Sakura Con 2012 Acquisitions

What's a convention without getting some stuff to buy to bring home, right? The strangest part about this loot is the fact that I didn't buy any shirts! This doesn't happen very often! I usually get at least one shirt from a convention... But maybe I just remember that I have too many already as it is... Oh also, that Durarara manga is a freebie and I forgot to take more photos of it. So this is the only time you'll see it :P Ah and pardon the quality of some of the photos. When I took the photos I thought they looked good enough on the display, little did I know I didn't have enough lighting for some ^^;

Yuri Mania 39 - Featuring: Suenaga Mirai!

Gokigenyou! Welcome to another session of Yuri Mania! This post is to commemorate my 150th Weekly Lily on Figure.FM! Yes, I know Mirai figma came out a long time ago, but I haven't had much time nor the idea til now ^^; Hmm... Mirai Gundam is also here... And it's a Yuri Mania post... HMMMMMM... It's not what you think! Or maybe it is...

NERV HQ & Bday Presents

Here is the NERV HQ base that I got from Yakuri when I was in L.A. I first seen it on her blog and was impressed with it, but this time I have my own and assembled it. It's quite compact at first, but it opens up to a lot of things you see from the anime! Most impressive!

Mini Anime/Doll Meet - 03.12.2011

And now, starting on my backlog of photos that I didn't post yet... It was a very busy March. Starting from the end of February to be exact. I was preparing the April Fool's joke that I planned with Chun and then started work my 200th post with the stop motion video, and then work 6 days a week when one of my co-workers were off on vacation. It was very busy, but I figured I should have some fun while I have my days off. So on the second Saturday, I had a mini meet at my place... But I didn't plan it ^^; Meaning I just provide the place, but I didn't arrange it, hahaha.

Mini Doll Meet - Oct. 23, 2010

So after a quick meeting with the Vancouver BJD group at Anime Evolution, I found myself landing in the middle of an actual Doll Meet or Doll Meat as Chun would like to call it :P

Well this isn't the actual official meet that I went to at first. It was a smaller group consisting of only 6 people and we all went to Magnetic Cafe. For me it was the second time, but for everyone else it was the first time. At least for this new version of the cafe with the "cosplay" aspect. As Azunyan is the only official doll that I have, she gets the spotlight, but I thought I'd bring her Nendoroid counterpart for more fun ^^

Anime Evolution 2010 Loots

Despite my complains of the dealers room and the convention itself, I actually got some stuff from Anime Evolution anyway. I withdrew some money on the Friday, but after my first visit to the dealers room, I thought I could just put all the money back later after the weekend. Turns out I've spent quite a chunk it already by the end of Sunday.

20 Years in Canada

4/20 for me is completely different than what some other people celebrate on this day. On April 20th, 20 years ago, my family and I arrived in Vancouver, Canada. On a very cool spring morning, by the way. This week the weather is much warmer than it was back then. Yeah, perfect weather for whatever she's doing up there...

So Long, My Gargantuan Friend...

BZZZZTTT! Poof! Those were the death knell of our TV in the living room on Tuesday night. It just happened so fast. One moment we were watching the hockey game, the next it was smoking... The picture completely disappeared and only scrambled lines left, so we turned it off. Then smoke started to come out. I frantically fan the smoke with a nearby magazine so that it won't set off the sprinkler system. One dead TV was enough for that night...

Picture somewhat related and not related... Will elaborate further on it at the end of this post.

Anime Stores Around Vancouver II

Been in Vancouver for a while? Can't find your anime & anime goods fix? Let me help you by showing you the anime stores around Vancouver and its surrounding areas. This is a continuation of part I. I've only found fewer than before, so I also moved one of the entries to this post to reduce the loading time of the first one. After this post I think I've covered all the stores that sell a majority of anime-related products in-store around Vancouver.

Anime Stores Around Vancouver I

Dropping by Vancouver for a visit? Looking for anime related stores? Then let me help you. This is an ongoing project to inform the public (specifically the anime fans or people looking to get gifts for anime fans since it's almost Christmas now) about the anime stores around Vancouver. Now to be clear about this, the stores I show don't always sell anime, but anime-related goods and merchandise. And not all the stores are in Vancouver, but in surrounding cities and areas around Vancouver as well. This is but a fraction of what's out there, so I'll continue this project in another post in 2010. EDIT: Scratch 2010... The next one should be posted within the week. The second part is now posted.

