Dungeon Meshi & Walktapodes

I don't remember food (or lack thereof) ever being a particular issue when playing tabletop RPGs, but it was often a mechanic used in computer RPGs (e.g., Rogue, NetHack, Ultima).

One of the methods of preventing death by starvation in the dungeon in rogue-like games was to eat the corpses of monsters that you had killed in the dungeon.

The manga Dungeon Meshi by Ryōko Kui is a humorous take on this concept.

The English language version of the manga is published by Yen Press, and I believe that two volumes have been released so far.

The translated version uses the original subtitle of the manga, "Delicious in Dungeon" as the title, but I would have personally used something like "Dungeons and Dining" as a play off of D&D, or "Dungeon Eats" which is closer to what "Dungeon Meshi" would translate as.

Some of the monsters cooked up by the adventurers include giant bats, giant scorpions, myconids, slimes, living armor, carnivorous plants, and basilisks.


In one episode, they kill a kraken, but unfortunately it didn't taste as good as Marcille envisioned.

The episode reminded me of an article by Bill Johnson printed in the Wyrm's Footnotes about cooking walktapus.

Walktapus is also an ingredient of the Everlast biscuits used as rations by the troops of the Broo King of Dorastor.

The walktapus of course, is a tainted chaos creature from Glorantha with a head like a giant octopus, and a man-like body. It has the ability to regenerate, and can release poison gas in the manner that a normal octopus would release ink.

I recently was able to complete my collection of walktapodes when I picked up an Archive Giant Octopus (Fantasy 5038) which was originally used as the head of the Archive Walktapus (RuneQuest 819).

I've had the body (which is the same as that of the Arduin Shadow Golem) for years, but was missing the head.

The following image is of the Archive Walktapus, the Martian Metals Walktapus (RuneQuest 7002), and the Ral Partha Walktapus (RuneQuest 18-402).

The Martian Metals miniature comes in two pieces like the Archive miniature, while the Ral Partha miniature is a single piece casting.

Lance & Laser also made a walktapus, but at ~2.5" in height it would have towered over my other octopodes, so I had no use for it. The Lance & Laser walktapus suffered the fate of the Archive walktapus, and now only exists as a [giant] octopus from Armorcast.

S.M.G. Runa

Over Dard (オーバーダード aka Hiroshi Satou; 佐藤弘) is known for his sculpts of ero-figures with chestal regions of improbable proportions. His professional work has primarily been on large scale PVC and polystone figures, but recently due to what seems to be an interest in Girls und Panzer, he has started producing garage kits in 1/35 and 1/72 scale to sell at the Tokyo Wonder Festival.

The S.M.G. Runa Heavy Weapons Set (S.M.G. 瑠奈 重火器セット) was first produced for the 2015 Summer WonFes. It comes with the eponymous Runa, M60, Browning M1919A4 .30 caliber, MG42, MP40, jerry cans, and some ammo boxes, drums, and belts.

The figure and accessories are cast in a nice firm resin, and the pieces were easily removable from the sprue. There was some flash on the weapons, but it came off with some light scraping using the edge of a knife.

I had the most issues with the ammo belts, both of which broke during the clean-up process. It was simple enough to reattach the broken ends with CA glue though.

The grip of the M60 was incomplete, and the barrel of the Browning was a bit warped, but I've had a lot worse from other resin kits with parts as small as these.

It would have been a nice nod to the original S.M.G. series figure if the 1/72 set came with a M-134 Gatling Gun though.

The original character Runa (瑠奈) comes from the S.M.G. series of 1/12 scale ero-figures produced by Daiki Kougyou (ダイキ工業). Small scale Runa in her micro-bikini is much, much tamer than the larger figure.

Now normally, I would not bother with buying miniatures with disproportional body parts of any type, but I just had to get this figure for the uh... novelty factor... yeah... In any event, most of Runa scales out nicely in 1/72 scale, and I hope more garage kit makers will venture into the 1/72 market.

Laputa Robot Soldier

The Robot Soldier (ロボット兵) from the film Laputa: Castle in the Sky (天空の城ラピュタ) is an iconic mecha design, but it had an earlier incarnation as the [Armored] Robot Soldier Lambda Doll (ロボット兵 ラムダドール) in the final edpsode of the Lupin III TV series.

Lupin III second series (1977-1980), episode 155

In Laputa, the Robot Gardeners are gentle giants covered in moss, who tend the grounds of the castle.

There are also Robot Soliders that defend the castle. They differ from the gardeners in having spines protruding from their arms from which flying membranes can grow, and eye beams that can cut through stone like butter.

A 5m tall life-sized statue of a Robot Soldier stands on the roof of the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka.

The dimensions of the statue were probably not used for the 1/20 scale models of the Robot Gardener and Robot Soldier manufactured by Fine Molds, since the completed model is supposed to stand at 7" tall, which scales out to just over 3.5m in height.

The size of the robot in the film is not always consistent either, but discrepancies like that are common in most forms of media.

The Robot Gardener seems undersized in this scene.

It was one of my wishes that someone would make a 1/72 scale version of the robot, but nothing I found was close in size. At one point, I purchased a very difficult to find key chain set made by Nibariki in the hopes that they would meet my expectations, but the figures turned out to be too small.

The robots in the Nibariki set are about 40mm tall, which would be a mere 2.75m in height in 1/72 scale.

Recently however, ensky has released a set of Robot Soldiers as part of their Tsumu-Tsumu Series (つむつむシリーズ). I'm guessing that tsumu-tsumu (つむつむ) is a diminutive or duplication form of the word 積む (tsumu; to stack), which is how these toys were designed to be played with.

