Riuva : Research Institute for Unicultural Visual Arts

I got my pay yesterday. Between paying off the debts, eating a full meal for the first time in weeks and getting more anime goods, there was only one choice. So I went and got some affordable ones. Life is about priorities.

The best purchase would be this 8 dollar keychain of the Laughing Man logo. Good quality rubber, very crisp molding and a ring plus a crabclaw. I now can either hang it around my neck (which I did and still do) or hang it as a earring. Fantastic. Now I can proudly show my respect and GitS fanboyism. Get it from Aniplay.

The others are all pencil boards. I decided not to follow through with my usual OM of buying all the series I watch, but decided to go for only the good looking boards. Hence I skipped Kiba and a few others. But Honey and Clove, another School Rumble, Inukami and ARIA were purchased.

The Honey and Clover board is very sweet, with Ayu and Hagu lying on a grass field surrounded by balloons with the males’ chibi faces on them. The reverse side showed everyone relaxing together in a more normal position. Nice. This is a good buy. And I will watch episode 11 after this post.

The Inukami pencil board was a must-get for me because I think it’s a wonderful harem show. But sadly, there are a few undesirable parts that could have been better. Youko looks a bit weird and flat-chested and the "Inukami" title was in ENGLISH. Damn, the hiragana looked way cooler. We do get manly bits like the dancing muscle fairies and a naked Keita so it’s still great. Out of the 10 Inukami, only Nadeshiko (ugh), Tayune and Tomohane are featured. While I like the latter two as well, the lack of Gokyouya is a sore disappointment. The reverse side is a more battle-styled picture, with Keita arming his frogs, Youko with his Daijyaen, and young grandma with her inukami.

School Rumble Nigakki’s pencil board is great. I like the SR character designs,especially the anime ones, a lot and this is a great picture of Eri and her friends hanging out in class. The lack of Akira is an annoyance but the reverse side makes up for it. On the back, the four girls are cooking chocolate cookies. Man.. both these sides are so good they should be two different boards.

The Aria board is different from the others in that it is a clear and soft plastic one with no reverse face. I actually bought it because I needed to make my purchase above 20 bucks to get one stamp. So between a chibi Rozen Shinku, a Kiba and a Moe Shana, I picked this. May have been a mistake. There is a short paragraph of rather proper English describing the story of Aria too.