Wow, I’ve never seen this box cover before! This is the 15th anniversary 1:100 VF-1J kit by Arii. Of all the 15th anniversary boxes, I’ve never seen one featuring DYRL artwork. I came across this on Mercari and would be tempted to get it for the box art alone (well, that and because I have an impulsive mental problem), but I wouldn’t pay 4,300 yen for it. Still, the bags inside are unopened and the decals are in good condition. The figure inside is a mystery since the black bag it comes in is unopened. I’ll pass.
I remember when I first visited Japan in summer of 1998, I saw piles of these 15th anniversary Arii model kits. They were on a discount table at a department store and while I was happy to see Macross stuff prominently on display, at that time I had already given up on modeling a few years prior out of frustration and didn’t get back into the hobby until 2005.
I’m excited about this! I bought this Priss sofubi kit soon after I moved to Japan. I posted unboxing photos of this kit on my Tumblr account 11 years ago. I didn’t pay much for it at the time, but since then the price for sofubi kits have increased considerably. I began working on this kit a year ago and I like how it is turning out.
 I’ve painted her entirely with sofubi paints. mostly V-Color but also I’ve used the new, water-based Mr. Hobby Sofubi Color for the metallic black parts. The metallic blue color of her hardsuit is a mixture of silver, clear blue, and a bit of regular blue V-Color paints. It looks so beautiful.
I finished painting her eyes last week, using acrylic paints. (She has red eyes in the anime, so this isn’t a case of my color-blindness causing me to make a mistake). I added a bit of white to the red paint to one side of her irises to give them two tones, then painted the black pupils, and finally the light spots.
Unlike other sofubi kits I’ve made, this one is made to be semi-poseable. Her arms pop into sockets and her legs can swivel at the thighs. Her heads can pop in and out, and I’ve employed magnets to make this easier. Her regular face is sculpted with her neck together, but her helmet has the head and neck as separate pieces. I have magnets in there to make her head movable.
I’ve since done a panel line wash using Turner Acryl Gouache black paint with Mr. Hobby Weathering Paint Gouache Solvent. All that’s left is the final assembly at this point.
Here are the desktops to all three of my Linux computers. I’ve switched from Shantae back to Nadia. First up is my Mint Mate desktop, my main computer. I just recently learned how to set the terminal transparency. Neat effect!
Zorin OS on my laptop. I’m still getting used to Zorin. It’s not bad. Pretty friendly.
Raspberry OS running on my Raspberry Pi 5. I’m only using a 32gb SD card for the hard drive and I maxed it out by just adding some Rifftrax movies to the Home/Videos folder. I intend to buy at least a 128gb SD card to upgrade.
I finished this iron beads project using Perler Nano and Hama Mini beads. I found the sprite on Pinterest, and I believe it probably comes from one of the Macross games on the NEC PC98 computer.
So a couple of weekends ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Mandai in Takasaki and look at the neat stuff there. I first checked out the plastic model section. Here’s an Imai kit of the Big Mighty from Mighty Jack. Mystery Science Theater 3000 fans will know about Mighty Jack. I believe I saw the toolings for these models when I worked at Aoshima 9 years ago in one of the company’s storage warehouses.
Imai made a classic Batmobile in 1:42 scale. Weird scale. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this kit before.
There were many vintage Arii and Imai Macross kits too. I was tempted to get this one, but decided not to.
Here are vintage kits of Macross, Ideon, Harlock, and Yamato.
Vintage Mospeada, Ideon, Dunbine, and L-Gaim kits.
They have new kits too, of course. Evangelion, Xabungle, Layzner, Dunbine, Sakura Taisen, and Super Robot Taisen. I’ve watched YT videos of that Asuka kit and she looks great, even unpainted.
Plenty of scale aviation kits too! I don’t see those 1:100 scale Platz jet fighter kits very often.
I saw this Street Fighter II bath towel and Chun-Li doll. I was tempted to get the towel, but I couldn’t resist the doll. “Ha ha ha ha! Yatta!”
Lots of Famicom and Super Famicom games, of course.
All the expensive games are kept in the display cases, of course. I didn’t know that Clock Tower was ported to the Wonderswan.
I played a few rounds of Shanghai on a Blast city cabinet in the Gunma Leisure Land game center downstairs.
King of Fighters was playing on a Nesica cabinet.
There was this nice sculpture of Rei on an Evangelion pachinko machine. I don’t ever remember seeing Rei with long hair. Maybe it’s from one of the new movies I never bothered watching.
Here are the signs for the restrooms: Jojo for male and Hatsune Miku for female.
