Really guys. It’s not. It’s just a pre-sale. I’m sick and tired of reading blog and blog insisting that it’s only going to be sold during WF.

Why am I irked? Because I don’t want posts of “HEY I BOUGHT THIS WF EXCLUSIVE FOR 21302302930YEN” and right after the September main release, they start committing figure suicide. :\

I double checked this so really.

Mikatan’s blog says this:

9月発売予定の一般販売に先駆けて、ワンフェス会場・特別会場のみでの先行販売が決定いたしましたー！Σヾ(ﾟДﾟ)ﾉ

Which roughly translates that there will be a normal release in September. The WF release is a special pre-sale release.

Someone with equal or higher Japanese knowledge, please prove me wrong.

Gasp! Someone blundered!

Walking home from work one day, Konata chanced upon a shocking scene. A body! She found a body!

It was Koizumi Itsuki! Konata could never imagine finding him in such a state.

“Are you alright, Itsuki-kun?” Konata asks, while propping him arm. She delicately avoids his injury. “How did you get into this situation!? Was it an alien attack? Or some gangsters? Or maybe Haruhi?”

Itsuki smiles, despite the immense pain that he’s in. “Ah heheheh. Well….”

“It was one of my rabid fans. ^__^” He replies.

Konata loses her interest almost immediately. “Cheh!”

In all my years of figure collecting, I have never ever damaged a figure or have had a damaged figure.

Now I was trying to pose Itsuki and BAM, with a neat Kit-Kat crack, his arm snaps off. HOLY SHIT. I AM IN SHOCK. AND IN DISTRESS. I need another Itsuki arm! I’m trying to salvage his arm by TRYING to extract the joint left in the upper arm so I can try to glue it back to the whole joint but it’s not budging. I am in shock.

ITSUKIIII. You just have to be the first figure I break! And I was gentle. Really gentle!

Evidence that not REALLY my fault - part of the joint is recessed into the arm-part itself! Is it supposed to be like this? It restricts arm movement! Hence the breakage! ):

Does anyone know if Goodsmile has replacement parts for Itsuki? ):

Update: Managed to get the joint out. Just the upper part of the joint (the one shown in the above pic) to try to pry it out. D:

Guess what I picked up today?

Looks like you guys know what reviews I’ll be doing!!! X3

Just a note, updates on IYB:TD won’t be coming fast and furious for the next couple of weeks. My summer term lessons start tomorrow and I’ll be preparing for my study trip to Japan for the next two weeks! (More on that at a later date) I will update, of course. But probably not really intensely. I have a few figure reviews in store. However, do check out my flickr account if you’re bored! XD

Here’s the belated post on my STCC Haul for both days! I really outdid myself but didn’t get all the things I wanted because I was too indecisive. Namely, I was too late to get the first pick of Gloomy Goods (SOBS. MY PINK PLUSH, AND THE BAGS. AND THE WKJ:AWEWEWAN:SD); I flopped over getting DEVILROBOT prints and well yeah. ): Regrets abound. Was contemplating getting an IFS print of Pepper but didn’t too. Why am I indecisive like this? :\ Ne’ermind. Hopefully they’ll come again (namely Mori Chack, DEVILROBOTS and IFS) for next year’s STCC and I’ll skip whatever class I have to be there. Especially for Mori Chack. I’m going to comment on his blog later and demand that he comes back next year. I will sponsor his flight!!! (I think I can come up with cash if I save a bit every month!)

OKAY I’M GOING OUT OF MY TOPIC.

HAUL.

Here’s the blind-box items that I got. Tofu-Oyako, TokiDoki’s milk can, StrangeCo’s MR TTT and Monsterism’s Pets & Owners.

Part of my Gloomy Haul. Wish I got more. D: SOBS.

Kubrick+Be@rbrick Gloomy; Chax pins; White Christmas Gloomy; and a random Sheep-pig :D()

Jump behind the cut!

Gloomy stickers and postcards. These will go on my future Mac.

SIGNED! :D <3 I used to write “Soshi” in hiragana, but recently (~a year ago) switched it to katakana. Hearts for Mori Chack-san! (I use Chack and Chax interchangeably!)

DEVILROBOTS haul. Mainly stickers and postcards. Also will go onto my Mac.

