I have start a new blog on a new host because I am lazy to move older contents there. 

Please visit http://kusakabemisao.com for future posts.

It has been a great three months with wordpress.com.

Thank you guys ^^

Thanks for visiting my site

It is nearly end of 2008. This year I have discovered a few things in my life and also rediscovered some stuff I have forgotten about on the past few years. It has been nearly two years after I came back from Japan in October 2006 and I still miss Japan a lot. But still, I am back on the otaku track although it was not the same as the one I had before. I met some friends online leading up to more friends. Things are getting in place slowly.

I started this blog on end of September and I think I have worked hard on it for the past 3 months. Total of 101 posts and with the help of some  major event report like BAKUC, ACF and Comic Fiesta I got total of 3,562 views to this date with the highest acess per day on 17th November with 215 views. Most of the traffic came from The Figure Mall and I want to thank Kev, Aiko, Valho, Quaz, Haruji, e-jump and Sora for including me in your blogroll and linking some of my posts on your blog. I was also added to Happy Soda’s link page and I really want to thank SuperRat for including me there. 

I still resist to register myself on Danny’s otaku.fm because I still feel this blog haven’t achieve anything yet. Sometimes I was thinking “borrowing” Danny’s traffic will benefit me in many ways but I just don’t want to be a pathetic blog serving Danny’s fan with crap stuff on every post. I am not ready to stand the pressure so I will wait for just a little more.

Some things I want to improve:

- a lot of grammar and spelling mistake 

- very few description on photos, sometimes the description are lame

-overall I am suck at writing description – need to read more and do some googling about this

For the planning part I have finally decided to blog on my own host. I have been depending on the easy way now I need to learn the real thing. Everything need to start from scratch so I really need to stay focused and do things accordingly. Roughly I am thinking of a blog logo and theme. I want to use more of Kusakabe Misao and she will appear here and there in the new design. I am also thinking of printing some name cards for cosplay/potrait photography purpose. 

That is all I can say for now. Let’s hope what I write here doesn’t end up remain as plan on next year’s review and plan.

I need to post about this. Nagi (the super rich hikki/gamers/otaku Nagi ojyousama, not the tsurupeta god Nagi sama) will have a swimsuit figure by Kotobukiya ><

It’s extremely flat LOL. Here’s the picture from Hobby Search. Link to item page here.

I was lame because I tried to copy Danny Choo by walking around with Kagami (and Konata) in CF.  On top of that I became epic failure when I broke kagamin’s twintail that day! Aaaaaaaaaa ><

What happened was the peg holding her twintail hair has broke into two part. Making it worse, half of the peg stucked inside her head  -_-

Solution : Pull out the other twintail and let Kagamin has short hair…

NO!!!
THIS IS NOT RIGHT!!!

KAGAMIN MUST HAVE A TWINTAIL!!!

Ok then plan B : Buy another Kagamin from The Figure Mall…

NO!!! 

Need to save money to buy D90 -_-

Final choice – Plan C : Plastic surgey ( in this case real PVC plastic involved LOL).

Nice boat first to prevent damage to her body during surgery…

Then come the hell part of the surgery to pull out the remaining peg from inside her head.

After trying like forever, finally the peg is out (half destroyed). No way to stick this back to the other half.

So I decided to use gundam kit plastic as new peg. This is the nice part of being a gundam and figure collector at the same time

I was lazy to find and buy epoxy so I decided just to use gundam cement to melt and stick them togather. 

Using cloth peg to hold them and leave to dry. I cover it with a few layers of masking tape to prevent damage on the paint.
Actually Konata doesn’t need to hold it like that as it can also dry if we leave it on desk or on the floor haha…

And finally with the power of love (and Tamiya Cement) Kagamin has her identity back ><

We have saved Kagami YEAY!!!

Merry Christmas to all the christians and for those who are not celebrating,  enjoy your public holiday and for those who are working, enjoy your double or triple pay,  and for those who won’t get anything extra even you are working ,  I pity you lol.

