Demon's Chronicle

The most satisfying collections are sometimes the most complicated, complex ones.

My growing collection of Yanoman’s ‘Demon’s Chronicle’ mini-figures is certainly the most involved collection that I have. Not only does each subsequent set need to be imported from poorly-translated overseas websites (since I haven’t found any US shops that stock these, due to their very limited appeal), but each and every surreal, creepy character in each set is so obscure and mysterious that I feel the need to hunt down the origin of each and every one – which often involves translating things both from Japanese and Latin, with a whole lot of help from Google Translate and my unending supply of patience.

Did you know that there’s an actual, biblical angel that’s just a ball of wings? Well, there is – and Yanoman made a mini-figure of it. While their Demon’s Chronicle sets vacillate between mythology, the Bible and folklore, they’re always full of really unique, tiny sculptures, which is the real selling point for me.

This most recent set, Exercitus Caelestis, when translated loosely from the Latin, revolves around the idea of ‘Heavenly Armies’. From what I can tell, much of the set deals with creatures and people that were servants and second-in-command to various deities and demons. There are ten figures total, each one being presented in both painted and ‘unpainted’, beige colors, as well as an 11th mystery figure. Every figure comes with a descriptive card – written in Japanese. I ordered a case from Hong Kong, and unfortunately, due to a manufacturing error, I was stuck with a few pieces that didn’t fit together correctly, and one beat up figure that was shoved into a box with a completely incorrect card. This kind of quality control issue is really unusual, and the first batch of problems I’ve had since I started collecting these.

This first figure is a four-headed, angelic creature – having the heads of a human, a lion, a bull and a bird. According to a loose translation, he’s of the genus ‘Cherubim Cherubim’, and his description talks about ‘tanks of the sky with shining wheels’. This creature is mentioned in ‘The Chronicles Akira Hazime’, apparently, though the only coherent website I can find assigns that name to a Japanese erotic model, and a passing reference to the ‘million Emperor calendar’. So, that particular search has hit a premature dead end. All I’m left with is a four-headed freakout angel.

On the other hand, this second angel translates to ‘The Archangel Gabriel’, the biblical messenger of God, and an easy guy to find out a lot about in English.

The cherub on the two-headed dragon isn’t quite so straightforward. Translated from the Japanese, this guy is literally ‘Tatsuko varakku’, from ‘The Chronicles Antinora’, and a mention of the word ’setsuzou’, which translates to ’snow sculpture’. There’s also mention of the word ‘Acheron’, which is a river in Greece once believed to flow into the underworld. A little more digging (okay, a few more hours’ worth), and I figured out that ‘Antinora’ was only a phonetic translation, and I should have been looking for ‘Antenora’ – a part of the river to Hades.

So, who’s the baby? Probably something evil, but honestly, it’s another search that’s come up empty.

The cat playing the French horn is a little more penetrable, translating to ‘Cat Bireto no Tsukaima’, or ‘the cat familiar of Bireto’. Now, if ‘BERUZEBURU’ is a phonetic translation of ‘Baelzebub’ and ‘BERIARU’ is probably Belial, one can assume that the phonetic ‘Bireto’ is either ‘Beleth’ or ‘Berith’, both dukes of hell. Because of the limitations of the Japanese language in expressing English sounds, either option is equally likely. Unfortunately, I can’t find any relationship between wither of them and a musical cat, so my search temporarily comes to an end.

Days later, and toggling between Google Translate and Babelfish, I still only have a superficial understanding of these things in my collection. And I kinda like that mystery. I don’t know what this stuff is, I don’t know when or if any more are going to come out, I don’t know where I’ll buy them – but I know that I like these surreal little vignettes. Bring on lucky part XIII!

Historically, the ‘Malleus Maleficarum’, or ‘The Hammer of Witches’, was a book written in 1486 by a pair of ornery witch hunters, during the height of the persecution of these perceived ‘witches’. The invention of the printing press around this time allowed the book to spread far and wide, despite being banned by the Catholic Church as ‘unethical’. It’s a very interesting read, with entire chapters dedicated to things like “What do you do if you’ve been physically emasculated by a witch?”, which seemed to be a fairly major concern. That, and witchcraft being an affront to God, of course – but mostly, there was a lot of terror about strange vanishings in trouser town, all written in an anecdotal style akin to ‘one time I heard about this guy and this thing TOTALLY happened to him.’

The book also addresses the fact that witches can turn men into beasts, though they rarely seem to turn other females into lesser forms. By extension, these witches also had the power to make themselves ridiculously seductive, so that barely any magic was needed against whichever male they sought to ruin – just purely biological sex appeal. This is the complicated premise of the eleventh and latest set of Demons Chronicle gashapon, created by Yanoman in Japan.

I’ve always loved this ongoing collection for just how bizarre and obscure the premises for each set of surreal creatures has been. Because everything is written in Japanese, I know very little about the origins of each specific, diverse figure, but every time I obtain a new set (always ordered directly from Japan, as there’s no real market for them in the US), it’s always a fun game of detection and discovery, trying to glean the purpose of everything – looking up Japanese mythology, piecing together hiragana phrases, and eventually coming up with not a lot, but learning interesting things nonetheless. The creatures inspire new paintings from me, and it’s worth the nervous wait as a box of these things makes its untrackable way from overseas.

