For the first review of the year we’ll be going back eleven months with this figure of Sumika Kagami, one of the central heroines of the popular eroge Muv-Luv Alternative. She’s the third figure from this series to be produced by Kotobukiya, following lead girl Meiya Mitsurugi and a peculiar figure of Kasumi Yashiro in a skimpy bunnysuit. It’s possible that Sumika will be the last figure that Kotobukiya produces from the core science-fiction series, as it looks like they’ve moved on to the Carnelian-illustrated spinoff Schwarzesmarken, though who knows; they’re still producing model kits of the mecha from the game, so perhaps they’ll revisit Alternative someday. If not, at least Sumika is quite a nice figure to end the mainline run with.

Muv-Luv Alternative is, of course, the game from which Total Eclipse was spun off of. We’ve looked at a number of figures of the Total Eclipse characters before and Sumika’s design and construction is in much the same vein. I recently watched most of the anime adaptation and in lieu of any better place to write my thoughts, I thought I’d mention here that it was slightly better than I initially thought it was, being that I dropped the show after the tenth or eleventh episode. Unfortunately, its elevation in my esteem is due to its transition from the overwrought, melodramatic Soviet arc to slapstick antics once Cui Yifei is brought on board; sad to say, the show works a lot better as a harem comedy than as a war drama or giant robot series. I’m not sure if that’s more of an indictment of the production staff or of the larger themes rife in contemporary anime.

I have not played the eroge, but as far as I know, Sumika is one of the main girls from Muv-Luv Alternative and served as a potential love interest in the original game Muv-Luv, in which she was the archetypical childhood friend of lead male protagonist Takeru Shirogane. Her circumstances are quite a bit different in Muv-Luv Alternative, and her enigmatic status comprises much of the framework of the game’s narrative.

Muv-Luv Alternative is one of those eroge franchises that, as it has entered the mainstream, has minimized the pornographic aspects of the series (Fate/stay night is another example; both series also share an obsessive and often pretentious emphasis on historical trivia). However, while I do not know much about Sumika, particularly as she is in Muv-Luv Alternative, I do know that she is possibly the only Muv-Luv Alternative character to be tentacle-raped, which makes her a pretty cool character in my view (I have a similar affection for Sakura Matou from the Type-Moon series). Any lady who knows how to show a swarm of tentacles a good time is fine by me.

This figure is produced by Kotobukiya and is sculpted in 1/7 scale. She comes with no accessories except her base, which, like the Total Eclipse pilot suit characters, is made to look like urban wreckage. That puts her design at odds with her castmate Meiya, who has a rather more garish purple base. She’s about 21 centimeters tall, overall.

The Total Eclipse girls are presented as war-hardened veterans with tragic or difficult backgrounds – Yui witnessed the slaughter of her homeland and many of her friends, Cryska and Inia grew up as experimental medical subjects – but Sumika’s initial introduction in Muv-Luv appears to be as an ordinary, friendly girl, and that’s what she looks like here. Her warm smile and and gentle, inquisitive gaze make for an inviting expression. She also has huge hair with an enormous ahoge, prominent hair intakes, and a conspicuously oversized bow, giving her a softer look than that presented by the figures from the cousin series.

Her placid demeanor contrasts sharply with her futuristic outfit. Like many of the Muv-Luv characters, Sumika’s body is sheathed in an impossibly-tight bodysuit. Sumika’s suit is uniquely colored, featuring an attractive mix of pink, purple, and black. It’s an eye-catching combination, particularly when compared to the blue, black, and white suits the rest of the cast wears, and it lets the viewer know that Sumika is a very special girl.

Sumika doesn’t quite have the curves of Cryska or even Yui; her breasts are a little smaller and her body build is a little more slender. She still looks very appealing, though, particularly in the way she’s seated on the girder. In particular I thought the shape of her thighs are quite attractive, and of course, the way she’s vacuum-sealed into her suit is also striking.

The base does look very nice; it fits in perfectly with the Total Eclipse characters. I’m not sure why Meiya is the outlier in that group. Note that Sumika does attach to the base via foot pegs, so there’s no risk of her toppling off of her perch.

One odd thing about the design of this figure is the way her hair sweeps upward, as if it were defying gravity. Not that that’s unusual in anime figure design, but I thought I’d mention that, as there doesn’t seem to be any reason for her hair to be moving.

