Merry Christmas!

[lhb412]

Hope everyone's having a very merry Christmas!

I'm now up to my neck in new Godzilla / Ultraman Blu-rays, so that's going to keep me busy into the new year!

[Tom R VanSlambrouck]

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

I got a nice haul this year including

-New tires on my car
-Criterion Showa Godzilla Collection
-$50 Amazon Gift card from my sister and brother in law
-$50 Best Buy gift card
-New Cloths
-Candy lots and lots of candy.

With the Gift Cards I bought Xbox Gift cards and so far I've preordered Doom Eternal Deluxe and RE3 remake.

[dagarah]

A Very Merry Christmas to one & all!

[Benjamin Haines]

Merry Christmas to everyone still reading this in 2023!

[lhb412]

^Hell yeah. I hadn't been able to log in for a few weeks on Chrome - but I apparently still can on Firefox!

Merry Christmas you wonderful old derelict forum!

Childhood be damned; this has gotta be the best bevy of Christmas gifts I've ever received: new pair of Chuck Taylor's, authentic Irish wool knit sweater, Cavity Colors Godzilla shirts, the new Columbo blu-ray set, Tohl Narita art book, Godzilla/GRA novelization...

Well, off to do the last of my holiday baking with this apple pie...

[Kailem]

Merry Christmas to the four or five people still regularly posting here!

I didn't get a ton this year, mostly games and Blu-rays, but as far as giant monster stuff goes I did pick up the new Gorgo Blu-ray as well as the Kong: Skull Island TTRPG adventure for Everyday Heroes, as well as the core rulebook. I'd been thinking for a while that the Godzilla universe would on the one hand make a great playground for RPG's but figured because of the size difference between the players and the *real* main characters that such a thing wouldn't be possible. Then I found out someone had apparently figured out a way to make it work!

Chances are I'll just end up reading through half the rules, never actually playing any games and then forgetting even that much, but I was at least interested enough to pick it up, as I'm planning to do with the second Kong adventure they're releasing next year too.

[lhb412]

Merry Christmas you wonderful old quasi-functional forum!

In addition to the presents I bought for my close family and friends I baked hundreds of cookies and ended up giving cookie boxes to coworkers, neighbors, and (somewhat more distant) family. Note to self: make and freeze the dough earlier in the month so you don't spends several days straight laboring over cookies right before Christmas day!

Got a lot of great stuff: the latest Shawscope blu-ray box set, Jackie Chan's Project A duology, Ultraman Blazar and Kamen Rider V3 complete series sets, a new pair of Chuck Taylors, two Cavity Colors Godzilla shirts, and the Japanese 'art of' books for all three of the Shin movies (Godzilla, Ultraman, Kamen Rider).

... but I gotta go back to work for two days, so I left alot of this stuff in its packaging so I can enjoy opening it up this weekend!

Happy Holidays, folks!

[Benjamin Haines]

Happy holiday season to everyone! Through the year 2024 and Godzilla's 70th anniversary, I'm glad that this old message board still lingers on.

For Christmas, I gave my lady a collection of hot sauces featured on the latest season of the Hot Ones talk show on YouTube, then I assisted her with frying fish, broccoli and french fries for dinner. A couple of our friends traveled out of town for the holidays and they were the folks who adopted the last two stray kittens that we had fostered earlier this year, so we've been going over there to feed those kittens and it's cool to see how big they've grown now at 8 months old.

[Kailem]

Merry Slightly Late Christmas! It might not be quite as active as it used to be, but I'm glad this place is still around and somewhat functional!

I didn't get a ton of stuff this year, but what I did get was entirely Toho-themed, so I'm very happy! I got the rest of the Media Blasters Toho tokusatsu DVDs I hadn't picked up yet, namely Space Amoeba, Frankenstein Conquers the World, Dogora, Atragon and Latitude Zero. I've not seen any of them before, so I'm hyped to finally check them all out for the first time. And to wrap things up (no pun intended) I got the SH Monsterarts Showa Gigan figure from last year, since it was something I've always kinda been wanting to pick up and figured this was a good opportunity before it potentially started getting too hard to find. It's a really gorgeous figure too! I just wish I had more space to put these sort of things, and less reluctance to pay the very high prices they always go for!

Hope everyone else got everything they wanted and had a great day(s), and here's to a great 2025!

[lhb412]

Well, the exhausting week is over, so I've finally dug into my presents!

Man, these Japanese booksellers on Ebay are fantastic at securely wrapping their stuff up. It does make removing the layers of plastic a bit of an adventure, though. All three of my Shin artbooks were used, of course. My Shin Ultraman Design Works has a slightly bent corner, no other imperfections, but the Shin Kamen Rider Design Works looks new. What really impressed me is the previous owner of The Art of Shin Godzilla, the book itself is like new, the protective cardboard box it came in is a little banged up... but I'm amazed it's included at all, and what's more; every insert, from the two posters to the bookmark and fliers advertising other Godzilla stuff are still included! Even the big sticker that was originally on the outer plastic wrap has been cut out and included! Amazing!

Inspecting my Cavitycolors Godzilla shirt I see that they included two Godzilla bookmarks as well! They have the shirt designs on them.

Oh, and it's not Godzilla related, but I can't resist sharing: I got a wonderful oversized hardcover collection of Usagi Yojimbo comics, an 'artist edition' that reproduces the comic pages exactly as they really are, with imperfections, pencil lines, corrections, and other things that don't show up in the final published version. It's like having the original art in your hands. Anyway, this limited edition book went out of print a while back, but a few months ago I saw that the creator Stan Sakai suddenly had a few back in stock on his personal site. Flashforwad to a minute ago and I open it and look at the handwritten number under Stan's signature... "#AP out of 999" ? AP? That's not a number. Then I realize this is an 'artist's proof!' One of the sample copies given to Stan outside of the numbered retail editions! How cool is that?

[Benjamin Haines]

I received a surprise Christmas gift in the mail this week, thanks to SciFi Japan and Mill Creek. I'm one of the five contest winners of the Ultraman Blazar BRD set giveaway! I wasn't expecting this because I didn't get any email notification.

Kailem, I still remember the thrill of collecting The Mysterians, Matango, Varan and Dogora all during the same summer without having seen any of them before, so I can imagine how cool it must be to get all five of those movies at the same time!

lhb412, I look forward to reading your thoughts on Kamen Rider V3. How much of the original series have you seen? V3 is a direct follow-up, and even though you don't need to have seen it all to get into V3, I do recommend watching the final two episodes of the original series first.

[lhb412]

[quote="Benjamin Haines"]
lhb412, I look forward to reading your thoughts on Kamen Rider V3. How much of the original series have you seen? V3 is a direct follow-up, and even though you don't need to have seen it all to get into V3, I do recommend watching the final two episodes of the original series first.[/quote]

I know the basic arc of the series (I think I watched some series overview on YouTube ages ago) and in the past few years I've watched, I dunno, over a dozen random episodes throughout the series run via just putting on Shout's stream and catching whatever was on. This is in addition to watching the first four or so episodes back when they first went up on streaming.

So, I have a good handle on the original series, even though I haven't watched a majority of episodes in order.

[lhb412]

... and while I'm at it: Happy New Year!