#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.

[yumeka-sxf]

Spy x Family merch updates and manga hiatus

I wanted to post about some recent fandom news, starting with the good news: while I mentioned in my 2-year anniversary post that we've been in a dry spell lately as far as SxF content, we just recently got a bunch of new merch/designs! (mostly from various Jump Festa vendors) I'll start with my favorite of the new designs, from HMV's Jump Festa set - Forgers in winter outfits ❤️

Next is the "French casual" set from Chara-Ani~ Bond's little red beret looks so cute!

Another winter outfit set, from Animate. Gah, this one's so adorable, too 😭

Next is merch from Ichiban Kuji. Not sure if it's for Jump Festa as well, but either way, I want the acrylics and the plate!

And lastly, Ensky's merch for Jump Festa - Forgers baking cakes/cookies!

Again for those who don't know, Jump Festa is a yearly event held in Japan in late December that's dedicated to Shonen Jump IPs. SxF will have its own panel with the four Forger voice actors in attendance. We've always gotten exclusive announcements and content at past Jump Festas, so fingers crossed it will be the same for this year! I'm gonna try my best to get some of this merch when it goes on sale in late December. And of course, if I'm able to make high quality scans of these new designs, I will post those as well!

Now onto the bad news, which most of you probably heard about already: the hiatus for the SxF manga has been extended to December 23rd. I believe this is the longest hiatus the series has had so far, and what makes this one concerning is not only that the date kept changing, but also the noticeable silence from Endo and other official outlets.

In the Japanese version of the manga, the last page of each new chapter typically notes the date the next chapter will come out. In the case of the most recent chapter, 107, it said it would release on November 25th, meaning Endo would be taking a break from the bi-monthly schedule, which isn't uncommon. But then, just a few days before the 25th, official English manga outlets like MangaPlus updated the release date to December 9th. It was disappointing since we had all been waiting longer than usual for the new chapter, but again, a second postponement wasn't too alarming...what was alarming though, was the third one that came just yesterday, only a few days after the last. People started noticing that official manga outlets had, again, changed the date for the next chapter to December 23rd this time.

The fandom got stirred up quite a bit when this happened, mostly out of concern for Endo's well being. What made me particularly worried was the fact that, while these hiatuses had been going on for the past month, Endo hadn't posted anything on his Twitter account, which is very unusual considering every month prior he's posted at least a few unique illustrations. Not only that, but the last thing he posted was this oddly cryptic image on October 19th, with text that says "Don't look for me." And he then deleted it soon after, which makes it even stranger.

But thankfully, Shonen Jump must have noticed the pandemonium happening in the fandom, because just a couple hours later, they made this statement on the official Jump+ Twitter, apologizing for the delay and confirming that chapter 108 will indeed come out on December 23rd.

This to me was good news, since their official statement about it makes it unlikely they'll change the date yet again. But some sort of explanation would have been nice, even a vague one. I'm not someone to spread rumors, but my own personal speculation (which could be totally wrong) is that there was some dispute between Endo and Jump. This is the only explanation I can think of as to why his Twitter would suddenly be barren for a month after he posted consistently for so long - my guess is that he has to get approval from Jump for all the illustrations he posts there. I don't know much about the inner workings of the manga industry, but I would assume he has some contractual obligations where he can't freely post stuff on social media without some sort of publisher's approval. It is possible he's just been too busy with Jump Festa and other things, but he's still posted at least a couple times a month even when he's sick or busy, so I don't think that's the main reason. Again, this is just my speculation that could be completely wrong. There's also the fact that they so quickly changed the release date to the 23rd, the day right after Jump Festa ends, which could indicate that Endo's been busy cooking something big to be announced there. Regardless, I'm happy we finally have a new chapter release date that's pretty set in stone now, though I won't feel totally better until we get clear acknowledgment that Endo is okay, either from himself on his own Twitter or somewhere else official.

Anyway, despite this setback, I'm relieved that SxF is still going strong with all the hype for Jump Festa and season 3. Between that and the new chapter right after, we'll be eating good this Christmas!

[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 😁

[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.