Over the weekend, I followed my anime club to the annual trip to Nekocon (Hampton Roads, VA). Although this is a yearly trip for the club, it’s actually my first time going with them since I’m always too busy with school projects at this time in previous years prior graduation. The con itself felt, greatly diminished, compared to my experience at Otakon (Baltimore, MD), mostly due to the far lower quality of its panels and the globally lower attendance, particularly in the Dealer’s Room and Art Bazaar. But visiting the con with the full club sure was fun, particularly when half our club attended the Name-your-tunes panel and rocked the event with fangasms in our seating sector.
Putting my own adventures aside, this Nekocon’s lasting souvenir is the set of KEY 10th anniversary plushies I came across by surprise.
Kawaaaiiiiii~!
I like this Rin Natsume a lot better than the plushie by Toy’s Planning. Mostly as the bubbly huge eyes makes her look far more consistent with the original artwork, as well as more proportional with the rest of her head. Plus, that half clueless half I’m-not-sure look is perfect for her (￣▽￣).
The non-flash version
I’ve always felt jealous of Honya and his plushies, feeling an unbearable desire to hug them every time I go to his room and see his plushies corner. I wanted to begin a collection of my own, but I was having trouble picking out a suitable starting point, particularly since I wasn’t satisfied with Toy Planning’s work. Thus, plushie hunting has been one of my top anime merchandise goals for the past months.
On Sunday, the last day of Nekocon, I was wandering around the Dealer’s Hall with Honya when I suddenly saw a Rin plushie at a shop. “Is that a Rin plushie? Rin from Little Busters?”, I pointed out to Honya. “Hmmm… wait, is that Misuzu?” came the reply. From there I took a more careful look of the nearby plushie and began rapid identification “yeah, and there’s Ayu! and Komari! and Nagisa!”
Obviously, we weren’t expecting KEY plushies at the small, regional con.
Due to my love of Kud’s absolute cuteness, I immediately asked the vendor if he had plushies for the other Little Buster characters. I had yet to notice the pattern of the available plushies.
He didn’t recognize the title Little Busters. But he revealed that those plushies were of a KEY 10th anniversary set, released by a relatively new company. At the price of 15 USDs, I decided to swipe the full set right away. But Honya wanted Misuzu, and since she is one of Honya’s top-5 permanent favorite characters I decided to let her go, hesitantly, and a bit unwillingly. So now we only have the full set when me and Honya Gattai…
The plushie labels were marked FuRyu, presumably the company, with the url http://www.chara-hiroba.com. It would explain why I never saw the plushies in any of the sites I shop at, but all I managed to find after browsing the company’s website were the following:
Not that I’m complaining. I would love to get a full set of KEY plushies, even if it’s going to cost an arm and a leg.
As far as merchandise goes, there’s also the Big Stuffed Kud that my heart is torn on. So cute~! But so expensive!!! It hurts just to look at that price tag!
Apparently, cuteness is expensive…
Other loot from the con included the Strawberry Panic full DVD set (one of the most adorable series ever), a White Oak Bokken (wooden katana) for sword practice, and a DM shirt for presents.
Entries (RSS)
Lucky~ I still like my Rin having a face like a doll, but I would love to have Rin with her adorable Rin face. Heck, I’d love to have all the Rin merchandise that’s available in the whole world. XD
But I do have a FuRyu Nagisa plushie coming my way at some point in the future. It’s a different set. Actually the set you have a picture of with Kyo and Fuuko. After seeing that I’ve been keeping my eye on FuRyu stuff because it seems whenever I search that name and something comes up it’s always Key merchandise.