Pre-order list: I still like to burn money!

Greetings fellow collectors, how has the year of 2014 been treating you so far? At least for me the first third has been fairly nice, the figures I pre-ordered are actually getting released. As far as overall figure releases the year has also been nice to me, lots of nice figmas and figuarts I want and some nice scaled figures to top them off. Let's get on with list alright?

May

Panzer vor!

Did any of you guys watch Girls und Panzer last year? Did you like it? It seems the show was pretty much hate it or like it from my point of view. Since I'm buying the figma of the leading lady Miho you can probably guess I enjoyed it. Never knew I would like tankery and tank battles as much as I did when I watched the show.

At first I wasn't all that interested when the figmas were first revealed, after all without the tank the girls are just... well... girls. However, while they don't actually come with parts to build a tank they do come with some nice related accessories depending on their role. As you can see Miho as the commander has the commanding seat and the binoculars. I read somewhere that apparently GSC was gonna release a tank kit for the Panzer the girls ride in I hope it's true.

If I had to say who my favorite girl from Girls und Panzer that would probably be Yukari, the resident Tank otaku from the show. I really liked Yukari, her enthusiasm for tankery and tanks was a bit infectious at times. Much like Miho she comes with some nice bits from her role as the Panzer's loader, I'm really digging that tank shell for some reason.

Although, if I had to say what my favorite part is it would be the awesome sex hair Yukari comes with, so lewd! :P

It seems like you've lost your love, oh sad Mr.reader! I, Cure Heart, will set your heart racing again!

Kyun~kyun~!

Have I ever mentioned I am a big Precure fan, I'm pretty sure I have several times before. As of this post I'm just one show and a couple of movies from having watched all of it, Precure 5 GoGo is the missing show for anyone curious, including the currently airing Happiness Charge Precure. Just recently Precure celebrated their 500th episode and this year is celebrating the franchise's 10th year anniversary. That's a lot of Precure I watched since Exilehero introduced me to it back in 2010.

I really, really must like Precure since I keep buying these S.H. Figuarts from Bandai. These figuarts sure keep getting the low end of the stick in my opinion, their releases are so spread apart and not in any timely fashion and their build quality leaves something to be desired sometimes.

Alas, here I am buying Cure Heart from last year's Doki Doki Precure. I liked her, probably one of the most capable leaders even if she was a bit of a Mary Sue in some episodes. Since I'm buying Cure Heart it probably means I will buy the rest of the girls, gotta keep the Precure merchandising machine going for more shows after all.

June

You know how I just mentioned Precure figuarts get the low of the stick right now? Cure March from Smile Precure is a nice example. Now only is she barely getting released this upcoming June, a whole two years since Smile Precure aired, she is also an exclusive. Three out of five girls from Smile were exclusives actually making them a bit more expensive than they really should have been.

It's ok, since I liked Cure March, she was a nice straight up no nonsense Precure as shown by her post transformation catch phrase. Plus, she was voiced by the always lovely Marina Inoue, have her voice a character and you got my interest.

After Cure March that leaves only Cure Sunny for me to complete the set, she already has a release date on MFC but I haven't been able to find her up for pre-order anywhere which is kinda odd.

Do you guys like Idolm@ster? I sure do after watching the anime, I really want to play the games. Alas I'm not fluent in Japanese enough that I can fully enjoy them. Even so I can still enjoy other aspects of it.

One such aspect of it is of course figures as you can see with the super cute Ranko from spin off card game THE iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls. I love her Chuunibyouness, something I find amusing as her voice actress Maaya Uchida voices a certain other Chuunibyo, and she looks super cute with her goth loli looks. Besides just look at that pouting expression, so darn adorable!

Luckily for the ones that like Ranko and wish she was a playable idol in the main games the recently released THE iDOLM@STER ONE FOR ALL has some DLC of interest for them.

May be I should pick up that game, I always wanted to play a console Idolm@ster game anyways.

One of the hottest properties right now has to be Kancolle the online game with anthropomorphized Japanese WWII era battle ships. While you could possibly know nothing about the game or its contents or anything about WWII era ships I bet a lot of people are familiar with poster girl Shimakaze. Heck just look at the last Comiket's winter braving cosplayers cosplaying as Shimakaze in such large numbers.

While I don't play the game, too much trouble in my opinion with the lottery and VPN stuff, it is an entertaining affair with plenty of girls to fit anyone's taste. While not a fan of Shimkaze as a character I do love her expressions in game and this figma, specially her "damaged" expression. Plus Shimakaze makes very good use of the improvements made with the figma 2.0 body, just look at that lovely tushie of hers!

Since I ordered here from the GSC web shop I wont be getting mine until some time in June but I will be getting an extra version of Rensouhou-chan with a different expression than the normal release.

Infinite Stratos is not the best show around, it has some... problems for a lack of a better word. These problems were definitely exacerbated during its second season not too long ago.

Still, if you were there just for the girls then you are in luck and the show delivered on that front. A while back Wave released a Beach Queen figure of Laura, sadly that figure turned out to be fairly popular and it sold out before I knew it. Haven't really checked recently but her second hand prices were a lot more than anyone should pay for a Beach Queen figure.

