u/Drama11amama

I've been wanting a Japanese alley nook for a while but none of the designs spoke to me until this one. I love how realistic it looks, and there's so much details and texture. 3D props asides, even the printed material have grains and grooves on them. Yes, I'm excited that I can feel the mortar joints on the stones and wood patterns on the doors.

And I'm never going to shut up about the perfect mirror placement that multiplies the bougainvillea why are they so pretty 😭

It's like twice as expensive as my typical nook but I also think everything from the design to the wood plies and props are a step up or two or ten from the ones I previously built. I was pleasantly surprised they even included glue and tweezers lol

10/10 build (except for the ducks... they are weirdly caricature for this nook so I left them out)

Edit addition: Just want to add some thoughts on the build and mention the areas that I struggled with the most in case anyone is interested to know for their build:

1/ The manual is in English yay! So it'll point this out but you still gotta pay attention. Look carefully at the shingle/tile roof to determine bottom side (flatter) vs top side (more grooved) so that you don't glue the wrong side, and the lay direction of the roof tiles (each row counting from the eave should be under the next row up), this is less important because you'll be covering most of the roofs in moss but I'm OCD about this for whatever reasons)

2/ You may want to glue your bougainvillea before sliding the back mirror on. I got a little glue on the mirror so had to pop it out, apply goo gone, wash, wipe, dusted for one tiny dot of glue. Use your tweezers to help keep the moss in front of the mirror when you push it in after. A bit tricky by doable.

3/ Batteries pop in fine. Impossible to pry out with just fingers. I had to use mini pliers to pry them out.

4/ It's my first time working with moss yarns so I'm still getting used to it. Probably my most troubled element, trying to arrange it and getting it to stay where I want.

And I'm so glad I did!

Those Sailor Moon boxsets are so snug after your books expand. And they will, if you actually read them 📖 🥂

I contemplated the box for a good 30 mins wondering how much glue they used on the cardboard spacer, and how much I'm potentially going to eff this up 😭 I did good yall. Got that sucker off with my swiss knife, cleaned the glue residue and I'm good to go. My volumes fit like a dream now

Since I'm a heathen who doesn't read Nana I can only compare this to the Neighborhood Story release. Happy to report that Viz included French flaps like they did for NS, at the same price point while INA is much thicker too. However we only get two color pages (the original inside covers) and the rest is black and white. Compared to NS which has so much more colorful art 😭

Super happy to finally get an English release though don't get me wrong. This plus Mars at the end of the month are my two long awaited oldies

Preface by saying this is my first order with Aloha and had no idea what to expect. It was just really hard trying to find their products from typical resellers like B&N. My preorder got cancelled and I've been checking month after month before taking a chance ordering directly from Aloha (shipping is so expensive T_T)

They used Uniuni which is also a first for me. Arrived today, 5 days since order, which is super quick but up til today the tracking still only said "label created" lmao. Packaging is your typical throw everything in the box and top with crumpled brown paper. but at the same time I feel like it didn't need to be better since the three volumes of Little Mushroom are already in their own secure box, and then Last Dynasty is hardcover with shrink wrap so nothing is especially fragile.

Really happy overall with the books. They're beautifully produced and I'm especially stoked that Last Dynasty is getting printed in English.