#but I got a bunch of merch and manga so I'm in it again

[akakris10]

Jin Yuichi World Trigger auuuuuggghhhh.... This guy..... He's so everything..... He's the single most crucial agent in Border because of his ability to see the future, he's carrying the safety of the city on his shoulders via his foresight and preparation, he was previously one of the only 2 S-rank in all of Border, he's part of old Border and has watched many of his former peers either die or retire, his family has been killed twice-over counting both his mother and Mogami, he has an unhealthy diet of pretty much only fried rice crackers on a day-to-day basis, is constantly in his Trion body(which is rumoured to cause sleeping problems) even moreso than any other character in the series, and he was carrying around the weaponized memento of his dead teacher/guardian-figure around for several years prior to canon. Oh And He's 19.

[earthbovndmisfit]

11, 12, 19, 21, and 24!

Fandom/fanfic asks! - @icouldbemoreclever

11.- Most unique merch you have for a fandom? That would probably be my old Captain Commando figure from the MvsC series by Toy Biz. I don't know how "unique" it actually is, but I've seen it going on sale for waaayyy more than I paid for it brand new at the time, so it kinda looks like it's not too common. Plus, other than the games and the 2 volume manga, there's very few official merch of that franchise! :c

12.- Craziest thing you've ever done as part of a fandom? I've mentioned this one before, but I once attended to a Megumi Ogata (YYH's Kurama's seiyuu) concert in my country while wearing a Karasu (YYH) cosplay lol. I was also on the second row! Just about 2 meters away from her. It was quite the experience lol. It was also not that planned really! ((Story time ahead)) The concert was held inside an anime convention and which was also located in another city (around 4 hours from where I live). Said anime convention used to give free entrance to most cosplayers at the time. I went with my sister, a couple friends, and a bunch of guys we met during the trip and also met with an online friend I had at the time and her girlfriend. At the time, my sister and I were kinda broke bc we had just attended to that con the past November (this one of the concert was on February, just a couple months later), so we'd had many expenses already from then and also from buying bus tickets to get there this time, local transportation tickets (bus and subway), food, etc so any pennies we could save to buy merch would be great! I also used to cosplay every time we went to those cons, plus, I already had the Karasu cosplay ready since that was the first cosplay I ever made and I also still had my hair long by then since I was planning to cosplay as Kuronue at some point too (spoiler: The Kuronue cosplay never came to fruition :( ). I also had a hunch they would have Kurama merch on sale for that con due to Megumi Ogata's concert (YYH merch was difficult to find, and even more so Kurama's because it would be sold out before we even got there), and I was right because that's where I managed to snatch a Kurama Banpresto keychain I'd wanted for years! So it was a win/win all around with the moneys I saved from that free entrance lol

19.- Fanfic you read again and again? I don't have a specific one that comes to my mind tbh, partly bc I haven't read any fanfics in a good while and partly bc my memory is awful. I like plenty that I occasionally re-read every now and then tho! Most of them were written by HamonHugs because I really like the way they portrayed and stayed true to Jonathan and Speedwagon.

21.- Favorite fic trope? I'm a simple man who loves Friends to Lovers stuff (bonus for "Enemies to friends to lovers" which, coincidentally, pretty much fits Jonawagon lol). "Fix-it" fics where some of the characters with canon deaths survive the horrors (like the "Jonathan lives AU" stuff in Jojo for example). Romance stuff, fluff, stuff like Mutual Pining, a bit of Drama and Angst here and there (pretty sure the Hurt/Comfort thing fills this bill but idk?), bits of humor sprinkled here and there to give the story a wider range of emotions (thus making the sad and the fluff feel much more pronounced too). Some whump and violence can be good too depending on the story. AUs are also nice when done right. I like some of the "Modern AUs" I've seen for Jonawagon. Same with reincarnation stuff and so on. I suck at naming tropes tbh, so I totally missed stuff here.

24.- Funniest fandom-related story? Probably the story I mentioned earlier about the Megumi Ogata concert lol. Other than that I can't remember anything in particular, save for the times Reki Taki-sensei (one of Araki's former assistants for the manga and also part of DavidPro's art staff since Stardust Crusaders) drops some likes on some of the art I retweet or on some of the random Speedwagon posts I make on twitter. As a bit of a side note: He also sometimes likes some of my Jonawagon ship-ish posts too 😁

[oatmealaddiction]

Ok, I've got to respond to this because what on earth?

Firstly, where are you getting the information that Japanese speaking audiences hated the 2003 anime? It made Studio Bones a ton of money, and they were always quick to prop it up as one of their best, such to the point they—again—made a sequel series. I'm just going off wikipedia here, but it won best anime of the year two years in a row from the TV Asahi poll, and was usually pretty high in the ratings. Won a bunch of awards from the looks of it at the Tokyo Anime Awards. I mean, I'm not Japanese so I don't know, but to me it seems like the show was popular and pretty well liked. Enough that I remember seeing references to it from other anime back during the time like Lucky Star. It had three video games, a lot of merch, and a lot of fan content. I remember an entire fan-game made by Chinese students that had tons of fan content from both English and Japanese fans. Where are you getting this information that nobody in Japan liked it? Second, uh, I read and liked the manga and I like 03 a lot??? I like both versions??? You don't know what other people are going to like, and a lot of times it doesn't have a lot to do with how faithful an adaptation is. Honestly, my issue here is that people write off 03 without ever watching it or giving it a chance, such to the point it's been taking off a streaming services and it's hard to find places to access it legally. I'm not saying it's better than Brotherhood, but that you gain a lot watching it and Brotherhood together—along with the manga. Each version enhances the other. Like, 03 is good, a lot of people like it, I think it's worth people's time to try it and see if they enjoy it, why does everyone have a problem with me saying that it's good and was regarded as good? I was there in 2007, I remember the discourse, I remember how people talked about this anime. What is this revisionist history where it was just some mistake that Studio Bones needed to rectify???

Okay but the weirdest thing about the whole "Brotherhood is better you should skip 03" discourse that's become commonplace now, it sort of forgets the world Brotherhood came out in and why you should watch the original Fullmetal Alchemist. When Brotherhood came out, the original Fullmetal Alchemist was one of the most beloved and most watched animes of all time. Brotherhood assumes you the audience have already seen it because of course you have, everyone has seen it, so it skips important information and speeds the story up because it doesn't want to bore you with things you already know. Have you ever wondered "hey why does the first episode of Brotherhood kind of suck, and why am I being introduced to like 50 new characters, and why are they acting like I know what the hell an alchemist is?" It's because Brotherhood thinks you've seen 03.

The first 7 or so episodes of Brotherhood constitute dozens of chapters in the manga, and the first 25 or so episodes of the original Fullmetal Alchemist. The Nina Tucker episode in Brotherhood, in FMA 03 takes up nearly three episodes. Yoki gets a backstory in 03 and it's genuinely one of the best episodes and taken directly from the manga and Brotherhood glosses over it because: duh, you've already seen it. And so if you skip the original you miss out on dozens of really great character building episodes like Ed and Al meeting Hughes for the first time and getting to spend a whole episode helping him free a train from terrorists, or Ed and Roy having a duel that expands on the relationship they have, or episodes where the brothers just help out random people in towns before the major story gets going.

The original also paces itself quite a bit better than Brotherhood and is more in line with the mangas storytelling. In the manga we don't find out about The Gate until nearly two dozen chapters in, and the same goes for the original anime. Like, that's a twist reveal in those stories, and it's weird that the most watched series is the one where they tell you all about The Gate in the first two episodes because they assume you've already seen the original show.

What's more, people don't know that Hiromu Arakawa helped write for the anime while she was still in the middle of writing the manga, and as a result was inspired to write scenes in Brotherhood that the anime did first. That scene of Edward getting impaled by a falling beam? Directly inspired by a similar scene in the original anime. There's a lot of little instances of that and they're great when you can recognize parallels and things in Brotherhood that are direct references to the original anime, but people don't notice any of that anymore. Because the original anime is just an automatic skip these days, and it's a bummer because people don't realize what a giant it was back before Brotherhood was released. They treat it as *bad,* not realizing it was one of the most beloved anime of its time and the problems people take issue with have a lot more to do with personal taste than any kind of actual flaw in the writing. Brotherhood was never meant to dethrone it, and the original anime was always supposed to be part of the viewing experience which is why those first few episodes of Brotherhood are so fast paced. So like, please stop telling people Fullmetal Alchemist 2003 is a skip, or it's bad, or you don't need it because Brotherhood is better. Regardless if you think Brotherhood is better or not, the original wrote Brotherhood's check. It was huge, it was beloved, and Brotherhood is *banking* on the knowledge you've seen all of it and loved it. And trust me when I say there is so much to love about the original series. It's still my favorite branch of the FMA franchise, and it's worth your time, I promise you.

[justabstractthings]

aljsdfl;asd your favorite character list is such a mood. I love pretty much all the characters from the Fairy Tail guild, and a whole bunch of others outside of the guild. One of my good friends loves it too and we bought Funko Pops of Lucy and Natsu (I kept the Lucy one) on a trip! Have you been keeping up with the manga? And what kind of tattoo did you want to get? (also, hope it's okay that I'm talking to you so much about Fairy Tail, I'm just really excited to have found a fellow fan!!)

Of course it’s okay! I love talking about Fairy Tail and I’m always happy to meet another fan!!!