GN Archer

I've been meaning to work on GN Archer for a while, but it kept being pushed back. This was the decoy to prevent people from figuring out that I was doing a Mirai Gundam last month. I intended to make this one straight build from way back...

Unlimited Saber Works

The arrival of Saber Lily Nendoroid was a pretty good timing. I was about to collect the poseable figures of Saber together. She came in with EMS shipping because I forgot to change my shipping method at HLJ from the last order ^^; But here she is posing with her older sisters. Saber Lily Figma had to borrow Excalibur from her blue cloth counterpart.

Mirai Gundam

Gundam of the Future aka Mirai Gundam is finally done! 5 days worth of work and countless hours... Countless because I didn't keep track of how long it took me to make it. There were some extra unaccountable work that I did not foresee. But here is my blog's first anniversary project finally done. In case you don't know, mirai means future in English.

Beware, there are a LOT of pictures! XD

So what started all this? Why, it's Mirai Suenaga of course, the mascot to DannyChoo.com. I knew I wanted to make another Gundam kitbash after the Saber Gundam, but I couldn't figure out what. Then I thought a Mirai Gundam would be feasible with the use of Nadleeh! Oh and if you saw my first post about this Gundam project, I've added a red herring... which is the GN Archer. I didn't use any parts of it on Mirai Gundam :P I have another plan for that one.

Now a word of warning: I am not that good of a modeller... I only have something in mind but I cannot execute it well. So please don't mind the crappy paint job and overall of it, lol. I may take some advice and wouldn't mind having a suggestion for which paint I can use instead of markers for future references if I have time to fix it.

Here's a quick tour of the Mirai Gundam... In the front you'll notice the "d" on the chest. That was a printed out decal from my computer and stuck on with glue. It's not well done and some of the paint stuck on the front of it before. I had to fix it real quick with white paint. Hopefully it's not too bad. Forgot to mention... instead of the ribbon on the chest, I opted to colour in the core in the blue ribbon colour.

The neck piece that is used for the Kyrios torso tilts forwards and backwards, so it has a bit of an effect on the hair at the front.

Angled side view shows the "d" logo on the side of the arm that's supposed to be a part of the uniform for Mirai. And I gotta say... this is the first time I've seen a Gundam with "socks"! I laughed and laughed at this fact. It just looks so strange XD


Here's the back side... the hair had to be repainted just before I took these photos. Some of the paint peeled off because the hair is actually a flexible piece instead of other materials. In the future I may have to repaint it again.


Another side view shows the hair tie on the side of Mirai's head. It was hard to paint it because I was all shaky and couldn't paint in a straight line. I can see visibly how the paint is rubbing off here... I'll fix that soon.

Here's the Mirai printout I used for colour reference. You can see that I was trying to compare my Gundam markers to the original art.


Mirai Gundam with GN Rifle! What do you like best? Mirai with a gun...

Or with a beam saber?

Or perhaps with dual beam sabers?

I'm trying to do all the poses that Mirai does, but unfortunately Danny's mascot page is offline at the moment... Either that or I can't find it at the moment. If I remember other poses that I haven't done, I'll post it here or make another post.


Mirai Gundam with hanky? Do Gundams cry GN particles?

This is the Mirai Figma pose that was shown at Tokyo Figure Show... though the arms are a bit too long here ^^;


The pantsu exposing pose... And YES, I painted the bottom part white for this reason! :P Cannot unsee?

Here's a pose where Mirai is supposed to be in a maid uniform... but I don't have one, so go with this one ok?

I visited Chun on Thursday to show her this Mirai Gundam. She suggested I do outdoor photos. It was a nice day outside, but it was kinda windy. As for the people watching me, I didn't even notice. I was focused on the Gundam not falling from the wind and trying to get the right focus for the camera.

So here she is outside... Had to prop her up on the box I was carrying her in because there weren't any stable surface outside.


Mirai... it's not nice to read over someone's shoulder... or their wrist for that matter. A bronze statue that sat on the bench at the mall I went to.

