The gaming figures of Winter Wonder Festival 2015

It’s that time of year again: a weekend where rampaging figure nerds like me mash their F5 keys across numerous Japanese webpages to get sweet, sweet pictures of pretty new plastic figures from the twice-annual Wonder Festival. Wonder Festival is a celebration of all things figure, bringing together garage kit makers and builders, prepainted figure manufacturers, traditional action figure makers, and a whole brigade of fervent otaku.

Every Wonder Festival brings with it a plethora of pictures of new wares from numerous Japanese figure manufacturers. While I’m certainly a fan of figures in general, I’m most excited when my passions of gaming and figures collide to create gorgeous pieces of three-dimensional art. And I’m sure I’m not alone! Yet with so many manufacturers large and small competing for the attention of showgoers and photographers – and with juggernaut series like Kantai Collection spawning huge amounts of merchandise – it’s hard to sort through everything to find the gaming-related goodies.

That’s why I’ve done it for you! I’ve assembled a gallery of Wonder Festival’s gaming figure announcements, both prominent and obscure. Given how much gets shown at a typical WonFes, I may have missed a few things – if so, let me know and I’ll add them ASAP!

Some notes: I’m not posting garage kit pics, because as awesome as resin kits are, a lot of them are extremely difficult to obtain (since the creator probably makes less than a hundred of them). I’m trying to focus on stuff you actually have a chance of seeing in your hands sometime in the near future. I’m also aware that KanColle/Tony Shining Series/Love Live/Idolmaster/Senran Kagura etc. would technically fall under the gaming figures category. My major excuse for excluding them, in this case, is because there are like a billion of them and I’d rather look more at the gaming stuff that doesn’t get the plastic treatment quite as often.

Images are sourced from Akiba Hobby, Dengeki Online, MFC, Figsoku twitter and website, WHL4U, and the AmiAmi Blog.

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Interview: Yusuke Kozaki

Yusuke Kozaki is one of the hottest Japanese artists right now, and it’s not hard to see why: his work has a distinct, refined style that’s both stylish and has a more “realistic” look that gives it broad worldwide appeal. Kozaki’s work in games is especially memorable: besides working extensively with Suda51 on titles like Liberation Maiden and No More Heroes, he also did the designs for Fire Emblem: Awakening (along with some additional art for Super Smash Bros. 4).

This interview was conducted at Japan Expo USA 2013. I was unable to find an interested publisher at the time, and seeing as how Kozaki’s become much more well-known in the past year or two (he’s a big part of the Under the Dog anime production effort you’ve probably heard about) I think it’s a good time to put this out there. Just remember: this is a little over a year old at this point, but I still think it’s a really nice interview with some interesting info.

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