On my trip to my hometown of Phoenix, AZ during my summer vacation, I was able to visit a Book Off on Bell Road! It opened within recent years. There have been Book Off stores all along in California. When Mayu and I used to live in America, we would visit the Book Off locations in Torrance, Garden Grove, Los Angeles and other areas. But now both Book Off and Daiso stores have opened in the Phoenix area.
Here are the signs outside.
Look at all the books! The books are in English, of course. Otherwise, the experience is just like a Book Off in Japan. This makes Book Off a direct competitor with the long-standing Bookmans store locations in Arizona.
The store clerk says that so much of this stuff is imported from the Book Off locations in Japan. I guess they buy so much stuff that they just export it to the USA for sale there.
So many anime figures for sale in the display case.
So many pin buttons, keychains, and small figures. Just like a Book Off in Japan.
They have import Famicom games from Japan! Star Wars, Red Arima, Parodius, Galaga… neat stuff!
Import Famicom and Super Famicom games too.
Domestically-released modern games are sold used there as well, of course.
This is the Grave of the Fireflies movie soundtrack on vinyl record. I was surprised to find this.
Huge selection of used, English-language manga. I bought several used volumes of Spy Family.
Gunpla! There were also other model kits there too. I even saw an Eggplane Girl resin figure by Hasegawa there, and for a good price. This is so cool.
Dollar books. Very neat. I didn’t have time to look at the SF book selection there. It would’ve been nice if I had more time to spend, but I had quite a busy itinerary with my friends Kevin and Brian. (Our next destination was Andy’s Hobby HQ which I featured in my previous blog post.)
I posted before about how the Nadia movie was a real dud, especially since it reset the characters and failed to feature Jean and Nadia’s wedding in this post here although it was featured in a doujinshi manga I included scans of here. Well, I recently learned of this novel published by Tokuma Shoten called “Jean and Nadia’s Longest Day,” written by Hirotoshi Kobayashi and illustrated by Kazuhiro Miyake. I bought it from Rakuten rather cheaply. There are novelizations of the TV series in three books, but this one is under the “Nadia Stories vol. 1” category. Vol. 2 in this series apparently involves an older Marie and Samson. Maybe it’s a story about how they get married? It’s the same writer and artist team.
In this book’s prologue, it says that Jean and Nadia were married in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. I’ve only read the first page so far. It’s pretty easy to understand so far, with only a few kanji I had to look up. I’m sure the reading level will become more difficult though as this is an adventure story after all. By the looks of it, the antagonist in this story is some weird non-human with some weird Illuminati-style horns growing out of his forehead. Anyhow, it’s neat seeing Nadia a bit older. Aside from the full color images I’ve scanned below, there are some occasional black and white illustrations interspersed through the pages of the novel.
An older Nadia, apparently sewing her wedding dress?
Nadia as a happy bride. Yoshiyuki Sadamoto did not do the artwork for this book, but as I mentioned above it was done by Kazuhiko MIyake. Not bad. So now I’ll show you some of the black and white pictures from the book, namely the ones featuring Nadia.
The only nice thing about the Nadia movie were the older character designs, and the art i this book remains faithful to that image of an older Nadia.
OK, so apparently Nadia makes a re-appearance at the circus she was once the star of? She’s wearing the same clothes, but they’re getting a bit small since she’s no longer 14 years old. Her top barely fits her tits now.
Looks like Nadia’s not having a good day. She got attached to yet another Y-shape, although this time it’s some sort of wall recession. The guy at the bottom is the villain of the story.
I’ll give the book a shot, but I’ve no idea how far I can get into it as I am not fluent enough, even for this novel aimed at adolescents. Nearly 10 years ago, I got to the point where every new kanji started looking the same, and all the pronunciations started sounding the same.
Here they are. I had to buy more 2mm brass rod because the length I had in Asuka’s leg wasn’t long enough and she began leaning forward. I removed it and put in a longer segment and now there’s no more problem. I’m still thinking that I might paint the base and print out a custom decal for it.
I made this for a teacher I work with. Evangelion is his favorite anime. He suffers from epilepsy, and the stress from work is once again keeping him from doing his job. He came back last year and did well, but this year has taken a toll on him again, unfortunately.
I used Perler Nano and Iron de Beads (local Japanese iron beads company) mini beads for this. Shinji’s fleshtone is Perler Nano Sand, Rei’s is Nano Cream, and Askua’s is Iron de Beads Fleshtone. Rei’s hair is two tone Iron de Beads Aqua. These colors matched her hair perfectly. Iron de Beads are slightly taller, but they melt well and I like them way better than Hama Minis, which are too small and cause problems.
This is where I got the pattern from. It was done in Lego! I found this image on Pinterest.
