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Berserker Armor Guts

Wednesday, May 7th, 2025

I recently assembled the above model kit. It appealed to me not just because it’s a character from a manga I love, but because it’s designed to not require painting and has a cloth cape!

This is a Kotobukiya kit which means it’s got a slightly different design approach to Bandai, and from experience kits from this company are a little more finicky and difficult to assemble.

Appropriately, I used my new ‘GodHand’ nippers to make this kit. I bought these during the last Japan trip, and they cost more than a typical model kit! They are designed to produce a clean cut from the runners, which minimizes sanding and cleanup. They work very well, and I should have purchased a pair years ago.

There were no stickers and a tiny amount of pre painted pieces, but aside from these and the sword blade…

…everything else is black. This proved a bit problematic during assembly, since it was sometimes difficult to see the tabs and holes on the tiny pieces. Some parts are also very sharp, and I almost cut myself once or twice!

Overall I’d say assembly was a bit frustrating and a bit difficult compared to the average Bandai model. Aside from the reasons already mentioned, I was surprised to see some pieces required rotations when you assembled them, and others even required glue! The joints are also very stiff, and I even broke a wrist joint during assembly although the kit seems to consider this a possibility since the runner contained extras.

Here he is finished sans cape and sword arm. Incidentally – and unlike Bandai – the instructions contain no English.

The cape looks great and is threaded with wire to make it poseable, but it was a massive challenge to actually get it correctly on to the figure. A sort of collar device is supposed to lock it into place, but despite Herculean effort I never managed to get it working as the instructions suggested, so my cape is a bit ragged around his neck.

What’s interesting is while this is a model kit, once assembled it feels like an action figure. The seams are all but invisible in the black, and the stiff joints and excessive possibility mean you can display Guts into all the usual poses, including the crouching one I’m leaving him in.

And although it’s a kit (or action figure) once posed it looks like a statue, and will look nice on display. This may have been frustrating to make, and a little pricey, but I’m happy with it 🙂

Posted in Crafts, Models, Otaku | Comments Closed

Ultraman Cards

Sunday, March 9th, 2025

I bought this in Japan:

It’s a box of the initial set of the new Ultraman card game! Even single packs of this was difficult to find in Tokyo, and I only saw boxes for sale in Nagoya. It wasn’t very expensive; about $30 for a sealed box of 20 packs.

At the time I hadn’t seen the English language cards for sale in the US, but in the last month or so packs of both the original set and the first expansion turned up at a local comic store. I bought every pack I saw, and opened them all.

The cards aren’t particularly attractive, and the first set in particular is heavy on images taken directly from the TV shows. It only features Ultras taken from the last couple of decades (no Showa era Ultras at all) which is ok, but I wish it was more art-based and less photographic.

The cards themselves are well manufactured, made of thick stock with a premium feel compared to other TCGs. The chase cards are beautiful, with the ones I pulled having metallic effects, rainbow foiling and embossing. But they’re spectacularly rare, and in about 40 packs (including all my Japanese ones) I only got one (of 40) ‘AP’ cards, and no SP, SSSP, UR or ExP cards!

I don’t know how to actually play the game, since I’ve failed to find any of the starter decks for sale here in the USA! Almost no retailers have them, and sellers online ask silly money. Hopefully I’ll get them one day and see if the game is fun 🙂

As I said this is a brand new TCG launched recently (with some fanfare) by Bandai. It’s a little surprising since Bandai have so many other TCGs on the market including Battle Spirits, which recently released these two Ultraman expansions:

There have been several Ultraman expansions for Battle Spirits over the years, with these two being the most recent, with the blue one in particular only being released last December. Kristin got me a box of each for my birthday.

The red expansion box came with a single card box topper promo pack (which I haven’t opened) and the set contains 69 cards in four levels of rarity. With 20 6-card packs, how much of the full set could I get?

I can’t play this game, and the cards are very wordy and entirely Japanese but they’re so pretty! This is the level of design the official Ultraman game needs in my opinion.

All the cards (even the commons) are embossed, foiled and plastic coated making them all feel like thin credit cards. And these packs are significantly less expensive that Magic packs, which asks the question why is the quality of Magic cards not at this level?

The blue expansion box included a box-topper and a promo for the new Ultraman TCG, which I found amusing. This set has 75 different cards once again in four levels of rarity.