I suddenly felt like going out for a lunch so I asked my friend Azam, who is working near Pavillion for a lunch. The early plan was to go Sakae Sushi but we stumbled upon this restaurant called “Pepper Lunch”.

Actually it was just a sizziling hot plate restaurant haha…They  just want making gimmick by exaggarating the nature of having your food inside a hot plate by calling themself a DIY steak restaurant haha… Go to their site pepperlunch.com if you wish for more info.

They are all over Asia and got a large chain in Japan.

There is a display in front of the restaurant showing video on how to “cook” and enjoy their meal.

The shop interior was simple enough with not much gimmick other than some posters and some display showing the “how to enjoy our meal” video repeatedly.

The counter.

Ok the service was quite fast lol. No actually this a failed attempt to capture the cute counter girl haha…

OK finally the food. Here is Azam cooking his meal.

And Minamin with my food. I ordered cut meat and chicken combo + egg. Costed me around RM30.

Actually the guy waiter realized my Minamin haha. He didn’t remember the name but he knew it’s from Lucky Star lol. Kuala Lumpur filling up with otaku recently? haha…

Ok I am not gourmet guy as I eat same thing everyday (kari kepala ikan in Bangsar Jalan Ara – rice, ikan goreng, kuah kari and teh o ais for RM4 /gg) and tend to eat the cheapest meal I can get so I basically sucks at commenting food. Well the chicken and meat does not taste bad but I don’t think I will go there again. Maybe it was my fault busy taking pictures and only eat it after the plate already turned cold. At least they are fresh meat and the honey sweet sauce did go well with white rice ( my freind said too sweet though).

I ordered macha ice ( green tea flavoured ice-cream) but I forgot about it totally T_T. It can be served after meal but I simply forgot about it, WHAT A FAILURE I AM ><

Ok on second day I tried approaching the cosplayers and asked them if they owned a blog or if they mind to leave a contact and suprisingly I only got rejected a few times. I don’t have the media tag, I don’t cosplay myself and my camera is small and silver opposed to other photographers who were carrying big, black and heavy stuff lol. But most of them were very polite and friendly and patiently waited for my second shot even it took almost forever for the flash to recycle haha -_-.

Different from scenery and figurines photography, potrait/cosplay photography requires communication between the photographer and the subject  to make things smoother. As me and this blog is just a micro piece in the otaku/cosplay scene at least I need to start somewhere to be recognized.

So to the cosplayers, if you are reading this post you guys/gurls were awesome and thank you again for letting me snap your pictures and sorry if it turns out bad because I am still funding for much better equipment and still on my learning path to photograph people.

As this blog still resides on wordpress free hosting and I cannot tweak much on the design, I think I just put some of the photos here and throw a link to my flickr and flash photo galleries for better viewing experience.

This is Osaki Nana from Yazawa Ai’s NANA. One of my fav girl characters and this girl really done a great job. The accesories were nice, the haircut was nice and do notice the tatoo on left arm. Nice pair of boots she got there!

This is Enma Ai from Jigoku Shoujo. I would say it decent result with minimum effort. I’d like to see red eyed Enma Ai though ^^

My fav magical girl on second day I can say. This is Aoitenshi cosplaying Yagami Hayate from Nanoha Series. Great details on the costumes and the painting on her wand was neatly done. Too bad her spellbook was taken away when I had a chance to approach her.

Ok some great pair series.

Miku and KAITO.

Souseiseki and Suisouseki from Rozen Maiden.

Ranka and Alto from Macross Frontier.

Kiddo and Liz/Patty from Soul Eater. Nice attitude here!

Last pair is the beautiful Yuuna and Riku from Final Fantasy X-2.

And for the love of  Lucky Star and Fate Stay Night.

