Random crap.
Mayu and I went to a game center today and we played this Cup Noodle game called Fun Fun Cup. Insert 100 yen and the game releases colored plastic balls which you toss into the cup. the lid opens and closes… sometimes fully open, sometimes partially open. We scored 53 balls in 60 seconds.
Yet another reason to hate Disney! Disney has plagiarized Japanese animation before, with Aladdin and most infamously for Lion King. I found this post on Pinterest demonstrating how they stole the concept of Nadia with their Atlantis: The Lost Empire movie. 10+ years prior, there was the fantastic Gainax anime about a dark-skinned girl in a tube top who turns out to be a long-lost princess of Atlantis who teams up with a boy with blond hair and glasses. Disney took the gist of that story, gave the girl white hair instead of black, and plagiarized. Those stupid bastards. I took the image and cut it up into segments so that it can be seen in this blog format.
To hell with Disney. Plagiarist bastards. Interestingly enough, the Nadia anime places Atlantis in the heart of Africa. Lately, archaeologists are pointing towards this theory. It makes more sense than the “middle of the ocean” theory.
Just in time for the summer, Nadia relaxing on a beach now replaces the USS Enterprise wallpaper I’d had on my Raspberry Pi for a while now. I had to sudo apt install Kazam because Raspberry OS does not come with a default screen grabber that simply uses the print screen button on the keyboard.
Look, just migrate to Linux. You’ll thank me later. New desktop as of June.
I finally finished her last night. Over the weekend, I had to pry some parts apart and reattach them. Her right arm especially did not want to cooperate. I had to use some acrylic putty to fill in a bit of a gap and I hand-painted the flesh tone over the putty along her right shoulder and the side of her breast.
I posted before about painting her eyes, but I had such a hard time getting the shading right for her cleavage. It was too dark for a while, so I had to redo it a few times. I used Tamiya’s pink flesh accent color, Mr. Hobby’s Lascius pastel shader, and Faber Castell pencils go get the shading right. It looks better if you don’t get too close to it.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been nearly two years already! In summer ’22, my wife Mayu brought home a baby toad from her work. A coworker had a batch of baby toads and gave one to Mayu. He was so tiny at first! Some toad species are hatched as toads rather than as tadpoles first, but I believe this species are tadpoles although he already had legs when we got him. This guy was tinier than a grain of rice! He was such a dark color, nearly black. When we put him in the plastic box with dirt, he was so dark and tiny that he was hard to see. You couldn’t see him unless you looked very hard. Ulan named him Kuromaru, which is a ninja-sounding name (kuro is “black” in Japanese). It was an appropriate name, since he was nearly black and could blend in with his surroundings, like a ninja.
A few years ago when I first started this blog, we had a Japanese rhinocerous beetle named Pun-chan whom we cared for for a very long time. She lived much longer than expected because of the care we gave her. Now we have this cute toad. He has grown so big since we first got him!
Kuromaru has such a big belly! Here he is posing with his bath. When we first got him, his bath was a bottlecap. Now it’s a big plastic container. Toads like water, but they are not good swimmers like frogs are. They also do not sing like frogs. He is always quiet.
He’s so cute!
On my nerd shopping expedition with my friend Lou at the end of April, I was at a Book Off Plus in Maebashi and took a look at this kit. I’ve seen it at that store for many years now, but they had reduced the price from something like 4000 yen down to 2400. I peeked inside the kit, thinking that it was a resin kit. It turns out that it’s a sofubi kit, with resin and metal parts. I couldn’t resist! I’ve already begun cutting the vinyl parts. I’ll put videos of this build on my YouTube and Odysee channels.
Argo Nauts was a sublabel of Aoshima’s in the early ’90s. They made sofubi kits of subjects from Robocop, Terminator, and Predator. They also made several Star Wars kits, and until Fine Molds got the license, these Argo Nauts kits were the best ones available. A few years ago, I built the Argo Nauts TIE Interceptor that was resin and metal. (Here’s a link to my photoset of this build on my Tumblr feed.) The detail on it is pretty fantastic, but despite it being 1:72 scale, it is a bit smaller than the Fine Molds TIE Interceptor (I built that one too). Argo Nauts’ X-Wing fighter kit is also a sofubi/resin/metal kit. That same Book Off Plus in Maebashi once had the Argo Nauts X-Wing Fighter, but that was sold a few years ago. They also made resin kits of the Millennium Falcon and the Star Destroyer. I have a 1:6 scale sofubi Stormtrooper by Argo Nauts, but the figure stands a bit too short, proportionally. It looks a bit like Luke Skywalker when he wore the Stormtrooper armor because he is short in stature and looked awkward wearing the armor. I think I will try to modify the knees with some PVC pipe or something to try to make it stand taller.
I had known of Argo Nauts for a while, but I did not know that it was an Aoshima brand until I worked for Aoshima in 2016. I had a conversation with an employee named Iizuka-san who had been with the company for a very long time and said that Aoshima had once made Star Wars kits. I was like, “No way,” and he told me that Argo Nauts was their sub-brand.
While visiting the in-laws for Golden Week, I completed my new Nadia gachapon jigsaw puzzle I got on Mercari.
Minmay and Yor buttons to add to my backpack.
Glad to have learned of Artkal beads on the r/Beadsprites subreddit! Perler is American, Hama is British, and Artkal is Chinese. Artkal provides such a broader palette of color than the other two companies do! Artkal S82 made this project possible. That and Perler Brown are the two main fleshtones for Nadia. Her hair is Perler Midnight and Pastel Blue, while her vest is Perler Cherry and Red.
The pixel artwork was taken from the Fushigi no Umi no Nadia game for the PC Engine CD.
Here she is, ironed and pinned to my wall.