This eleventh series is composed entirely of female figures in mythical animal forms. They’re about 2 inches tall, with an additional heavy base for each figure, and they all come disassembled into about six or seven pieces each, which must be put together very delicately. Every figure comes in two different color schemes – a painted, full-color version, and a beige, statuesque version. New to this series is the option to display each figure with a human head, or an alternate scary animal head – revealing the duality of the nature of these shapely witches. Don’t be fooled, guys – it’s no fun to make out with a bird skull.

Since these do come from overseas, where the attitude towards the nude human form is more relaxed, many of the Demons Chronicle figures might be considered risqué. Still, it isn’t without reason. A witch in a baggy sweater isn’t going to be quite as effective as a naked one. Combining female forms with animal forms is also nothing new for Japanese toys – but most of the examples of this also wouldn’t be appropriate for a PG blog.

The most bizarre figure in the series is the rotund Elephant Woman, who comes with a pachyderm head, and clutching a giant fork and knife – which strikes me as a strangely malicious depiction of the overweight. I can always enjoy a good succubus hanging off of a church steeple, a frog faerie, and an Egyptian-themed depiction of a female Grim Reaper with an alternate skull head. I enjoy them because they’re such a large step away from what we usually see in figural form in our own mass toy market. I can only take so many iterations of Spider-Man before I stop being interested and need a break.

There are ten different witches in the series, with a rare eleventh mystery figure. You can see nine of them in our Community Section, at the end of my Demons Chronicle collection.

My most recent collecting obsession comes direct from Japan, and by ‘direct from Japan’, I don’t mean ‘created in Japan and sold here in the US’. I mean paying ridiculous EMS shipping fees to get dusty boxes imported from Asia and hoping for the best.

I’m a big fan of miniature toys. If I can find a superhero or diorama or otherwise culturally significant thing in miniature, it’s probably flanking my computer at some point. An army of robots from all manner of places gathers below my monitor, while other significant portions of space are occupied by the deadly Cartoon Warrior Women armada. The battle shall be glorious, and probably have too many upskirt-underwear shots.

So when I came across a little thing called Demon’s Chronicle on Toyzz.com, I thought that they’d be fun. Little sculptural figures from world mythology, gracefully placed atop pillars, no more than 3.5 inches tall. I bought a half dozen boxes of the figures from them. Since they’re blind-packaged, you never know exactly what you’re going to get. It could be any one of the things pictured on the box (if there’s anything pictured on the box at all), or it could be something rare and mysterious that hasn’t been spoken of before.

What I ordered was the 6th incarnation of the Demon’s Chronicle series by Yanoman. I have no idea where demons play into this line of figures, but this set was a series of twelve eerie sculptures interpreting the typical signs of the zodiac. Each figure comes in two paint schemes – full color and a monochrome beige. In addition to that, there happens to be a bizarre Cthulhu-like guy surrounded by an albino serpent and mist, which you’ll pull from a box if you’re lucky, like me. My luck in toys, though, completely balances out the complete disaster that is the rest of my life. I’m wondering where I can go to trade some of this toy-luck in. You know, never find that rare Hydro-Man action figure, but not have my soul crushed. I think that’s a pretty fair trade.

Demon’s Chronicle figures come in bags of tiny, tiny pieces that need to be assembled, completely without instructions and only a small image to guide you. You fit round pegs into round holes, and L-shaped holes fill up with L-shaped pegs until you have a beautiful little figure. It’s not without difficulty, but that’s half of the fun. Parts fall off as you’re forcing others on, something flies into your eye, a whole herd of cows in Wisconsin suddenly vanishes. It’s all worth it.

Toyzz.com, which is based in the US, quickly sold out of the figures, and I was forced to search the wide world over for more pieces. They were inspiring, and they were beautiful, and some of ‘em were naked ladies! The acceptance of nudity into ‘toys’ is another fascinating part of Asian culture, but that’s a discussion for another day.

I found these figures available in only one place – Hobby Link Japan. And they were only available by the case. Could I possibly be crazy enough to import whole cases of toys? I managed to justify the expense by purchasing some toys for my niece’s birthday in the same order, because if you’re going to be a creature of avarice, you need to take countermeasures of generosity so that your soul doesn’t immediately blacken, shrivel up and find its way into blocking one of your more vital arteries.

Other series of Demon’s Chronicle figures include a set of Egyptian mythology, angels and an early version of Santa Claus, a unicorn with a penchant for trumpets, dragons and fairies. Santa, curiously, is the mystery figure in a series that also contains a figure that can only be Satan riding a serpent. You can see a full gallery of the figures on the Yanoman website, even though there’s no English translation. The paint quality and sculpting detail are excellent for things of this size, but all of that pales in comparison to the imagination that’s gone into these figures. I’ve set up a display of the ones I’ve managed to acquire right in front of where I paint, because they instantly became creative talismans to occasionally glance at and remember what’s possible.

And that’s your daily slice of something that you probably didn’t know about before.