Dakimakuras anyone?

Got an email from HobbyLinkJapan stating the manufacturer isn't making any more of the Hinagiku Dakimakura I wanted/back-ordered. Guess it happens, worth a try nonetheless :)

Their shirts are of amazing quality and color. I own Mana and Erica, well worth the price.

I'm not showing my hobby through my clothes, that's why I'm not interested in shirts or hoodies with anime/eroge characters on it. I see my clothes only as practical items, so comparing to the price of a Purely Kiss shirt I could get 3 normal ones :)

The way I see it is most of my collection is art. I do occasionally toss a cover onto a pillow, but the vast majority of my collection is for collection/potentially display only. So maybe 20 of the 200+ covers I have will ever be put on a pillow, while the rest are reserved solely for my admiration. That's a fairly expensive piece of art. The art on the shirts is absolutely beautiful; I probably won't ever wear them, but they'll definitely fit right in with the rest of my dakimakura collection, as art to be displayed. And it's considerably cheaper, too.

Sure, that's way to see it, but I already have figures, dolls, artbooks and recently dakimakuras, so for me there's a line that I do not have to cross or my room gets fuller and fuller with collection stuff :)

Damn, looks like SMJ was able to get my Anko order in on time. From a money standpoint, I was almost hoping that they wouldn't, but I will be happy to get that Kimi cover.

And happy to see that my Kuma-Puro cover has already been sent off to the SMJ US office. :D

On a side note, the shirts look nice and all, but yeah, I don't think I could bring myself to shell out 6K for one. I'll stick to covers, figs, games and tapestries, etc. Although, I did buy that one Harthnir shirt for 2K that I'll never wear... ;)

EDIT: Mother of God, feels like SMJ is moving super slow with updates. I hope they get my order in for the Tifa Ask cover.

DOUBLE EDIT: New Sengendo cover looks pretty good. I love the back side, I just wish the front was a little more revealing:

Shh guys, keep it quiet and let's see how many edits Kobun will make to his post!

Oh wait.. ;<

That Nibutani one is pretty nice, but her character personality makes me not too interested in having a cover of her (though she is funny to watch).

Looks like the first few Comiket 83 covers are starting to trickle in on the blog. Quite like the Remilia Scarlet one by もとみやみつき and it even has a web order open too.... but I'll probably pass as I already have a similar cover of her waiting for me at Yokatta.

Heh, now he knows how I'm normally feeling on the weekend; it seems that whenever I post Thursday/Friday night, I have the topic to myself for the weekend. :P Just haven't had much to add, but I've been occupied otherwise the last few weeks with anime, D3 and most recently some MoP. :o

Yeah, I really like the Remilia. I'm thinking about picking it up but will have to see how things fall. The order window is open for about two week so I can see how I feel about it then. I think it's about time I taper back and save a bit for Comiket... otherwise I know it's going to destroy me financially like this hobby already has in general. Been trying to cut back on Mandarake purchases as well, but I finally managed to snag a cover I've wanted for about a year. Always feels good when you see something uncommon pop up and it hasn't sold out yet.

Yeah always nice to find something you've been looking for for a long time :) Which one was it?

It's good to save for comiket... but that cover is a comiket cover too so it doesn't make sense to save for comiket by not spending on comiket!1 I guess it won't be too long til we see more of what Comiket will have to offer this time anyways..

Just realised I forgot to link my latest dakimakura post on figure.fm so here it is (not that Shashin doesn't already know :P) http://www.figure.fm/en/post/44237/Dakimakura+Collection+49.html

Over the weekends I tend to be playing MoP every waking moment >< too much stuff to do in it...

True enough. I liked it a lot upon initial viewing, so if I still like it as much in a week or so, I'll almost certainly end up ordering it. I just need to stop spending so much in general. I think I need to start cutting out the covers I don't feel strongly about and stick to my favorite circles along with the occasional piece that really appeals to me.

