Yep, here’s another test. This was recorded a few weeks ago, but I finally got around to working on it. But the difference this time is there’s an actual transcription of the piece (though I’m half debating whether it should be filed in a separate category, as in audio would be somewhere else/article is separate. Will stick with this for now.). Other difference this time is we got hopefully useful figure talk, and so I went in-house and talked with Muse (who also has her own blog Subdued Fangirling) about how she got into figures, any figures she’s looking forward to getting this year (though you’d think the title gives it away), and how one can get into figures. If I missed asking a question, you can ask in the comments and get away with it.
Organization ASG: How did you get into figures in the first place, or how did you get into figure collecting?
Muse: Well I’ve always been a collector since I was little, like when I was 4 I did the whole poly pockets thing and pogs and all that stuff, which is one of the reasons I really got into Pokemon because it’s “look at all the stuff you can collect!” So when I started getting more into anime and seasonal watching and started to see pictures of figmas and nendoroids and all that stuff I was like “wow, those are really cool, but they’re probably like mad expensive,” but then I found out they’re like 40 bucks a pop. Which is still kind of expensive, but still like sort of affordable if you budget correctly. So when I was in college I got a couple Lucky Star figmas and I just thought they were the coolest thing ever *laughs*. So from there I started researching a bit more, finding out about the different figure creators, I did the whole thing where first I thought that figma was a company, and I still see newbies make that mistake and it’s like “No, that’s Max Factory, they make this, Good Smile Company makes that, and Alter–” and all that other stuff, and it just kind of snowballed from there.
How often do you have to take care of your figures? Do you have to take care of them on a weekly basis or is it a monthly thing?
It depends on the material the figure is made out of — basically if it’s a dust collector or not. For most of them once a month I’ll go through the whole thing and just dust them all. Some of them, like my Black Rock Shooter Figma, her coat is a giant dust collector, so that’s more like once a week. But yeah it kind of depends. Like I know some people who just don’t touch them ever, and then it becomes kind of scary. But basically once a month.
How often do you run into trouble with figures? Like with paint stuff, or just assembling the figure?
Well for most of the ones that I reviewed that are articulated, they’re meant to be easy to put together, so in the reviews when I mention that this part was really weird or whatever it’s kind on a level of “this should work, but it doesn’t.” I just think it goes along with the whole mass production level of it so the figure that I get, I’ll mention that I had a problem with whatever and somebody else will get the same figure and they won’t have that problem. But there are some I know that have across the board issues like the Figma Kaito I got — I think I mentioned that I broke one of his ice cream sticks and most of the other reviews I read literally everyone had that problem. So it kind of depends on the figma and how much money they put into the production.
You talked about a few companies like Good Smile and (Max Factory), can you share any other companies that sell figures, nendoroids, etc?
Well those are the manufacturers of the figures, and those are kind of the big three I can think of. Max Factory, they sell figmas, also scale figures; Good Smile Company is the big player right now with the nendoroids. They also work with Max Factory on joint releases for a lot of stuff, which kind of leads to some confusion. Alter does really high-end scale figures and they’re really nice. There’s also all the Bandai stuff, which is where all the Gundam stuff comes from — they’re figuarts series which are like figmas, sometimes better, but it depends on the line. It’s kind of like with anime licensing: it depends on what company gets the license for what series, and for some series they’re just handing out like candy like with Attack on Titan recently, like everybody’s got that license *laughs* like everybody’s got a Levi figure coming out in the next couple months. And then for others it’s like Sunrise and Bandai…that’s it. You’re not going to see any other Sunrise properties with another figure maker.
Well as expected, there are politics also in licensing figures, which we should all know.
Yes.
Are there any other figures you’ve already pre-ordered, and are there any other figures you’re looking forward to getting this year?
…My entire year so far is Attack on Titan *laughs*
Oh god *laughs*
Which speaks to my obsession with that series. At the end of the month is when Sentinel’s 1/8 Levi is supposed to come out, and I managed to get that for a price that didn’t require me to sell my unborn child or anything like that! It was getting a little insane for a while though I thought I was gonna just miss out. I got the regular edition not the special edition cleaning version ’cause I would have had to break the bank for that. But that’s supposed to be coming later in the month. I’ll probably do a review on that in February or whenever I can get pictures done…or when it shows up at the house even *laughs*. Yeah so far all the figmas that haven’t been released, all the nendoroids that haven’t been released, I have those on pre-order. I also have 2 UtaPri figures by Alter, the re-releases that got delayed are on order, and that’s pretty much it for me.
Anything last year you couldn’t get you might think about getting this year?
Yeah it’s gonna depend on how my finances go. I was thinking about scaling back for a little while. Then Attack on Titan happened! So once all of that is over, we’ll see.
I guess one more question I’ll ask is I’ll always see everyone’s obsessing over figures nowadays. How would you convince somebody to try and get into figures themselves? Is it just a thing where it’ll depend on the series?
I think it would depend on the person and how much into a series they are ’cause what got me started was “wow these look exactly like the characters. ” Because I was used to, you know, growing up with the licensed toys like those Sailor Moon Barbie dolls and it’s like “Yeah, the character doesn’t look like the character–” but you gotta pretend but with this it’s like, “no, they go the extra mile to make it look like the character, ” even if it’s just paste on eyes or whatever. And to have a three-dimensional model of favorite character is pretty fun so I think if somebody really really loved a character and there was a figure available I would say, “hey you can have this and it would not cost you an arm and leg…hopefully!”