Fall 2009 Preorders List

Just placed more preorders at my favorite figure site, HobbySearch, and like always I will be broke during the holidays. This list of preorders is K-On! heavy with an appearance of a certain video game character from one of my favorite PS2 games.


Nendoroid Mio



This adorable little nendoroid is from the fan crazed new anime, “K-On!”. For those who don’t know, it’s about a group of high school girls trying to form a rock band. Think of it like the adorable and funny baby of Lucky Star and Beck.

Mio here is the very ultra super shy bass player of the band. She comes with the amplifier; at least I hope she does. Cute, huh? She comes out in November.

Nendoroid Yui



Yui is the ditzy, but highly determined, guitarist of the group. Shes not the best guitar player at the moment, but through sheer determination and hard work, she will become the best!

She comes out in December. These are the first two of the four band members and I plan on having the whole band!

Alter Mio




Can you tell she’s my favorite of the K-On girls? This figure is done by Alter and is at 1/8 scale. And judging by the second picture, it looks like Alter will release Yui soon. Is this going to be another set of the band I must have?!? Maybe.

She comes out in November also, so I’ll be broke that month.

Odin Sphere Velvet




Velvet here hails from the totally awesome PS2 videogame, Odin Sphere. If you never heard of Odin Sphere, it’s no surprise. It came out late during the PS2’s life cycle, without any kind of promotion.

The best way to describe Odin Sphere’s game play is combination of a 2D beat ‘em up with RPG elements. You play as different characters, playing through different worlds and maps, beating up everything in your path. But along the way you learn new abilities, spells, attacks, and gain new weapons and armor upgrades. But what separates Odin Sphere from other beat 'em up, is its beautiful animated 2d graphics. Check out the review from IGN.

Well, Velvet here is one of the playable characters in Odin Sphere and since I missed out on buying my favorite character of the game (Mercedes), I immediately reserved Velvet. She comes out in January.

Well there you have it. If you would like to reserve or purchase any of the figures listed, please follow the links to Hobbysearch.com.

What figures do you have preordered?

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Ponyo Review

This past weekend Disney released the English dub of Studio Ghibli’s latest film, Ponyo in the US. So naturally I had to see it opening weekend. How was it? Well read on to find out…

The film opened on Friday, August 14th, in select theaters nationwide. Here in Philly, there are only a couple of theaters showing it, the Ritz at the Bourse and the UA theaters in King of Prussia. I love the Ritz theaters, so I decided to see it there. So along my younger anime crazed cousin, my sister and brother in law, we made our trek to Old City.

Upon being seated at the theater, I was delighted to see it filling up with families and their children. I heard that Ponyo was heavily geared to young children, so I was happy to see the large crowd. Especially since there was barely any advertising for the film.


Ponyo tells the story of a goldfish who desperately wants to be human. The film is loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, and you could definitely see the influence. But Ponyo is not a mermaid, she’s a goldfish, whose father is an underwater Sea Wizard, who works endlessly on “Restoring the balance of the planet”. Not happy, with her life under the sea, Ponyo escapes her father’s magical submarine. While on her journey to the surface, she gets trapped in garbage and is saved by Sosuke, a five year old boy who lives in a coast town. The two then form a special friendship much to the chagrin of Ponyo’s father.

In this day and age, it seems like all animated films are computer generated. I have no qualms with this, as there have been some spectacular CG films coming out recently. But I love hand drawn animation and Ponyo is a beautifully animated film. Everything is painstakingly animated, from the humongous under water creatures to the tiniest little sardine. The colors are so bright and lovely, it’s a treat to the eyes. The amount of detail in the town is fantastic as well. Cars zip along the small windy roads in town, huge fishing boats in the town bay move about realistically, Its obvious no shortcuts were taken by Ghibli which makes everything on the screen seem alive.


