Category Archives: Off-topic

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I finally made myself a tumblr it focuses on toys, dolls, comics (especially Batman) and of course anime figures.
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Speaking of anime… I find myself really enjoying the Puella Magi Madoka Magica series which is unfortunate because it has a lot of merchandise and figures that will all be getting released soon. I fear this may lead me to another anime figure binge (maybe just the nendoroids wouldn’t hurt? but I like the mini nendoroids too.. oh and of course the figmas >_<).

Animadness revisited…

I decided to make a pilgrimage back to Animadness (my semi-local anime/pullip store today) as I was planning on visiting Requiemart anyway and it isn’t that much farther to go to Animadness from her home. Animadness is located in Waltham, Ma for those curious. Anime shops in New England area are kind of rare and I have traveled ridiculous distances to check some of them out sight-unseen and some were well disappointing, so I decided to post some pictures up in case anyone was wondering if they were worth the trip or not. The owners are actually pretty nice, they recognized me from my few previous visits during the pullip meets.
Animadness
The store isn’t actually very large, but they manage to cram a lot into a small space.
Animadness
They sell a wide variety of anime products including plushes, figures, pillows, pullips, gashapon, wall scrolls, posters, as well as some manga, cds and dvds even a handful of handmade clothing (not cosplay type clothes but somewhat lolita-ish).
Animadness
I took this one as we were checking out (we being my travel companion and I as I am incapable of going such a distance without getting lost, you can actually see my companion’s Joker hat in the pic). They keep the pullips behind the counter, they have a pretty good selection of pullips including some extreme rarities like Leprotto and Noir. Their prices are fairly reasonable especially for the new releases, prices tend to be somewhere between Pullipstyle and VOTD‘s prices plus you get the benefit of actually just being able to get one immediately for instant gratification. I didn’t actually buy a pullip or dal today, I decided to buy Phoebe yesterday and since I had purchased a lot of dolls recently I decided not to get another one today.. I did kind of buy a mini pullip Aggonya but mini pullips don’t count right? They are small so they don’t count..
Animadness
They had a fairly large number of different gashapon in front of their register area, I ended up picking up a Vocaloid petit nendoroid at random on impulse while I was checking out and ended up getting  this one. I was pretty happy as she is pretty cute and it had been ages since I bought something blindbox other than re-ment.
Animadness
They had a pretty impressive wall of plushes. I like a good anime plush but there wasn’t really anything overly tempting today :(

I didn’t bother photographing certain areas of the store as they were kind of uninteresting to me and well dvds and cds are kind of dull to photograph anyway (plus there were a few people browsing in those sections at the time that I didn’t want to disturb ^^; ).
Animadness
They had a fairly nice variety of figures, they had everything from Sega Prize figures to Shuraki figures to Max Factory figures. They do have some newer stuff like the Max Factory Miku but I think most of their stuff is slightly older fare like a year or two old which is nice if you happen to miss a slightly older figure.
Animadness
Display Case
They do have a display case of figures, I had a very hard bad time of leaving this figure at the store…
Animadness
She’s gorgeous but I have already spent an obscene amount of money so far this year, on dolls and figures so I ended up on ultimately passing on her I’ll probably pick her up next time if they still have in stock though.
Animadness
Couple of things I wouldn’t have minded in this case but honestly unless I absolutely love a figure these days it isn’t coming home with me, no room left at this point unfortunately.
Animadness
Couple of things I had been on the fence about in this picture that I was glad to see in person, it’s nice to be able to see things in person sometimes..
Animadness
That said this figure is even more gorgeous in person so I will have to acquire her at some point.
Animadness
Even more figures..

They did have a number of figmas and nendoroids unfortunately all the pictures of took of the area didn’t turn out so well ^^;

