Doujin music invades Osaka

Doujin music convention M3 (Music MediaMix Market) is holding its 10th anniversary this year, and in commemoration the event is being held in Osaka for the first time ever. It’s scheduled for March 9th from 11:30 to 4:00 PM at the GRAND CUBE OSAKA, which is apparently a giant robot standing in the middle of the city. The event catalog is now on sale, and a list of the participating circles complete with site links can be found here. If you have some time to kill and want to go on a musical adventure that list comes highly recommended; if you’re in the Osaka area and manage to hit the event, drop me a line! I’d love to hear how things go down.

Comiket 74 Begins Today

In the midst of all the furor over the upcoming Wonder Festival it’s easy to forget that there are things other than figures in the world, but yesterday at 1:00 PM the payment deadline for the C74 online application quietly came and went. I barely squeaked in under the wire, which means I now have an additional week in which to draw a circle cut and fill out the rest of the rather voluminous application. The event itself isn’t until August, of course, but for those planning to sell there it’s already started… for further information on the circle participant’s road to Comiket I’d recommend checking out our feature on the subject, imaginatively titled The Road to Comiket.

Cobra-Kai meets Cobra-san

Sculpting circle Cobra-Kai has updated their official site with a new mascot! designed by veteran illustrator F.S of Queen’s Blade Menace, Echidna and Mellona fame, she’s tentatively known as “Cobra-san” and is scheduled to become a garage kit within the year (we don’t know whether Toushirou or Y乙Ｊ will be on sculpting duty, but here’s hoping for a version from both :3).

Zen and the art of molten hot resin

Following a recent string of professional PVC releases Tandem Twin is in the process of producing his first proper garage kit in a long time, and he’s been dispensing almighty justice on his blog with a detailed explanation of just how the “garage” part of the kit is done. It seems to involve oden on a dirty stove, and Legos… I’m familiar with the basics of kit construction, but it’s always fascinating to see just how hardcore and generally gritty the process is. So much respect for the artists and artisans who are capable of such exacting feats of craftsmanship.

Kotakudotting

While in internet time this is already ancient history, those browsing the site over the past weekend may recall some slow patches and moments of unavailability. That was thanks to a little mention we got over at Kotaku, which apparently piqued a lot of people’s interest… note to self: review more semi-castoffable fighting game figures. Or not.

Despite its questionable newsworthiness that link-through got HD it’s single biggest access day ever – well over 10,000 unique visits (and hundreds of thousands of page views) in the course of just a few hours, which effectively kneecapped the server. I’ll be doing my utmost to avoid letting such surges disrupt the site in the future.

Ryofu castoff explained

There were some inquiries recently as to exactly how Yamato’s Ryofu Housen PVC could be cast off, so I thought I’d document the process here. Removal of the skirt is pretty easy, and just requires some tugging once the torso is separated from the hips. The jacket is trickier; the inner seam of the jacket’s right arm is made to split cleanly and allows the arm to be extracted without much trouble, but the left arm can give some difficulty due to the elbow. The seam over the left shoulder is meant to split, as is the inner seam in the crook of her arm, but that space is quite narrow and will require some determined tugging to yank the arm free. This will do little if any visible damage to either the jacket or the skin of the kit however, which is a testament to the consideration they put into it (knowing that we’d be taking the thing off anyway, no doubt). With careful manipulation no permanent damage to either part will be visible.

That’s about it for today, except a quick reminder that Play-Asia’s Year of the Rat discount sale is still going on, and there are a lot of great figures to be had at very nice prices – Clayz’s battle-damaged Ryomou Shimei at 50% off, for instance. :3 All purchase made at the above links will help support this site, so anything you do decide to pick up is much appreciated!