Plastikitty

Welcome to another week of wallet-killing goodness! This was a particularly spectacular week of releases, with big-name releases from Alter and Good Smile Company, the sexiest male figure ever, a stunning Nendoroid, some hilariously big-breasted girls, and even more! So hit the jump to check them all out (and weep at how much money we are all going to have to spend in September).

Depending on what your other hobbies are, there’s potentially a good chunk of crossover with figure collecting. Anime, manga, video games and comics certainly have a large presence in the PVC figure world, and if you branch out to vinyl you’ve got overlap with pop culture, modern art, and design. Then add in dolls you’ve got sewing and miniatures! But of course there are a lot of hobbies that have absolutely no overlap with figures, and sadly a lot of mine fall into this category.

Some of the things I love that never seem to have any presence in collecting, like tea and books, but that’s obviously not really a surprise. So you can imagine my excitement when I saw the concept art for Tony Taka’s Rufina: she’s holding a book and she’s the Princess of Tea! Not to mention the multitude of ruffles, lush color palette, and the gorgeous wings. It’s like they sat down at Kotobukiya and went, “that Leah chick is pretty cool, let’s make a figure just for her!” So was Rufina everything I imagined and more? Hit the jump to find out! (spoiler alert: she’s awesome!)

Welcome to this week’s pre-order roundup! Last week was Golden Week, and it was so barren that there weren’t enough figures to scrape together for a roundup. To make up for it this week is a doozy, packed to the brim with pretty ladies. There’s some game-related beauties, a few long-awaited releases, several (themed!) re-releases, our usual dose of Nendoroids and figmas, and a figure so bad it looks like it time-traveled from 2004. So hit the jump to check them out!

I don’t have a ton of male figures in my collection, and I find that for the most part they just don’t appeal to me. They’re either kind of blandly posed (Altair’s Yuri and Flynn) or just outrageously designed in a way that doesn’t float my boat (most of the P.O.P guys). That’s not to say that I don’t like all male figures: in fact, the few I have, like MegaHouse’s Zero or Kotobukiya’s Kaworu (review), I definitely love–and I’m always on the lookout for some diversity for our collection!

When I saw Kotobukiya’s new Akira, it hit all the right notes with me, especially the jacketless Damage Version. I actually had one of their Togainu no Chi figures way back when I started collecting but actually sold it–this Akira, however, definitely struck a different chord. Awesome pose, gorgeous face, ripped clothing, cool base–what more can you ask for in a male figure?

Much like January, our March order ended up coming in very late due to a mess-up on AmiAmi’s end. For some reason all of our March stuff was stuck together with April, creating a terrifying mega-order that nearly had our wallets jumping off a bridge. It took bout 2 weeks to get it all straightened out–which was particularly agony-inducing, as it was chock-full of figures we’d really been anticipating. So what exactly did we get for the first month of spring? Hit the jump to check it all out!