Background: I’ve had this figure sitting around for quite some time now; I think almost a few months short of a full year since it was first released; so I’d think it’s about time I actually open it and put it on display. I have a number of other figures still in queue to be opened and depending on how I feel, some are jumped forward and get opened earlier, others such as Northern Princess get opened pretty much within the week I receive it, which is what I normally do for mini figures and Nendoroids since they don’t occupy much space and are usually pretty easy to put together.
The figure itself being reviewed here is actually based off a single illustration by the very well known doujin/ero-arist Ishikei; famous for well, you know, some of the best doujin/ero material ever. Aside from Ishikei’s signature character designs which make all of his girls immediately recognizable, this particular character is interesting simply because she was only drawn once, for some kind of ad or promotional material for Comiket 77, which was in the Winter of 2009. With that in mind you have to wonder then why was this figure even produced in the first place? Original character? Drawn only once? Ad for Comiket? Event Staff Girl? Really? Seriously, who is this for?
Well, for me I guess since I ended up buying it. Fuck, can’t resist that smile and ass.
The back of the box shows her in all of the various setups and display options possible. To be honest, I didn’t think this figure was going to be cast-off able, or rather, how could it have been even possible considering that there was only a single illustration to go by, with her back turned and butt to be seen. She’s also wearing a parka/hoodie thing so I can’t imagine what was needed in order to sculpt her front, considering it’s not even visible.
However, if you look at the original image, you will notice slight differences between the figure and the illustration. They added to her jacket some kind of cotton/fur trimmings around the hood and edges of where the coat ends and removed the white trimming off her hot pants, which honestly, I didn’t even realize were hot pants until I saw the figure itself, I had always assumed they were panties. They also decided to give her boots with similar styling and have her pants slightly undone in the front, shit that you would never have known, guess it’s figure wizardry.
Review: At first glance you can’t help but say “Damn, that’s some phat ass” and realize you are talking about a PVC figure and not some music video by Nicki Minaj. Reactions and jokes aside, this figure is produced by Wing, a relatively new figure manufacturer which has only appeared in the market within the past 2-3 years. Based on my experiences with Wing so far, I’d say their quality is pretty damn good, on par or even better than most Goodsmile Company, Phat Company, Kotobukiya, Alphamax figures but not quite to the level of detail or craftsmanship as Alter, Max Factory or Megahouse. Other than it’s solid quality, it’s immediately obvious that this figure should only be displayed from one angle, her back turned and head looking backwards. From the front it really does look odd although you get to see how big her boobs are and the rest of the jacket they designed for this figure.
I didn’t have any major problems putting her together although I had to wiggle her legs into the base pegs as they were not quite aligned properly, which can be troublesome at times since you fear you could either warp the plastic, break the peg or worse yet break her legs. Luckily, nothing bad this time. This figure is also larger than most, at 1/7 scale which is a size that I prefer. I sometimes feel the typical 1/8 scale is just not big enough to convey details and makes paintwork sloppier as there isn’t as much surface area to work with. At least with 1/7+ scale figures I can at least expect the paintwork to be decent.
While not a complex figure that has alot of shit sticking out of her or metal/variable accessories, Wing does a pretty good job with coloring within the lines; her thigh-highs and boots are painted with shadows/highlights and look great while her jacket/parka get a similar treatment along the edges of the faux fluffy fur. I would have liked it if they spent a bit more time on her hair tho, which looks a bit dull up close if you don’t have any kind of external light source.
The sculpt itself is very good and captures Ishikei’s art fairly accurately, although differs slightly in character design as I mentioned earlier, which is fine by me, although I wonder what was the reasoning why they gave her the faux fur trimming for her jacket. But look at that cheerful smile, isn’t it great? Look at that ass, isn’t it great? Look at those glasses, isn’t it great? I’m not really into ass, boobs are my thing for the most part but man, this this pretty good ass. Her armband and glasses look great too, everybody loves glasses type characters right? No? Fuck you then. You always have to appreciate glasses, especially if they don’t look like shit and don’t have clear plastic lenses in them to ruin the view of the big anime eyes of the character.
Did I mention this figure is also cast-offable? Yea, I’m putting some up photos here too for the sake of research and science. Well, actually not so much science but for the sake of the beauty of the female form, yea, whatever, I tried.
When I first found out that this figure would be cast-offable I thought about how Wing would achieve the feat, thinking that parka looks pretty hard to take off. It’s difficult to make cast-off figures and not make them look like bloated pieces of shit with visible seams and poor paintwork when clothes are normally on. When I opened the box I got my answer; they straight up provided another torso that was naked with bare boobs and such.
Hmm…separate torso with different positioned arms and everything…I guess that’s one way to go about it…probably cost more so I don’t really know how I feel about these kinds of approaches. If they were going to make her straight up naked, then they should have just committed on that and sold her as is, otherwise I would be more than happy to have paid a bit less without the extra torso since I’m just going to be displaying her clothed like in the original Ishikei illustration.
Other than minor nitpicking, I’m overall pretty happy how this figure turned out. It’s not the oh-wow this figure is so cool and amazing that gets girls into the figure collecting hobby; which happens for some figure releases; make no mistake, this is no doubt a ero figure targeted for guys with lewd/active imaginations and spare money on their hands and with that in mind it does it well, very well.
It takes a certain amount of blind faith and stupidity to buy something purely on the fact it was based on a picture they liked by an artist they like, even more so if the end result is amazing and you end up posting about it on your blog; saying how good it is with full on Photoshop treated photos, NSFW in the post title and a small essay worth of writing with it’s intended target audience being no one except yourself really. Yea, dats me and this figure is good.
Score: I am happy.