At this point you are probably wondering what I actually bought. I was actually pretty well behaved today, I have making an effort to cutback after recent excesses I was kind of proud of myself. I ended up buying three Tenga Toppen Gurren Lagann pillows (Nia, 14 year old Yoko & 21 year old Yoko) as I was getting rather bored of my current pillow harem of Kanu (Ikki Tousen), CC (Code Geass) and Suzumiya (Melancholy of Suzumiya). To answer your next series of questions yes I am female, and yes I actually sleep with anime pillows in my bed, I actually sleep with them in my bed as well as a billion anime plushes and don’t use them for other nefarious purposes (ie. none of mine are love pillows).
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Front
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Back
They are not exactly the best pictures but finding a spot with enough space to photograph them was problematic plus my apartment is beyond trashed at the moment ^^;
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I got Papette from Requiemart a bit later in the day but I also got the previously mentioned petit nendoroid, little pullip Aggonya, a Gundam kit and the Saber Lily nendoroid at Animadness. The Saber Lily nendoroid was the last of the Saber nendoroids that I didn’t actually own ( WF Armor Saber, Saber Lion, Hetare Dark Saber, Hetare Saber and the not actually Saber Konata cosplay nendoroid) so I had to have her, honestly she was my second choice though I would have bought Rasberyl instead but they were sold out of her :(
I spent a total of slightly over $200, somehow the math didn’t quite add up when I was going over it in my mind on the walk back to car (unlike at Anime Boston carrying three body pillows a couple of blocks back to one’s car kind of raises a few eyebrows) upon review of the receipt I discovered that I had actually received a 15% discount and I am not exactly sure as to why but the amount saved basically equaled the cost of one of the pillows so I am not going to complain especially when there is a free pillow involved. I picked up the Joker figure at a comic book shop on the way home, it is getting harder and harder to find Joker stuff I don’t already own ^^;

68/365- A/V Set up

Since everything is hooked back up again in the “new” living room aka. my old dining room (what was my living room is now my doll room) I decided that my picture of the day should be my TV rig. It’s probably the most unfeminine part of my apartment but I combat it with my pink headphones and under TV shoe storage (keep in mind the 14 pairs of shoes seen there is just the tip of the iceberg, I own over 200 pairs ) my preferred 360 controller is also pink although all of my controllers and most of my remotes are actually put away in this photo which is a rare occurrence.
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What all is hooked up to the TV you ask?
- Most importantly I have two switches which most of the video game systems are hooked to the TV through, I actually need a third one but haven’t picked one up yet ^^;
- Sony Playstation 1
- Sony Playstation 2 with hard drive (I have a second PS2 hooked up in my bedroom)
- Sony Playstation 3 60 gig Japanese Version with 500 gig laptop hard drive dropped in
- Nintendo 64
- Nintendo Game Cube with Game Boy reader
- Nintendo Wii (actually got it on launch day)
- Xbox
- Xbox 360 elite Halo 3 edition
- Xbox 360 HDD drive
- JVC region-free DVD player
- Sony 5 disc dvd changer (great for blitz watching anime)
- Atari
and you can’t see them because they are on the bottom shelf but..
- Laserdisc player
- CED player

I still need a Dreamcast to be completely happy but I am fairly pleased with my current rig although I need to replace my receiver still as I never bothered to after my bunny chewed through the wires I just opted to run everything through my Sony 51-cd stereo which actually sounds pretty damn good.

58/365- Adventures in the real world

I was out and about most of the day, eventually I made my way to the mall unfortunately there were clearance sales and I was weak ^^; FYE and Hot Topic were my main two distractions this trip. Clickety-click the pictures for notes..
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FYE was my first stop. I bought all of the Gatekeepers TV series and OVA, they had a bundle made up of all of it marked for $30 I can’t even remember the last time I bought an American anime dvd off the shelf so that was kind of interesting that, that show of all things would tempt me.  I also got the 30th Anniversary Hello Kitty plush set that I had been wanting for a while but had been unable to justify the cost of (^^;) $10 seemed pretty reasonable for it though, I plan on leaving it NRFB and sticking it up on top of my dollfie case with my NRFB Hello Kitty pullip. I also bought a small Hello Kitty bunny plush for the zilla as she seemed rather rapt with it. I bought two lunch boxes one Hello Kitty, one Nightmare Before Christmas I like to use the metal lunchboxes to sort the tons of small items I own they were marked down to like $3.50 each. I picked up yet another Joker hat, it was extremely cheap and I liked that it wasn’t a Dark Knight Joker hat it is very rare to find a Joker hat that is not Dark Knight. I also picked up some action figures, another Soundwave figure because I am almost as addicted to Transformers as I am to LPS (I should run a comparative count of my collections of them) and two Wathcmen figures Ozymandias and Silk Spectre 1 they were all less than $5 each. I kind of regret not picking up the Comedian as well, I might have to go back for him tomorrow. All in all I spent slightly around $60 at FYE which really wasn’t that bad considering how much stuff I managed to really get.

