Pokemon: Re-Ment Tsunagete Kawaii Pokemon no Kaidan ~ Ameagari no Machi~

In which I’m just smitten with this Re-Ment set, just thoroughly in love with this twenty buck steal!

For a long time, I didn’t buy Pokemon-related Re-ment. Why was that? Frankly, it’s because Re-ment licensed sets have been worse quality than their non-licensed ones. I’ve based that on “cute character” licenses like Sumikko Gurashi and Sanrio characters, and I figured it applied to Pokemon too.

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Then this set went on sale at amiami for about $20, and then my horrible spending habits made me add a couple more sets to my order, and — wow, I was 100% wrong. The Pokemon Re-ment sets are great this far. This cannot be good for my spending, but it is good for my happiness. And so I thought I’d talk about this set with the what-a-mouthful name of Tsunagete Kawaii! Pokemon no Kaidan ~ Ameagari no Machi ~, which I think I’ll translate as Cutely Connected! Pokemon Staircase ~ Rainy City~.

First we have Pikachu, looking very dear (Pokemon is one of the few series where I seem to like main characters). The stair steps have a nice matte finish to them, almost “chalky,” which just seems like brick to me. I do have a small quibble with the fact that the grass and flowers don’t fit snugly into the base, but they fit, and I can’t imagine they’d have any opportunity to get loose no matter which way you display the set, so I guess I can’t complain too much.

I love the starters for the first and most recent games best — honestly, I really do think the lineup of Sarunori/Grookey, Hibanny/Scorbunny, and Messon/Sobble is just about as great as the first in terms of design! I’d recently rewatched the first Hitokage/Charmander episode from the very first anime series, and it’s a real tear jerker; he’s one of many Pokemon abandoned by a jerkwad trainer. He’s definitely safe in my house.

The deciding factor for me in buying this set was, of course, the presence of mah boi Wooper, with another favorite, Metamon/Ditto no less! The puddles here look a little janky to me throughout — the water looks super fluid and has wavier borders on the preview images — but who cares? Look how much fun they’re having playing together.

Next we have….ah….er….I didn’t know this one’s name in any language! Apparently, this is Yoogirasu/Larvitar, a Rock/Ground type who I’m happy to meet as he scrabbles cutely up the stairs.

I do know this little one, though, it’s Iwanko! I didn’t know his English name was Ruffrock until I looked it up just now, but I have to say I kind of love that name. The Japanese name (ostensibly, I’m just guessing here) breaks down as イワ iwa (rock, its type) + ワンコ wanko, puppy. The reason wanko is used for puppy is because one onomatopoeia for a dog’s bark is わんわん wan wan. So I think it’s pretty cool how the English uses both a bark sound and its type as well!

Finally we have the lovely Umbreon. Honestly, it’s a toss up whether I like the relatively grandiose English name or the cuter Japanese name Blacky. They’re different, but each has its charm. (I’m also unsure whether the Japanese name is just because of the color, or because it’s a mix of black and lucky necessarily like some wikis say, but I’m unsure about a lot of things.)

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All put together, this little staircase measures about eight inches high and comes together really wonderfully — as a decent quality little statue bursting with Pokemon personality, it’s pretty much worth its regular price of around fifty dollars (close, at least) but for twenty? Consider me absolutely, totally in love.

The only problem is that I just can’t decide whether I want to work on getting all the Pokemon visible from one angle to display this stacked up, or whether it’s cuter piece by piece on a shelf. I keep going back and forth on this….I seriously could use some advice. _(:3 」∠)_