Aranea Highwind Play Arts Kai

Today I picked up a figure that I’ve been super excited about! It’s a Play Arts Kai figure of Aranea Highwind from Final Fantasy XV! She is my absolute favorite character in the game, so I was really happy when they announced a figure of her and of course I had to pre-order~

Aranea arrived at a perfect time, since yesterday was the one-year anniversary for Final Fantasy XV! ♥ I was really surprised how fast the Air Small Packet shipping was - it took less than a week to arrive, so pretty much EMS speed D: The actual EMS shipping would've been double the amount I paid, lol.

Anyway, let's move on!

Here's the box from front!

And from back

The front of the box actually opens like a book, on the other side there is some information on Aranea's character and a bad ass photo of her >:3 ♥

The figure and all its accessories are packed really nicely. If someone prefers to collect figures leaving them inside their boxes for display, this is one of those figures that looks pretty neat in a box!

Love this art! ♥

I tried to get a close-up of her face through the plastic, sorry about the light reflections... :'D

The stand

Some instructions on how to change the parts

Aaand instructions on assembling the stand... This kinda reminds me of Ikea furniture XDD And let me tell you, assembling it really felt like putting together an Ikea furniture, hahah! I'm still not sure if I did everything 100% correctly...

Removed the plastic cover! I didn't realize it until later, but as you can see from the photo, her helmet is missing from the package ;___; There's just an empty space on upper right where it should be. I double checked the outer box and everything, but there's no sign of it anywhere. I've already contacted Amiami customer service about it and hopefully they'll send me the missing piece... *fingers crossed* I hope that they won't ask me to send back the whole figure and then send a new one to me... That would be much more complicated and end up costing them a lot more too, since shipping from Finland to Japan is quite expensive. But yeah, we'll see what they answer!

Ms. Aranea is out of the box! I absolutely love her, she's looks lovely and has so many nice details ♥ Her armor looks really nice too. The paint job isn't 100% perfect and there are some slight imperfections here and there, but overall I'm very happy with the quality!

From side

From back

Posing with her lance! *o* You definitely don't wanna make this gal angry... The lance came in two parts that were attached together, but I forgot to take a photo.

Face close-up! The paint job doesn't look the most flattering if you look closely, but I'd say that it's understandable for such a tiny face. But I don't think it's too bad! She even has eyelashes, that's so cute! :D

Details on her... skirt? Or whatever that's called :D

I loooove her boots! ♥ I think they were painted to look worn out on purpose.

The "tail" for her helmet that doesn't exist... :'D It can be bent from multiple places, I can imagine that being useful for action poses.

I realized that she can make a heart with one pair of the extra hands! ♥

I need to take some proper photos of this girl at some point! I don't have any photo ideas for her yet, but maybe something will come to my mind later, at least once I get the helmet (if I ever get it XD). I also plan to buy the Ignis figure to accompany Aranea, because I totally ship them!! ♥ That might have to wait for a while though, since I have some expensive figures on pre-order and my Japan trip is getting closer too...

The time has gone SO fast, it's hard to believe that it's December already! Are you ready for the Christmas season? :3 I've usually bought a Christmas chocolate calendar every year, but this time I'm skipping since I couldn't find a Hello Kitty calendar, hahah. Me and Sarg made the first Christmas tarts of the year yesterday and maybe during the weekend we'll put some Christmas decorations around the house \o/

Amiami April loot

Besides Sera, also my Amiami order from April arrived on Monday... :D It was a day full of opening boxes and setting new stuff on display.

I got one scale and two prize figures, the two Nendoroids are Sarg's. I still wanted to include them in the picture, as they arrived in the same package :D The order was so big and heavy that it had to be shipped by either SAL parcel or EMS, we decided to go with the latter since it was only a little bit more expensive and there were two of us sharing the shipping fee. EMS is always so fast and reliable, whereas SAL can take ages to arrive...

Sarg has been quite excited about this Venom Snake Nendo. He came with many fun accessories, like the Fulton balloon, weapons, cigarette and even a cardboard box XD Seems like the perfect Nendo for a MGS fan, though it would've been even more perfect if he came with the chicken hat!

I'm sure Sarg will come up with some fun photos of Mr. Snake later, so make sure to follow her on DeviantArt and/or Instagram :)

I hate this character and Sarg doesn't know much about the whole Fate series (besides Saber being awesome :'D), so it might seem a bit weird to get him... The only reason why Sarg ordered this Nendo is that she's trying to put together a Nendoroid version of herself and thus gathering pieces from a few different Nendoroids. She wanted the body/outfit from this one. There was a visible white spot on the figure's pants, but seems like Amiami is going to send us a replacement part!

Moving on to my figures!

