Riuva : Research Institute for Unicultural Visual Arts

Tomorrow is the annual EOY cosplay event, which I am still undecided over whether to attend. It’s for a rather silly reason, because I feel attending means that I am still very otaku, despite my previous resolutions of "diversifying my interests". But logically speaking, not attending a convention because one feels "otaku" doing so, and then buying 200 dollars worth of figurines and manga the day before is the epitome of hypocrisy.

Loot.

I went to pick up my Tsuruya-san figurine, only to realise that it was the Alter version that got released and not the Max Factory one which I preordered. Yet they look the same. Great! But it wasn’t a wasted trip, because the shop guy persuaded us to get Danboard Revoltech, which was extremely adorable and by far the best-looking revoltech. He also gave us a huge discount, which was the main reason why.

I spotted a huge line up of Armoured Core model kits, with even more varieties of add-on weaponry and equipment, going for less than the price of Gunpla of the same scale. Now, it is common knowledge that the AC series by Kotobukiya looks far better than the typical 1/100 scale Gundam, has more details and is hugely customisable without the need for modding. Yet why do people still buy Gundam?

I am thinking of getting a group of friends to each buy one AC chasis and some weapon packs and creating a unique AC each. That would be cool.

Over at KKnM, I picked up Kurogane’s Megami featuring a Shana pencil board which apparently can sell for lots of money. I also collected the preordered Clare figurine from Megahouse and it is extremely nice. Having just finished watching Yakitate Japan and ruing my missed opportunity to purchase the figurines of Tsukino, the bikini version was right there and I bought her as well.

Finally, I picked up a doujin artbook by the local circle Collateral Damage featuring Tera. To be honest, I only pre-ordered it because quite a few of the artists in the circles are my friends, but upon receiving the goods, it was a pleasant surprise to see the extremely high standard of art. The artbook also comes with two CDs of original music soundtrack and 2 prints of the Vocaloids (I think a regular pack has only one, but because I am awesome, they gave me 2, apparently, thanks!). The artbook is going to be sold tomorrow at EOY, so do pick it up. It’s probably better than 98 percent of the stuff sold at Comiket. Detailed review to follow.

Other things include 5 manga, all shounen.