Extra postcard I forgot to include.

Kubricks and be@rbricks! These were my brothers. I bought them/helped him pay for them though. So yeah, part of my haul. Sex Pistols FTW!

Freebie haul. Most of them will be up for sale. :D()

Fortune Gundams; Ice-cream monster; Kidrobot; Negima Figumates; To-fu blanks; STCC be@rbricks (the white one is somewhere…); Naruto stylus; StrangeCo Ledkins

Tokidoki haul. Not a really big fan - except for his Onitsuka Tiger design. Stickers, mainly. Plus a free fan.

Book haul! The Filth, illustrated by Gary Erskine; and IFS artbooks. All signed!

My sole print for the day (I wish I had more prints. I realized that I could decorate the sliding door with them! So actually I do have wall space!). Pete Fowler’s print. Signed.

DEVILROBOTS poster!

Gary Erskine poster! Signed.

MONSTERISM poster. :D

Yep. I think I’m slowly growing out of the ZOMG ANIME FIGURE phase and returning to the trap of designer toys. I managed to escape them a while back but looks like the STCC managed to sucker me in. :D() I like well-designed things, what can I say!

Alrighty! Yesterday saw Day Two (and the final day) of the STCC come to a close! I was at Suntec around 10am to queue up for the free Be@rbrick for my brother (he collects ‘em) so yeah. The queue was already LOOOONG when we got there so my brother and I spent most of our time playing the NDS we share (well actually it’s mine, but what the heck).

The queue for the initial freebie was far more organized that what occured earlier yesterday (save for the 5pm collection) so like I’ve been repeating myself - PI Events has relatively good crisis management skills. At least they didn’t commit the same disasterous mistake, like how Singaporeans tend to do. :\

Yes so after collecting our white be@rbricks, we headed off to the convention hall.

Granted that we were one of the earliest visitors, the hall was refreshingly spacious. By that I mean no frenzied crowds like yesterday. Plus, no aimless visitors eithers. Most people knew what they wanted to get and stayed out of each other’s way most of the time. :D

Yeah Nintendo booths. My brother went and asked a booth babe how she got the job. Alas, as expected of booth babes, she didn’t know. Her friend introduced her. =A=;;

With a lot more time and a lot less people in my way, I could actually take a leisurely walk around the hall and take a good look at the exhibits. Met 0ne (omg, sorry I got your name wrong!!!! ): )at the IFS booth and bought Imaginary Redux - got Artgerm to sign it for me! Hurrah! I wore the Animal Square Panda shirt (I’ve got Sergeant Moo too!) yesterday and he recognized it. Well duh, it’s his design. But it was ages ago - like four years ago? I didn’t think anyone would still remember that Animal Square would exist! I was on the forums too I think.

I think I might’ve sounded rude when he said “Hey that’s my shirt!” and I replied, “Yeah I know! :D” so I APOLOGIZE! DDD:

Artist designer types are so cool. <3 I love them all. I’d love to release my own line of toys/designs in the future but everything’s limited to my sketchbooks at the moment.

Since I was there early and there was virtually no queue, I headed over to the Star Wars toy exhibit. Nostalgia overload dude! My dad would have totally enjoyed this. Actually, my brother too - but he went wandering off for be@rbricks. =A=;;

I have a sudden urge to rewatch the original trilogy again.

At around 11 or 12, I met up with my cousin (if you saw a lolita in a light blue dress and rocking horse shoes, that’s my cousin. Sadly not me.) and the three of us walked around for a bit. Visited more booths and gushed over how awesome Mori Chack is. And then we headed over to the Blythe stall.

We’re all genuine pop culture kids, bred on 1990s cartoons and a fusion of anime meets quirky Westerns. Loli-cousin was contemplating over whether she should get a limited edition Blythe and became all the rage in the booth with her BTSSB outfit (head to toe dude!). And no, you can’t have her number. She ended up buying it, with one of the staff and me egging her on. XD

I actually left the area to get a cup of coffee before heading back around 3pm to queue for the StrangeCo giveaway. Which I kind of regret. Because I found out that during that time, Mori Chack was selling the walls of his booth - signed, for $10. Like what the bloody fuck, I totally missed it for Ledkins. =A=;; I fail at life. ORZ

After feeling sorry for myself, I headed back to the IFS booth to grab Imagine. I told myself that if they still had copies after 5pm, I’d get one. So yeah, I bursted my budget and got a couple of artists to sign my copy! :D Huzzah! Really inspiring, their art. Makes me want to draw again.