Let's start with the one that I was most excited about - 1/8 scale figure of Mercedes from Odin Sphere! ♥ This figure had been on my wishlist for years and I thought I would never be able to get my hands on her without paying at least double the retail price (as she was no longer for sale at any hobby stores, just popped up every now and then on the second-hand market for horrible prices), but then I saw the news about it getting re-released! It made me so happy and I knew I'd have to pre-order her instantly - which I did, of course :D

I have to say that I've never played Odin Sphere since it's a PS2 game and I've never had a PS2 myself, so I don't know much about the game itself or Mercedes' character. I do love the character design a lot though and I'm also a big sucker for anything fairy related ^^; Luckily the game is getting a HD remake for PS4 in summer and I can't wait to be able to try it out then~ I have high expectations and hopefully won't end up being disappointed!

There she is in the box! ♥

The box is really pretty, so I just had to take photos from all sides~

Out of the box! She came in two separate parts - the figure had to be attached to the base. I'm glad that she was designed like that, in one piece there would've been much bigger risk of her getting broken during the shipping.

Close-up of the cute frog XD I think it's such a cute and funny detail~

Mercedes' face looks really cute and I like how her eyes catch light in certain angles :) The painting job looks great all over.

Another gorgeous detail on the figure is the "water", it looks like an actual little pond!

I'm so, so happy to be able to have this figure in my collection now! ♥ After admiring her from all the photos through the years, I can only say that she looks even more gorgeous in person~ I hope to take some pictures of Mercedes outside in a forest, such scenery would be perfect for her :3

The second figure I got is this Ichiban Kuji prize figure of Madoka Kaname :3 She was a lucky get from Amiami's Preowned section. Apparently this set of Ichiban Kuji figures is usually quite expensive (4000-7000yen+, so around $35-65 or even higher), but I got her for just 2700yen (~$25)...  She's a nice figure, but I still wouldn't have bought her for a higher price. Got very lucky, I guess :D

Madoka's outfit look really cute~

One fun detail on this figure is that random Kyubey's eye on the skirt XD

The heart pattern on the collar continues on the back!

My third and last figure in this order was Ranko Kanzaki from Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls ^^ This is another prize figure that I got from Amiami's Preowned and cost me a bit less than 2000yen (~$18) Although I'm not a huge fan of the anime, I do love Ranko and she's definitely my favorite character from the whole Idolm@ster series. There have been gorgeous scale figures of her, so I kinda bought this one as a consolation prize for myself since I didn't want to pre-order the more expensive ones XD

She looks surprisingly nice for her price! I love the outfit and pose. Her arms and hands look a bit too long, though that could be just because of the shorter sleeves? I wish the base was darker, the white color doesn't fit so nicely with the rest of the figure ^^;

Not a big fan of the way her eyebrows are painted, but I can live with that XD

That's it for the April order! I have one scale and two Nendoroid pre-orders scheduled to be released in late May, but they might still be delayed by a month or two, who knows... So the next figure loot post won't probably be until June or later :)

A surprise gift

Today I received a lovely surprise gift from dear Irene and I thought I'd make a quick blog post about it ♥ Picking up the package from the post office was such a funny incident! I wasn't expecting a package, so it was a total surprise and I just couldn't figure out what it could be since I hadn't ordered anything, especially to my old address where my parents live and where the package had been sent to o_o

I was too curious so I opened the box before getting home ^^;; When I saw what's inside, my first thought was that apparently my Picconeemos had secretly bought a house?? :'D But then I saw the card with a message and realized who it was from!

I hurried home to take a better look at what's inside!

This little house-shaped cardboard box is sooo adorable XD I'm definitely going to use it for storing some of my Re-ments and other tiny props. I think it'd make a cute prop for some photos too!

And this is what was inside the house-shaped box! These are mooncakes, traditional Chinese pastries that are usually given to friends and relatives during the Mid-Autumn Festival :) What a coincidence that there were three of them - one for each of these girls to hold XD After receiving these, I realized that I actually have a mooncake miniature for my dolls! ♥ I got a bunch of different pastry miniatures in 1/12 scale from Taobao and never really knew that this one has a specific name and meaning, now I learned something new ^w^

The mooncakes tasted good, though quite different from the usual treats we have here in Finland! I think it's really fun to try out snacks from different countries, I'm always especially curious about the Asian food :)

A cute card with a picture of macaroons~ ♥ After taking the photo we put it on our kitchen wall, which also has many other cute cards and pictures on it :)

***

Two more school days and then my one-week autumn holiday starts! ^w^ We don't have any special plans for most of the week, so maybe I'll have time for sewing and other doll stuff. I admit that I haven't paid much attention to my dolls after I started playing Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn ^^; It's been a while since I last played a FF game and I'd forgotten how addictive they can be... This one is especially fun since it's a MMORPG that can be played with friends~ I just got my Scholar character to lvl 34 today ♥