. In Immaterial and Missing Power, she made the residents of Gensokyo have feasts one night after another, intending to draw the joyous oni from hiding.

She’s my favourite of this set, mainly because she looks drunk.

Her plastic stand is shaped quite differently like the regular ones, making it even harder to get it in the floor and in her hair. It has always been hard to get those stands in the base AND in the character without breaking it, but this one was a real challenge!

Lastly, we have Reimu. Together with Marisa probably the most famous Touhou character.

Reimu is the main character of Touhou games 1-12. She is the shrine maiden of the Hakurei Shrine, a remote building far in the east where the boundaries of Gensokyo and the human world overlap. Reimu is very easygoing—some would say lazy—and hates training. As such, even though she’s naturally talented, her offensive and magical abilities are only average. However, she has a strong sense of duty, and if it’s for the sake of Gensokyo she can overcome almost any obstacle through sheer perseverance. Her main abilities are flying in the sky, good intuition, and getting along with everyone; even those who were once her enemies. In the games, she is characterized by her homing amulets and yin-yang orbs.

What I like most about Reimu is that she has a broom! No need for that annoying base stand thing!

The broom is removable, so you could exchange it with other Nendoroid Petits, like Saber’s Excalibur.

Or even Miku’s leek!

There’s also a donations box included. Reimu is a shrine maiden, so I guess it can be used to make a little shrine of some sorts.

Okay, I really don’t want to do this, but I need to get all three of those in the holes. I did Aya’s first, to get the hardest out of the way. Reimu’s and Suika’s took equally long though. Why is this made to be so hard! Compare it to figma bases and see how easy they are to do!

They’re finally in. It’s such a tight fit it even became VERY hard to turn the stands around in their socket. I will probably never get them out without breaking them, so I won’t try.

There, the girls are all in, just barely. I’m especially careful with Suika because her stand looked like it would break with no effort. If have broken some of those things before on other sets and try to avoid it from happening again xD;

I’ve been asked why I never give a rating to the figures I review. It’s basically because in my eyes, ratings are useless. You either like the figure or not and after reading a review I usually have already decided if I would buy it or not, it being a game, a movie or a figure. For example, Pokemon Black and White will be released in a month and I’ve already preordered the Japanese game, no matter how good or bad it will be. Anyway, for those who really want to know my rating: I give it an 7 out of 10. The figures look fine, the price wasn’t too high (though it has already doubled right now) and the figures look fine. I haven’t spotted any error on either of the three, but that’s a personal experience that varies for each figure. Your set may get errors, but out of my experience this isn’t usually the case with Nendoroid Petits. The downside is (as always) the so hard to use base stands. The donations box is pretty useless in my eyes as well. Lastly, the next set will get a different piece of floor (grass). It would have been much cooler if they all got the same so you could put them next to each other to make one big stage, but that’s just a minor complaint.

I wonder if there are any fans of the Touhou Project outside of Japan. I personally like what I’ve seen of the series so far, so I decided to get this set~ I just thought the girls looked cute, which is what I usually go for when looking for new figures to get. If you already have some Nendoroid Petits, and you can find the set for a reasonable price, I can suggest you to get it. Remember, you can use these girls’ heads on other Nendoroid Petits as well!

Pasu Judgment: 7/10

I actually got quite a lot of new figma the past month! I’ll review most of them before school starts in 2 weeks~

Earlier this month, I received Rin and Saber from Fate/stay night, which you’ve seen briefly in the Nendoroid Petit review. I’ve seen the anime now, so I can go into more detail for these characters, though I probably won’t review Rin since her figma is already over a year old (just bought it cheap on an animecon)! On eBay, I found Ui Hirasawa and Aya Kagura, both limited figma that are hard to get. I saw one person selling Aya for a relatively low price and when I checked his store, he was offering Ui as well! Last week, I received Mio from Archonia, but that store is asking insanely high prices for new figma these days :c I got Mugi and the Touhou Project Set 1 from Otacute today, for very nice prices! Seriously, I could buy two Mio on Otacute for the price of one on Archonia, but she was sold out…

I will also be getting Ritsu and Revoltech Buzz Lightyear this month (they’re already sent by Otacute), which’ll be the last ones of August for figures~

Lastly, I’ll be getting a new Pokémon Booster Box: HS Undaunted! I will probably make a post about that, similar to the first HS set and Arceus~ Also, that Rayquaza looks badass XD

As some of you may know, I keep my figma pretty high above ground on a shelf. If one would fall, it would probably get damaged. Luckely the figma stands really help them standing still there. Untill I turned on my fan on max. Duke Togo came tumbling down, bravely holding his sniper rifle. His right hand couldn’t stand the impact and snapped in half.

