So, the epic Naru figure battle in the war between my unquenchable figure thirst and my dying credit score has come to and end today when I purchased a Naru Narusegawa figure by Max Factory from Ebay for $145. Yes… I am a fucking moron; my credit card debt is high enough as it is. I just bought a Konata figma because I decided not to buy the Naru figure, but I ended up buying the Naru anyways because Love Hina was my very first manga (that I was interested in) and she was also my first manga love. Full story after the break.

Here’s the sexy credit score assailant who will kill me in the future when I can’t get a loan:

Sexy Naru Narusegawa by Max Factory. Shorts are removable to reveal leaf panties XD. The see-thru hair gives her hair a glowing-in-the-sun feel, much like the event in the manga.

It was back in high school when I started to read manga. I remember this because the year before, a girl in my 8th grade Spanish class asked me if I liked manga, and she recommended Love Hina.

At the time, I had no idea what Love Hina was and the name itself was a turn off. A year later, however, I went to Fry’s with my brother and my dad and while my dad was browsing the tech stuff (I wasn’t too into tech at the time, only video games), I noticed there was a manga/anime section. At the time, my brother had started his manga phase with Shaman King and One Piece and so I decided to take a look at the selection with him.

Immediately, I noticed Love Hina, because it was one of the few series I recognized. I looked at the cover of volume 1 and was interested (cuz Naru is sexy). So my brother and I decided to buy it with the money we had (rather, my money -__- ). I think we bought volume 1 and 2 at the time, but all I remember is reading the mangas in the car and getting hooked. As soon as we got home, my brother and I started to come up with a plan to make enough money to buy the series.

We came up with a calendar and the amount of volumes we could buy with the money we had. I think all of our books came from Fry’s (weird place lol) but some might have come from Barnes & Noble or Borders. I eventually got the whole series and was really sad when it ended (I’m always sad at the end of a series cuz I don’t want it to end, naturally).

So now Love Hina is sitting on my book shelf in my room, collecting dust. I still need to replace volume 6 I think cuz some of the pages were ripped in half (we bought it like that -__- ) and there were some moments when I couldn’t find a particular volume. This also started my infatuation with Ken Akamatsu’s work, which lead to my brother buying all of A.I. Love You (which I didn’t buy due to the art style) and my eventual purchases of Negima!, Negima?! Neo and Mao-chan (the latter two are written by him, but the art is similar).

I love Love Hina and I’ll always have a special place for it in my heart (I didn’t watch the anime tho cuz they all look fat lol). It was my first love story that I read (I’m not gay, I promise) and it gave me hope that someday I might have a love story like that of my own, but I think reading all these great love stories has created a sort of precedence that can’t be beat, making all my past relationships a little bland compared to the fictional ones I’ve read.

Anyways, Love Hina was the start of my manga phase. That manga led to me buying Chobits (another recommendation from that same girl) and started my brother’s manga obsession (he has 3x as many books as I do, but I’m catching up mostly cuz I can buy them myself and he as to get them from my parents). This, of course, led to my brother reading scanslations online, which he got me into. After that, I started to read a lot more series and buying the series that I loved. That in turn made me want to own figures, which I had seen every now and then but never really thought about. That led to a few months ago where my first figure purchase was my Goth Loli Haruhi and that led to me watching the Haruhi anime which brings us here, my otaku phase.

So there’s my story about Love Hina and how it’s affected my life (and my wallet T-T ). I’m pretty much a closet otaku; the only people who know are my parents/brother and my roommate, who stumbled into my room without my permission (and he laughed when he saw my figures). I plan to continue buying figures/mangas and watching animes well into the future and I’ll probably want to be buried with my figures. Hopefully, in the future I won’t run into a tight spot which causes me to sell figures for money or some natural disaster occurs that damages my figures (knock on wood). I’ll probably buy earthquake/fireproof shelfs to store them in that has climate control to keep them safe (lol).

Anyways, I’ll have pictures of that when I go home this summer. By then, I should also have my Haruka Takamori, Golden Darkness and Ena Ayase figures as well as my Konata figma ready for unboxing. Hopefully my Rin Kokonoe nendo and Haruhi summer uniform and Makina Hoshimura figmas come by then too (if not, they’ll arrive a few days later). This purchase also means no Kagami figma for a while =[ .