Well, I was expecting a traffic fall for july since I was very busy and/or lazy ^^
But I was definitely not prepared for such a rise during august, especially regarding the number of page visited per day which crossed the 8,000 line.
Thanks to all of you who keep reading me, or just looking at pictures hehe. This sure motivates me even more to try improving this little “burogu”. Setting a new theme helped me a lot to find new inspiration, and I am also happy to read you like it.

So, thank you gain, and stay tuned, like it is common to say ^^

Oh, Melissa and Miku seem happy as well.

Miku - « I am really moved to see such an enthusiasm for us. Thank you very much dear friends! »
Melissa - « Ohoho yeah! All that thanks to me and my awesome cuteness! Ohoho no one can resist me! »

mmhhh… why Ink-chan is staying behing? is she …?

Pastel Ink - « No I am not crying! I did not participate to this nice result, but I am not sad! And I will contribute even more to future success! » *sob *sob

Hope you will all help Ink-chan feeling better, won’t you? ^^;

In fact, the layout of articles and pages has not fundamentally changed. So if you are following mukyaa.com articles through rss feeds, you may have missed the new front page design, which is actually the main new stuff, apart from the header and footer. Oh and by the way, the footer was actually inspired by what super rats chose for HappySoda. Community Cloud is a nice plugin ^^

The idea behind the new layout

I wanted to underline the main topic of the website, and focus on anime figurine photos and reviews. So visitors can now easily see what is the latest plastic kit(s) highlighted, and browse older reviews with the little slideshow widget in the header. Normally, it should slide when you move the mouse cursor above… I hope ^^;
In a second humbler part, latest news from other categories can be quicky perceived. And that’s all. This to reduce the length of the front page, which in my opinion just needs to present latest updates and let visitors to have a quick idea of the site purpose.
That’s at least the way I wanted this site to be, and I am quite satisfied with this first result, which seems operational ^^;

But a lot of adjustments are still needed, like reparing (or even completing *oups*) some dead links, re-fill the sidebar which looks a bit empty for now etc… And as always, this fellow IE is causing some trouble with the layout… *sigh*
Will fix that little by little now the core is set up. And all should be settled for next figure review, coming soon! ^^

In the meanwhile, feel free to share your impressions or report bugs (I am sure there are some, this would not be funny without).

(latest perform on saturday 19th - I am the guy in white playing the trombone)

But combining this with work and friends does not leave much more time neither for figures, which never stop to increase my collection, nor enjoying the figure/anime blogosphere.
All the more the biggest summer event of the region is coming soon, and I will just be able to take a break from work for this special week.
Aahhh want some free time to continue playing with my new figmas and watch tones of animes. I am so late now about that hehe.

(it’s always fantastic when folks are enjoying so much our music ^^)

Well, even if it is not really interresting, I just wanted to give some news. I hope you don’t miss mukyaa.com updates too much ^^;
See ya soon!

Too sad I can't read it ^^;
Also pictures of my Saint Seiya figures have also been published in May issue, in a more standard layout. See the scan here.

And this made me think about this: do anime-related magazines in your region write articles about goodies like figures? I can't remember any one here reviewing them… and well, there are already not much of them.

However, I want to congratulate the ABA team for this great project. Till now, I have to admit I was very centered on AnimeNano and Figure.fm members blogs, and did not really tried to “go” elsewhere. And I am glad to be able to discover new blogs through another portal than rss aggregators.

And well, the reason why I have been aware of it is because mukyaa.com has been nominated for the Best Figurine Blog award. This really makes me happy. Thanks for your support!

I am now level 24!
yatta!! o(^^o)(o^^)o

Here a lovely Noizi Ito artwork from Alice Parade to celebrate this.

And I profit from this message to mention that mukyaa.com update is finally complete, with the poll-return on the home page. As you can also see - maybe after pressing the command ctrl+F5 to refresh your browser cache - user avatars are now in full color. I was a bit tired of this all-green, and its more lively this way, I think. Thus I have renewed/replenished the avatar pool, so feel free to change, and/or suggest others.

