I got a notification that they expect to have her in stock soon, so I expect she'll be available sometime in the next week.

As did I. Pretty well answers that heh.

Oh cool, just got the Preparation in Progress email for Sigurd & Busou Chaser.

First teaser for Ghost, no hood.

http://i.imgur.com/LNIG4FG.jpg

I did the pay half thing for my Hakaider Squad and it worked pretty well. You basically pay half on ordering and then the guy running the store sends you an email. If you want to pay the other half any time before the deadline (which I think was at the beginning of the month of release? I don't quite remember) you can just reply to that and he'll send you a paypal request. If not, he'll just send you another email when it's time to pay up.

The only downside to Toku Taku is they're the only middleman I know that fully mark the cost on parcels, so if you're in a customs-paying country that can be a pain. With the Hakaider Squad being a 16,000 set, I got stung pretty bad.

Just tell me when the preorders go up, I need it now.

Ghost Figuart looks neat. I do wonder how his other forums will be released. I would imagine most of them will probably be web exclusives.

Oooh, that's a nice silhouette there. What details can be seen look great. Fully expect the raised hood to come as a separate piece though...I hope.

It's going to, I wouldn't worry.

Oh, definitely. I think they're probably going to end up doing a lot of Web Exclusive 2-packs or something. At least, that's really the only way to get those out at a reasonable rate, provided they want to. I don't really see any of them being released at retail.

As far as retail releases go I think we can just expect the 3 Riders and at least the Machine Ghostriker (if not the Machine Hoodie as well, we'll see I guess). Maybe Boost, they did do Dead Heat, after all, and Boost seems much more important than Dead Heat ever was...beyond that probably just Ghost's mid-season and/or final upgrades...if even that, considering how Drive went. Point being, I don't really see any space for alternate forms.

Or Bandai could just surprise everybody and not make any sense and release Newton and Ryoma at retail, I wouldn't complain...

I wouldn't really, either, but considering how sparse recent Rider releases have been, there's always that feel that they may just cheapen out on stuff not considered completely essential. I have a little more faith in Bandai than that, though, so yeah.

Speaking of completely essential, really hope Ghost Figuarts come with stands. Dude likes floating, so it's kind of important. On the other hand, with the parka covering his back, trying to use a claw stand is going to be...not fun.

edit: But really, the fact that recent Figuarts releases aren't exactly loaded with stuff does make me wonder about Ghost...

Ideally, he would come with the alternate hood, both the Sword and Naginata modes of the Saber, Yurusen, a stand, and a menagerie of diverse hands (since Ghost, unlike the past couple of Riders, has some very specific and distinctive hand gestures). Plus, you know, a tiny ass Eyecon or two. Which is all a bit more than any release for Drive really had... I'm worried that it's going to either not come with everything it should, or alternatively, that it's going to end up really expensive as a result of including all that stuff. I suppose they could offset some of this by including some things (Yurusen and the Naginata?) with the Ghostriker instead as bonus...

...or I may just be worrying needlessly, wouldn't really be the first time.