Here is Kei, an avid konata fan cosplaying Konata. I would suggest if she can add ahoge and make some props like choco corone in the future haha…

And here is XXRikaXX cosplaying my fav Tohsaka Rin. Also can be improved a bit by making some props of her main weapons.

I think that’s enough for a post. Please view the rest of my photos here on my flickr account and also on my flash gallery here(first day) and here(second day).

Thanks again to the cosplayers and I hope you like my pictures. You can always contact me or leave a comment if you feel my photos or links are inapropriate and want to request a removal. See you all again on next event^^

Update: My posts on CF are about some of the cosplayers only so I decided to compile some better reports on the event from other senior bloggers in the scene. Please take a look and they have better pictures too haha…^^

Day One

AnimeShrine(Aoshi88):http://shrine.lowyat.net/2008/12/22/comic-fiesta-day-one-photographs/

Aoshi88(personal):http://aoshi.wakarimasenlol.com/comic-fiesta-day-one-photos/

ejump:http://ejump.wordpress.com/2008/12/23/comicfiesta’08-day1-new-venue-a-new-standard/

kurogane:http://kurogane.animeblogger.net/2008/12/21/comic-fiesta-2008-day-1/

shin:http://www.atalude.net/archives/2008/12/22/comic-fiesta-2008-day-01/

*ok  you need to pay attention when reading this shin’s report. It’s for your own good I tell you haha.. When you see a Sheryl Nome cosplayer photo after a Ranka and Sheryl photo, do scroll very fast and stop when you see Mint from Galaxy Angel . It will save you some brain damage of seing something gross… -_-

Day Two

kurogane:http://kurogane.animeblogger.net/2008/12/22/comic-fiesta-2008-day-2-photos/

Got myself two Lucky Star’s puchi nendos – Minami and Yukata. Actually the only one I picked was a Nanako Sensei but EG let me change it wih Minami and Haruji let me buy his Yukata. Thanks you guys – another yuri couple added to my collection now ><

Also bought a miku+rin yuri poster from the vocaloids booth ( don’t remember the booth row). This costed RM8.

Another one was customized emoticons. The artist drew konata and kagami for my figma pair for RM3. GJ  ^ω^. b

Update: I bought two more items on second day. One is Konata+Kagami poster and another one is a Ranka Lee Kira☆ Pose tin badge. 

The event hall was loaded with cosplayers. I am very new to otaku world I dunno that many anime titles but these are some cosplayers I can recognize. And yes I took them with point and shoot haha…

Hatsune Miku

Krauser from Detroit Metal City.

Ranka Lee from Macross Frontier

Yuna from Final Fantasy X

Chii from Chobits

Please view the rest via my flickr account here.
You can also view on flash gallery here.

By the way here is Aiko hikki-ing in Comic Fiesta as Komori Kiri from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei.

I am going to Comic Fiesta 08 after this. It is known as one of the biggest otaku event in Malaysia. The Figure Mall also will have an exhibition booth showing around 200 of our member’s collections. I am planning to shoot the cosplayers with my A580 and hope ( yeah just hope) it will turn out well haha…

Picked my latest scaled figures from The Figure Mall which was a 1/8 scaled Kotobukiya Louise from Zero no Tsukaima.

This Louise is my 6th PVC scaled figure and my second from Kotobukiya. It also complete my Four Tsundere Wonders. I have uploaded the pictures to flickr, just wanna put it here as a post.

The box was bigger than expected. After I opened the box I found out the mantle part that has added extra thickness to the box.


The base got drawings on it and was a colored translucent plastic. An extra stand was provided to hold the mantle weight.


The book she is holding has actual clear writing on it.




Zettai ryouiki – following the standard Tsundere procedure.

The face is in “dere” mood for the figure purpose and not satisfaying those Louise fan who expected it to be more in “tsun tsun” mode. (including me…)

Finally my Four Tsundere Wonders.

As always you can view all the photos in this post as slideshow here via Flickr.