I may forgot or introduced some bugs, so feel free to report them if spotted ^^

A nice event and a great experience for us, but very exhaustive since there is two hours drive between Bayonne where I live and Bordeaux, and moreover we had to move our clocks one hour ahead of local standard time between satudary an sunday, according to Daylight Saving Time.

Anyway! I will post some pictures tonight, local time, so in more or less 12 hours, to share with you what a convention about Asian culture can look like over here ^^

I want to give a deep and sincere thanks to all of you who keep visiting this little blog. Sharing thoughts and impressions on figures have became a true passion, and I am glad to have woven such great relationships among otaku sphere. I took inspiration a lot from fellow figure addicts, and I hope I gave some too.
A special thanks as well to Danny Choo and the project Figure.fm, to HappySoda and to foo-bar-baz, without who mukyaa.com would have never born and grown like it did.

As you can see, I have illustrated this article with my favorite pictures. I’ll try to do my best more and more ^^

To celebrate this One Year Anniversary with fellow readers, I propose a little game, with little reward, which will dive you through mukyaa.com pages again. I was a bit inspired by what ron~ did last month for otadesho.com birthday ^^

Here are the very simple rules.
There are twenty (20) thumbnail pictures of figures photographies I took, since last year. Those who want to participate will have to find the twenty complet photos. Each answer must contain :

• File name of the picture
• Title and date of the article where the picture is published
• Name(s) of the character(s) on the picture
• Name of the anime, game or illustration the character(s) on the picture come(s) from.

For example, here a kind of thumbnail image you will have to find. A correct answer would be :
« Number 0 : Picture file is FAS004.jpg, under article titled “Fasalina” on November 14, 2007. Fasalina from Gun X Sword is on the photo. »

Go it? Easy isn’t it? All answers are here, among past articles listed in Figures category. And if you have some hesitation, no worries. I allow two attempts for each picture. Here we go :

I give also a subsidiary question : Bite me! article featuring Pachira Max Factory figure was the most read page from February 28, 2007 to February 28, 2008. In your opinion, how many times it has been viewed? You can find a clue in Octobre statistics article.

Now, let’s talk about the reward. It is not really impressive, but here what I have to offer: one of those Lucky Star boxes. *

Each contains a little gashapon figure (Konata or Kagami), a CD with funny widgets and wallpapers to “LuckyStarize” your computer desktop, and a little booklet. **

The competion will end on March 16, 2008 (sunday) at 23:59:59 GMT. I will then randomly choose 2 winners among all correct submissions. The one with the closest answer to the subsidiary question will be able to choose her/his reward, leaving the second box to second winner.

So, all you have to do to participate is to find the correct twenty answer, reply the additional question and send them to me via email at lu-k [atomaaku] mukyaa.com with “Happy Birthday! mukyaa~” as a subject. I read somewhere that “at” symbol was called “atmaaku” (at mark) in Japan. Here, in France, it is named “arobasse”. Well… nevermind ^^;
Leave also a little comment her, with the same e-mail address to validate your participation.

So, good luck all! Thanks for participating, and thanks even more for reading mukyaa.com! See you soon for more and more figures and other otaku stuff ^^

[*] I will post them world wide via France standard post, so it would certainly take a little time to arrive
[**] if you want to know why I am giving those item as a reward, well that’s simple. I scewed up by ordering them twice, from Amazon first, then from HLJ, and I forgot I’d already ordered them. Didn’t have the time to cancel either, so I ended up with doubles ^^;

Here is the new header.

(hit ctrl+F5 to force your browser refreshing if you still see the old one)

And I have also prepared a new watermark for my picture. Next pictures will have it on from now.

And one last word for this article, thanks a lot for reading mukyaa.com! According to FeedBurners that manages this site feed stats, you are now more than 100 subscribers. Merci!