Today I came across a really interesting entry on the Bandai Gashapon blog. The page has not been updated much lately, its light having been stolen by their Twitter account. However, with this recent entry talking about the next releases in the Gashapon qua Shooters figure series the lead designer decided to spend some time discussing a lot of topics related to Gashapon manufacture in general. If you are familiar with Gashapon you will recognize a lot of the topics and it is interesting to get some insight into the plight of the Gashapon development team and the realities that they deal with in day to day work.
I was considering injecting my own takes on the topics in between the quotes but decided I have beaten that horse long enough in the reviews and so it would be better to let the text speak for itself. The outtakes you will see here are of course machine translated and so can be a bit grating at times but you should have no issues understanding the main gist of it. To read the original blog entry, see here.
The first section of the text follows the immediate introduction of the latest Aqua Shooters figure series but it can be easily applied to figure series like Mobile Suit Ensemble and Gashapon Warrior Senshi Forte. It also explains the bitter fate suffered by discontinued brands like MicroWars and Universal Unit. One word that you will come across often in the translation is "bullet" which here is translated from the Japanese word meaning set or volume, so fifth bullet would be volume five, etc. The highlights in the texts are all the author's own.
If you have read previous announcements for new products you have no doubt seen the almost pleas for people to pre-order the new sets, and this section clearly explains why it is so important. I don't know about you, but I have never pre-ordered any item, preferring to pick things up in the marketplace. One of the major pains with pre-ordering is difficulty of putting together larger orders to combine shipping and the most egregious problem which is the consumer-unfriendly packaging offers. Why would I want to buy a 10-box of Ensemble when it gives me maybe 3-4 duplicate figures I do not want and no duplicates of the figures I would like multiples of?
Anyway, you have heard all of this moaning from me before so let's go on. The original blog went on to talk about further upcoming Aqua Shooters releases here but at the end comes the below deeper insight into the manufacturing situation faced by the Gashapon team today. Most interesting.
This clearly explains the shift from beautifully painted figures to the mini-model kit figures we see nowadays. Personally I wouldn't mind paying higher prices for figures with better pre-painting, since the time and effort needed to tune up everything yourself is not a luxury I have. I haven't even caught up with my Ensemble backlog to begin with... :)
Hope you found this topic as interesting as I did, and apologies to the author in case the translation caused any greater errors but I think we all heard your message. Best wishes to both the Gashapon and the Shokugan teams over at Bandai because even though we harp and moan and bitch and whine all the time we really do like your output, if only it was a little bit easier to actually find and purchase the things you really want.
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