I really like the feeling of serenity conveyed by Sumika. She’s not a character who has much cause to be happy, at least in Muv-Luv Alternative, but regardless, her tranquillity is pleasing to look at. The sexy Muv-Luv suit is also attractive, as it always is, and its sleek, body-hugging appearance and Sumika’s more girlish accessories complement each other nicely. It’s a little unfortunate that Kotobukiya hasn’t made more figures of the Muv-Luv characters in their pilot suits – there are a ton to choose from – but hopefully they’ll make more. It’s not that Irisdina looks bad or anything, it’s just that swimsuit figures are really commonplace in this hobby.

Anyone who has been in this hobby for a while can’t be too surprised by the concepts embodied by certain figures. I mean, there’s a figure out there based on an anime-fied Adolf Hitler, every now and then a company shows off a tentacle rape figure, and there’s even a very nice necrophilia-oriented figure up for preorder at the usual stores right now. Still, it was a little strange to see three figures involving toilets going up for preorder at approximately the same time (this one, obviously, and the other two were Ringo Hanamaru and a Kaitendoh figure). To be a fan of anime culture often implies being a fan of certain themes and fetishes, but I freely admit that toilet usage is not amongst mine. Still, if anyone could make this look good, it would be Native, no? Perhaps – but only if they didn’t botch it for other reasons. Which they did, unfortunately.

This figure is, of course, named Touko. As far as I can tell, she’s an original character created by well-known illustrator Tony Taka and adapted into figure form by Native. Unlike many of Native’s earlier products, she is rather small; she’s listed as 1/7 scale, but she has a slim body build that makes her look smaller than that. She measures about 17 centimeters in height when seated on her throne. She comes with a variety of clothing options, though she doesn’t come with any additional accessories aside from her commode.

Incidentally, the address label on the shipping box listed its contents as “Touko in the Lavatory,” so everyone from the customs inspector to the deliveryman knows what was in the box. Thanks, Native.

Tony’s style is highly recognizable, and it’s easy to tell whose work this figure is based off of. His artwork is sometimes criticized for being generic, with a common remark being that he re-uses face designs too often. There’s some truth to that, but I think this figure looks a little more distinctive than many other Tony-derived figures in that Touko looks more or less like a realistic teenaged girl, aside from the anime-style face. She has a slim body, small breasts, and reasonably believable body proportions to go with her normal, unexceptional hair color and style; it makes for a marked contrast compared to many other Tony-adapted figures, which often feature stylized bodies and waist-length hair.

Presumably this focus on realism was why Touko comes with fabric clothing, and that’s where the problems start. Dressing her up isn’t too big a deal, particularly for anyone with some experience playing with dolls; an easy-to-follow instruction sheet is provided to show how Touko can be disassembled to remove or replace her clothing. In her most dressed-up form, she can be depicted wearing a blazer, a blouse (actually just the front and back panel of a blouse, sort of like the fake dress shirts boys might have worn for their high school senior yearbook portraits), socks, and a skirt. I didn’t bother dressing her up with the skirt since I think she’d look weird sitting on the toilet fully clothed.

One problem with having her wear her jacket is that it closes via a velcro strip. This makes it easy to close and allows it to fit closely to her body, but if her jacket is opened up, the loop side of the velcro is highly visible.

You can try to fold it back but it doesn’t stay in place. This makes it problematic to display her with her jacket open; one can obviously just keep her jacket closed but that’s not what Native’s about (as conveyed by their company name) and again, why would anyone be sitting on a toilet while wearing a fully-closed coat?

But of course, there’s always the option of displaying her nude, which only seems appropriate as Native’s name is a portmanteau of “naked” and “creative.” But if you do that, you get something like this.

There aren’t any armbands or anything to hide the detachment points; I guess that’s in keeping with the theme of realism, as nobody wears armbands on their biceps in normal life, but the seams are so ugly that I find it impossible to display her this way. That’s not even the worst of it, though.

There’s another detachment point where her right leg comes off. Presumably this is to facilitate getting her right arm in place, being that the placement of her hand would make for a tight fit if you had to reattach the arm with both legs in the way.

Still, there’s no denying that the large seam arcing over her hip is really ugly to see.

It’s unfortunate that Native chose that direction for this figure, and it’s puzzling that they did so. Providing removable clothing or accessories ought to provide the collector with alternative display choices, but in this case, there’s really no choice at all; the seams are so conspicuous that one feels compelled to keep her mostly dressed, and being that’s the case, why provide for removable clothing at all? Further, the fabric doll clothing doesn’t really add much to the figure, and it presents the threat of staining the surface of the figure.

