A few final Wonder Festival industry notes before the big event tomorrow, including Akiyama Koubou’s 1/1 scale Ayanami Rei, the surprise appearance of voice actresses from Kodomo no Jikan and Potemayo, and the world’s first ever tote bag made from a gym uniform. We’ll be bringing you coverage of all the Wanfesu action starting tomorrow night, so be sure to stop by and check it out!

Some exciting news today for old-school fans of the amply endowed 2D chest: veteran CG artist Gegera is on duty for budget eroge maker Pin-Point’s newly unveiled Bakunyuu Chikan Train, a title scheduled for release on September 28th in both download and package versions. As my Gegera fandom is practically synonymous with my interest in 2D ero overall I’m quite happy to see him finally moving beyond the realm of his biannual Comiket CG collection releases into something more substantial; here’s hoping this marks the beginning of a long and successful career in game design. (no more)

I’m ordinarily not much of a hinyuu fan, but when this Plug-chan kit appeared on the horizon back in April I was psyched. The second coming of Mahoromatic in an ero-ero vinyl suit – is this really Kotobukiya we’re talking about? Indeed it is, and it seems they’ve gone the rare extra mile to make this a figure to remember.

In the prurient interests of comprehensive figure coverage, some updates on a few of the items we’ve been following here recently: Akiba Blog scoops the castoffability of Megahouse’s soon to be released Queen’s Blade Tomoe figure, albeit the limited color edition. Updated Amiami listings also bring good news, in the form of new shots of Taki Corporation’s ero-ero Kanu Unchou Ikkitousen kit and Movic’s recently announced Sekirei Tsukiumi and Matsu; relevant images reproduced below:

As the post title says, you’ll notice a few tweaks in the sidebar over the past couple of days. Firstly we’ve got a new poll, asking a very straightforward question: Among the big summer otaku events in Japan, which gets you revved up the most? Comic Market (doujinshi, cosplay), Wonder Festival (garage kits, figures, cosplay), Chara Hobby (Gundam, toys, figures), and the Tokyo Game Show (games, cosplay, September is really part of summer in Japan for reals) are the four contenders. A glance at the sidebar will also reveal the presence of a couple of blog feeds we’ve decided to feature here, from EvoSpace over at Akihabara Channel and Zepy at Canned Dogs, two of the best Japan subculture news blogs RSSing today. We hope you’ll favor them with your patronage! Results of the previous poll can be found below:

Two significant developments today in the saga of the world’s first “Purichichi” contoured hug pillow (earlier reports here and here): first, Hobby Channel scoops the finished product with additional release information and production details. The pillowcase is scheduled to retail from Toranoana in September at 9,450 yen (or 15,750 yen in a set with accompanying pillow), and is a whopping 60×170 cm in size – significantly larger than the average 50 x 150 cm dakimakura pillowcase. The price for the pillowcase alone is surprisingly reasonable (when compared to similar items), though it does only have a single illustration; on the other hand 6,300 yen for a pillow seems like a huge ripoff, though that may be due to the non-standard size… The second related scoop comes from eroge maker G.J? and illustrator Sano Toshihide, who’s character art adorns said pillowcase: the official Anata no Shiranai Kangofu page was updated yesterday with several bits of new material, including a site-exclusive decent resolution shot of the pillowcase cover featuring the game’s heroine, Shiratori Amane. The lack of a preorder listing on the Toranoana mail order site is giving me the jitters; I’m worried that I’ll blink and miss it and it’ll be lost to the wilds of overpriced Yahoo auctions for ever. Needless to say we’ll be providing further updates on this as they appear. (no more)