My Shiny Toy Robots

While perusing the dealers' room at this years Amecon, my eyes were drawn in by some figure sets I'd be considering buying for a while. Originally Phat Company's (distributed by Good Smile Company) Anarchy sister 2-pack from Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt had been my planned purchase in terms of figures (since I knew they were eventually bringing a Scanty and Kneesocks set out too), but I eventually passed on them in favour of the Nendoroids. However my want of the Scanty and Kneesocks set still remained, and when my girlfriend and I stumbled across both sets we decided to clean house. She bought Panty & Stocking, while I happily took home the Demon sisters. There's not really a lot to say about them to give an extensive review, but I thought I'd share some pictures of both sets for anyone considering picking these (or the other two available sets) up. The packaging is pretty nice with its distinct Panty & Stocking "colour explosion...

Nendoroids have always something I've been mixed on in the past - while they look like excellent super-deformed versions of popular characters that come with a pretty impressive set of accessories, the size and price (around 3333 yen/£26 RRP) has always been a bit of a turn off. However when Good Smile Company announced that they would be making nedoroids of Panty and Stocking (and thus, the first 'posable' toys for the characters) I felt it was time to finally check this line out. And since she was my favourite of the two, Panty was the first one to be purchased. A standard nendoroid is about half the size of a figma/revoltech figure (I forgot to take a comparison picture, but this will illustrate the scale difference), with the bulk of the figure being in the oversized head. While small, the limbs do have some posability. In Panty's case, she is posable at the head, shoulders and hips. While her posability is somewhat limited, the variety of poses you can get ...

When the team behind Gurren Lagann first announced that this would be the name of their next project, along with this trailer , I'd be lying if I didn't wonder what the hell they were thinking. Gainax have always been known for taking things to the extreme, but this looked like it was that little bit too far. Nevertheless, because of the quality of Gurren Lagann and other Gainax works I planned to give this a go. And I am so glad I did. The plot is simple. It revolves around two angels by the names of Panty and Stocking, who were kicked out of heaven due to their behaviour and have been assigned with ridding Daten City of demonic creatures known as ghosts. They are guided by black-afro priest Garterbelt and aided by their pet/chewtoy Chuck (who is a homage to the disguised Gir from Invader Zim ) and ghost hunter/geek boy Brief. Panty and Stocking's powers are as their name suggests - Panty has the ability to turn underwear into pistols (and various other weapons)...