Yeah, I just started playing it yesterday I think it was. I'm taking things pretty slowly to begin with versus my Wrath (where I managed a few server firsts) and Cataclysm (every waking moment on Archaeology) styles of play that probably led to my quick burnout. I raided in Wrath for the initial raids but didn't last until Ulduar and I quit Cataclym after about a month of playing it... I really wanted to professor title and ended up quitting at like 18/20 (~15/20 on my second character.)

When I logged back in the other day, the first thing I did was check my /play and I had under 4 days total at 85, on two characters. All of that time was spent on Archaeology; I quested a bit on the second toon to break up the monotony, but I'd say 95% of the first toon's leveling came from Archaeology and probably about 80% of the second's did. So I really didn't stick around long at all for the expansion and I saw next to nothing content wise.

I don't want to do the same thing this time around, so I'm really taking things slow and enjoying it as I go along. The changes were a bit strange and it had been over two years since I had seriously played (when I was doing Archaeology I had my mount and Survey bound to my primary hotkeys.) I tried the first few quests on both of my toons and died quite easily to two mobs. A mix of shitty level 70ish gear, inexperience with the changes, and not having played in two years was just a really bad combination. So I sat down with my paladin (the toon I decided to level first), completely cleared my action bars, redid my hotkeys, and then went through my spellbook and set things up.

I haven't really had any problems since then and have been enjoying myself. I'm currently about halfway through 86, I think and fairly close to wrapping up the first zone.

Ah that cover's 2 years old even, quite a lucky find indeed!

Yeah the changes to all the classes in MoP is a bit overwhelming at first. I do think they were largely for the best, but it can be a bit daunting initially to get used to.

The content is a lot easier to get to see now, since you can see all raid bosses through the Looking For Raid (LFR) system, which matches up people who queue into a instant raid to face all the bosses (though with their abilities greatly weakened since the quality of a randomly assembled group is terrible.. at best). It's no where near to "real" raiding, but does mean that everyone can get to experience content easily now, to some degree at least.

I'm one of those people who likes doing achievements, so I pretty much end up doing everything possible in WoW. I've been ranked in the top 5 worldwide for achievement points at times, so I clearly play far too much. Currently I've slipped and am not even in the top 50 I think.. too many things to do and not enough time with work ;(

Yeah, I've seen Mandarake add other covers from the circle from time to time, but never that one. I was definitely psyched when I saw it added and very relieved when Mandarake sent the confirmation email. Definitely got really lucky that no one else was after it, because this was the one morning I decided to sleep in... I'm normally right on top of all the daily Mandarake updates.

Yeah, I'm enjoying the way my Paladin plays right now. Still think it's a bit sad that they've eliminated Auras and the oversimplification of the talent system is still something I'm up in the air about. Granted most classes are usually forced into cookie cutter builds in order to stay competitive, I liked the idea that there was always the choice to try something really unique. There were absolutely a lot of terrible talents (that they pruned with each expansion) and there may still be some ways to experiment, but it saddens me a bit that the customization was cut down so drastically.

I remember reading about that system in Cataclysm sometime, I think. I definitely had mixed feelings about it then, and I still do now. It's great that people are able to see more content; everyone should have some chance to see the content of the game they're paying for. Even so, it really shouldn't be handed to people and they're absolutely missing out on sense of achievement/pride that comes with a guild first kill. I still occasionally look back on my early BC raiding experience, which is when I was most active in raiding.

Heh, achievements are one thing I have never given one damn about (in any game, for that matter), with very few exceptions. I remember trying to do the Wrath dungeon achievements for the mount or whatever it was, but that was more because we had a good core 5-man and it was fun playing with the group. I remember there being a few that didn't favor a specific class, and I had absolutely no problem sitting out and missing the achievement. The other time was when server first achievements were first announced. I really, really wanted the Crusader title to go on my paladin. Once they decided to pull the titles associated with it, I lost all interest in making a run at server first. I ended up doing RAF with a friend about a week before the expansion hit, on a new server. Hit 70 about two days before it released, and blew through to some server first 80s in greens (I was too lazy to spend that time to PvP for free epics.)

