Hobby Hovel
If you’ve been a long-time reader of Hobby Hovel, then you would have undoubtedly noticed the lack of activity over the majority of the past year. I had even skipped my anniversary post due to the laughable amount of content produced. The reason for this has something to do with this engagement ring happily accepted by my fiancé Melissa, and if you’ve got time and patience to spare, I will tell you the story of how I and the blog ended up where they are right now.
A month ago, I flew to San Francisco and met someone in person for the first time. We had In-N-Out Burger and visited the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art briefly before she had to run off.
On the very next day, I attended her wedding. And believe me, I had a lot of fun telling the other guests about the briefness of our acquaintance.
Of course, there’s more to the story to that, and this post is going to be all about my friendship with the newly-wed Alicia. Before anyone objects about yet another normalfag post:
I did not actually take any photos of the wedding itself because I didn’t want to get in the way of the professionals on the scene. I did end up taking a lot of photos at another wedding, but that’s another story entirely. So in lieu of weddings photos, here are some of my photo highlights from San Francisco to keep you from dozing off!
After taking a year off, I’m back at Anime North! After Otakon last year, I had my doubts on whether or not I’d attend AN again, but as luck would have it, I got into touch with Jenn and Suich from Poke the Merch and decided to give it a shot — I just can’t say no to meeting strangers from the internet!
If there is one personal quality that the figure collecting hobby develops, it’s patience. The journey from original source material, to the first prototype at an expo, to painted prototype, to pre-order, to delay(s) and finally to release usually is an absurdly long one. This often means by the time a figure appears of a anime I really enjoy, that anime has flown off the radar ages ago. Still, some series manage to endure the test of time, one of them being AnoHana from which Alter’s 1/8 Menma hails from.
Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai.(AnoHana for short) is a melodrama about a group of estranged childhood friends. Once known as the “Super Peace Busters”, the gang has since parted ways after Honma Meiko (nicknamed “Menma”) — one of its members — died in an accident when the group was out playing together. Yet several years after, Menma’s ghost would come to revisit Jinta, another member of the group and the protagonist of the story, thus beginning a journey to reconcile with the past not only for Jinta, but the rest of the Super Peace Busters as well.
The anime is good, but it’s one of those shows that I’m a little uncertain about after the fact. Looking back, it was very heavy-handed with its melodrama and I can easily see a lot of potential eye-roller moments. But I didn’t seem to mind — I marathoned the series in two sittings, and the floodgates on my face crumbled away to nothing by the end. Having emigrated to Canada at the age of eleven, I don’t even remember the names of my childhood friends from the motherland, so I may be especially susceptible to a story about the ultimately unbreakable bonds of such friends. In any case, I would recommend AnoHana to anyone, but especially if you’ve enjoyed melodramas like the KEY shows — if you could stomach the melodrama in Clannad, then AnoHana should be just the thing for you.
Anyways, back to the figure, which depicts a girl who isn’t dolled up and sexed out in any way — unthinkable, I know! I suppose that’s testament to how much I liked AnoHana, so let’s see if Alter’s Menma lives up to that.