OK, so 2013 still has about five more weeks but I figured I'd get a start on my "end of the year" round up. It's always interesting for me to go back and review this type of post at various points in the future to see how far I've strayed or stuck to my goals. This time out, I'm listing the items I would like to acquire during the coming year. If I don't, that's OK since this merely represents a snapshot of my thinking at this point in time. The main criteria here is not to list things I hope will be made in 2014 but things that already exist and are currently not in my possession.
Azone Pure Neemo Kanata Sorami from
Sora No Woto.
Hey, I
liked this series in spite of all the grumblings that it was nothing more than
K-On with military uniforms. Azone's version of Kanata was readily available in 2010-2011 but I procrastinated and also had some issues coming up with the money, then she was out of production. Oh sure, secondary market sellers still had her for a while but I just couldn't see spending the even higher prices they were asking. I still can't see it, so if I find one of these, it needs to be around the original retail price of ¥14,000 or less... hopefully much less!
Azone ACG series items.
If you know me from various doll/action figure sites or blogs, you probably know that these items have been a bit of a
"grail quest" for me. There's a whole story about missed opportunity and a lack of knowledge about who to order from back when this stuff was available but I won't go in to that here. Basically though, even the secondary market is pretty empty and this quest has been more frustrating than fruitful. I had mostly given up ever finding more than the one piece I already owned until I recently found some other items being sold by a collector who was getting out of 1/6 scale dolls. I'm still not completely optimistic about finding my "most wanted" items from this series (pictured above) but I'm a little less pessimistic than I had been the last few years.
Armoury Anastasia from Paolo Parente's Dust.
I've always kinda liked Paolo Parente's work although I'm not entirely sure that his alt-WW2 setting
Dust is exactly the way I'd do things. Many years ago, I received an earlier figure from this line, Koshka, as a gift but for some reason I never bought Anastasia. If anything, Ana seems like a better, more complete figure. Anyway, now she's hard to find and expensive so naturally, I'm kicking myself for not buying her when she was more readily available. That makes her a great candidate for this list!
You might have noticed a definite military leaning in these items and I will plead guilty in that regard. While I like figures in other genres, these are the items that have stayed near the top of my want list over the years. Will any of them come home in 2014? Heck if I know! None of them are "must have" to the point that I'm willing to spend insane amounts of money to obtain them. These are by no means the only items I want, so it's possible that other posts of this nature will appear in the future.
A couple of asides.... First, all the images in this post have been snagged from image searches. They are used for reference only and I've tried to use "official" manufacturer's product photos. However, if I've used someone's artistic masterwork by mistake, let me know so I can remove it.
Second, while composing this blog entry over a period of several days, I actually found two of the items that I planned to include in this list. While this post ended up shorter than I first imagined, I think I'd rather have the items instead.