The  Laputa Tsumu-Tsumu set (TMU-31; 天空の城ラピュタ つむつむ) consists of 10 pieces. A couple of single robot sets are also available. There are six robots in four different poses, and four levitation stones (飛行石); three in cube form, and one in crystal form.

The standing robot is about 52mm tall, which would make the model 1/69 scale if going by the dimensions of the Fine Molds kit. However, if the robot is considered 1/72 scale by default, it would be about 3.75m in height. In either case, I think it's the best one can hope for in our scale.

Cube form levitation stones.

Crystal form levitation stone.

I ended up ordering three of the sets so I would have some extras to do conversions on. If I have the energy after dealing with all the issues with the forced Windoze 10 install that Microsoft pushed onto my PC last night, I'll try to do a quick conversion of one of the Robot Soldiers to a Robot Gardener.

White Elephants

Sometimes when an impressively large model catches my eye, I have to take a reality check and think about whether there is any point in owning the thing.

Here are a few items that gave me a moment of pause before I decided not to buy them.

1. Kyoshinhei by Good Smile Company

This figure represents a God Warrior from the Studio Ghibli short film produced for a 2012 exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.


Giant God Warrior Appears in Tokyo posted by f711513007
At 50cm in height, the figure is impressive, but I have to say that it would be well under it's actual 1/72 height as represented in the short.

The figure is still probably very undersized compared to the original God Warrior as presented in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.

Scale issues aside, the final price with shipping would have been very high, and there was the very real possibility that the model could have sustainded damaged during shipping (polystone resin is not the most durable of materials).

2. Colossal Titan Coin Bank by Bandai

This PVC figure represents the aberrant type 60m Titan from Attack on Titan.

The Colossal Titan at 60cm, is even taller than the God Warrior. It is actually 1/100 scale, but that's something I would have been willing to overlook with regard to a fictional flayed giant.

3. Flower-class Corvette by Revell

Even now, I often contemplate buying this kit, but at 85cm in length I wonder where I would store it. The pool might be an option, but I couldn't keep it docked there all the time.

4. U-Boat Type VIIC by Revell

I would seriously consider a waterline U-boat since they could be used for gaming every now and then, but at 93.3cm long, the type VIIC and the even larger type IXC submarine (106.3cm) are just really big.

I suppose that the kit could be converted easily enough to a waterline model, but that seems almost like throwing away half the kit.

5. Skipjack-class Submarine by Moebius Models

As with the U-boats, I would definitely consider a waterline model of the Skipjack for an Ice Station Zebra scenario, but at 106.7cm, the full hulled kit is a monster. I believe that this model is also sold in Revell packaging.

6. Gato-class Submarine by Revell

Yet another submarine. This time the 132cm long Gato-class sub. If I were to have bought this model, I would have been tempted to get two. One built up in the standard way, and one built up as the USS Sea Tiger from the 1959 film Operation Petticoat.

Balao-class submarine

However, I probably would have been bothered by the fact that the subs used in filming were actually Balao-class submarines, while the USS Seadragon which reputedly operated in red primer color for a time was a Sargo-class submarine.

7. C3-type Cargo Submarine by Lindberg

Lindberg went out of business, but the kits are still being produced by Round 2 LLC under the Lindberg brand name. The model is 148.6cm long, and comes with four Kaiten manned torpedoes.

8. Saturn V Rocket by Dragon

There was a time when I was really interested in getting the 1/96 scale Revell Saturn V, but by the time the Dragon version came around, that desire was a distant memory. At 153.7cm tall, I'm not sure if there is a commercially produced 1/72 kit that is larger than this one.

In closing, I'll have to admit that at times I look at my existing piles of lead and plastic and wonder what the point of it all is. However, finishing a project no matter how small, or getting to play a game with newly painted miniatures always brings a sense of satisfaction, and puts me back to the proper hobbyist perspective.

Aragami

The Aragami (荒神, アラガミ; violent gods) are giant chimeric monsters from the game God Eater. I have not played the game, but it takes place in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by various species of Aragami whom the players kill and harvest for resources.

The game franchise expanded into an animated version of the story which started airing last year. The anime version of God Eater belongs to the action-oriented seinen genre, with violence, gore, and underboob.

The story is pretty standard fare, but one thing that really stood out for me was the primary antagonist Aragami known as Dyaus Pita.

I found the creature to be terrifying, particularly because it had a human face which seemed to be completely devoid of human intelligence.

Anyway, I liked the monster so much, I went ahead and bought some of the Bandai trading figures (超造形魂; Chouzoukei Damashii) that were made for the game.

The Vajra Aragami is the base type of its species. For some reason, it is always shown with a broken fang.

Dyaus Pita, a sub-type of the Vajra. There is also another version in the game known as Dyaus Pita (Resurrection) with skeletal dragon-like wings.

Prithvi Mata, is another sub-type of the Vajra. It has not appeared in the anime.

All three of the figures have the same basic body, but vary with respect to paint scheme, face/head, and neck frills. They also come with their own 80mm bases.

As far as size goes, I think they work well with 1/72 scale humans when compared to the 1:1 scale Vajra display used at events ^[1],[2] and how they are portrayed in the games.

The anime versions of the creatures on the other hand, are a lot bigger (although the size will vary a bit within the game as well). This being the case, I see the option for some to use the figures for 10mm or 15mm gaming as well.

The final monster from the set that looked interesting was Sariel.

It is a chimeric creature that seems to be part siren and part butterfly, with maybe a bit of fish mixed in. I don't know anything else about it, and I don't think it has appeared in the anime at all.