I’m a huge Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli fan. I’ve seen most of his films, at least all of them that have been released by Disney in the states. Before watching Ponyo, Spirited Away was my favorite Studio Ghibli film (with Princess Mononoke a close second). But right now, I have Ponyo on the top of that list. Even though the film is more kid friendly and cutesy than previous Ghibli films, I loved every second of it. In fact so did all kids in the theater, after the film most of them were singing the Ponyo theme song on their way out.

I will recommend this film to everybody at the office this week, especially those with children. Please go see this truly wonderful film. Check out the trailer below.

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New Slice of Life Animes Announced!

Over at Animenation news, they posted news articles on two new slice of life anime series coming out based on the manga titles, “Arakawa Under the Bridge” and “Working!!”

Arakawa Under the Bridge (pictured above) is a romantic comedy story about a rich boy picking up an odd homeless girl. The series is classified as a “denpa-kei”, which is genre given to anime with slice-of-life stories about people with odd idiosyncrasies. The anime will be produced by Shaft, with direction by Akiyuki Shinbo, the director of Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei.



“Working!!” is based on the weekly 4 panel comic strip of the same name. It’s a lighthearted slice of life series about the staff of a family (The Wagnaria family) run restaurant in Hokkaido, Japan.

I’m excited about these announcements, as the slice of life genre is my favorite genre of anime.

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Kannagi Tea Time!

While working from home today, I got a special delivery from Hobbysearch Japan! Woo!


It's my new Kannagi tea cup! This was a nice surprise as I just ordered this on Friday and made it's way all the way from Tokyo to my apartment in a few days. Much quicker than ordering something from amazon a state away.



As you can see Kannagi got excited about the new surprise:



But she was a bit shocked to see her likeness on a cup!



Being the Kannagi fanboy that I am, I had to pick this up. (I also have a coffee mug on preorder :P ). I love green tea in the afternoon on occasion, but Im afraid to use this awesome cup dont want to stain it. Oh wells guess ill use my other tea cup.

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Dragon Gate USA : "Open the Historic Gate" 7/25

This past Saturday I went to the first Dragon Gate USA Pro wrestling show right here in my home town of Philly. I've been looking forward to this show since it was announced a few months ago. I felt I had to attend to this historic event and I'm so glad I did. In short, it was frickin' awesome!!!


I had second row seats, which came with a free gift and early entrance for a meet and greet with the wrestlers. The free gift was a set of Dragon gate inflatable thunder stix, a pretty cool freebie souvenir. I bought a program and got autographs from Shingo, Yokosuka, and CIMA. They were the only ones that came out for the meet and greet. There was a bonus match, a fray match they called it. It was an ok match, there were a lot of wreslters i didnt know, except for Lince Dorado.

After waiting for an hour the show started. It started off with an awesome video montage of Dragon Gate footage to hype the crowd for the PPV taping. The crowd was hype with everybody baning on their thunder stix.

This led into the first match: BxB Hulk versus YAMATO. First match was BxB Hulk versus YAMATO. Great opener, with BxB Hulk coming out with his full entrance with dancers(Daizee Haze and some other sexy blonde girl). In case you dont know heres an example of BxB Hulks entrance:



This was my first time seeing YAMATO and he was a great heel. This match was a fantastic opener, crowd was on their feet and hype for most of it! Whoo, I had goosebumbs.

The next match was: 2 Cold Scorpio versus Ken Dykstra

This was a boring ass match. The crowd got dead during this one. Scorpio missed spots and Dykstra tried to carry the match, but it was sloppy, too long, and very boring. Plus, it was tough to follow hulk/yamato.

Next was the chikara 8 man tag match: Quackenbush/Jigsaw/Soldier Ant/Fire Ant versus Gran Akuma/Icarus/Amasis/Hallowicked.

This match blew the roof off the joint! Ive seen these guys wrestle plenty of times, but man, this was perfect. Quackenbush looked fantastic coming back from injury. Too many insane spots to talk about.

Post match Quack layed out an open challenge to anybody from dragon gate, to which YAMATO came out and said some mean things to Quack and kicked him in the nuts, haha! This brought out Jigsaw to started beating down on YAMATO, Gran Akuma then ran out and made the save for YAMATO. They both then end up beatin on Jigsaw and Quack. Awesome!

