Books are a wonderful way to experience different aspects of life from our own and take in the wonder that is words. As well a great source of information to be used by all who wish to seek it. Although the internet is easily available in the age we live in now, we must not forget where the words we read on the screen originally came from ancient text we have found on paper that dates thousands of years back. I have come to the “British Empire” for vacation and decided to look up books in one of the worlds oldest library, the “British Library.”
Once inside, I was surrounded by books from across history positioned in four story shelves that were positioned wall to wall and in between. The smell of books from ages past filled my nose with each intake of breath. I touch the closest book nearest me and could feel its rich history and age. I pushed forward to seek more and more books, deep within the recesses of the endless book shelves. After what might have been hour, I found myself in a clearing surrounded by book, within that clearing I hear a faint noise, like the turning of book pages, that I try to follow. A bit further into the clearing I find a young woman surrounded in books from all ages and languages and that she herself has her head in a book.
I move closer to get a better view of the woman and end up tripping over one of the many books on the ground. Dust, which can be seen through the thin stream of sunlight coming through the green and blue mosaic window that lights the clearing, fills the air as I have fallen face first onto the dusty and grey square tiles of the floor with a noise the echoed throughout the high ceiling library. Getting up, with a big and painful bump on my forehead, I am surprised to find that the woman is still immersed in her book and perhaps never even heard the loud noise coming from my fall.
Suddenly a mysterious blur crashes through the green and blue mosaic window and glass shards that twinkle off the sunlight comes raining down on the two of us. The woman suddenly springs into action by opening the large suitcase next to her that contained…paper?
The blur that had flown through the window has stopped and reveals itself to be Leonardo Da Vinci. He floats in the air by a human sized helicopter which is similar to the one found in his notes that I have seen before. It consisted mainly of wood and stayed afloat through an engine. He starts shooting wooden arrows from his helicopter aimed at the woman and yells “Give me the books,” that the woman holds tightly towards her body. She throws paper into the air that moved extremely fast, as if shot through a gun, and somehow cuts the arrows in half and deterring it from her body to my amazement.
Leonardo soon starts throwing bombs at the woman who has now shielded herself in a cocoon of paper to protect herself from the blast of the bombs. Once Leonardo stops throwing bomgs, the woman comes out and Leonardo finds his chance and starts raining showers of wooden arrows at the woman. Surprised by the attack, the woman barely has any time to jump and avoid the arrows that rip through her skirt. To my own surprise, she rips her skirt off and paper from her suitcase magically fills the spot and becomes a new skirt.
Leonardo looks towards the edge of his eye and suddenly notices my presence. “Give me the books or he will die!!!” he shouts as he moves towards me. He starts shooting arrows at me and the arrow is about 50 cm from my face when the woman appears before me and covers us in a shield of paper that absorbs the blow of the arrows. “Are you alright?” she asks. I respond that I am and I just realize how close I came to dying. “Good, now when I turn to attack you run away” she tells me with a smile.
I nod my head as the volley of arrows seems to be dying down. When the volley of arrows stops, the woman turns around and starts shooting her own shower of paper at Leonardo’s helicopter, causing severe damage to it.
Leonardo suddenly takes out a mechanical device that moved as quick as lightning and grabbed the books from the woman’s hand. It quickly returns to Leonardo who is now exiting through the broken mosaic window as the woman shouts “Please return my books.”
She turns toward the broken window and creates a large paper airplane out of the remaining paper in her suitcase. I call out to her asking her name before she leaves. “Yomiko, Yomiko Readman” she responds and flies away in the paper plane to retrieve the books stolen from her.
Figure Information:
Manufacturer: Kotobukiya
Anime: Read or Die (R.O.D.)
Scale: 1/8
Price: 4,800 yen
Availability: HLJ, Hobby Search
Impression:
Did you enjoy reading the story? I basically copied it from the Read Or Die OAV and threw in different angles like Leonardo Da Vinci. This is actually my first indoor figure shoot and I used my brother’s manga and my books for a background. I used the natural light coming in through the window to give the figure a more natural look. On to the figure, Yomiko is actually my brothers, he wanted me to tell you that lol, who is a big fan of R.O.D., I too am a fan though not as big as he is. Kotobukiya did a great job with this figure and even though she was mass produced, I don’t see any scratches on the paint job anywhere unless I look really close to find the minuscule scratches. She is screwed onto the base and you can add a “cover” to the top of the base that consists of a bunch of paper on the ground to give her the more “Paper” (Her codename in the anime) feeling to it. Although you can’t see it, she is actually standing on paper that comes off the base. The box she came in was interesting, it was very decorative and looked like a fat red book if you close the cover, you can see it through the links to the online sites that still sell her above. Her skirt is cast off, as you can tell from the picture above, and her pantsu actually has detail to it to my amazement as I usually see plain white pantsu or pantsu with colored stripes. The way she is positioned, the flow of her hair, and the flow of her coat is nicely arranged to show a single flow of movement that could be suddenly around which I used with my story. Her clothes are nicely detailed and she captures the Yomiko Readman of the anime which is really sugoi. A nice collection to my brothers ever growing collection.
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