Touko’s deficiencies are a shame since in other respects, she looks very nice. She has a lovely, enigmatic expression fixed on her face, and one wonders what sort of emotion she’s conveying. Her eyes have a lustrous coating that imparts a life-like sheen to them. And of course, her pose is quite tantalizing; I can’t think of another figure that looks quite like this.

But in the end, it’s difficult to get over the design issues of this figure. What makes it worse is that all those faults were willfully self-inflicted, and that with a little introspection this figure could have been remarkable. Ultimately, this figure disappoints, and the only consolation is that for anyone who wants an ero-themed Tony figure, Dragon Toy and Alphamax have a variety of appealing products for collectors to choose from instead.

And we’re back to our irregularly-scheduled program of figure reviews. Today we’ll be looking at Chris Yukine, one of the lead characters from Senki Zesshou Symphogear. For some reason or another, the series hasn’t gotten a lot of figures, despite apparently having been popular enough to receive a two-season anime adaptation. In fact, a quick survey suggests this is the only one scaled-size PVC figure from the show. This is also the first figure I’ve bought that is made by Aquamarine, a company that seems to be under Good Smile Company’s corporate aegis, and it’s always interesting to see whether a figure from a new company can measure up. That is, unless the figure is terrible, but happily, this figure of Chris is anything but.

I watched only the first few episodes of the anime and though it has a number of elements that I like – an all-female cast, appealing character designs, and an action-oriented premise, amongst others – it didn’t really grab me. I didn’t care too much about Hibiki, the main character, and I guess I probably would have preferred seeing Tsubasa as the lead girl, being that she seemed to have the more compelling backstory. I didn’t stick with the show long enough to see much of Chris, though I did like the one scene where she wears a bondage outfit and gets zapped by some psycho nudist woman; that was pretty cool. Maybe I should give it another shot; something tells me that I might like the show if I kept up with it.

As mentioned, this figure is manufactured by Aquamarine. I haven’t paid much attention to their products, but they do have an interesting upcoming figure of Saber in booty shorts and a tube top (yes, I’m aware that that figure is technically of Mordred or somesuch nonsense), and I was curious to see how their products stand up to those from more-established companies. Chris is sculpted in 1/7 scale and stands about 21 centimeters in height to the top of her head, and about 23 centimeters in height to her bunny ears.

Chris comes with one accessory, some sort of object that goes between her breasts. I’m not sure what it is (it looks vaguely like some kind of miniature sex toy) and I don’t particularly care for the way it looks so I didn’t even take it out of the packaging. Anyone curious as to how it looks can refer to the product photos on any retailer’s website (and perhaps they can tell me what it’s supposed to be).

This figure is based off of an illustration of Chris and it does a reasonably good job of approximating her look. Embarrassment and discomfiture are evident on her face, though the figure lacks the deep blush from the original artwork, giving her less of a panicked expression. The combination of her upward gaze, oversized eyes and comically exaggerated frown give her kind of a puppy dog look.

Chris’s hairstyle reminds me a bit of Rei Ayanami, with the longer center forelock and the two side locks looking sort of like pincers framing her face. She has a couple of long twintails that sweep improbably behind her, adding an element of visual interest that complements her pose well.

Speaking of her pose, she’s striking a sexy stance that emphasizes all the curves of her body. The swell of her buttocks and the size of her breasts are certainly the most obvious, but the arch of her back is equally attractive. The way she’s shrugging her shoulders while placing a hand on her chest in an almost protective manner also go nicely with her anxious expression.

A high-cut thong leotard comprises the main portion of Chris’s outfit, and it looks very nice. A glossy sheen gives it a realistic look, and the prominent wrinkles give the suggestion that it is made of a more rigid material than typical clothing. She’s also wearing stay-up thigh-highs rather than the more common pantyhose, and I think it looks great considering the high-leg design of her bunnysuit. She’s also wearing cherry-red pumps and the usual wrist cuffs. All in all, her outfit, despite not being nearly as unique as her normal fighting outfit, looks very nice.

And it looks very sexy, which is certainly what it is supposed to do. In particular, it reveals almost all of her back and ass. Again, it looks great.

We can’t ever get gratuitous enough, even when the subject is supposed to be 16 years old.

She’s holding up a bottle which features a bass clef on the label along with “S.D.A.U.,” which I assume is some sort of organization in the show. I doubt that they are a distillery but I’ve heard that hom-brewing beverages is a popular activity these days.

