Jump Festa 2014

It's been a long couple of days at Jump Festa 2014, still catching up on sleep. But here's a quick run down of this year's Jump Festa.

The most popular series this year was probably Kuroko no Basket - lot's of merchandise, lot's of cosplay and massive queues of girls wanting to get their hands on anything related to it. The upcoming series they are pushing - Nisekoi; the anime is starting next year and they are pushing it hard. The original goods - not my cup of tea as there was mainly a lot of stationary type items but I got the Yugioh Premium Pack 16s and Double Galaxy-Eyes Dragon play mats (which were then sold out on the second day). The merchant booths - things sold out pretty fast, especially at Cospa and Animate. The Jump Store was a lot smaller than last year which made no sense to me as it was very busy.

Glass balls of  various sharingan as well as a rasengan at the back. These were on sale back in summer and glow with a black light.

Bleach animation sketches.

Staff carrying freebies for Puyopuyo game.

Move and pose with life-size Gintama cut-outs.

The Yugioh Double Galaxy-Eyes dragon play mat close up of Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon.

Big balloon characters served as helpful meeting places.

Life-sized Kakumeiki Valvrave statue.

Ao no Exorcist DVD goodies.

More life-sized cut-outs for picture taking opportunities.

Giant blow-up Kyuubi - you can wear a Naruto vest/jacket and pose in front of it and a staff member takes your photo. These photo 'booths' were very popular; one for most of the main Jump series like One Piece and Ansatsu Kyoushitsu.

The next G.E.M Naruto figure coming out will be Sasuke.

Also new chibi-Naruto figures.

New Digimon figures will also be released soon.

They come with interchangeable parts for different expressions.

And the next, next G.E.M Naruto figure will be of Kakashi again but in Anbu mode.

I also had a lot of fun at the Yugioh duels.The lines were fair, about 15 minutes for single duels and 40 for tag duels. You get a Jump promo pack for participating and after your second win, you receive the extra plastic play mat  (which was called a patamerun field). All it is, is 14 bits of card connected by clear plastic so that you can fold it up - not quite cheap and nasty but getting there. Not surprisingly, some people were more than happy to concede their matches so that they could queue up again for the promo packs instead. Your wins/losses are recorded on a stamp card - they use different stamps for each day so no carrying over results from the previous day. Konami also had an 'attraction corner' where you could play mini games and get the plastic play mats as well but it was only open to little kids, families and women.

Lastly, there was a free item you could get for Pokemon X/Y as well; the weakness policy item. I have to admit I was a bit disappointed at the lack of Pokemon merchandise available - all the items there are also available in Pokemon Centers.

All in all, it was a great weekend at Jump Festa. My tips for anyone going next year would be: dress warm, bring your own food and drink, bring some form of entertainment while you wait in queues and wear comfortable shoes.

New Lightsworn Duelist Set

Really A++ play mat and sleeves from the new Lightsworn Duelist set #yugioh #ygo #duelist

Image of the Lightsworn play mat and sleeves.

This has been a busy month for Yugioh OCG with the new booster, VJump announcements and now, the new Duelist sets. There are two versions, Lightsworn and Geargia. They both come with a deck, a booster, a sleeve box, a play mat and sleeves featuring their respective themes. I have only bought the Lightsworn one so far as I am hoping to make a Lightworn deck but having seen what's in this one, I'm probably going to pick up the Geargia one later.

Anyway, I am very impressed with the set overall but since most English players don't do OCG, I'm just going to skip to the mat, sleeve and box.

The play mat comes in a neat folded box and the sleeves aren't in any particularly special packaging haha.

The play mat is actually pretty impressive. It's a good quality, full sized mat featuring most of the Lightsworn members. Dimensions are approximately 14" x 24" x 0.08" - basically the same as the WoW TCG mats.

The Lightsworn mat in all its glory.

The sleeves are pretty much the same as other sleeves released in previous sets. There are 70 sleeves in the pack - nice to see they are keeping the same nice number for a 40 card deck, 15 extra and 15 side deck.

The set also comes with a long cardboard box for holding cards in general and has a flat plastic handle on top. I didn't make mines up so here's a picture from Konami. Lightsworn is Lightlord in OCG.

The cardboard card box.

As an aside, this set of merchandise comes with some cardboard Madolche deck boxes. They're just your standard freebie giveaway but I have a soft spot for Madolches so I'm still happy with them.

The front part of the Madolche deck box.

The back part of the Madolche deck box.

It goes without saying, I have some Lightsworn play mats and sleeves that are looking for a good home so if you are interested, please contact me. They are, of course, new and unused. You can use Facebook, eBay, Twitter, this blog etc and I'll get in touch with you. Happy dueling!

TCG Playmat Review: Character Rubber Mat Collection Movie: K-ON! Death Devil Gokko

In packaging.

To get things started, I'm going to give a short review of my new K-On play mat that just arrived last night. It's released from MOVIC under the Character Rubber Mat Collection and features the characters from the K-On movie.

It is 60cm x 30cm x 0.2cm (23.6" x 11.8" x 0.079") in dimension. I would say that it feels a lot like the World of Warcraft mats or the Yugioh Gold Series mats. That is, decently thick but the material is a bit on the rough side (if you want smooth, I recommend Bushiroad - unfortunately their mats are on the thinner side).

I really like the design; my only gripe is that the length is a bit long for the width. I guess I won't have any trouble with it hanging off the table though :)

Unrolled in all its glory.

Haven't watched K-On? Check it out here. It's a slice-of-life comedy series about a group of girls that form a "light music" band at school. Done by Kyoto Animation so looks nice all around. I recommend it for some light-hearted fun.

#K-On #anime