Anyway, that was it for my STCC Day 2. I avoided all the cosplaying action because well. Naaah. I’ll save my memory card for next week. :D() Plus, I had to rush off to meet a really cute Japanese girl after that. HURHURHUR.

Haul for yesterday:

Full fotoset Here.

First things first, the event was badly organized - and I mean from the ground up: the layout of the event was horrific and a cesspit for traffic jams and rotten displays of bad Singaporeans.

TO BE CONTINUED WHEN I RECOVER

Hello fellow pop-culture enthusiasts! Rather, Japanese pop culture enthusiasts, because well - you’re reading this weblog after all.

So anyway, after I finished my morning classes (hence my manic exhaustion after I returned) I zipped off to Suntec City’s Convention Centre to meet up with my ubercool Dad who had been touring the event for the past 3 hours or so. All kinds of awesome here. He passed me his set (yes set) of passports and showed me some of the stuff he managed to get (like the be@rbricks for my brother’s collection) and left me to battle the crowds by myself.

You know you’re a real loser fan when you go conventions by yourself carrying loads of equipment and swag.

Okay yes, onto the STCC itself.

For one, I love the fact - and am very appreciative of it! - that P.I. took the effort to plan this inaugural event. But frankly speaking, it wasn’t enough effort. As you can tell by my er, rather short introduction I posted earlier last night (before I was knocked out for 348127312 hours), the layout of the convention hall was atrocious. All this resulted in 1) extremely pissed off queues (which were thankfully resolved so thumbs up for their crisis management); 2) which led to extremely pissed off parents who were screaming and yelling (my dad would never do that. He’d just call the management and yell at them immediately instead of screaming at grunts); 3) horrific human traffic jams which everyone can attest to.

Otherwise, the event was peachy keen.

I’m not sure if I mentioned this earlier, but the STCC perhaps, is trying too hard - to cram everything sweet about pop culture into the nice package of one convention hall. It is probably more expensive to rent out another convention hall but seriously guys, it’d make up for the human jams and probably maximize casual visits because everyone won’t be turned off by the crowd.

Side note: It amused me about how many people had (d)SLRs in there. And young kids/people at that. I mean, what the fuck. The best ironic thing that happened was this girl (like secondary school or JC age) who had this swanky looking dSLR was well, told by this more professional photographer (HI I’M BEING TOTALLY AGEIST HERE) that she needed to look after the camera better. HA HA. PWNED.

I managed to actually hit some booths amidst the crazy crowds so my trip wasn’t for naught (I need to leave in like 10 minutes for Day 2). Spent hours queueing for the freebies which I genuinely wanted (snobbism here lulz) and hurrah got my tofu blanks! Shall think of ways of how to design them soon enough. Plus the Icecream monsters - which I kind of hoped would be bigger. They’ll look nice on my shelf. I’m probably going to sell the Negima! figumates off since well, I’m not really a fan and they just shoved those at me. ):

Vistited Mori Chack (HURRAH <33333) and went all fangirly on him. I went all Japanese mode and told him that I was a big fan - not that he couldn’t see it. I had my Gloomy Bear pencil case with all the swings plus the Baby Gloomy plush. Which I made him sign. <3 He was like telling all his staff that I was ubercool (or maybe that’s secret code for: she’s creepy). So yes. Had people asking me where I got the bear. DUDE GO TO JAPAN <3 BUY ORIGINAL GLOOMYS!

After that… after that I was lost in the crowd for a while. My bag was bursting with schoolbooks and other unwanted items so I went and queued for teh freebies. I will admit here that I cut the queue. But wait, let me explain myself! THERE WAS NO SEMBLANCE OF A QUEUE. Like it suddenly disappeared so I found the “end” and just joined in. No one objected. Because everyone else after me (and before) thought that this was the “end” of the queue.

Bad queue management P.I! They managed to resolve things during the second collection time though.

