5 Un-Lolita Confessions

Hello everyone! So today I thought I'd do 5 "confessions" about me that are not what is typically considered Lolita. I've seen similar videos with other alternative styles, such as a Goth one where the lady making the video confessed to having a hot pink tracksuit she had intended to sew skulls or something on, but never had. I was going to do 10, buuut I can only think of five. So here begins...

My 5 Un-Lolita Confessions

1.I don't like tea.

   Despite the fact that tea is, in a way, an integral part of Lolita fashion with meetups being held at tea houses or having tea parties, I just don't like tea. I've tried different kinds, iced and hot and just generally don't care for the taste. A few years back when I held a tea party I went so far as to drink lemonaide out of a tea cup...

2. I like wresting.

   I've always been more of a tomboy, so I like wrestling with my guy friends or grappling with them. I usually lose due to less upper body strength, but hey, I'm a bro too y'all.

3. Most of my friends are average guys.

   I have a total of one female friend, and she's practically a guy. All my other friends are my bros. Some of them cosplay, but none of them are into Lolita or any other Japanese streetstyles...

4. I hate pink.

   And yet for some reason I have a ton of pink stuff. Go figure.

5. I don't wear circle lenses or wigs with Lolita.

   Circle lenses are very much a newer thing in Lolita. I have yet to get any partially due to how I choose to allocate my spending money, but mainly because I want to be safe about the whole thing. I'd rather not end up with damaged vision or missing an eye or something, so I'm being very careful with my research and ensuring I know as much about what can go wrong as possible before actually taking the dive. Wig wise, I don't really have any Loliable wigs and I prefer my natural hair most of the time anyways. I may add some extensions or clip on ponytails though since my hair's rather short currently (Stay tuned next week for how that happened!).

So, I hope you guys all enjoyed this. Let me know if you have any suggestions for Lolita or anime related tags you'd like to see me do!

Lolita on a Budget: Mr. Yan Grab Bag

Hello everyone! So recently I decided to try getting a lucky bag (grab bag) from Bodyline. All of the defective item grab bags were sold out, so I went with the 2015 Mr. Yan Grab Bag since I wanted a coat anyways. Here's my review of what I recieved!

*Note* I appologize that quite a few of the pictures turned out blurred. I don't think I'd eaten breakfast at that point and was rather excited about the Luck Bag's arrival. Plus I wanted to open it immediately, so I kinda didn't take a lot of multiples of the same angle...

Sizing
 This grab bag is offered in two sized: 2L and M. Since I generally find myself to be a 2L measurement-wise (thank you Asian sizing for making me feel fat), I went with the 2L grab bag which promised a coat and a surprise item. Unfortunately, my shoulders are broader than average, so the coat ended up fitting a little tight around the shoulders, so I'll likely go with a larger size if possible in the future.

Shipping
 My package was sent out the day after my purchase (or at least got a tracking number assigned) and I was very surprised to find that, for once, the tracking was accurate! For those of you unfamiliar with Bodyline, many times the tracking will show "Leaving outward office of exchange" or something similar for the durration of shipping, occationally updating to show it's arrival in your country, or, if you're lucky like I was this time, actually show when the item's been delivered. All of my mail goes to a post office box that I check compulsively when I'm expecting something, so I was surprised to see that the package arrival and the tracking corresponded for once. My package arrived 16 days after the tracking date showing it was picked up (two days after recieving the tracking), well within the 2-4 week period tro be expected when ordering from Bodyline.

Arrival and Unboxing/Opening
 Like my previous package from Bodyline, my lucky pack arrived in a large, grey polymailer with the paperwork inside a clear packing label holder. The exterior was undamaged and well taped shut

Front of the package (packing slip removed)

Back of the package

After opening the outside package, I found the largest Bodyline bag I'd ever seen! The top was folded over and taped, with a little sticker reading "Fuku008," the product number for the grab bag, in the middle. The bag was mostly opaque, but I was still able to just make out a little bit of lace through it.

Ginormous Bodyline bag!

Barely visible lace showing through!

At this point, I was super excited and quickly opened up the Bodyline bag to find a beautiful coat inside as well as the much dreaded Mr. Yan Bodypillow case! I was only mildly surprised as I knew that such a thing did in fact exist and had also gotten a little impatient and managed to find an unboxing video...

Nice plastic bags around both items!

The coat was gorgeous! It has rose shaped buttons, two front pockets (They're real!), fur collar and cuffs, and a very pretty scalloped edge that ends at about knee level for me. After pulling it out of it's package and unfolding it, I also discovered that there was a little matching capelet as well! The coat is the L460 in Beg available in M, L, and 2L on Bodyline's main page (it was out of stock in almost all colors when I got this coat).

Just out of the bag!

Lying flat

The separate capelet

On my dress form without the capelet

With the capelet front view

With the capelet side view

With the capelet back view

The Mr. Yan bodypillow, which I surprisingly was able to sell shortly after posting in sales groups, was made out of a very nice, plush fabric with a picture of Mr Yan in his wizard costume on one side and his beach wear on the other side. (Pictures are only half of each side due to length.)

Dream Time...

San Francisco

Esta nocheno, duermes conmigo?
Something about "come sleep with me"

Canain? I think it's a city name like the front.

