Ngee Khiong: The End

Ever since I got into gunpla back in the summer of '09, I've been checking Ngee Khiong daily for updates on upcoming gunpla releases and other cool pictures. On October 1st, Ngee made a public announcement that he would be shutting down the major part of his blog [and ultimately decided to keep Ngee Khiong EX around]. In his penultimate post, he stated that his final post would be quite lengthy and clearly state his reasons for ending his service. Today, on October 4th, that lengthy post hit the internet. Being a dedicated follower of Ngee, I checked his blog and read the whole thing. It was really interesting to see what he thought of what the gunpla community has become. It was also a bit upsetting to read, because, well, it's the last post that will ever happen on Ngee Khiong's main page. A page that I, among countless other gunpla fans, went to at least once daily to check for new goodies from Bandai.

At any rate, I thought I'd do a little post of my own. I have absolutely no intention of quitting, but I'd like to share my thoughts in a manner similar to how Ngee did. Know now that I mean none of this maliciously.

Rather, there are a few key points I'd like to touch on. The first one is the "UC Fans VS 00 Fans VS SEED Fans VS any other fans" thing. Regardless what the topic is, as long as there are multiple groups under that topic, human nature will kick in and we will declare one to be "the best" and believe that anything else is not worthy of gracing our computer screens/TVs/whatever. This definitely applies to me too: I'm a big fan of Gundam 00, and don't really enjoy watching SEED or any of the side stories. However, I have enough self control to not let that consume what I think of the other series. I feel like people take their fanboyism to the extreme to the point that they're actually hating people who don't share common views as them. I'm aware that regardless of the scenario, this is bound to happen, as we're only human. That is still no excuse to blind ourselves to other people's views. I have plenty of friends who prefer SEED to 00, and I respect that. If they find some hilarious re-dubbing of a certain scene, then I'll watch it. There's nothing wrong with any particular series: they all have their ups and downs, and people [jeez, I'm being so general DX ] need to accept that not everything is perfect. So you're a UC fanboy? Prefer Turn A Gundam to everything else? That's fantastic for you. Don't try to shove your ideals down my throat.

The next topic on my little list are the blog-goers themselves. The fact of the matter is that the folks who commute through their regular blogs every day are helping out the owners of those blogs by giving them someone to write to. I'm incredibly gracious of every one of the people who visit my blog every day [though most of them are anonymous, but that doesn't matter!!], and I'm glad that nobody has had a reason to impersonate me on other blogs to make me seem like a bad person. There are a few people, though, who I feel have overstayed their welcome. They are the people who hop from blog to blog and make comments like "Your reviews need more of X in them. I stopped following your blog for a while because there was too much Y and not enough X." To those people, I have an open challenge for you:
Make your own blog. Try to keep a regular schedule like some of us do. See how easy it is for us to include every little detail we can in every single review. Now throw school and personal life into the mix. Suddenly a week doesn't seem like all that long of a time frame to review a MG kit, does it? Don't criticize others's work without knowing what it's actually like to do it yourself. You want to see more inner frame stuff? Too bad, go to dalong. That's not how I do things here. I find that kind of behavior is rude and disrespectful to the blogger.

Which leads to my next point, which is how I do do things on Baby TheEnd's Gunpla and Toy Review. Since I started blogging, I've kind of developed a template for how I write up posts, the same way dalong or Hobby no Toriko does. I build the kits for my own amusement, and I blog about them for my own amusement. I even go so far as to treat each of my kits with respect. I put a lot of time and effort into each one, so why would I not take care of them? I don't think it's right to request that someone who already has a set blogging style to change it so drastically for their own personal gain. I have no intention of ever removing the armor from any of my kits to show you how the internal frame moves. To me, doing so kind of ruins some of the surprises of buying a Gundam kit in the first place. The only prerequisites that I look for when buying a new kit are:
-is it a fair price?
-do I like the design?
-how much extra detail work do I need to do on it?
-would it look awesome among my other gunpla?
I feel that the design and extra work are the more important of the four requirements. I've heard from many people that the MG Acguy is an amazing MG kit, requires no painting, and is not only incredibly posable but a total chick magnet too xD. That's all fine and dandy, but I really don't care for the design much, and I don't think it's going to grow on me over time like Turn A did.

While, yes, I do check dalong a few times a week to check out what future purchases I may want, I generally do not look at the newly released kits until I've decided whether or not I plan on getting it. A lot of the fun in building a Gundam kit is seeing how everything goes together, and something like having a whole section on the inner frame, to me, ruins a lot of that aspect. Yes, it's interesting to see and it allows me to make a better choice as to whether or not I want the kit, but building it and figuring out the little gimmicks and whatnot on your own makes it all the more satisfying. When I was building my first kit ever, the MG Exia, I was amazed at all of the sliding mechanisms and opening hatches and all of that. I thought that being able to remove the GN Drive was the coolest thing ever. I like to keep those little surprises unknown until I'm actually building the kit.

And yes, this site has become predominantly gunpla at this point, I recognize that. Honestly, it will probably stay that way too, as I find gunpla to generally be more worth the money. On occasion there will be a few action figure purchases [and most of those will likely be figma or Robot Damashii]. I don't intend on changing the name of the blog, regardless, because I feel I've already made a name for myself and I'd rather not alter it.


And that's all I've got to say about that. I really hope that most of you bothered to read through the wall of text, but if you didn't then it's no skin off my back. I just wanted to get my opinion on a few things out in the open. Will people give me crap for this? Undoubtedly. There's always someone who violently disagrees with you. I will take it in stride though. I don't plan on shutting down because the community I'm a part of is "crumbling." I blog because I want to, and the people who read my blog are just getting that much more insight into the stable bits of the gunpla and toy community.

Thank you for listening. As a reward for reading through all of this [or as a free picture for skipping down to the end to see if there's any pictures xD] I give you this: