meltme Posts

Circles are definitely the way to go, for me. Every now and then I'll see a character I love get a cover from a circle I'm not familiar with, or a circle I love will do a cover of a character I don't care for, but generally speaking, they put out a lot of great stuff; Evening Call's extensive offers are always of quality, Anko's work is always beautiful, Kyounetsu has a lot of fantastic art, and so on.

Yeah, it's a just a shame the "foreign" market for legit cover is so limited; the covers I have doubles of, that I'd be happy to sell, are selling for 14-20k on YJA. I have them listed in the $150-200 range, which is in most cases, either what I paid for them or a bit less.

I'd love a copy of the Maidoll Saeko cover... apparently she was up on Toranoana at some point (you can still pull up her page there), but it never made it to the blog, so we all missed out. >.< I like the cover a lot, but 20-30k isn't what I'd be willing to pay for it. I bought the loli Rin myself, and it's a fantastic cover, but if loli doesn't appeal to you, then there is nothing that can be done about that. ^^

I did a quick count in my head and a look through the blog (though they don't always have every listing), and I think I'm at 8 unique Azusa covers and 8 (including duplicates) Sena covers. I don't particularly love Azusa, but she seems to get a lot of good covers from my favorite artists/circles (NoReal, Illust Guerrilla, BWStore, etc.) I think it's rather strange with Sena; she has gotten a lot of good cases, but she's exactly what I don't like in a character, normally. I'm not really a fan of blondes or big boobs, and when I actually got around to watching the series (after I had already ordered several cases for her), she was my least favorite character (though there were no character I disliked.) So in her case, I definitely think it was the artists that made my buy so many for her (4 from Marks of 2 versions - duplicated because it was a short preorder and I put in an order with SMJ and Yokatta, 2 from Evening Call, duplicated because I had a friend who was interested in it but didn't have the money at the time, Dai Taiwan's fantastic bikini cover, and BWStore's cherry cover.)

Well, in all fairness, Saeko and Rin don't get a ton of dakimakura covers. Off the top of my head, I know Saeko has 3 (Maidoll, Cakemoon, TAMA), and possibly a Dakemakura or two. Rin has quite a few more, but not too many ones that have come out recently; Saber has always been the more popular character from the series, and since Fate/Zero only featured her as a loli, there wasn't really much reason to do a new one for her. The only two in recent memory are the two Evening Call did, but I can think of a lot of others that came out from 2008-2010, maybe.

I was just giving this some thought the other day on which character I have the most covers of. I think I'd need to do a complete tally, but was laughing, because as to the number of covers I have (including duplicates) I think Sena holds the lead. I don't even really like Sena that much, it just seems that I have a ton of covers for her. If we were going by unique covers, I think Azusa would hold the lead, but I'd need to do a full count.

Yep, apparently she has the hat/eyepatch in a later movie of the series but I never watched past the original 26 or however many episodes were in the first series.

Yeah, the Clesta cover will be Comiket. Hope it isn't too expensive. :(

HOP cover is up for preorder right now directly though them; contact your proxy.

No, unfortunately. :( I'd love one of her myself. Off the top of my head, there are one or two Yukiko covers and a Naoto.

Can't wait to see some of your goodies, Kobun. :D

Zengar probably outspends me 2 to 1. T_T

SMJ just received both mine and Kobun's order, so your proxy should be getting it soon. Not much else has been happening otherwise. ^^

Yeah, I left this post alone because I don't have washing experience myself (I'm a collector and most of my covers don't get much/any use.) It has been talked about in this thread a few times, and everyone has their own style for doing so, so I figured someone would chime in sooner than later. ^^

The most detailed guide I've seen was written by BluRay quite some time back, but I can't speak for it being the best, because I don't have the experience. You can see his post here: https://www.fakku.net/viewtopic.php?p=2606759#2606759

Yeah, I'll agree with willowywicca here. Especially on the materials part... the four basic materials that bootlegs generally offer is a pretty easy thing to wrap your head around, once you tried them all. But once you introduce legit covers into the equation, it gets all the more complicated. >.<

The point about being happy with bootlegs but not knowing where they compare to legit covers is quite true. I think that if you managed to get your hands on a copy of the legit Kyounetsu Rorona cover, that you'd be absolutely blown away by the difference; both in material type and print/image quality. From what I can see with your others, the difference in image quality might not be as pronounced, but I think there would still be a noticeable difference. But as willowywicca said, it's a hard expense to justify when you're happy with the quality of the covers you have now. I do know that a few of the people who post in this thread started with bootlegs, and once they actually tried a legit cover, they (mostly) haven't gone back.