The cards are the same high standard as the other set, and the rare cards just as spectacular:

I’ve only opened a few packs of each, and will probably finish opening the over the next few months. Even though I can’t play it, I like these cards much more than the official TCG, and I wish it were these ones that had been translated into English 🙂

Posted in Collecting, Games, Otaku, Trading Cards | Comments Closed

Japan Pickups: Games

Wednesday, January 15th, 2025

I’m using ‘games’ here to describe video games and ‘TRPGs’ (as tabletop games are called in Japan). This is the category in which I’m always hunting for items on my trips and this time I was very happy with my finds…

It’s been a while since I’ve found a new Japanese Fighting Fantasy book for my collection, so I was pleased to see this JP version of ‘Out Of The Pit‘, the FF Monster Manual. Unlike the western version, it’s published at the same size as a normal FF book and is therefore a chunky little volume. The cover is a little tattered, but it’s in otherwise excellent condition and included its obi and even an advertisement for the Japanese Warlock magazine.

Speaking of which, I bought ten more issues of Warlock, which I found once again at Mandarake in Akihabara (where do they keep getting these from?). These weren’t cheap, but with this addition I now have 75% of the entire run of this magazine, including the first and last (#63) issues.

Moving onto one of my other collections, I found the above three Wizardry games. The leftmost had eluded me for years and was surprisingly inexpensive (about $30) but I didn’t even know Summoner had a PS2 version and didn’t hesitate to pay through the nose for it (~$100) when I found it in Nagano on Christmas Day. The last is the JP physical edition of the recent Wizardry 1 remake. Alas I was unable to find the special edition of this release, which comes with a lot of bonuses. One day I will…

This is a remarkable guidebook for all three Game Boy Color remakes of Wizardry 1 – 3. I’ve got many Japanese Wizardry game guides in my collection now, but this may be the best I’ve yet seen.

It starts with some lovely colour pages detailing the history of each game…

And then goes into detail about the specifics of the GBC versions of each title, including monsters, items and maps. Most of the book is in colour as well.

Each game gets its own section and as a result the book is fairly lengthy. The GBC versions of these games are rare and (very) expensive these days, so this book would have a limited audience. But I have all three games and will one day play them again and when I do this ‘bible’ will be extremely useful!

The above is the 1991 revised edition of the Wizardry TRPG rules for the tabletop game based on the video game series. I have read that the Wizardry TRPG was immensely popular back in Japan back in the day – competing even with D&D – but this is the first time I’d found a basic rule book for sale.

It’s got all the usual sections common to RPG rulebooks, and I like that the character sheet resembles those in the video games. I wonder what this game is like to play?

Speaking of the TRPG, I also bought the above. The two on the left are adventures, and on the right is a gamesmasters screen! These date to a few years before the rulebook above, which suggest they were intended for the first edition rules (which I’ve never seen). These were expensive, and only a maniac would buy them if he couldn’t even read them…

The above was an incredible find, not only because I’d never heard of it but also because I have since read it is ‘extremely rare’! It’s a Wizardry card game named after the ultimate wizard spell ‘Tiltowait’!

The description said it was ‘opened but never played’ and while the flimsy cardboard box had seen better days the cards themselves don’t show any evidence of use so I’m guessing the description was accurate.

Amusingly this is a reskin of Uno using monsters and spells from Wizardry as card art. From the included rules it seems ‘Tiltowait’ is the Draw 4 equivalent and other spells (‘Haman’ etc.) correspond to the other effect cards in Uno, with a few additions such as counter and discard spells.

The last game pickups from the trip were the above Switch titles. All of these are compilations of arcade games – mostly shooters. Taito Milestones 3 was purchased not just because it includes Cadash but also all three Rastan games and both Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Islands. It’s one of the very best arcade compilations I’ve seen! The game on the right is the special edition of Mushihimesama, the insect-themed Cave shooter.

Lots of treasures here, but alas my grails once again eluded me. The hunt will continue in future trips…

Posted in Blog, Books, Collecting, Gamebooks, Japan, Otaku, Retro | Comments Closed

Japan Pickups: Crane Games

Sunday, January 12th, 2025

As with any Japan trip, we visited many game centers and were tempted by countless crane game prizes. These run the gamut from figures to toys to housewares to clothing to food to…

To a box of ziplock containers! Sometimes I wonder if the operators just put anything in a machine to see what people will try to win?

