Plastic-Love

  Let it be known that I am a Tony Taka fan. His art is maybe a little old-fashioned compared to artists that are hot right now like Mataro, or Nidy-2d-, but the guy has a classic style that translates well into figures, of which many have been made. You only need to look at his MFC entry and see that he has nearly 300 items that he's credited as illustrator on. Impressive! He has a lot of characters that I like, but my favorite must be his elf character Elaine. She's shown up in figure form before as a faerie queen ( see my previous review ), and here she is again as a cute elf-maid struggling against a sudden gust of wind that has blown her skirt up.  From the front the main draws of this figure are Elaine's cheerfully embarrassed expression and her ample cleavage visible through the boob window in her maid outfit. Her arm is drawn close to her body and her hand balled into a fist in apparent surprise or frustration at her situation. The sculpting on the frills and detail

Well it's that time of the year again, when Wonfes casts its long shadow over our budgets for the foreseeable future. There were A LOT of fantastic looking figures on display this year, and there's not way I'll be able to buy all of them for lack of money and also space. There were, however, a few that I am going to keep my eye on, and I'll put them here in order of how much I'm going to want them.  Arms Note - Swimming Club Manager (Amakuni) This is the companion figure to previously released Arms Note swim team member. I don't know anything about Arms Note, and not really anything about swimming either, but as far as I can tell this is regulation swim attire and equipment. In reality I was so impressed by the quality of the previous figure that this one was always a certain purchase for me. It's just a matter of the pre-order going up.  Azur Lane Chen Hai Vestibule of Wonders (Anigame) This deeply horny Azur lane figure featuring a doubly alternate outfit

Over the past couple of years, as I've gotten more into swimsuit figures, I've picked up a few Wave figures from their DreamTech line. It seems like the evolution of their Beach Queens line, which as far as I can tell doesn't exist anymore but had filled a space in the market between scale figures and prize figures that is now (somewhat dubiously filled) only by Good Smile's Pop Up Parade line of figures.  DreamTech exists somewhere beyond this in a shrinking arena of "reasonably priced" (by 2020s standards) scale figures of good if not always great quality.  They represent a hard to find good value in a hobby space that increasingly seems bereft of reasonable prices.  Enough about that, though, we don't whine about prices in this luxury hobby here. Lets get on to the figure. When I think of Sonico, I think it's safe to say she's got three distinct features. One is her pink hair, which is present here with some gentle transitions to blue towards th