Tasuke

one of the best cassette decks ever made, PIONEER's LaserAmorphous-headed, CLOSED LOOP DUAL-CAPSTAN CT-S800;

got this coming;

new Nightie♥

in the 80's, the highly nascent Anime fandom in the U.S. basically consisted of a handful of college-based chapters of one or two general Animation/Sci-Fi fan clubs with connections to Japanese citizens getting raw VHS or BETA off-air recordings of episodes of various series, and making and distributing dubs, made from the master tape, throughout the club's chapters. usually many of those dubs ended up pretty poor in audio/visual quality, as many/most were invariably several generations removed from the master. and then, you had to hope there was someone in the club with knowledge in at least spoken Japanese, who could either translate orally during group screenings, or produce a printed transcript, to duplicate and pass around amongst the screening audience. in any case, it wasn't really until the onset of the 1990's that the U.S. began to see pure Anime releases, Subbed and/or Dubbed, officially distributed on home video in any true capacity...

actually, technically, a good while longer, since i vaguely recall sitting through an episode of ROBOTECH as a very young boy around what must have been sometime in 1986 or so. a nephew gave me his old 1985 REVELL ROBOTECH CHANGERS VEXAR transformable model (U.S. market reboxing of 1983 IMAI MACROSS VF-1S Focker 1/72 VARIABLE TYPE) around 1988/1989 or so, and then i got a taste of Mecha Anime tropes at a more readily-impressionable age around 1991, thanks to the Mecha action-platfomer game "ASSAULT SUIT LEYNOS" (TARGET EARTH in the U.S.) on the SEGA GENESIS games console. my Anime fandom truly began to consciously coalesce around 1995, when my dad bought me an old IMAI MACROSS 1/100 VF-1J Ichijo GERWALK mode model kit, and PLAYMATES toy company reissued the old original MATCHBOX-made ROBOTECH Mecha toys under their "EXO-SQUAD" line. around that time, i discovered SUNCOAST VIDEO at the mall, and their Anime selection. first i concentrated on ROBOTECH, -via the dual-episode FHE VHS cassette volumes- found VIZ MEDIA's ANIMERICA Anime magazine, and began picking up issues often as i could, and then i discovered MANGA VIDEO's MACROSS II and MACROSS PLUS movie compilation releases, Pure, uncut MACROSS, for the first time. from there, i began to branch out from Mecha-themed anime, with series such as Galaxy Fraulein Yuna and Tenchi Muyo! and then the early-21st-century and the DVD Anime boom hit, and i was well and truly off to the Anime Races. i'm about as hardcore today as i've ever been, and, thanks to the internet, i now have the kind of Mecha and Character-themed merchandise that i would have killed for as a young teen, two-plus decades ago...

new Chinese Qipao outtfit for Konomi-chan~

MOBILE POLICE PATLABOR T.V. one of the best Mecha TV series of them all, YMMV...

Indeed it is. interest gradually built-up over the last five/eight years, -an Artbook here, a DVD set there- but things have been ramping up within the last couple years or so, acquiring these four dolls, -all from different companies and product lines spanning the last 20 years- and unifying them under the recent OBITSU brand 26cm. hobbyist's aftermarket Doll Body. Essentially, the PS3 AQUAPLUS universal-mashup Fighter "AQUAPAZZA" there came along and single-handedly boosted my interest in the To Heart franchise into overdrive...

a modest little collection of dolls and paraphernalia spanning the near-25 year history of this classic series of Japanese-market Visual Novels; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Heart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Heart_2 -from LEFT to RIGHT- Lucy Maria Misora; https://to-heart.fandom.com/wiki/Lucy_Maria_Misora Konomi Yuzuhara; https://to-heart.fandom.com/wiki/Konomi_Yuzuhara Tamaki Kousaka; https://to-heart.fandom.com/wiki/Tamaki_Kousaka HMX-12 "Multi" https://to-heart.fandom.com/wiki/Multi

Mouth/Lip detail and underskirt petticoats painted in;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichigeki_Sacchu!!_HoiHoi-san

just sat through the two parts of MEGAZONE 23 once more. though a pervasive sense of deep Banality permeates the rather unlikable characters, (-YMMV-) the soundtrack, as well as the 80's-futuristic visual style, is nothing short of phenomenal. if the basis if it all wasn't so damn-blasted Boneheaded to the core, i would surely have one of my very top Anime greats here. as it stands, it manages to to be -superficially, at least- an Audio/Visual tour-de-force, and that puts it up there pretty far for me in any case...

LEFT to RIGHT; *MegaHouse Mikuru Asahina (the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya) (wearing outfit from TAKARA/YELLOW SUBMARINE MACROSS; DYRL Lynn Minmay) *MegaHouse Yuki Nagato (the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya) (wearing custom-made Ballerina costume) *MegaHouse/ALTER Konomi Yuzuhara (To Heart 2) (wearing lightly-modified outfit from MegaHouse/ALTER Lucy Maria Misora (also from To Heart 2)) *KOTOBUKIYA Tamaki Kousaka ( "Tamaki DOLL in Summer ver." ) (wearing outfit from MegaHouse Yuki Nagato) *VOLKS Ultimate Figure Series HMX-12 "Multi" (To Heart 1) (wearing heavily-modified outfit from SEGA Sakura Wars "Sakura Shinguji")

from Anime series as diverse as 1999's "To Heart" 2005's "To Heart 2" and 2006's "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya" come my little coterie of OBITSU 26 body-based Anime Ladies, whom all clearly enjoy Cosplay from Vintage/semi-Vintage Anime and Video Game Classics such as 1984's "MACROSS; Do You Remember Love?" 2006's "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya" and 1996's "Sakura Wars" as well as a wholly-original custom costume; LEFT to RIGHT; *MegaHouse Mikuru Asahina (the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya) (wearing outfit from TAKARA/YELLOW SUBMARINE MACROSS; DYRL Lynn Minmay) *MegaHouse Yuki Nagato (the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya) (wearing custom-made Ballerina costume) *MegaHouse/ALTER Konomi Yuzuhara (To Heart 2) (wearing lightly-modified outfit from MegaHouse/ALTER Lucy Maria Misora (also from To Heart 2)) *KOTOBUKIYA Tamaki Kousaka ( "Tamaki DOLL in Summer ver." ) (wearing outfit from MegaHouse Yuki Nagato) *VOLKS Ultimate Figure Series HMX-12 "Multi" (To Heart 1) (wearing heavily-modified outfit from SEGA Sakura Wars "Sakura Shinguji")

got this KOTOBUKIYA Hoi Hoi-san alternate colors set coming in April, to join my standard colors Hoi Hoi-san;

i finally gathered the courage to attempt to rework my KOTOBUKIYA To Heart 2 Tamaki Kosaka's head to fit the new OBITSU 26, an irreversible procedure that required removal of the neck pin that was designed to interface with the old OBITSU 27's neck shaft. i had to scratchbuild a mounting peg of sorts, in order to make a solid union between Tamaki's head cavity and the existing OBITSU 26's neck post, but i think it all turned out fabulously; original, OBITSU 27-based KOTOBUKIYA Tamaki; NEW OBITSU 26cm. OLD OBITSU 27cm.

DISREGARD