An attempt usually costs ¥100 (about 65 US cents) although some newer or more desirable prizes can cost ¥200 a go. There’s a lot of randomness and frustration involved with the machines, and one of the announcements periodically piped over the AV at one Akiba game center is on the nail when it simply says “You are unlikely to win”! The fun is in the trying though, and winning is icing on the cake.

I won two ‘prize figures’ (the term used to describe figures primarily available via crane games) this past trip. The first – Marin from Dress-Up Darling – cost me ¥4600 which is a ridiculous amount (that’s 46 tries!) but the character is a current favourite of mine. Here’s a better look:

I like this because it’s small! I didn’t know when I won her, but it’s also a very high demand prize figure right now, and we rarely saw it in the resellers (shops which sell prize figures) and the few times we did it was ¥5000 or more.

A few days after I won the above, a new figure of the same character came out and literally overnight was featured in many machines in every game center we visited:

That’s four machines at Gigo in Akiba.

And four others at an Ikebukuro arcade. If you look closely you’ll see they show off the figure in the machine, to tempt you further:

I got very lucky with this one, winning it in only four attempts (¥400). With so many in machines it was readily available at the resellers, but even then she was ¥2500 or more. Here’s mine:

She’s a lot bigger than the other Marin, and once I open her she’ll probably go in one of my curios.

In addition I bought the above two from resellers. They were each inexpensive (¥1500, or about $10) and the boxes were lightweight and not too big. I bought Shalltear (on the right) because I’d watched some episodes of Overlord the night before and I found her character funny! I don’t know anything about the character on the left but I like that one of her pupils is a clock 🙂

Buying figures at resellers can be challenging due to the abundance of choice. Many new prize figures appear in crane games weekly and the better resellers have hundreds to choose from! You may desire a particular character only to find five or more to choose from, some with multiple colour variants! Most prize figures are inexpensive, but occasionally older or very desirable/rare figures can be over $100.

On the last morning, during my Akiba ‘speedrun’ before we left for the airport, I was determined to win KLS a cute stuffed frog from a machine at Hirose in Akiba. I’d put a few yen in it the day before without luck, but money was to be no object this morning.

I was alone in the arcade except for an employee who I could tell was watching me repeatedly failing. After about ¥1500 in attempts I asked him if he had any suggestions and he obviously took pity on me by opening the machine and putting the frog right on the precipice (as you can see above)! Even then victory wasn’t certain but when I failed he did it again and I suspected he was going to ensure my victory. What a nice guy! The next go, the frog was mine.

Kristin was very happy with the frog, who will now live happily on a shelf.

Posted in Blog, Japan, Otaku, Toys | Comments Closed

Henshin-A-Go-Go-Baby

Thursday, November 7th, 2024

Remember Tamagotchi? They’re still around, and there’s loads of licensed ones now. Such as this one:

It’s tiny and inexpensive – I paid about $12 – and the fact it’s a Kamen Rider ‘gotchi was irresistible. So I bought one and turned it on, and my first ‘rider boy’ soon arrived:

The above shows the ‘boy’ chilling, eating and being attacked by Shocker troops. There’s not much interaction aside from pushing a button now and then, and it seems even if you forget all that happens is he gets sad:

There’s a couple of rudimentary games to play (that I mostly ignored) and 24 hours after the ‘boy’ is born he turns into an actual Kamen Rider:

What are their names? I think the right is Kamen Rider Saber, but the others I don’t know. The device has 48 Riders in it (some of which are ‘secret’) and despite the tiny resolution they seem to be decent representations of Riders from each era of the show. I’ve not yet watched the 7 Kamen Rider DVD box sets I’ve already bought but once I do I’m sure I’ll know their names 🙂

The riders stay around for 48 hours before ‘leaving to help someone else’, which looks like this:

And then, with a push of the reset button, the cycle begins anew. I ‘played’ it for two weeks and saw five riders at which point I’d lost interest. It’s cute and funny for a while, but as with all Tamagotchi (and I’ve got about half a dozen now) the appeal fades fast.

Maybe I’ll return after I’ve watched some of those DVDs!

Posted in Otaku, Toys | Comments Closed

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