I hit Hot Topic as well , they were having a take an additional 50% off of clearance sale. I bought a pair of Invader Zim Gir shoes, I have like five pairs already in various designs but I love Gir and I love shoes so I had to get these as well (plus green is my favorite color). I ended up buying five t-shirts two Transformers (one dino-bots, the other is kind of generic comic based), a Green Day shirt (even though I got injured at their concert they are still my favorite band), a Joker Shirt and a Harley Quinn shirt. I already had the Harley Quinn shirt, I knew that when I spotted it on the shelf but it is one of my favorite shirts so I figured while it was still available and cheap that I should buy a back-up.

I also stopped by Target, their toys were marked down quite a bit. I bought a giant singing/dancing Dora for zilla as she loves Dora and while I could not justify the normal $60 price tag I had still really wanted to get it for her, at $12 some I couldn’t resist even if the box had seen better days. I also the MLP (whose box was utterly destroyed) and the Domo plush there for very cheap. I think I paid like $18 total for everything there.

I only bought two things that weren’t on clearance today, one of them didn’t even make into the picture. I had stopped at Walmart earlier in the day and I found the meerkat limited edition Littlest Pet Shop, I had been looking for this one for a while so I snatched it up. The other thing was Batman: The Widening Grin Issue #4 (omg I love the coverart) which has me on a mad hunt for issues #1-#3, I neglected to include it in the picture as I was rereading it when I decided that I needed to take the picture.

Goals for 2010

As we bid adieu to 2009, I have decided to make a list of goals for myself for the year 2010.

Hina
^ A picture of my namesake so this isn’t all text

General Goals
- Clean the apartment- the current level of chaos is unheard of.
- Move to larger apartment or buy house
- Watch more anime, while on that subject when I do actually watch anime watch new stuff instead of re-watching old favorites >_<
- Read more manga, get caught up on what I need to
- Finish reading the gifted 250 gig hard drive of Batman and related comics, also finish reading Sin City
- Find some time for Halo 3 and Halo ODST seriously I could use the stress relief right now
- Completely beat the five games I am currently playing through on various systems, also want to play through Arkham Asylum on hard mode
- Actually have a cell phone last for more than one month, let’s just say it’s a good thing I have cell phone insurance as I have terrible luck with phones *gently cradles her three day old phone*

Doll Goals
- Keep up to date with collecting all the pullips/dals
- Actually get all of the pullips back up on the shelves and get everything organized again instead of current utter chaos
- Organize all the doll crap I have accumulated, possibly sell the excess
- Limit the number of non-essential pullips ie. try to cutback on the number of duplicates, focus on getting the new releases and customs, maybe a few taeyangs and well Papins don’t count…
- Keep to my blythe goal of no more than 26 blythes at a time, didn’t seem like so impossible a goal when I set it originally but I am already up to 15 (not counting the 7 sold) within a year of starting collecting.
- While on the subject of blythes.. Get a Kenner- haha! More realistically get Ribboneta Wish
- Get Dollfie Dream Grail- Illyavasal MDD
- Get Super Dollfie Grail- Nono
- Get other Super Dollfie Grail- Chii
- Get more dollfie clothing and shoes
- Resist urge to buy more pukis- I will have my third one soon and then my collection will be complete
- Try to resist the siren call of more Little Fees.. I can see that on failing.
- Go to Puddle (still debating feasibility and whether or not I can get time off of work)
- Finish Dollfie projects- Mahoro & Utena so project Komugi can start

Anime Figures and Swag Goals
- Go to Anime Boston
- Finish collecting all of the damned Pinky Street
- Reshelve figures, dusting needed and rotate out figures that have fallen out of favor stick them in storage until later
- Buy Disgaea 3- Rozalyn Nendoroid
- Acquire Figure grail – Nurse Witch Komugi figure Link
- Don’t get carried away with buying too many figures, be less impulsive with purchases
- Find and purchase the Mahoromatic and Disgaea towels that have been on my wish list for ages
- Build more kits, still in the middle of a perfect grade Gundam kit-
- Get the figures on my desk in some semblance of order
- Acquire Macross x Lucky Star figures
- Photograph more of my figure collection
- Get apartment clean enough so I can photograph a good portion of my figures anyway

Online Goals (WordPress/Flickr etc.)
- Organize this blog better, for those of you keeping a close eye on this site you may have noticed that I am already in the process of working on it.
- Organize flickr, delete older photos and replace with newer, better photos
- Finish various projects I have started but never completed here ^^;

Project integration- Kleintoys and Sodapopandritalin

When I started this blog, I said I intended to make this my final resting place and I am making it official as I’ve decided it’s time to take down both Kleintoys and Sodapopandritalin my former blogs as they have outlived their usefulness.  I had started integrating all of the posts that I felt worth saving from Kleintoys last week, about 90% of the content was saved the only things I really culled were posts about preorders and such as I canceled most of my outstanding preorders due to my recent overwhelming lack of interest.  I just finished integrating content from sodapopandritalin, I will go back and delete everything there within the next week or two as everything is now archived here.  I posted messages on both blogs pointing people here.