Nah, it's very possible you could have read the information on Hobby Heart correctly. However, (and yes, I know I'm repeating myself) they are a bootleg site, so they're just taking sample shots off the internet and printing them out themselves. It's very possible that for some of the prints they find, they're unable to dig up the source material. Like I said, I'd have to go back and watch the video again, but all of your covers are from an IP and not original characters. All but one of them were released officially by the IP holders (be it anime or eroge companies); the Atelier Rorona (I think that's her name) is the only character that was done by a circle, in this case, Kyounetsu.



That makes sense and it might be the case, however, it is worth pointing out that bootleggers will use a lot of the same prints. And every bootlegger I know uses peachskin as their base material. It's definitely possible it was someone reselling a bootleg they had purchase from Hobby Heart (but I don't see why it would be a bootleg of a bootleg, then), but without knowing the seller, I'd say it's just as possible that it's just a competing bootlegger with a similar product to offer. eBay is 99.9% bootleggers.

It's a nicely put together video. Don't worry, it wasn't too long-winded. I do have some comments though, and I hope they don't come across too harshly:

1. You refer to all the covers as either being from an artist or a series, which I assume is similar to the comparison I use as "company" versus "circle". But I'm not entirely sure the point you were trying to get across. All of those covers are from a series, though some of the ones you may not be familiar with are from eroge. The difference between a "company" and "circle" cover is that the art for company covers is officially licensed where circle covers are fanmade art, essentially. I'd have to double check the video, but all of your covers except for the Kyounetsu one, are company covers. If I don't understand the point you were trying to get across, please correct me, because I'm honestly not sure.

2. I'm curious as to what you mean when you refer to the one cover as being ripped from Hobby Heart. How is it possible to rip off a bootlegger? A clear, high quality sample image is readily available on the internet, published by the company who created the cover in the first place. If anything, the bootleg that you purchased from eBay is just from another bootlegger who found the image online and added it to their catalog.

3. Yeah, the Evangelion cover sucks. Believe it or not, that's the only pillow of the batch that's licensed in the US. Though I think the Strike Witches one may have gotten an official release, I don't remember for certain if it did. That should just show you how shitty the US scene for dakimakura covers is.

4. Some pictures would still be nice. The video turned out to be kinda jaggy/dark, so it was hard to make out the details on most of the cases. A good still shot with some decent lighting would probably be better for comparing details.

5. From the detail I could make out, it seems as if all the company covers are fairly decent in detailing when compared to the official products, but the circle cover is definitely where it suffers.

Loving the new Clochette and Baseson covers. I still want to get the one Dracu-Riot cover but don't necessarily need any of the others and it's already pretty reasonable on both YJA/Mandarake. But now at least I don't have to hurry to get it.

I'm probably most excited about the new Omega Star cover, that looks like a silver-haired Mafuyu: http://www.amiami.com/top/detail/detail?gcode=LTD-ETC-00039&page=top

Looking good; I regret passing it up. I especially love the juice/wet sheets on the backside.

The first is from Kyounetsu (a circle), the second is from Lass (a company), and the third is from Rabbit.net (a company.) That by itself wouldn't really be relevant to the discussion, but I think it's interesting to note because of the sample images. The Lass and Rabbit sample images don't look bad; in fact, the Lass sample image is pretty much a direct rip taken from the sample image the company originally published. If the prints are similar to the sample quality, then you didn't do too bad. It is worth noting that sometimes you can get legit company covers for pretty cheap; I have a Lass cover that I paid about 4k yen for brand new, and Mandarake has the new version of the character you bought for 10k (sample.)

On the other hand, and this isn't meant to make you feel bad (if you're happy with it, that's what ultimately matters), that the Kyounetsu bootleg is an abomination when compared to the real thing. It just looks lifeless to me. If all three sample images are representative of what you purchased, I probably wouldn't recommend purchasing legit copies of the company covers, but if you ever got a chance at the legit Kyounetsu cover, I would absolutely recommend it.

