As anyone who has ever been to a convention should know, having available money and walking into a dealer's room is generally a dangerous combination for the safety and well-being of that member of the family known as 'Wallet McDosh'. Well, thanks to the recent MinamiCon I am now 100% less rich than I was before and am awaiting my next payday so I can eat again. Luckily that is tonight.
Anyway, first up is the two items which I was specifically looking out for, as I checked the site of the dealer in question beforehand to see if they had them in stock. Those items are the second and fourth volumes of the Kozue Amano Illustration Works, Stella and Birth. As a huge fan of Aria I had to pick these up, especially since I already had volumes one and three from previous events.
Couple of pages from Stella:
And a couple (+1) from Birth, which now includes Amanchu! works, which is awesome:
Now all I need is Avvenire :D!
Next on the list, DVD's. Since Haibane Renmei has gone out of print over here in the UK (and has been for a few years) I thought I'd grab a copy of the US release whilst I could. Interesting little tidbit here is that this edition contains a quote on the back from a reviewer who has specific relevance - he's the same person who I sent my own reviews to (I do reviews for UK anime releases on The Fandom Post website).
Alongside that is a copy of Dennou Coil, also known as Coil - A Circle of Children. I am a MASSIVE fan of this series and the fact it hasn't had an English language release until now has been a constant cause of distress to me, but it's finally happened. Thanks to the Australian distributor Siren Visual I can finally own a copy of this masterpiece and, when I saw it on one of the tables at the con, I knew I had to buy it. The same distributor has also released Kaiba which I intend to purchase at some point, but they didn't have it in stock.
Finally is a copy of Ghost in the Shell. I know there is the 2.0 release but after watching both, there isn't all that much of a difference. I wasn't actually intending to buy anything else at this stage, but one of my friends was selling off a whole ton of stuff and this was one of the things left over that nobody bought. As a huge fan of the Ghost in the Shell universe I decided it was finally time I actually owned a copy of the original film.
Now, some of you may have read my blog post last year about stopping collecting scale figures due to lack of space, and that still mostly stands. However, I have updated it to a state where I won't be buying anything that isn't a grail or related to Madoka Magica. Let's just say it didn't take long to buy something under those restrictions.
I wasn't expecting to see these there, especially since last year the only Madoka-related material I could find was the US Blu-ray's and the You Are Not Alone artbook (the latter of which I bought, naturally). Whilst I hadn't been specifically looking at this set of figures, I had actually checked out the Mami on Mandarake the week before the con. In hindsight I should've probably picked up a Madoka too, one of my friends got her and after we got back and compared our loot I wanted one of my own. The most irritating thing though was that the seller had multiple boxes of Mami, Homura, Sayaka, Madoka and Moemura, but didn't have a single Kyouko. I think you can tell from my profile that I'm a Kyouko lover so that made me sad.
There was an unfortunate problem my friend's figure, actually. By the time we got back and checked everything out, his Madoka had somehow got damaged and had a clean break across her neck, resulting in her head rolling about in the box. Luckily I've been collecting Warhammer and other similar things for years and it was a simple fix, but getting a proper look at it just made me want one more.
Why aren't there any other Mami figures with tea?
That pose is so very Homu-Homu.
And one final image of everything together:
Still, despite spending ALL OF MY MONEY, it was a fantastic weekend and, if you're in the UK, it's definitely a convention I'd recommend. Considering everything I bought stays within the boundaries of my top 10 anime/manga franchises, I certainly don't regret my purchases either.
Anyway, first up is the two items which I was specifically looking out for, as I checked the site of the dealer in question beforehand to see if they had them in stock. Those items are the second and fourth volumes of the Kozue Amano Illustration Works, Stella and Birth. As a huge fan of Aria I had to pick these up, especially since I already had volumes one and three from previous events.
Couple of pages from Stella:
And a couple (+1) from Birth, which now includes Amanchu! works, which is awesome:
Now all I need is Avvenire :D!
Next on the list, DVD's. Since Haibane Renmei has gone out of print over here in the UK (and has been for a few years) I thought I'd grab a copy of the US release whilst I could. Interesting little tidbit here is that this edition contains a quote on the back from a reviewer who has specific relevance - he's the same person who I sent my own reviews to (I do reviews for UK anime releases on The Fandom Post website).
Alongside that is a copy of Dennou Coil, also known as Coil - A Circle of Children. I am a MASSIVE fan of this series and the fact it hasn't had an English language release until now has been a constant cause of distress to me, but it's finally happened. Thanks to the Australian distributor Siren Visual I can finally own a copy of this masterpiece and, when I saw it on one of the tables at the con, I knew I had to buy it. The same distributor has also released Kaiba which I intend to purchase at some point, but they didn't have it in stock.
Finally is a copy of Ghost in the Shell. I know there is the 2.0 release but after watching both, there isn't all that much of a difference. I wasn't actually intending to buy anything else at this stage, but one of my friends was selling off a whole ton of stuff and this was one of the things left over that nobody bought. As a huge fan of the Ghost in the Shell universe I decided it was finally time I actually owned a copy of the original film.
Now, some of you may have read my blog post last year about stopping collecting scale figures due to lack of space, and that still mostly stands. However, I have updated it to a state where I won't be buying anything that isn't a grail or related to Madoka Magica. Let's just say it didn't take long to buy something under those restrictions.
I wasn't expecting to see these there, especially since last year the only Madoka-related material I could find was the US Blu-ray's and the You Are Not Alone artbook (the latter of which I bought, naturally). Whilst I hadn't been specifically looking at this set of figures, I had actually checked out the Mami on Mandarake the week before the con. In hindsight I should've probably picked up a Madoka too, one of my friends got her and after we got back and compared our loot I wanted one of my own. The most irritating thing though was that the seller had multiple boxes of Mami, Homura, Sayaka, Madoka and Moemura, but didn't have a single Kyouko. I think you can tell from my profile that I'm a Kyouko lover so that made me sad.
There was an unfortunate problem my friend's figure, actually. By the time we got back and checked everything out, his Madoka had somehow got damaged and had a clean break across her neck, resulting in her head rolling about in the box. Luckily I've been collecting Warhammer and other similar things for years and it was a simple fix, but getting a proper look at it just made me want one more.
Why aren't there any other Mami figures with tea?
That pose is so very Homu-Homu.
And one final image of everything together:
Still, despite spending ALL OF MY MONEY, it was a fantastic weekend and, if you're in the UK, it's definitely a convention I'd recommend. Considering everything I bought stays within the boundaries of my top 10 anime/manga franchises, I certainly don't regret my purchases either.
Carmina