Luckily to the rescue of sorts comes Penguin Parade with this super cute embarrassed Laura. I never bought anything from Penguin Parade nor have any of my figure collecting buddies so this figure will be my first experience with them. I'm hopping things turn out well since this figure is just a little bit pricey for its 1/8th scale and would be a shame for my first experience to be a bad one.

A few years ago there was a show by Shaft called Bakemonogatari, each Blu-ray cover got some spiffy illustrations by Akio Watanabe which in turn go some nice figures by Good Smile Company. A lot of people liked both the show and the figures becoming very popular, as for me? I completely ignored both of them.

Fast forward to a few years later and I watched and enjoyed the show and it's sequels, my favorite girl of the show would end up being the donut loving loli vampire Shinobu. Being the figure collector that I am I wanted to add GSC's Shinobu to my collection but alas the second hand prices the figure carried had one too many significant digits. That made me sad, very sad, luckily GSC decided to lift up my spirits by doing a release of Shinobu. Come June I will be a happy owner of this figure for a couple hundred less than some were asking for her.

July

My relationship with Nitroplus has been pretty hit or miss. I loved their earlier release of the Lovecraftian inspired Saya no Uta, which you can now buy in English by the way. It made such a big impression to me that to this day it is the only straight up PC visual novel I finished. It's also the theme of the first post I ever did in this blog apparently.

The first couple chapters of Chaos;Head had some awesome creepy atmosphere going but the anime ended ruining that game for me. I still can't muster enough interest to watch or play Steins;Gate, which you can also now buy in English.

However, when I watched a trailer for the Robotics;Notes visual novel it really caught my interest with the neat in story augmented reality bits and its use of 3D models rather than static 2D portraits. When the anime was aired I watched it, I enjoyed it for the most part and did find some of its commentary and use of technology interesting.

What I liked the most though, would have to be the lovely Frau. Socially awkward geeky girl who knows how to code? Oh god, marry me please! Frau was like a refreshing gust, a character definitely set in a different camp than the usual moe tropes really tickled an itch I never knew I had.

This figure of Frau with the couch and all the pocky boxes is nice, GSC did a good job in spicing up the original illustration. I do wish it was like the nendo and it also came with the disheveled hair in addition to Frau's usual pony tails.

Here we have the third girl from Girls und Panzer, the communications officer Saori. This busty lovely lass sure is amusing to me, always preoccupied with how to attract the opposite gender only to end up being popular only among her underclassmen, all of whom are girls mind you. I mean, aiming to get a boyfriend in a show with an all female cast? Good luck with that.

As you can see she comes with even more bits from the tank, at the very least even if there is no actual tank displaying all the girls together will be kinda neat.

With Saori that only leaves two more girls, gunner Hana and tank driver Mako, I look forward to seeing their proper reveal and eventual release.

~~DON'T LOSE YOUR WAY!~~

Did you guys watch Kill la Kill? I know silly question, who didn't really? After watching Little Witch Academia, buying the Blu-ray release and funding the kickstater for a second episode I can say I really like Trigger.

When they announced they were doing a TV series I figured it would be worth my time. I must be honest at first I wasn't all that into it, I found the character designs a bit ridiculous, I mean just look at Ryuko above! I watched the first two episodes a bit disinterested, but then I got to the third and holy mother did I become hooked, that fight between Ryuko and Satsuki, the music, the sudden bump in animation quality, the over the top fight with people flying about, all that hot bloodiness!

With that said, how can I not buy the leading lady? I'm glad that Ryuko is a character I really like, something that makes me very happy as Ryuko wont be just any figma for me... she will be my 100th figma! I can barely believe I bought 100 of these things, sure as hell didn't expect it when I got Exilehero to buy Yuki when he went to Japan back in 2008.

Ah, the last of the inner scouts, with Sailor Jupiter I will have all five of them. I don't know if you noticed but I have a thing for completing sets like these, at least when it comes to the non scaled articulated stuff.

I actually missed out on pre-orders for Jupiter so she ended up being sold out in the usual set of shops! Luckily for me this is a Bandai figure and Bandai just so happens to sell directly through Amazon in the US so I just ordered her there.

As I been buying these Sailor Moon figuarts I have been noticing I don't really remember all that much about the show or the girls themselves. I heard that there was gonna be a Blu-ray release of the show in the west or something lately, might be a good time to pick it up and re-watch it that way.

This takes care of pretty much anything that will be released up until summer Wonfes shows us what's coming for the rest of the year. Although this list might grow by one or two figures before that.

I actually also want to buy Wing's Purple Heart; however, my lack of experience with Wing and the fairly high price made me think it over a long time and unexpectedly for me she sold out. Given her price I was really expecting for her to be available up until her release, only thing I can do now is wait and hope I can still get her for a decent price.

The other figure I'm considering is Max Factory's Yagami Tsurugi from Sasami-san@Ganbaranai, for Tsurugi there is no particular reason I haven't ordered here, I suppose I should just do it.

What about you guys, anything tickle your fancy here? That's all for now, peeps, have a nice one!