On the technical side, I don’t really see any major issues with this figure’s construction. Paintwork is neat, the sculpt looks pretty good, and they’ve done a solid job in replicating the look of the character.

Having not heard of the manufacturer, I did not have very high expectations for this figure and so I’m pleased that Chris turned out so well. She is highly attractive and though one could argue that the bunnysuit thing has been done to death, here it is used quite effectively to show off her body. This is a very nice figure and hopefully future products from Aquamarine are just as good.

It’s time for another review of a figure made by a company I am not at all familiar with. Technically this figure – of Ines from Konami’s Busou Shinki series – isn’t the first Ques Q figure, I’ve bought; I have their Neptune buried somewhere in my closet, I think, and I don’t remember anything about it other than being amused that whoever packed the box put the figure in backwards. I’m a little surprised that doesn’t happen more often. Despite not knowing much about the manufacturer or their track record, it wasn’t too difficult a decision to order this figure, for reasons that should be apparent in the image above. However, this figure did come with a very high price tag, and I felt some trepidation as to whether I would feel that my purchase was worthwhile. Is this figure satisfactory? Well, yes and no – always an annoying thing when one is a collector, to find something that is almost but not quite everything you were hoping for.

An extensive series of action figures comprises the foundation of the Busou Shinki franchise. Unlike some other lines of Japanese toys, I don’t think the Busou Shinki products have gotten a lot of traction overseas, and I’d guess that many people – including myself – first became acquainted with the property through its various media spinoffs, including several video games and a couple of anime shows. Presumably, this figure exists because of the 2012 television anime, which would make it a figure adapted from an anime character adapted from a figure. I watched the first couple of episodes of the anime, partly because of the appealing character designs but mostly because I hoped that it would be similar to Angelic Layer. It may sound strange for me to say this but Angelic Layer is one of my favorite anime series and was largely responsible (along with Noir, Last Exile, and Jin-Roh) in getting me interested in anime again back in the early 2000s. Unfortunately, it wasn’t all that much like Angelic Layer and the only thing I remember of it is that the little girly figures performed housework for the protagonist – certainly not all that compelling. I’m guessing I didn’t miss much by skipping the rest.

That said, the character designs really were quite nice and that’s pretty much the only rationale I need to buy this figure. That and the figure’s overtly provocative pose, that is, but we’ll get to that in a moment. As mentioned, Ines is manufactured by Ques Q (pronounced like “cues cue,” I think). This figure is marked as non-scale, and while I’m usually dismissive of such a listing, I suppose there’s some justification here since this figure is derived from another figure. At any rate, this version of Ines is considerably smaller than I thought it’d be; I’d guess that the figure is about 1/10 scale, and being that Ines is fairly petite to start with, it’s not all that much larger than a Figma. Disappointing, particularly considering this figure’s exorbitant price tag, but what can you do.

Fortunately, Ines comes with some other qualities that at least partially cover up for her lilliputian size. For one, her outfit is quite appealing. She’s wearing a crop top, thigh-high boots, and some rather skimpy panties; I vaguely remember that she was a little more modest in the anime but it’s obvious that the sculptor was going for a naughtier look here. Her boots, gloves, and top receive a glossy black finish which gives her an appropriately futuristic look. The overall black, red, and white color scheme is also attractive, particularly when paired with her red eyes and purple hair.

Like many – if not virtually all – anime series, Busou Shinki’s cast featured a variety of body builds and breast sizes. Ines gets the petite, twintailed, flat-chested look, which is a very common – some might say cliched – archetype. Accordingly, Ines doesn’t offer much for fans of larger racks, but she more than makes up for that lack by the raciness of her pose, in which her back is sharply arched, thrusting her ass outwards in a blatantly sexual manner. The eroticism of her pose is compounded by her spread legs, which practically command the viewer to inspect her crotch and buttocks. It’s certainly one of the best aspects of this figure.

While the Busou Shinki anime – again, like many anime series – has no qualms about appealing to the baser attributes of its audience, it is at its core a mecha girl show, and Ines does come with some type of mecha unit. I barely even noticed it in the promotional photographs, but seeing it in person, it’s actually quite impressive; it’s not that large but it is well-detailed and nicely-constructed. It is obviously mechanical in nature but its humanoid form offers a pointed contrast against Ines’s human form.

Speaking of which, one nice thing about this figure is that Ines is sculpted as a human rather than as a combat doll. I don’t dislike doll joints on dolls or action figures but I’d rather not see them on a static, non-poseable figure, and it’s pleasing that they changed her look to omit them. Presumably that is why this figure is labeled the “Image Model” version.

