Hello, and welcome to All Your Monies, where The Glorio Blog’s resident toy and figure collecting crew (and Iro) will run down the last week’s new pre-orders, turning a loving or scathing all-seeing eye over what’s been put out for you to spend your hard-earned cash on. This week, true horror awaits us all.

Nendoroid Joker Suicide Edition & Harley Quinn Suicide Edition (Suicide Squad)
Good Smile Company, February 2017, ¥4,167 each

Zigg: I’m not going to go ahead and say the Joker Nendoroid is the worst thing we’ve ever featured on here because god knows we’ve seen some creepy, disgusting shit on here, but it might be the most horrible toy I’ve seen that isn’t utterly peverse. It’s not creepy in a good way either – instead it just looks vapid, cheap and completely vacant. Harley isn’t much good either, but at least she vaguely resembles the actual Nendoroids we know and love. Still these designs are so awful in the first place there’s not really much GSC could have done with them. Ghastly.

Iro: The worst nendos I’ve ever seen. Joker looks like he’s gong to eat you in your sleep, and Harley’s hair looks like candy. Remember when Harley Quinn actually looked like a harlequin and didn’t just dress in fetish outfits all the time?

Jel: I’d say these were the worst nendoroids of all time if the Batman v. Superman set didn’t exist… you know what? Let’s just say these are the worst nendos of all time. I mean technically they’ve done a fine job of translating the characters to tiny giant headed form but the source material is so awful that it hurts to look at them. That Joker face is going to haunt my nightmares for a long time.

Umi Sonoda (Love Live!)
Alter, April 2017, ¥15,800

Zigg: By contrast this is absolutely delightful and perhaps my favourite Love Live! figure yet. Alter always excel when they have insanely frilly and embroidered outfits to work with, and I adore the colour and the pattern. Combine that with a great pose and even though it’s expensive it’s another clear knockout.

Iro: Alter makes good figures and this looks like a pretty good figure. The detached-sleeves-kimono-dress-crossover-thing is prime idol fashion bullshit, but details like the microphone cord and the various ribbons/frills look well-made. Also, it isn’t super skeevy, so that’s a plus.

Jel: Iro’s Love Live counterpart (we all took this disturbingly accurate quiz, can you guess who was who?) is impressively sculpted but I have to take issue with some of the design choices. For one thing, it’s a bit monochromatic but I can kind of forgive that since all idol groups have to have their image colors and what not. It’s the overuse of that pattern which is really killing me. It’d be fine if it was just on the main part of her dress but extending to the arms and leggings is just overkill. At least she is not wearing anything super revealing and the pose is fun, so I’d still say overall it’s a nice figure.

Stardust (VOCALOID)
Myethos, April 2017, ¥11,800

Zigg: Myethos are still a slightly unknown quality in the figure world, but they’ve produced a range of highly intriguing figures and this is another one. I think what strikes me here immediately is the dark, muted colour palette, a rarity in an industry where design tends towards the overbearingly flashy. Lots of lovely little touches here too, like the star pattern on the dress and the hanging gems. Extremely promising.

Iro: Has the Dreamworks logo fishing man finally found his dream girl? One would normally expect the ever-present Miku in something like this, but seeing as how Myethos is a Chinese company, it makes sense they’d focus on a Chinese vocaloid I’ve never heard of. It’s a pretty good one.

Jel: Nice to see Myethos continue to improve as this is a lovely figure. The sculpt is nice, particularly her hair, but that base really steals the show. It’s very elaborate without being too distracting, and the copper color really contrasts nicely with the blue dress and hair. I’m not particularly familiar with this vocaloid (apparently she is Chinese?) but even without context this looks great.

Saber White Dress Ver. (Fate/Stay Night)
BellFine, December, ¥14,000 

Zigg: Isn’t this just Saber Lily? Actually I have no idea what Saber Lily even is but she looks kinda like this right? The main draw of Saber figures is the insane swords and armour, but this is just bland as bland can be. Also, what’s with that facial expression?

Iro: This might be the least necessary Saber figure I’ve ever seen, depicting a scene which lasts a few seconds at most. It isn’t even a flattering scene, seeing as how it’s when Saber has been drained of her power and forced into a creepy fetish dress by Caster. It’s also the dress which inspired the Saber Lily design, which has led to all other kinds of figure bullshit. Pass.

Jel: This looks fine but I’m struggling to find anything remarkable about it. All of the dozens of iterations of Saber at least have some kind of cool armor or something but a plain white dress? Yawn. I guess I’ll say they captured the motion of her dress really well, but that’s probably I got on this one.

iDOLM@STER 10th Memorial Figure (Take A Wild Guess)
Stronger, June 2017, ¥33,000 (Exclusive)

Zigg: THIRTY THREE THOUSAND YEN. I mean sure, you’re technically getting three figures, and three pretty nice looking ones, but they’re still only 1/8 scale and certainly not as complex design-wise or detail-wise as something from the top drawer of Alter or GSC’s catalogue. It’s a neat idea and like I said the figures themselves look decent, but it’s really hard not to just scoff at that kind of money.

Iro: All these idols look the same to me, but I guess this is nice? I also feel like the girl in blue should have been in the center flanked by those in red, just from a framing perspective, but what do I know? If you’re enough into Idolmaster to drop this kind of money on a statue, this probably belongs on your shelf.

Jel: Hey look, it’s three figure for the price of…. three. I mean technically the price is acceptable for what you’re getting but that’s still a bit of an investment. That aside, it’s a really nice looking set and I kind of like the softer, almost matte finish on the paint work, assuming that’s what the final product will aim for. Based on my limited knowledge of the series the choice of girls seems odd besides Haruka but I probably have that all wrong and should leave that up to the fans to debate.