The mall had an indoor garden with perhaps fake plants... I thought it was a nice setting for this. Just as I finished taking these pictures, my brother called and I tried to quickly grab the Gundam as I was talking... Unfortunately I dropped her on the pot of dirt right beside this bridge... Thankfully it wasn't so dirty. I also noticed a security guard passing by, but she didn't say anything to me.

There's a waterfall in the background.

This is what it'll look lilke IF Danny uses Mirai Gundam as part of the DannyChoo.com banner XD

Here's that kneeling picture again. This time she's holding a smaller version of her Gundam ^^

I really liked this dual wield beam saber pose! So much so that maybe we can use it for a Figure.fm header?



And finally, I had to do a parody of that Hidamari Sketch scene... Gundams are a bit hard to handle unfortunately ^^;


I think I'll have more things I'll do with Mirai Gundam in the future, she is after all, Gundam of the future!

Secret Gundam Project II: Days 2-5

So this time my Gundam project took about 4 days to finish and I have no idea how many hours it took. Before I post the final Gundam I'll show you the progress it took to get there. Some of you may know what this Gundam is just by looking at the first picture.

The pictures above and below are the results of day 1 and 2. Colours are set and I've decided which piece needs that colour.


I saw the back of the torso and looking at the colours, I immediately thought of Kinder Surprise XD


On the third day I was cooped up in my room, so I decided to colour using the markers which doesn't give too much fumes. The knees and the legs get their colours along with the feet. I originally got a gray marker to colour the legs... but it was way too dark. So the next day I coloured it silver.


On day 4 was my last day of work, so I was able to stay up and worked a lot more on the kit. I've finally tried out the first actual paint I'm using on a kit instead of markers. I'm very surprised how well the colours match properly to the original.


And here's that ballcap joints that I was trying to make for the arms so that it could connect to the shoulders. I had an annoying time filing down the original ball on the left to what it looks like to the right. Filing, sanding... it was a pain in the ass I tells ya! One of them I actually used the plastic cutter to chop it down to size. The latter worked better... I'm in the process of acquiring actual ball caps. Hopefully they'll fit.


And here's the Gundam leg that gave me a good laugh. I believe this is the first time I've seen a Gundam with socks XD


On Wednesday, the fift day, I managed to get the labels/decals on the pieces I need them. I originally wanted to use the markers to make it, but it was futile. I printed them out on paper instead and cut them out, but they're so fricking tiny! I couldn't find a glue stick... So I went with this super glue thing called Mr. One Push Button. The thing I wanted to glue on is so small that some of the glue came on my fingers. My index finger and thumb was stuck for a second. It hurts like hell for a while after I pulled them apart >_<

The Gundam's all done now and I took pictures of it outdoors for the very first time (on Chun's urging). All will be revealed on Friday.

Secret Gundam Project II: Day 1

The first day I'm starting this project I encountered a problem right away... The arm that I want to use goes into a peg into the torso...

However... the arm for this torso requires a ball joint to connect. This threw my plan up in the air. I don't wanna mess around with my original plan. So somehow I need to fit in this stupid arm in that torso, perhaps even make a ball joint for that arm.

Thankfully I remembered that I had this cheap First Grade Strike Dagger from my last Gundam Project. It's a good thing I'm a ratpack, so I keep this sort of thing even though it was useless after I finished Saber Gundam.

Basically I'll be cutting off that blue peg from the torso and use the ballcap on the left and somehow fit it into the arm. Hopefully it works. I haven't tried it yet, but I know the ball cap on it should fit into the torso. Here goes nothin'...

As for the rest of the day... I stopped counting how long I was doing it because I kept going back and forth while waiting for stuff to dry. I messed up badly because my main colour didn't turn out well at all. So I went out shopping to find an alternative colour. Turned out it's almost the same. I'd show more photos of what I done, but it's mostly just painting and those colours would give it away. I'll add them in once I finish the whole Gundam.

Top Secret Gundam Project II: MATERIAL GET!

Last year at around this time I bought myself 3 Gundam kits... All that were to be destroyed or bashed, I should say into another. That Kitbash Gundam became Saber Gundam. It's now almost a year since I started my blog and I thought I'd make another kitbash for my first BlogDay(TM), the first anniversary of my blog.

Of course there's a reason why it's called "Top Secret" so I won't reveal what it is I'm making until next week. Which hopefully gives me enough time to actually make it XD

I'll let the picture do the talking and leave it to your imagination of what it is ^^