November 12th, 2024
It's finally November 12th, making it 2 years since my love for Koisuru Boukun started!!!
I've been looking forward to this day for weeks and weeks. Besides creating this shrine, I came up with all sorts of ideas for how I should celebrate my yaoi-versary. I initially wanted to get a small cake with an illustration printed on it. I tried finding artwork dedicated to anniversaries for Koisuru Boukun and GUSH, and I think these would look really cute on a cake.
The problem is that I live in the middle of nowhere. My local grocery store doesn't offer printed pictures, and the other option that I'm aware of is to get it done at Wal-Mart, but that's a 40-minute drive! I love Koisuru Boukun, but I'm not strong enough to drive out of town and then back just for a cake, although it was somewhat tempting. I still want to have a KSB-themed cake for my own birthday or one of the characters' birthday because I've only ever experienced having one with a printed picture on it once.
In October, volume 15 was having a physical release, and it had a lot of extras! When I was looking at which stores were releasing what kind of extra merchandise and placed an order on comicomi-studio, I wandered off to mercari.jp and placed a couple of orders there too. It was nice how everything worked out because I was able to get the package with all of my orders at the beginning of this month, and then I waited until today to finally open everything.
Here's everything that I got! I'm sorry if the pictures don't look amazing- I'm not really good at framing stuff. ^_^;; This entire order honestly wasn't that expensive! Including shipping with Buyee, the total was around $70-$80. I really wish I got into proxy services sooner because I've always had such a good experience! I usually use Neokyo, but I used Buyee since comicomi had an option to automatically put their items directly into the Buyee cart, so I didn't have to worry about accidentally placing the order wrong.
Here's the cover and the first page of the book! I love TK's art style so much, and this might be one of my favorite covers from her. A lot of volume covers look nice, and I adored volume 14's, but this one... They're so close and cute, and they're BOTH wearing their engagement friendship rings! I love them SO much!!!
This is another item that came with the comicomi purchase. It has the same illustration as the cover, but it has some additional decorations and writing on it, and the paper material is pretty delicate. When it was still in the clear packet, I saw a small crease, and I kind of didn't mind. And then things kind of went downhill... Nearly everything was packed in its own clear packet with sticky tabs, and I've had other merchandise packaged like that and never had any issues. This paper was also packaged with another piece of paper that had the extra chapter on it, and some sort of cardstock material behind everything. When I was opening it, the illustration and chapter slid out past the cardstock, and then it got caught on the sticky part, and I had to cut open the packet and carefully peel everything off of it. The extra chapter was thankfully not damaged at all, but you can see that some of the paper on the illustration tore off next to one of the hearts and the "15", and I was a little sad! It's not a huge deal and it's barely noticeable, but it was still kind of tragic.
Here's the extra chapter that survived. I forgot which extra I would get with my order, and I'm really happy that I got this one! This isn't the first time that Morinaga has tried tricking Souichi into saying his first name. Maybe one day, Souichi will say it without having to be tricked into it...
And here is the acrylic stand! I had the hardest time taking pictures with this one. The glare was a small issue, but it was mostly just trying to find a good place to pose them. I ended up putting them on the Cardcaptor Sakura shelf because I thought it looked cute.
These are what I bought from mercari!!! The first charm of Morinaga is a common item since it came with volume 6's release, so it's never too expensive. What's NOT a common item is the Souichi charm! I'm pretty sure he was mail order only, and I've only seen a few listings that had him in it that were from years ago. I ordered one of the Morinagas just because he was only about $6, even though it made me kind of sad that I would probably never have a matching Souichi. But not even a few days after I already placed this order, my friend shared the listing for the Morinaga AND Souichi charms in the group, and I considered them to be at an extremely reasonable price for how rare both of them together are. I don't think I've ever placed an order so fast in my life. I didn't mind that I would have 2 Morinagas because they're actually different versions. The first one might be a little discolored from age and/or how he was stored, but the coloring differences aren't just from that. I can't remember the reason or what made the ordering process different, but there was another release of the charms with slightly altered colors. I prefer the teal Souichi over the sky blue one, but I'm so so so thankful that I got him regardless!!! The quality of these charms is surprisingly nice considering how tiny they are, and the previous owners never got them scratched up or anything like that. I also found out that you can unhook the charm from the string, so it's nice to know that I could attach them to other things if I wanted. I'll probably put them all in my ita bag or on my corkboard!
Overall, I'm more than happy about this haul! This was probably the most exciting haul for Koisuru Boukun merch I've had, and I'll definitely buy more things in the future! I'm probably going to spend the rest of my day fixing up this shrine, working on one of my many unfinished fanfics, and rereading my favorite chapters. Thank you to anyone who made it to the end of this entry!
