Some figma pre-orders arrived this month.

I haven’t opened any of my new acquisitions in a while. Not in the mood I guess.

• K-ON! Mio Akiyama figma by Max Factory
• K-ON! Tsumugi Kotobuki figma by Max Factory
• PSP Fate/EXTRA Limited Edition with figma Saber Extra

I almost have the complete K-ON! set of scaled figures, nendos, and figmas. After next month’s arrivals, I’ll just be waiting on ALTER’s Mugi and Ritsu figures.

The Fate/EXTRA Limited Edition came with a small hardcover magazine (Fate/the Fact) that appears to include a DVD inside.

My postcard set for achieving Bronze Tier in the Square Enix Members Rewards program arrived yesterday.

Considering the amount of Square Enix games you need to purchase to achieve a fairly high tier level, it’s not worth even going for Silver. They also only have a few decent games out, which forces you to either buy multiple copies of the good games or to buy some random bad games in order to achieve a higher tier.

This “set” only consists of 3 postcards featuring Final Fantasy XIII, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, and Star Ocean The Last Hope International artwork. It appears to have been printed on glossy photo paper.

Since it only takes 1-2 game(s) to get Bronze Tier status, these rewards are a welcome bonus. I wouldn’t recommend intentionally aiming for the higher tiers though, since the tier levels reset every year.

Two of my pre-orders arrived this month. The extra copies of the magazine are for a friend and my brother.

• K-ON! Azusa 1/8 Scale PVC Figure by ALTER
• Dengeki G’s Magazine August 2010 with Nendo Petite Tenshi as a bonus

My copy of Starcraft II: Collector’s Edition appeared on my doorstep this morning as well. I’ll post photos of its contents later.

Anyone else pick up SC2 today?

All my loot from Anime Expo this year was purchased from the MangaGamer booths.

The AX convention bag came with the program guide, a starter deck for Magic: the Gathering, and various advertisement cards.

Random Goodies

A purchase of $10 or more at MangaGamer netted you a free bag, $30 or more got you a t-shirt, and $50 or more got you a mousepad.

Wall Scrolls

I couldn’t resist the high quality wall scrolls that were made in Japan and then priced very reasonably for the convention.

Sketches

The bulk of my spending money went towards getting sketches. Many well-known artists were there such as Kayura Yuka (Da Capo II), Fumio (Tomoyo After ~It’s a Wonderful Life~), and Watanabe Akio (Bakemonogatari).

I’m still bummed out that I wasn’t able to get sketches from Fumio and Watanabe Akio since their orders filled up almost instantly. It seems like other exhibitors commissioned sketches before the hall was even open to the public.

At least I’ll be joining the ranks of the exhibitors next year. *shrug*

Autographs

By Day 3, I was tired of getting autographs and skipped out on Yui Horie/Eri Kitamura and May’n/Megumi Nakajima when I saw the lines. Oh well.

Music CDs

It was awesome that MangaGamer brought Minami Kuribayashi to perform at their booth. She was Haruka Suzumiya in Kimi ga Nozomu Eien and also sang the openings for anime such as Chrono Crusade and Katanagatari. Hearing “Tsubasa wa Pleasure Line” live was a real treat.

I purchased their CDs and got them autographed afterward. ^^

It was an amazing AX this year, let’s hope next year is even better!

Saturday felt like it was really packed with people. I guess all the 1-day pass holders chose Saturday to attend?

Upon seeing some of the lines for certain panels/autograph sessions, I turned around and walked away.

MELL Panel & Autograph Session

The announcer messed up and told us photographs were okay at first.

Mell was very enthusiastic during her panel and had a great personality. She answered questions thoroughly and often used hand gestures to assist in her replies. It was entertaining when she reenacted taking swigs of energy drink to stay alert and then using water to force it down.

We ran to her autograph session afterward and were the first couple people in line.

Danny Choo L.A. Meet-up

I didn’t stay for that long, but the place was really packed. It would have been nice if the location of the meet-up was larger, but I don’t think they expected the event to be that popular.

I was there at the beginning and sat in the very front until they told us to leave that area since there was a line for autographs/photos with Danny Choo.

The Now and Future of Bishoujo Games

This was MangaGamer’s panel and they brought in a ton of guests. At first, they were having trouble finding a competent translator and kept adding more translators up on stage until things worked out.

Tororo Dancho, Bamboo, and Katakura Shinji made a lot of amusing comments during the panel. When asked to explain what bishoujo games were, Tororo Dancho simply said, “MOE!”.

Near the end, they had a raffle for quite a number of prizes and held a mini-concert afterward. It was a fun late-night panel that went way over the allocated time, but it was worth it.

Misaka Car

We happened to park next to this epic car.

On Day 4, I just wandered around the Exhibit Hall for a bit and then left to go home early. No photos, but next up is the loot post!

Since I wasn’t really interested in the morning panels, I wandered around the Exhibit Hall right when it opened.

Exhibit Hall

I mostly stayed around the MangaGamer booths the entire time since they were the only ones offering sketches from various well-known character designers. Besides sketches, they were selling a large assortment of wall scrolls, posters, CDs, dakimakura covers, and more at very tempting prices. They brought legit products straight from Japan that no other booths had, which is why they were my favorite exhibitor there.

Plus, they held live concerts at their booth with performances by Aina Kase, Minami Kuribayashi, ur@n, and rino (CooRie).

Kitamura Panel

Eri Kitamura’s panel was very entertaining. Even though they had the producer of Toradora! there, most of the questions were requests for her to do the voice of Yui from Angel Beats! She seemed like a fun and easygoing person, which made the panel awesome.

