So today my brand spanking new gundam kit arrived in what I thought was a rather excessivly sized box. Looked like it could of shipped a small child it was so large. As the pics below should show as well this kit is indeed so big that it requires (rather gracious of Bandai) a carry handle to cart around; something i’ve never had the pleasure of seeing on a kit i’ve bought. Gone is the flimsy cardboard housing that could eaisly be taken apart by some theiving bastard to steal a precious runner which would leave you and your kit high and dry. This baby is fully enclosed, fully colored thick cardboard which looks like in itself would of cost a little bit to make.

It even has embossed kanji on the side of the box which makes it very pretty to display. Unfortunatly due to the weather and the time this guy arrived construction is schedualed to start tomorrow when I wake up so this is sort of a pre-build post just to show off the box. Next 2, 3 or mabye even 4 posts I do will be about the building of this bad boy. Fun times ahead!

PG Astray kit together with the Limited options kit. This includes an extra katana, stand for both weapons as well as clear armor plating that replaces 2/3rds of the armor on him, including head, shoulders, 1 arm, 1 leg, chest and waist,  allowing you to show his innards off.

This is the other side of the box. Spiffy no?

Next up we have a size comparison with the Strike gundam’s housing. As you can see the Astray box is around 2 – 3 inches taller and about 2 inches wider. More parts = more fun

And finally here we have the side of the box which has the handle on it as well as the embossing. So far this kit gets a 10/10 on box presentation

So… tomorrow starts a long day of sore shoulders and modeling. Many more pics to come.

Wow, quite a mouthful of a title. Next month will be a great month for Gundam Kit fans who have a wad of cash to burn (me) with the release of perhaps the best looking Perfect Grade (PG from now on) so far. What’s so special about it you may ask? Take 1 part samurai, add it to the Strike Gundam kit, add a sleeker more battle ready look and you get something along the lines of these pictures. If you look closely you’ll also noticew that this seems to be the basic, unpainted, un-lined kit. And that is just downright awesome because 99% of kits shots you see are the finished product of someone who has all the gear ready to go. This is how awesome this beast will look seconds after fitting the last part together. 

Please excuse the small pictures but since there are a few, it’ll save you time opening them. 

However with all this awesomeness comes the only downside. The cost. While this isn’t an issue for me because i’m an idiot, at $170 US excluding shipping, it isn’t exactly something that everyone can afford. In Australian that equates to about $260 or so. If your interested, head over to HLJ.com and you can see how much it’d be for you.

As you may remember i’ve mentioned my Perfect Grade Strike Gundam a bit in some of my posts. This is usualy in reference to another gundam kit or just addons i’ve bought for it. Well about a 2 hours ago I was reposing my guy and stupidly put him on on my 7 foot high book shelf, standing on 1 leg, and went across the other side of my room to gather some parts for him to look his best. Some of you can no doubt tell where this is going. While I was picking out the parts for him to hold, there was a huge SMASH and sound of shattering plastic. Yup. My poor widdle Striker fell off the top of the shelf and smashed onto the floor. Sad face.

However despite all logic telling me that there is no way he could be put together after that, I am amazed that all that was wrong with him was that he lost the white armor parts on his shoulders, his head popped off and 1 of his butt flaps came out. All of which was repaired within 5 minutes with no  traceable damage. You really have to hand it to Bandai’s gundam division. Not only are they able to faithfully recreate the robots in all their 13″ glory, split them into 500 – 900 parts and then give instructions on how to build the damn thing, but they are able to withstand a 7 foot fall onto solid wood flooring and come out with the equivilent of a couple of scratches. And this is with no glue or screws at all. +1 for craftsmanship

Faint red outline is the white part that came off, which I like better without it on. The part with the X105 sticker on it also popped off but that was very easy to just press back on.

My Revoltech Eva-01 found himself a nice seat. Shame S.G’s fingers are all dumb looking. Didn’t notice that. Also didn’t notice that it looks like he is saluting the camera. 

The shoulder flaps make an exellent seat for other figures. Pay no attention to the brown water either, I assure you it’s just the light in the house playing tricks.

While this post isn’t technicly anime related, it is refering to something extremely anime like and that is the brilliant movie from 2005, Final Fantasy 7 Advent Children. Chances are you’ve seen this, loved it and if you have a blu-ray dvd player maybe even wondered 

“When oh when will this movie come to blu-ray? It is a must!” 