Next Match: Dragon Kid versus Yoshino

This was a good solid match, not their best match. It was also shorter than expected but still very good and entertaining. Post match they set up a rematch between the two for the next show.

Intermission time! This time I ended up getting some more autographs, Dragon Kid and BxB Hulk. I also picked up a super cool Hand fan with chibi dragon gate wrestlers.

Next Match was Young Bucks versus CIMA/YOKOSUKA.

Simply put, this match stole the show. Seriously, this was my fave match of the night, insane spots back with so many holy shit moments. I was surprised by the ending.

Next was the main event, Naruki Doi versus Shingo.

The main event was a non title match between Doi and Shingo. Doi is currently holding the Open the Dream Gate title, which looks super cool. This was a very solid and entertaining match to end the show. There were some sick bumps taken during this match and Doi's finisher is probably one of the most dangerous moves in wrestling.

Afterwards, they also announced the next show date in philly, its on 11/28. They will crown the first DGUSA champion with a tourney, the belt is called Open the Freedom gate belt. Cant wait!

So in closing, I had a fantastic time and for a small moment I actually felt I was in Japan watching a Dragon Gate show.

Here are some pics of my swag and autographs:

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Bandai released Kannagi Vol. 1!!

Bandai has suprisingly released Kannagi Vol. 1 as part of their acquisition announcement. The first volume has the first 7 episodes of the 14 episode series, with volume 2 being released in september.


Also, animenationnews.com has posted free streaming of the first 2 episodes of Kannagi. They plan on posting two new episodes every week until the entire series is posted.

I'm super excited about this news. Kannagi was my favorite new anime series that came out last year. If you like slice of life lighthearted comedy series with tree gods, then I highly recomend checking out the series. At least check out the first episodes for free online at the link above.

Source Animenation.com.

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Upcoming Anime Movies

Later this summer, they’re some good anime movies coming out I wanted to check out. Granted they are only in Japanese theaters, with the exception Miyaki’s Ponyo (coming to US theaters on 8/14), they may eventually come stateside. Most likely as dvd/blu-ray releases rather than theatrical releases.

But here are the trailers for upcoming anime movies:

Summer Wars (Japanese Release 8/1)



Synopsis: When timid eleventh-grader and math genius Kenji Koiso is asked by older student and secret crush Natsuki to come with her to her family’s Nagano home for a summer job, he agrees without hesitation. Natsuki’s family, the Jinnouchi clan, dates back to the Muromachi era (1336 to 1573), and they’ve all come together to celebrate the 90th birthday of the spunky matriarch of the family, Sakae. That’s when Kenji discovers his “summer job” is to pretend to be Natsuki’s fiance and dance with her at the birthday celebration. As Kenji attempts to keep up with Natsuki’s act around her family, he receives a strange math problem on his cell phone which, being a math genius, he can’t resist solving. As it turns out, the solution to the mysterious equation causes a bizarre parallel world to collide with Earth, and it’s up to Kenji and his new fake family to put reality back in order.


Ponyo (US release 8/14)



Synopsis: A young boy, Sōsuke, befriends a strange looking goldfish whom he names Ponyo. Unbeknownst to Sōsuke, Ponyo is a magic fish who has decided that she wants to live with Sōsuke and the other humans. Unfortunately, Ponyo's decision to give up her underwater life creates a crack in an ancient magic spell, and places the world in danger. Together, Sōsuke and Ponyo must set things right.

Cencoroll (Japanese Release 8/22)



Synopsis: A huge monster shows up on the top of a building of an ordinary city, prompting the Defense Forces to go into action and causing the citizens of the city to start an uproar. Yuki, a brave-hearted and naturally inquisitive girl, happens to know a secret. Her friend Tetsu has been keeping and raising a strange creature called Cenco. Instantly becoming fascinated by Tetsu and his pet, a mysterious boy appears with control over the huge monster threatening the town. With that, an unexpected battle begins.

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