Homu-Sexual?

Well, my Figma Akemi Homura arrived earlier this week, so time to ramble on about it for a few paragraphs

 I left her alone for a bit and found her laying like this. I laughed

Well, Anyways, the quality is what you'd expect if you've ever owned a figma anymore, the range of motion is good everywhere that isn't restricted by her clothing. In Homura's case her shoulder are restricted by her mantle, preventing them from going up above her head, though its made out of rubber so it isn't as bad as it looks. Her skirt is also stiffer plastic than usual for some reason, unlike on most figmas where its made out of rubbery stuff. As evidenced by the picture above, all the joints are pretty solid, floppy joints are not a concern here.

For Accessories, she comes with an alternate arm with her shield on it, a rocket launcher, a DEAGLE BRAND DEAGLE, a Pipe bomb, a Driver, two altfaces(For a total of happy, yelling, and her usual serious expression), glasses and the braided hair.She also comes with an assortment of hand, some of which vary a bit from the usual set of figma hands. The shield pops off pretty easily, and it makes me wonder if during development she was going to have an alternate opened version shield (Or maybe the one from nendo homu works, I don't have one to check) 

  Forgot to take a picture of all the parts, so this one is a bit rushed

Overall, I'm very satisfied with my homura, but I do have some random nitpicks that may be of interest.

1. My Homura came with a black line of misapplied paint on her unshielded left arm. It wasn't enough for me to rage at amiami and try to get a new one, but it was minorly annoying.

2. The details on her bazooka, shield, and Deagle are lazy. The Deagle doesn't have any kind of barrel, not even a black dot at the end to indicate the bullet hole, and the rear hole of the rocket launcher also isn't shaded at all.  The shield looks like it could use some panel lining.

3. She can't hold her golf club in an actual golf pose. Not that she ever does in the show, and if you've ever golfed before you know that the basic guideline is "If this feels uncomfortable as fuck, you're doing it right"

 Magical Golf

4. Someone in an IRC channel I frequent pointed this out to me, she has sculpted cameltoe. What the fuck max factory, that's fucking creepy as all hell.

What the hell Max Factory, what the hell. And I felt dirty taking this picture.

And....I'm done rambling, now for pictures and the occasional commentary.

First off, A picture of the joints on her hair. The braided hair doesn't have any joints, but the regular hair does, which is a nice change from the giant brick some figures have that makes their neck articulation useless.

All of her faces have clips for the glasses to go on, resulting in things like this, the happiest girl ever to hold a bazooka. She also has pretty good balance, note how one of her feet is hardly even on the ground.

Nero has bigger tits than King Arthur

So, the English release of Fate/Extra came out last Monday and has mostly monopolized my gaming time. Well, that is when my PSP decided to not start doing random strange things like turn off for no reason. I'm about 1/2-2/3s of the way through my first runthrough of the game now and I figured I'd rant about it on the off chance anyone cares.

The first thing I was greeted with when I booted up the game was...A nag screen telling me to update my PSP to 6.39 or better firmware. Once I hunted down some new CFW and got that pain in the ass out of the way (I was rather mad as my PSP's battery was dead, and it takes fucking forever to charge off USB- I lost the wall charger ages ago) I booted up the game, hit new game, and immediately got dumped into a japanese highschool, with an assortment of recycled bits from Fate/Stay Night and some returning cast. A paragraph or so of description later and Taiga comes in and trips in a nearly exact recreation of the bit from Fate/Stay Night. This prologue goes on for a few days of nothing particularly interesting beyond some character introductions happening before the world gets all static-y, and after about a day of wandering around with static-vision you walk through a wall and die in a church.