Final words

 As most of Bodyline's coats are out of stock right now (or at least when I recieved this), this was the only way to really get one of their coats. Unfortunately, I found out about the Yen trick a day or two after purchasing this, so I wasn't able to save a bit more money that way. (If you want to know how that works, I reccomend you watch this video as I have no experience buying with this method yet.) I'm very happy with the quality of the coat, which also came with an extra button on the inside tag, and look forward to future purchases from Bodyline. And for those of you wondering, this review is in no way sponsored. I bought the lucky pack entirely with my own money and was not approached by Bodyline in any way or given any discounts besides those available to all shoppers on the site (the Valentine's sale).

Check out my Facebook page: facebook.com/CelesteChoCho

I'm on Twitter: @animlolicouture

First Impressions: Go! Princess Precure

Hello everyone! So the other night, after watching the first two minutes of a reaction video by one of the Lolitas I follow on YouTube, I decided to try watching a new series, Go! Princess Precure. Despite having vowed to never watch Shojo anime again (I know pretty much every storyline now...), I thought it wouldn't hurt to give it a shot as it's a magical girl anime and I tend to like that genera (Sugar Sugar Rune and Tokyo Mew Mew are my favorites n_n).

 Go! Princess Precure is a story about a girl, Haruka Haruno, who has dreampt of becoming a princess her whole life. When she was little, a young man named Kanata gave her a little trinket and told her she'd be able to become a princess one day and to not give up on her dream. Several years later, Haruka decides to go to a posh academy that she deems to be a good school to learn how to be a princess at. While being shown around the campus, Haruka runs into a couple of animal shaped faries that are refugees from a war in Hope Kingdom. Later on Haruka is forced to transform to save her friend after discovering that the trinket she was given is a key that allows her to become a Princess Precure, a magical girl in princess form! With her newly aquired powers, Haruka is able to fight monsters and free people's dreams from cages.

 Overall, I think Go! Princess Precure is an entertaining show. The animation is a mix between traditional drawn anime and anime styled 3D models as well as computer graphics, very similar to the graphics in Miku Miku Dance. While the switching between media styles bothers me somewhat, I'm pretty familiar with computer animation, so it might be more difficult for others to spot it. I'm probably not going to continue watching the series, but I would reccomend it to anyone looking for a new magical girl series to follow. The series is very new though, with only two episodes available on the site I chose to watch it on at the time I watched it.

Check out my Fanpage: facebook.com/CelesteChoCho
I'm on Twitter: @animlolicouture

Throwback... Saturday? Harry Potter on the PS One

Hello everyone! So the other night I was feeling antisocial and somewhat depressed due to a date falling through, so I decided to bust out one of my old PS One games I'd recently recovered from back home: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. As mentioned in a previous article, I've enjoyed PS One games for a majority of my life, so I was thrilled when I was able to get one of my own after moving out. Now on to the Harry Potter game!

 In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, you play as Harry when he first discovers he's a wizard and arrives at Hogwarts. While the characters and general story is similar to the original book, Harry Potter follows a different story line with a lot more running about and random character interactions that tend to go along the lines of "Hey Harry! We totally know you. You should do this!" This makes the game feel a little akward storywise as it pretty much depends on the player having previously read the book and know what part of the book they're butchering. Fortunately, I have read all the Harry Potter books multiple times in the past, so I'm not running around wondering why all these random people are suddenly so buddy-buddy with Harry. Or why this blonde kid has two characterless blobs following him around as he harrasses Harry and the school population in general for no aparent reason. This reliance on previous knowledge gained from reading the book makes the storyline very awkward throughout most of the game, but there's still enough of a congruent story line to explain events.

 Years ago when I first purchased Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for the PS One I struggled a lot with the gameplay and also got stuck. VERY stuck. My dad tried to help things along for me by putting cheats on our Goldfinger (a nifty little device that doesn't seem to exist anymore) for the game. Sadly, none of the cheats ever seemed to work properly as I still couldn't progress despite the requirements being met for certain in game missions. Recently, when I decided to pick it up again, I decided to start over at the beginning despite having a previous save file to see if I'd do any better with having several more years gaming experience under my belt. Not to mention I'd pretty much forgotten all the controls, so I didn't want to be flailing around aimlessly wondering what the heck I'm supposed to do. After the night's gaming, I'd pretty much caught up with my previous progress in the game, but let me tell you: It wasn't easy. Not in the slightest. To be honest, I can see more clearly why I struggled with this game so much and feel that it was rather poorly written. Annoying voice acting and seemingly nonsequitor story beside, the controls for much of this game feel very clumsy and poorly done to me. While having to manually adjust the camera isn't too uncommon for PS One games, sometimes the camera would be facing towards Harry, making it impossible to see the monster, lava, or whatever happens to be a threat in front of you. This makes losing health in the game  very easy at some points. Fortunately, you are given the option to continue from where you last left off, rather than having to start at the last save point. One of the biggest frustrations I have with this Harry Potter game is the broom controls. When Harry's zipping around on his broom, the controls are opposite what I would expect. Instead of being reversed, up to go down, down to go up, the controls are up for up and down for down. I'm not sure this is entirely a bad thing, but I know I've struggled getting a hang of these controls even when I was younger.

Overall, I'm feeling this game will probably end up being no higher than a 2.5/5 in my book. It relies too much on previous character knowledge based on the books, has difficult controls, and is overall a frustrating game to play. While I still intend to finish this gam, I would recommend anyone looking to buy older games avoid it completely except for collector's purposes ("I have all the Harry Potter games! They sit, unplayed, on a shelf!").

Check out my fanpage (maintained by yours truly): facebook.com/CelesteChoCho
I'm on Twitter: @animlolicouture