Well put away your petitions because on April 16 the offical japanese blu-ray release of this will take place. If that alone isn’t enough to get you excited then perhaps this little bit of news will. Not only will the movie be in super high definition, but will also come with 20 to 30 minutes of extra footage. Thats a lot of extra awesome. On top of even that however is that the extra scenes will be dubbed into english for the japanese release.  Wether that means the japanese version will come with a total english track and subtitles is still unknown to me personaly but we can hope right?

However if those features don’t strike you as worthy of consideration then perhaps this will. In special copies (that you must no doubt reserve) will come the first demo of Final Fantasy XIII. That is right. The first playable demo of the incredible looking game for the PS3. But that is STILL not all. On top of all this extra stuff are the first trailers to Final Fantasy Versus XIII and Final Fantasy Agito XIII in all their High Def glory. However if all that doesn’t get you excited then there may not be any hope for you. Mabye Hello Kitty Online is more up your alley.

Oh get your mind out of the gutter already. Honestly… Well due to some unfortunate circumstances, the huge post I had written up is now useless as every one of the 40 odd pictures I took to accompany it were deleted by family members. *sigh* All That I can do is show off a picture of the finished result of my PG Strike Gundam, with the recently bought and constructed Striker Unit addon. Here is the big guy all finish, sprayed and posing his ass off on top of my desk..

I’m pretty bummed about not being able to follow up on my last gundam post which was ages ago. I went to a lot of trouble to have photos of nearly every step I did and even before/after shots of the pieces I had already constructed. Oh well though. So as I had this package arriving today I thought this to be a decent substitute, as i’m a bit low on stuff to write about today. Perhaps next time will be about an ongoing anime or something. Time will tell. Anyway.

So today the 2 things I ordered arrived. a PVC statue of Choco from Chocotto Sister, and a trading figure box from Pantsu/Strike Witches.

Well I that is the box itself, and pay no attention to my monitor… I was watching Zero no Tsukaima season 3 at the time I took these. Perhaps a little bit of shameless advertising for them but honestly HLJ.com are the best place i’ve found to buy anime related goods and random toys from japan. The stuff they have is cheap, very fast shipping (they can ship my order on a friday, and i’ll have it monday) and a pretty damn big selection of stuff. Ok plug over. 

This is what I actually bought. 

I was looking through HLJ one day and they were having a sale of old things that never sold. Fair enough I thought, there is bound to be something cool in here yeah? While there wasn’t a lot that interested me, I did find a ton of bargins such as things that were $110, but now selling for $15. Then I ran across this.

Way to cute to pass up and since I am a fan of the manga (never seen the actual anime however im in the process of fixing that now) I figured i’d pick it up since it was only $20. The super cute Choco. I wont go into the actual story of the show itself since that isnt the point of this post but rather just to show off some cute things.  

Next up we have the Strike Witches figures. There are 7 in the set, and come in a box of 10, all randomly picked so unfortunately I was 1 short of the whole set. To make matters even more disappointing, that 1 missing happened to be my favorite character… Lucchini. Oh well though.

And Finally, in no relation to anything mentioned above, I give you 1 of the best scenes/series enders in anime history. For those that don’t know, this is from the 2nd season of the show Zero no Tsukaima. In case you wanted a bit of a backstory for this, and I must warn that spoilers will be posted from here on so if you don’t wish to view them don’t read further or watch the video. The guy in the video, Saito, has gone to fight an army of 70,000 on his own in order to protect the girl he loves (Louise). If you were wondering as well yes technical he does die, although he is brought back to life and returns to Louise in the last moments of the same episode so there is a happy ending. This also happens to be 1 of the scenes where I started to tear up because it really is such a sad, sad set of episodes leading up to the cresendo you see now. 

Saito, for all your flaws and bog standard anime male lead features, when you’re trying to protect Louise, you become such a bad ass.

This fan made CO2 gun actually shoots and looks like one of the guns found in the Gungrave anime and games. It can hurt you and that’s likely why it’s not for sale. It would have been perfect if there was a similar case and a silver version of the gun to make the pair.

There’s one odd thing about Gungrave: There’s not much of tie between the fandom of the anime and the video games. The anime was more realistic and included romance while the games from Sega were mindless but very styled. Gungrave the anime wasn’t bad, but it has two sides to it. From the start it’s about the friendships and the mafia, but later changes focus on Grave and his powers. Worth watching for drama or playing to shoot everything up in the games…just depends on your interest.