In all fairness, man, you're pretty much in a thread of people who won't buy anything but 2WT. :P I always try to convince people not to buy bootlegs, because there definitely is a difference in quality between a legit cover and a bootleg. But if I absolutely can't convince them that the price increase is worth it, I always tell them to at least do themselves a favor and make sure that they buy 2WT over the other bootleg materials. Very few people end up listening, and that's truly their loss. I'd also like to say that in my experience, a legit 2WT absolutely blows away the print quality of the few peach skin covers I have; it's absolutely no comparison.

As far as pillows go, I'd recommend you check out Royalpillow.com, if you haven't already. You can get a pillow that will be a nice and snug fit for your case at about $20 + shipping, which shouldn't be too high for you since they're based in Florida. The main disadvantage to buying at a store like Macy's or Bed Bath and Beyond is that the size of the pillow is a lot shorter than most cases. I think the largest pillow I've seen at Bed Bath and Beyond is 140cm long; that would leave a good 20cm of slack at the end of my pillow, even more if you factor in the elasticity of the case. I have a 150cm Cospa pillow and all of my cases are 160 these days, so whenever I put a case on it, there's always a good 4-5 inches of slack at the end of the case, and it's a massive pain in the ass to sleep with.

Figure.fm is pretty hit or miss lately; they seem to have a lot of downtime/slow periods, so it could have just been the time he was looking at the post. I think the post was a bit slow to load up for me the first time, and I had some trouble a few others times when the site was down/slow, but the few times I've opened it up since then it has been fine.

Yeah, my previous post wasn't really directed at you but more at the guy I was trying to tell that he shouldn't try an untested bootlegger out; he was insistent that he'd be fine and wouldn't have any problems with them. Other than you and him, I've never spoken with anyone who has seriously ordered from them but I've seen posts by 2-3 accounts. You can see a good example of what I'm talking about below:

http://www.figure.fm/en/profile/burnjai


It rubs me the wrong way because a lot of people don't have the slightest clue about dakimakura covers. It's easy enough for someone to do a Google search and find a bootlegger without being aware that they'd be buying from a bootlegger, but to come across it on sites where the community generally looks down on bootlegs (at least for figures), is a bit frustrating.

How did you come across ADP to begin with? As I mentioned, they've been spam/fake promoting figure and anime sites, but as far as I could tell no one had ever actually ordered from them. I'm a moderator on the Dakimakura subreddit and as soon as they posted there, I banned them/removed the post. A few days later someone posted a topic asking what happened to the thread and asking if the site was legit. I told him that I wouldn't recommend buying from there as they're untested and they're falsely promoting their site. He refused to believe me when I said I wouldn't recommend trying them out and I think he did end up ordering from them, but I haven't heard back from them. So I have no doubt that their spam promoting works to an extent, I just wish people would actually do some research before ordering from a site no one has ever heard of. I disdain bootleggers, but I will give Hobby Heart credit that they at least seem to treat their customers well and have a decent product for a bootleg.

Yeah, a good 2WT doesn't wrinkle much at all; it may have one or two creases coming right out of the packaging, but those disappear pretty quickly. 2WT is the only material I could see myself sleeping with. I dislike peachskin/sk suede, but they're moderately okay for display if you can sort out the wrinkles, but I wouldn't sleep with either of them. I'd consider Smooth Knit depending on the manufacturer, but I have plenty of 2WT covers to choose from.

If you enjoy Hobby Heart's 2WT, I'd still absolutely recommend trying out at least one legit dakimakura cover to see if it's for you. Because if you're moving onto 2WT anyway, you're already closing the price gap quite a bit between legit and bootleg products, so the price gap isn't so large anymore.

It's an expensive hobby, but there's certainly a very enjoyable aspect to it. I actually enjoy the "hunting" aspect of the hobby sometimes. The main difference between bootlegs and legit covers, other than quality, is that legit covers have limited windows of availability. It's hard to explain, but there is no greater feeling than a cover you've been looking to buy for a year just randomly popping up on Mandarake for a reasonable price.