This figure comes with an instruction sheet which isn’t of much use, but it doesn’t require any assembly. As far as I can tell, the sword just rests precariously under the mecha unit’s hand and Ines just perches on the part where her feet would go if she were wearing her mecha suit. She’s reasonably secure despite not actually being attached to the mecha, but she’s likely to fall off if the entire assembly is jostled or shaken.

Despite the figure’s small stature, it is reasonably detailed. For instance, Ines does not have the helmet hair that afflicts so many larger figures; actually, the spikiness of her locks is one of the elements that provides more personality to this figure.

Another interesting touch is the two wings patterned on her back.

I wasn’t expecting too much in the way of technical execution on Ques Q’s part, but they did a reasonably good job, I think. Paintwork is generally clean, the sculpt doesn’t have any glaring issues, and I didn’t notice any significant defects or problems.

Overall, this is a very nice figure that I like a lot, but it would rank quite higher in my esteem if only it were larger. I understand why they kept the size small – the mecha part is essentially a second figure – and though it was logical to include it with Ines, being that Busou Shinki is as much about the mecha as it is the cute anime characters, I would’ve been okay with them prioritizing the girl instead. But regardless, I’m pleased with this figure, perhaps moreso because the exchange rate has improved so much in the last year, thus making its impressive price tag less of an issue.

For another review of Ines, check out Cerberus’s review at Reflective Boundary. Like him, I didn’t buy the other figure – Lene, or somesuch – but it’s still in stock at several stores and I guess I might change my mind if I think more about it; I’ve still got my tax refund money waiting to be spent.

We go from the regrettably miniature to the sublimely large today. The sheer size of FREEing’s 1/4 scale figures constitutes a large portion of their cachet, with their sculpts typically towering over a foot in height, or in this case, length. Their appeal is not based on size alone, however; these products almost always depict sexy anime girls in showy or compromising positions. Satellizer is obviously no exception.

Satellizer el Bridget (or L. Bridget, perhaps; I’m going by what’s printed on the box) is the lead character of the manga (or manhwa) and anime series Freezing. The series received a second season a couple of years back; I didn’t watch it, as I wasn’t that entertained by the first season and I had no desire to see more of Aoi Kazuya, the show’s tiresome and superfluous male protagonist. Further, I can’t recall ever seeing an anime whose second season was as good as or better than the first. Then again, it’s not like Freezing’s initial season set the bar very high. Maybe I’ll take a look at it someday. I do know there’s a neat scene where Elizabeth gets plugged in and zapped while strapped to a chair, which is pretty hot.

This figure is manufactured by FREEing in 1/4 scale and measures around 10 centimeters in height and 38 centimeters in length. She comes with a bunch of clothing options, allowing her to be displayed according to her owner’s desired level of perversity. No base is provided, nor is one needed to keep her stable; this is a very hefty, solidly-built figure.

Those who own FREEing’s earlier “Sexy Version” of Satellizer may feel a sense of deja vu upon seeing this figure. This new figure – dubbed the “Y-shirt Version” – inherits much of the look of its predecessor, from the matte paint finish common to almost all of FREEing’s 1/4 scale figures to the design of her clothing. To save time for anyone who already owns the earlier figure: if you like that one, you’ll like this one, too.

This version of Satellizer does have a crucial difference from its forebear; this figure is meant to mate with a figure of Elizabeth Mably, Satellizer’s fellow Englishperson. Unfortunately Elizabeth’s release date got kicked back to May; hopefully she’ll be out soon.

The earlier figure was labeled “Sexy” but its pose was a good deal tamer than the one held by this version. In her original 1/4 scale incarnation, Satellizer was lying on her side in a fairly demure pose; here, Satellizer is face-down, ass-up on all fours, with an almost sheepish smile on her face. Her pose means that the number of ideal viewing angles is highly limited; she’s best viewed from her right side. Even with those constraints, her ass comprises the focal point of this sculpt.

Satellizer can be displayed wearing glasses; I’m not a big fan of anime girls with glasses, but Satellizer looks pretty good while wearing them.

Without her spectacles, she looks a little sleepy – a rather unusual look for the Untouchable Queen.

Just like the earlier figure, Satellizer can be displayed while wearing a white dress shirt. It looks alright and is easy to remove, even though it separates into three parts. She can also be displayed wearing fishnet thighhighs. As I did not use these with my earlier Freezing figures, I do not know if there is any risk of them staining the skin of the figure.

