avocadomaki

99.5% of programming consists of gluing together calls to library functions. All popular languages are equally good at this. So one can easily spend one's whole career operating in the intersection of popular programming languages.

But the other .5% of programming is disproportionately interesting. If you want to learn what it consists of, the weirdness of weird languages is a good clue to follow.

- Paul Graham, http://www.paulgraham.com/weird.html

99.5% of it is very boring, and the other 0.5% is difficult enough that you need a good understanding of maths in order to do it. (I struggled a lot with maths.)

This is what's being discussed in the latest trending article on MFC.

The Good Smile Company's Nendoroid Problem...


https://web.archive.org/web/20220727084627/https://myfigurecollection.net/blog/55247

A lot of collectors think that as GSC has increased the number of nendoroids they produce each year, their quality control and design have deteriorated significantly. Nendoroids now release with fewer props and face plates than they used to. A significant minority of new nendoroids release with paint flaws or parts that don't slot together properly... and of course, their prices have gone up from around $30 to $60+.

Nendoroids such as the Bloomed in Japan Sakura Miku are what inspired me to start collecting in the first place. Their uniform art style meant that displaying characters from vastly different series actually looked good, the chibi proportions are really cute (and work well if you have limited display space), and the swappable/poseable parts let you create silly scenarios of the type only a 14 year old could dream up. While I don't have an interest in buying them any more, I still completely understand their appeal.

The reduction in extra parts is understandable to me, since most collectors rarely change the pose of their nendoroid once it's on display. (I only changed the parts and pose of my Legacy of Revoltech Rei once a month - at most - during the time I owned it.) Isaloid says:

Yeah, the number of face plates and accessories has gone down, but how often do you really change them? As long as the nendo has the most popular accessories relevant to the character I think it's fine.

Some nendoroids fail to include key facial expressions for their character, or forgo a siginificant prop, and those are definitely design issues on GSC's part. Yor's (from Spy x Family) is a great example of this, since she doesn't have her trademark assassin face. Flaws like that can absolutely make a nendoroid not worth buying. But if a character has alternative expressions that capture their personality and props which reference common scenarios they get into, I'm not going to feel so bad about fewer parts being included in the set compared to five years ago.

Secondly, with the increase in oil prices, the price of plastic has gone significantly up too. Fewer parts lets nendoroids continue to be manufactured and sold in the same price range they target even as inflation begins to eat up profit margins. Nendoroids are still relatively affordable figures, typically retailing for about 5000 - 7000JPY these days, which is a reasonable increase due to inflation - unlike the runaway price hikes for scale figures.

The rise in paint errors and loose parts, to me, is the real issue with GSC's newer nendoroids. These were rare with older nendoroids, and especially with the price increase and reduction in parts, having proper quality control is the least they could do. As LovelyIdiot says:

I feel like quality control should be more important than number of accessories and price point. If they sell me a nendoroid for 7000 yen with a set number of accessories and parts, it is up to me whether or not I choose to buy it. If I feel like its too expensive, I'll pass. But should I choose to buy it, my nendoroid should be sturdy and not fall apart at the smallest disturbance. I should be able to put it in the poses they advertise it in and I shouldn't have weird paint splotches or finger marks on it.