Overall, almost every class now has more choice with the new talent system than they had before (since choosing not to spec the talent that makes you deal 10% more damage isn't a real choice). It mostly removed the illusion of choice and replaced it with some real choice (though not always, some of the talents are nearly mandatory in certain circumstances still). Whether or not it's enough choice now is still debatable.. a bit more would be nice!

I got into achievements weirdly.. I didn't really focus on them as such, just did the dungeon ones cos I wanted the mount reward and also did a few of the other ones that seemed like fun. And then suddenly I was server first on them and felt a strong compulsion to keep my lead just because... Have been first ever since, except for a ~1 month period at the start of Cataclysm where I fell behind due to my going to Japan for a week and a half.. which was totally worth it though ^^

Currently a package for me from COMEX either got delivered to the wrong address, or else was placed on our porch (despite being sent by EMS and needing a signature..) and stolen by someone passing by... The later of the two seems more likely, as last friday someone stole our recycling bin too >< So I probably will have to give up hope on seeing that cover ;( But at least it should be properly insured since it was by EMS. Currently contacting the post office a lot trying to figure out what exactly happened...

Oh, nah. I don't care that there weren't any posts over the weekend. I would have posted the Sengendo cover regardless of whether or not someone had added to the thread. I thought I'd take a stab at spoiling their teaser image the same way Tsurupettan and I did with the Secreder Tamamo cover, and there she was in all of her glory. At least I was staying on topic. *cough cough* Just messin' with you guys. ;)

Anyhow, SMJ is still moving at a ridiculously slow rate. I sent them a request last Friday to have my Kuma-Puro cover shipped out, and today I received a message saying that my shipping request was denied on account of my not having paid for the cover (I paid for it last Tuesday). So I responded and attached an image of my PayPal payment screen.

EDIT: RESOLVED :)

Good to hear it got resolved! I didn't want to say anything as SMJ had been working at a normal speed for me (though for processing an auction not for a special order.. I guess they're different departments/people).

I've never had anything but excellent customer service from SMJ. There have been one or two incidents in the two years (or 200 invoices o.O) that I've used them. Both were resolved quickly and satisfactorily. I've had no problem on the order side of things (other than the denied Taiwan order which has been taken care of), but their domestic shipping has been a bit slow as of late. Even so, that's as far as the extent of my "complaints" go and I don't know why you're having such a bad time, man. :( Hopefully there won't be any other problems in the future. :D

Yeah, it appears that it was on the PayPal end of things. Also, I'm find out from Ask (via email) if the 30-cover requirement for the Tifa cover was met because that is why SMJ is still showing my order as still running.

Ah yeah, that makes sense. I'm sure Ask wouldn't require (close one!) the buyers to pay until they were sure they were going to do a production run. I don't know if they've ever had a case where they didn't meet the 30 minimum, but I'd imagine it would be a pain in the ass if they had to refund the money to everyone that ordered it when they didn't meet the minimum order number.

Sweet! Ask confirmed last night that the 30 pre-order mark was hit. Yeah, I wouldn't think that Ask or HOP would have a hard time fulfilling 30 pre-orders. ;)

EDIT: Not dakimakura related, but my new Harthnir goodies arrived:

The item in the top left is a tissue box. The tissues are dispensed in the center making it look like...well, you know... ;)
And if anyone wants a new copy of that game (bottom left) let me know, because I now have three of them.

Lol, clever use for tissues!

The sofmap 2013 Aries Box is looking pretty promising, with another nice cover of Akeno Uesugi http://www.aries-soft.jp/2013moebox.htm no material type listed yet, but I assume it'll still be 2way tricot like last year's boxes.

Oh and I forgot to mention, for anyone looking to order the BWStore stuff via SMJ, I ended up paying $201.15 for 2 covers (plus international shipping once released of course...). So it does work out to quite a big saving as expected.