It was cool actually hearing her say Yui’s line of “Sensei, toilet!” in person.

Megumi Nakajima/May’n Concert

Photography was not allowed at the concerts for us regular attendees, which explains the lack of photos.

The NOKIA Theatre was packed and it was nice to experience the Macross Frontier duo’s singing live. They brought a secret guest who turned out to be Yoko Kanno. She played the piano and accompanied them in singing at times. It’s a pity she didn’t host a panel.

Horie Panel

This was the most disappointing panel. They told us no photography at all, which was after I snapped one quick shot of the room.

To start off the panel, they showed the first episode of Toradora!, which I thought was a waste of time. Then Horie arrived late and only took around 10 minutes of questions before leaving. The panels/events at AX seemed to all suffer from delays and the autograph session system was very poorly planned.

MELL Concert

Same as before, no photography allowed. I walked into the concert knowing a few of MELL’s songs, and I came out afterward as a fan.

Even though the hall wasn’t fully packed, the audience seemed more energetic and into the music than the previous concert. When they started playing “Virgin’s High”, the crowd went crazy. It was a blast, and my arms and throat were tired from waving glowsticks and cheering.

Onwards to Day 3 tomorrow!

This year’s Anime Expo easily surpassed the one I attended last year.

There were so many guests of honor this year that I couldn’t attend all the panels and autograph sessions I had planned on due to conflicting times.

Here are my photos from Day 1 of the events I went to.

Opening Ceremony

Kawamoto Panel & Autograph Session

May’n Panel

They said photographs weren’t allowed until the end of the panel unless you were a press member. I didn’t stick around for that long since the panel went over the allotted time and I had to get going.

Asakawa Panel & Autograph Session

If you went to her panel, I was the one that asked what her favorite line as Rider in Fate/stay night was.

Exhibit Hall

I took a photo with Danny Choo when I saw him in the Exhibit Hall. Yeah, I don’t really smile in photos.

Otherwise, I just stuck around the MangaGamer booths but didn’t take any pictures on Day 1. Even though I wasn’t planning on spending that much money at AX this year, MangaGamer changed my mind.

Laser Spectacular

That’s all for Day 1!

If you are watching Durarara!!, then you have probably seen the Dollars BBS that Mikado and other members post on.

Like many others before me, I became interested in actually recreating the site.

The first task was to make the login page. A friend from UCLA (mm) looked at snapshots from the anime and created the logo from scratch. Thanks, mm!

Then looking at this and other snapshots, I recreated the login page to stay as true to the anime as possible.

As for the BBS itself, I decided to use the Kareha script and modified it to suit my needs.

There wasn’t really any good close-ups of the board itself until the more recent episodes.

I haven’t really worked on the site until this week. The login page was up, but it didn’t lead to anywhere (I blame school projects and other work).

The goal here is to make the discussion board look as close to the anime one as possible.

There is no user registration and anonymous posting is allowed just like 2chan and 4chan. Personally, it’s much more likely that I’ll post if I can do it right away without having to register and put in an email.

Of course, the functionality and features isn’t the same as what they have in the anime.

This is still a work in progress and there’s always room for improvement (it’s still missing some things!). I’ll be modifying/updating the BBS at random times.

Feel free to leave suggestions here or on the board itself.

The URL for Dollars BBS is [http://dollars-bbs.org/]. Probably everyone knows by now, but the password is “baccano” (same as in the anime).

Please keep it clean and enjoy!

With Anime Expo just around the corner, many first-time attendees might be deciding what to bring to get autographed.

I was in the same situation last year when I finally decided to bring art books specific to the works that each guest was known for. This year I didn’t really feel like shelling out cash for more art books and instead opted for shikishi boards.

The only autograph/sketch that I got on a shikishi board is shown above, which I got from last year’s AX.

As you can see, it is around as thick as a thin piece of cardboard.

Booths like Kinokuniya’s at AX sell these shikishi boards which I find ideal for autographs, but I want to purchase some before I head down to LA.

Washi Accents has them at a decent price with the following description:

9 1.2″ x 10 5/8″ Shikishi is made from fine handmade art paper laminated to hard board backing. They are edged with a strip of gold paper and are traditionally used for sumi painting, Haiku, and water color painting.

That’s the standard size, but does anyone know where to buy these boards besides at Kinokuniya?

They’re light and don’t really take up that much space while still providing more than enough space for guests to autograph/sketch on. Plus, you can frame and display them when you go home.

Last week (6/3/2010) marked the first birthday for Project Saber, but I was unable to make a post due to being on vacation.

Now that I’m back, let’s take a closer look at the past year of this blog.

Besides the original intent expressed in my very first post, my goal was to simply play around with WordPress. There were many times when I was tempted to shut down this blog, but I decided to persist and keep going on.

I consider my main accomplishments to be maintaining and constantly improving Project Saber and also co-founding Figure Haven – a place where anime enthusiasts can purchase top tier figures at the best prices. I don’t believe in carrying subpar figures of questionable quality and hate it when vendors price gouge.

Now let’s move along to site statistics. I never really posted any stats before, but here they are for those that are curious.

My thanks goes to all the readers out there since without readers, the motivation to post goes down for me. The referrers have my gratitude as well because without them, less people would know about this blog.

I plan to keep Project Saber going as long as possible, but my activity on the blogosphere might decrease once I get a job now that I’m out of college. However, everyone on my blogroll can rest assured that I will still continue to read all their posts.

Looking back, my knowledge of both the WordPress platform and anime related things has vastly improved. I was also able to meet members of the anime community and fellow bloggers. It was fun interacting with you all and I look forward to another great year!

Image Source: Safebooru