I don’t really have any Fairy Tail merch cause when I started I was a poor college kid 😂😂 But I am on the look out for the Funko Pops now 👀👀

Unfortunately, I haven’t been keeping up with the manga. It’s really hard to find sites that have it so if you know a few, please send them my way! I want to get back into Fairy Tail and most likely rewatch every season again!

A few years ago, me and my ex were talking about tattoos that we would get and we agreed on getting the Fairy Tail tattoo (like the actual Fairy Tail symbol). We weren’t getting it because we were together. We were gonna get it cause we liked Fairy Tail so much. He got it on his left arm and I was gonna get it either on my ankle or wrist. We broke up before I could get my tattoo lmaooooo

[red-dia]

Thanks a lot for writing this!! If you don't mind, I'll add on with a few others I know about (including some which seem very obvious, but it might be useful to people who joined late :])

So, card games! Ichikawa drew two different sets of cards:

⬆️ I haven't managed to find a lot of info about this one, I only know it predates the second set of cards. According to natalie, it was supposed to be promotional material for vol 3, notably for libraries. I'm not sure how it was distributed, though (I've seen a few people claim they got individual cards when buying a volume).

⬆️ That one though, was actually produced and distributed as a bonus for vol 4. These two cards in particular were not included in the base set. Alloy Phos could be obtained with an issue of Afternoon Magazine (July 2015), and Padparadscha was a prize for a Twitter giveaway of vol 4.

Last but not least, Ichikawa drew two Phos cards as part of collaborations. The left one isf from Lord of Vermillon. The right one... I'm honestly not sure, I've tried looking into it but I can't find any satisfying results :( But you should be able to find them easily enough on mercari/yahoo/rakuma etc - here's an example of listing you can look for.

Moving on with fashion; HnK surprisingly had a few collabs with supergroupies! These included:

Jewerly,

Shoes,

Mineral-themed bags,

Lunarian-themed jewerly,

And gem-themed accessories (Shoes, handbag, purse, phonecase, overalls).

They're not the most affordable and tend to be pretty subtle about their affiliation with HnK, but it's still pretty cool seeing how much merch there was.

With the anime adaptation, there was also a big influx of new merch. ANIMATION ADDICT STORE had the bag you shared, but a few others items such as these 'antistatic wristbands' (their words, not mine) of Phos, Bortz, Dia and Cinnabar...

Or these various products ('bandana', night gown (?), tote bag, pouch, phone case).

We also got some cute chibi charms/pins of the cast, which were made by Exrare, a company that seems to have disappeared sometimes not too long after the anime aired.

These chibis were reused a lot though. Zextworks reused them for smartphone cases and little acrylic standees. (There's also little shikishi boards with the anime renders! Though, the character on it was random. All the pics are in the link.)

There were a few other goodies using these renders, like these acrylic charms by Atelier Magi:

(There's another series with Bortz, Rutile, Morga and Goshe)

Or these standees, which are supposed to be earring holders :

We also got a bunch of other standees by Zextworks, which. lol. lmao. This is where I'll stop listing most products that use anime renders, because a lot of them are pretty lazy in that regard.

In the style of the Exrare charms, there was another set of pretty cute charms (which I was convinced were the same as the others but I guess not? oh well)

And even if they appear in the link you shared, I'll take the opportunity to repost it : Minnanokuji had a few charms on the more original side, and a decently sized Ventricosus plushie which is very important to me 👉👈

Also pretty cool, but there's a few HnK manga shikishi. I know of 3 types (from 2014 ⬅️, 2013 ➡️, 2017⬇️). You could get the first two by buying tomes in libraries during special events, and the last by buying DVDs.

Some sellers also included bonuses with the Anime, like a mirror, a ceramic jewel box, and a pretty cute print.

And of course, this list wouldn't be complete without the famous Goodsmile figures:

And I can't mention these without giving a quick shoutout to the Phos figma, which was announced in 2018 and then never mentioned ever again. RIP lil guy

I ran out of merch to think about, but I'm probably missing some! If you want to be pedantic, the artbooks should probably be included (the ones that came with the manga's special editions, the orange artbook, pseudomorph of love, and probably the anime concept arts, too). But I guess mentioning them should be enough to get people to know of their existence, so 👍

It finally arrived! This a limited edition official clear folder of the 4th volume cover art. Since I own this now, it is very high quality. It feels like its made of plastic silicone(??), the button clasp is metal, and the cover is actually transparent, so you can see the lustrous laying on your documents.

There are several official clear files/folders of houseki no kuni (the manga, not the anime) floating around, yet there is barely any information I can find on them.

Note: photo is badly edited to show the colors more because my entire house has bad lighting, the colors on the folder match the actual colors on the artwork.