So while waiting for the second collection to start, I tried to walk around. Not a good idea, and had rough time. Dude. Not fun. ;__;

I mainly stopped by devilrobots, Gary Erskine, tokidoki (very briefly), Playbeast, the Blythe and BJD booths, StrangeCo, the Taiwan toybooth, Toumari and… Well I managed to circle around the area for a while but got obscured from most booths because of the CROWD.):

PHOTOS.

Kind of below my expectations (for myself) in phototaking. Most of the photos came out too blur - or grainy in Sports Mode. But hey! Better than a misused DSLR.

GOTTA ZIP OFF NOW.

My haul for Day One (probably not going to buy anymore and I’m going to do a proper post on my haul):

Told you I was a pop culture enthusiast. ;D

While I’m procrastinating from writing my monolog due for tomorrow’s class, I dug up a couple of photos I took last month.

So anyway, a few of my friends (who are indie arty-farty to the max) and I headed down to Old School a month or two back. After running around the premises for some shots, we settled down at Recess - a quaint little cafe reminiscent of old school canteens and tuckshops. Nostalgia 101 anyone?

The food is slightly pricy (especially when you remember that well, it’s recess and food never cost that much back in Primary/Elementary school) but most of their fares justify the price. I reccommend trying their fusion teas if you happen to pop by. Refreshing stuff!

Haruhi loves it too!

The dishes take some time to prepare so you probably need to order some finger food to stave off your hunger - or just don’t go there when you’re starving.

Like how Haruhi was. She demands food. And lots of it!

I didn’t bring a tripod along with me which made my photos fall under the hands of the monstrous BLUR MONSTER and SHAKYHANDS DEMON. The dim lighting in Recess also made the shots a lot harder to take.

Lonely Lulu, who never gets enough love from me nowadays!

Disclaimer: I was clearing my files and I found a series of short (100-350 words) expositions on readings I did for my Japanese Studies 101 course - so I thought - why not post them up?

These are topics I’d love to do more research into, and look deeper into. So yup! Here goes!

When manufactured Pop Idols don’t live up to their prototype

Hiroshi Aoyagi is undoubtedly proud of Japan’s success in creating and sustaining the idol and tarento industry as we can see from his emphasis on how Japanese pop idols have not only inspired their youth, but Asian youths to believe in the potential of Asia (as opposed to the superiority of the West). However, while he does provide a thorough introduction on the pop-music industry, he fails to address the presence of failed instances of ‘foreign’ idols following the Japanese model.

Singapore has had her own fair share of talent-time competitions and various “idol” contests throughout the years, yet it is quite possible to say that no local star/idol has ever reached the barest minimum of success that Japanese idols have, despite the latter’s so-called homogeneity. This leads us to question why the Japanese model fails in our local setting.

It is indeed strange that Singaporeans are incredibly receptive to Japanese, Taiwan and Hong Kong idols, yet do not even bat an eyelid when presented with our own local versions. Perhaps one reason could be the fact that our local entertainers are, in contrast to how Japanese idols are received, too alike the average person. The melting-pot culture of Singapore exposes us to a slew of various exoticized and inherently different cultures of other countries, so much so that it is possible that we lose interest in our own manifestation of the pop idol. The messages carried by foreign, more ‘successful’ Asian idols seem more realistic from them rather than Singaporeans – after all, they command significant economic power and ‘soft’ power over the region.

Even so, how far can we ‘manufacture’ Singaporean idols. There seems to be an implication that while we enjoy this ‘homogeniety’ of multi-talents from the rest of Asia, we tend to cast a too-critical eye on our own local talents. A good example would be how segregated our music industry is from the acting industry. Very rarely do actors sing, or singers act and if they do so, the public is all too critical of their lack in corresponding skill. This could be due to a reluctance from both producers (in not wanting to gamble in an uncertain arena), and also the performers themselves who perhaps refuse to compromise their already established skill for a marketing whim.

References

Aoyagi, Hiroshi.  2000. “Pop Idols and the Asian Identity,”  in T. J. Craig (ed) Japan Pop!  Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture.  309-26. New York: M. E. Sharpe.

Condry, Ian.  2001.  “Japanese Hip-Hop and the Globalization of Popular Culture.”  In G. Gmelch and W. Zenner (eds) Urban Life: Readings in the Anthropology of the City.  Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.