This is the part where you get to actually make your character (Name, Gender Select), and select your servant, Saber, Caster, or Archer. Then you get dumped in school again and get to run through another day of japanese highschool life before running through the same wall as before and getting to do the combat/dungeon tutorial. Pretty standard, you go through some tutorial battles and have some more scripted to hell stuff, and eventually get whatever servant you selected at character creation. Then Bla bla welcome to the holy grail war go kill people. They managed to set the entire game in either dungeons or highschool. Japan really fucking loves highschool for some reason, if anime and games are to be believed, the entire nation is just a giant complex of highschools, trains, and love hotels.

I picked Saber for my playthrough since she's supposedly the easiest, and I'm a lazy fucker that doesn't feel like playing on the hardest possible way right off she isnt the same Saber as from the other Fate games, and I've actually found myself liking her more than standard saber, to be honest. That and supposedly you can Newgame+ to keep some of your items and enemy attack patterns, making shit way easier the second runthrough. 

As for the actual game itself, I doubt it'll win over anyone that doesn't already like the Fate franchise, since the combat engine is rock/paper/scissors with some skills and items tossed in.  Grinding on regular enemies is entirely about guessing/memorizing their attack sequences and pattern recognition (And the more enemies of the same type you kill, the more of the enemy's attack sequence you see). The fights against enemy servants are actually interesting and fairly fun, because they have enough variety of skills and item usage in the AI that it has a more interesting dynamic than you'd expect. The regular experience grind battles are pretty uninteresting(Not that grinding ever is), though I find rock/paper/scissors to be mildly more amusing than "Mash A until the enemies are all dead".  Being unable to save in the middle of the dungeons is a huge fucking pain in the ass though, especially on a handheld, even a suspend type save would've been a huge help because I essentially can't play the game during the random short intervals (On the train, waiting for things, etc) I usually play handhelds.

The real entertainment factor for this game is the character interactions, most of the characters are amusing and distinctive enough that talking to them is actually interesting, rather than something you just mash the text-skip button through as fast as possible. The music is also pretty good, but most of the really awesome songs are one-off event songs and the background music will likely quickly just be completely forgettable.

The character interactions and boss fights make all the minor issues worth it, though. Be it completely absurd fetch quests from Taiga (Who keeps comic books in dungeons, seriously?) and things like this. (Thanks random dude that screencapped this, I couldnt get the PSP stream to PC plugin working worth shit)

CHRISTINAAAAAA (Toy Review)

So I finally got around to unboxing my figma Kurisu and fiddling with her. Her articulation is about the standard for a figma-good. The only thing blocking any of her range of motion is her brown jacket, though I'm not totally sure figma hip joints swing that wide anyways. As with any long-haired figma, her neck articulation is hindered a bit due to the hair getting blocked. She has the standard assortment of figma hands, along with a phone and a bottle of Dr Pepper, both attached to the hands holding them. She comes with three faces, a neutral face, a winking face, and a yelling face. Between the three she has a pretty good set of posing capabilities.

The notable difference from most figmas is the crossed arms, which is actually two pieces that stick together. Getting her regular arms off the joints was a bit of a struggle, and I was worried about accidentally yanking the shoulder joints out of their sockets, but they seem to be attached by some kind of balljoint that doesn't pop out as easily as the sliding part does, once they're on and clicked together however, they look great. Her stand is somewhat difficult to get in the peghole in her back, which is somewhat annoying since her feet are kinda small making her hard to get to stand unassisted(Though it isn't impossible by any means). I ended up just propping the stand between her back and her coat, it was easier than trying to wedge it into her back. One of my friends says the red color of the tie rubbed off on her shirt a bit, but I have yet to have that problem. Overall, a very good figma, though my opinion my be skewed by my enjoyment of Steins;gate. Now, ON WITH THE PICTURES.



The world's deadliest weapon combo, a totally-not-a-lightsaber and a bottle of Dr. Pepper



Yeah, I'd be protective of my drinks too.


"What the fuck is this shit"


The Arms crossed piece makes for some great smugness


They're also good for when she's pissed off.


I think she wants her arms back. Though I suppose disarmed Kurisu is moe in her own way.