Of course, the hand that broke is one of the rarest ones that only Golgo has. But don’t give up! We can still fix this!

First the hardest part. A small piece of your figma’s hand should still be in the arm’s socket. If you’re lucky you can pull it right out with a pair of tweezers. If you’re not so lucky, like me, you’ll have resort to more drastic measures. I got this needle-like thing (regular needles weren’t strong enough en bended), and started poking into the plastic of the hand, trying to pry it out. It was hard, I was more spooning little bits out before I finally got a hold of the final piece of plastic. Be carefull not to damage around the socket too much, or wiggle around a lot, or any hand you’ll put in will just fall out!

Now you need a donor hand. I wanted to use one of Kyon’s because I have two anyway. However, as you can see, they’re a bit different: Duke’s end as a little pole, while Kyon’s have a ball like shape at the end. This was actually the main reason those hands snapped in the sockets and have been changed because of it. It didn’t help Golgo with his 2 meter drop.

I ended up using one of Golgo 13′s other hands. I used the same thick needle-thing again to poke out the little stick from the side of the hand. Every figma hand has this and it’s very easy.

Here’s the broken hand with the donor. Just switch around the end of the hand with the little hole and put them back together! Pretty easy, right?

This time, the review will include 12 figures! They are small ones though: it’s the Fate/Stay Night Nendoroid Petit series! Yes, twelve figures, because there is a secret one as well! So watch out if you don’t want to know who the secret is yet, because there’ll be photos of it here!

On a side note, I have only seen the first two episodes of the anime so far, so I only really know Saber and Rin. Don’t expect me to go into detail on all the characters.

When you open the box and put the flap upward, you’ll see it’s a store ready box with every Petit packed separately. The figures are placed at random, but you are always sure to get them all if you buy a full box. Let’s open one of the boxes and see what’s inside!

The first one is one of the two Rin figures! Rin has her twintails packed separately, probably so the surfaces won’t scratch each other during shipping.

She pulled out her weapon already!

All the Petits have a hole in their back for the base stand. It’s a bit hard to move her head around because of her hair getting in the way.

The second one is Ilya in a cute pose. You can remove her hat~

Like the others, she has a hole in her back, but since her hair basically covers her whole backside, there’s also a hole in her hair for the base.

Ilya looks a lot meaner now! She also changed her dress a bit. She doesn’t have a hat though.

But you can use the hat of the other Ilya figure! It fits perfectly~

Here’s one of Sakura, ready to cook. It seems the silver spoon rubbed off on her hand! But since it’s so small it’s hardly noticeable.

Same goes for this one of Saber. Her upper and lower body weren’t connected when I opened the box and the silver really rubbed off on her head. Luckily it’s the backside.

This figure of Rider comes with a separate piece of plastic, to make a magical ring that reminds me of the Nanoha series.

Rider is normally masked. You can remove it and her weapon to change to pose into something pretty innocent and sexy <3

The last one I’ll go into detail in, is this special one of Saber ready to brush her teeth.

The cup is awesome! It really shows how detailed they can work on these figures. Don’t forget the cup is only 3mm big!

I don’t really have anything to say about the other Petits, so I’ll just show them:

And now it’s time for the secret, so:

Spoiler Warning!

How awesome is this! It’s a Petit remake of the second Nendoroid ever! Back then, Nendoroids looked more like this, with =_= expressions. They were later changed into the popular big eyed Nendoroids we have now. I’ve heard people complain about the secret Petit, but personally, I think it’s awesome! Not only shows it how Nendoroids have changed…

… it also has a pull-back mechanism to make it ride~!

And now, three of the Nendoroids compared to the figma versions in a mirrored pose, because I like doing that XD

That concludes my shoot/review of this series! If you are a fan of the series, then they are obviously for you. If you are a bit short on money, you can choose to buy a few. For other Petits, like Death Note, Lucky Star and Vocaloid, I would discourage this, because there are doubles in the boxes because there were only 10 figures + one 1 secret. This isn’t the case anymore, so you’re always sure you’ll get different ones! Of course, if you order them online, it is possible you get them out of different boxes… I’ve also heard some stores swap the figures over different boxes to randomize it even more, which is evil. I guess there’s always that risk. Savest bet is to buy a sealed box, but they can get expensive. The choice is yours. Otacute sells them per 12 so you’re sure to get them all, as I am proof for that. If you are interested, they’re still in stock!