Here’s a pic of my lovely Suzumiya so this announcement isn’t all text.

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Taking Photo Requests/ Suggestions

So here’s the situation- I have sexy new camera, tons of stuff to photograph but lately I have no idea what is is I want to photograph besides my Little Fee Ante, Marie who has recently become a bit of a camera whore. As much as I love photographing my little camera whore I need some variety and I bet my flickr contacts are getting pretty bored with seeing Marie so much. I hate being this stumped when it comes to inspiration so I thought I would open the floor up for suggestions.. can be dolls or anime stuff this list will give you a pretty decent idea of what I have. The side tabs on this blog have a better/ more detailed information on my dolls. Please note while most of the stuff is on hand, some of the figures that have fallen out of favor are currently at my storage unit and I do have a handful of dolls out on loan at the moment some are with Requiemart and a few are down in Texas to help a friend out with a panel on dolls at a local anime convention. Things I won’t do- ultra loli naughty shots, I have had requests in the past for upskirt shots on Lucky Star figures while I am not really prudish about doing upskirt shots in general I reserve the right not to photograph certain figures in certain ways.

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the little camera whore

The first person who suggests a picture of my entire collection will be shot :P

One month anniversary

Remember when you were young and first started dating and a one month anniversary was a big deal? well it’s like that for me all over again. I can’t believe it has been a whole month since I left Kleintoys behind. I know a few people were probably upset with that decision and the fact that I just hid a link to here in my final post there (I thought follow the white rabbit was fairly obvious but I guess not ^^;) but ultimately I blog for myself, I don’t really care who else reads it. I did just make a courtesy post linking to here in case anyone did actually want to follow me- this will be my last move, my final resting space so to speak. The decision to move was not taken lightly, I needed a change of scenery though as my focus has changed. I am now primarily a doll collector instead of an anime collector who also collects dolls it has somehow swapped around. I had put the dolls on the back-burner while I focused on collecting anime stuff and realized just how unhappy that made me so I decided to embrace it and change my focus. I don’t regret changing my focus at all, I haven’t even photographed any anime figures in almost a month save for one photo of my desk.

I’m sorry my focus is mostly on dolls these days, well mostly pullip. There will be a new Dollfie Dream arriving tomorrow which will result in a fairly epic photo shoot so stay tuned for that at least. I might actually get around to blogging some anime figures this month but nothing has really sparked my interest lately, if inspirations strikes though I will not ignore it.

and to close the promised photo of Holly and Princess Ann together. They are both based on the same woman- Audrey Hepburn but reflect two different roles she played. I thought it was fairly apt photo, for this post – a person fully taking on another role and making some changes although ultimately they are still really the same.
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Anime Boston

So I originally registered for Anime Boston quite a while ago but due to various factors I didn’t think I would be able to go then I get the call last night that basically meant that I would be going to Anime Boston.

I had kind of resigned myself to not go so I am not prepared for this at all. I am super busy trying to get everything ready in time for Anime Boston. Oddly it is not physically packing for Anime Boston it is updating my inventory lists so I know exactly what I am looking for in the dealer’s room. If I don’t write everything down I lose track and have a hard time remembering what I have, what is preordered and what it is I really want.

There is supposed to be a bjd/doll meet on Saturday so I am bringing both Dollfie Dreams, my little fee, and a handful of pullips.

There are no interesting guests this year >_<

Nostalgic for disaster

This is completely off topic for our purposes here but still pretty cool. I went to a Fall out Boy concert last night, I had a lot of fun even though there were an ungodly amount of opening bands (Hey Monday/ Cobra Starship/ All Time Low and Metro Station).

I even managed to get all the members of Fall out Boy to autograph my vinyl of their latest album.
fall out boy
While signing the vinyl, Patrick remarked that he owned the same shirt as me which was vintage Batman so I thought that was pretty cool.