Satellizer still wears the same purple underwear and, as one might expect, her bra is removable.

The nudity is expected but Satellizer’s doggy-style pose makes it difficult to see her breasts. Her stigmata marks are also completely covered up by her hair, but they are present on her back.

Like virtually all of FREEing’s 1/4 scale figures, Satellizer’s paint job exhibits a matte finish. It’s not the sort of paintwork that is calculated to impress, and it could even be termed a little cheap-looking, but I like it, myself; it lets the figure’s size attract more of the attention.

The attractiveness of the sculpt is quite evident, assuming one likes this sort of thing. Satellizer’s long legs, thickly-built thighs, and powerful buttocks are all conspicuous and are all highlights of this figure. There’s some detailing around her body, including her rib cage and the backs of her knees, but there’s perhaps less body and muscle definition than one might expect, considering the size of the figure. Also, I can’t help thinking that her left hand looks a little strange.

But that’s not really a big deal to me; I quite like this figure of Satellizer el Bridget regardless. The size, of course, is a big draw, and so is the unabashed lewdness of this figure’s design. While Freezing’s plotting and characterization are not exactly stellar, the character designs are highly attractive, and this is a fine adaptation of the busty blonde heroine of the series. Hopefully Elizabeth turns out as well; I am certain that they are going to make a great-looking couple.

The plan was to do a porno figure review but the gods of lighting and set design are fickle. Instead, with the To Love-Ru series getting quite a bit of love from figure makers this year, we’ll take a look at Alter’s Mikan Yuuki. This is the second figure of Mikan that they’ve released; I didn’t get the first, as I generally prefer figures that are standing upright, or at least kneeling. Considering its origins, it is perhaps not as lewd as one might expect, but there’s something to be said for a relatively innocuous figure of a cute anime girl.

Mikan is the sister of Rito Yuuki, the main male protagonist and unwitting harem master of To Love-Ru. She is presented as diligent and mature, keeping their household running smoothly in the absence of their parents. She’s also one of the youngest characters in the series’ central cast, which obviously heightens her appeal amongst a certain segment of the its fanbase.

This figure is manufactured by Alter in 1/7 scale, standing about 20 centimeters in height. Alter figures tend to be on the larger side but Mikan is a slightly-built character and so this figure does appear a bit small. Notably, she’s considerably smaller than Max Factory’s Momo and Mea, and presumably their upcoming Haruna as well, which is a bit of a shame as they would have looked quite nice together. Perhaps Max Factory will one day do a figure of Mikan in her underwear and a veil – as wrong as that might be (the original illustration doesn’t show a veil but it’d be hilarious if they added one).

Incidentally, I seldom comment on the price of figures but I was looking through Hobby Search’s back catalog for Mikan’s release date and I was surprised to see that this figure went for nearly 10,000 yen at release. I didn’t notice her cost as I haven’t bought many figures in recent months; the exchange rate also improved rapidly at the start of this year, making her quite a bit less expensive than she was when I preordered. Nonetheless, I really don’t understand why this figure was priced so high.

That’s not to say that this figure looks bad – far from it, actually. Being an Alter figure, manufacturing quality is top notch. So is the aesthetic appeal, at least for those who like this sort of thing. Me, I don’t really have a huge thing for lolis, but I do like Mikan – more for her personality, oddly enough. Judging strictly on body type, I guess I’d say I like Yui best in that regard, but I’m really not at all a fan of the tsundere archetype, and I guess Nana falls a bit into that category as well.

Mikan’s sunny expression is one of my favorite aspects of this figure. She has a warm smile that, unlike Max Factory’s figures, doesn’t really exude raw sexuality; it’s a nice, friendly look without some of the more peculiar overtones that can only be found in Japanese anime. That said, the completely casual way that she’s clearing a wedgie from her backside does provide a naughty subtext to her affable demeanor.

For those who don’t like smiles, Alter includes an optional head with this expression, in which Mikan seems apprehensive or unimpressed by something. It’s actually a head and collarbone; her head detaches around the boundary of her swimsuit, which keeps the seams to a minimum. It’s a nice touch, and an unexpected one, too; Alter rarely ever provides optional parts, except with some of their more dynamic figures, such as their Nanoha lineup.

The archetypical school swimsuit isn’t one of my favorite outfits, but it’s a pervasive symbol in anime, particularly of youth, and Mikan makes it look good. It’s not at all a complex design, but skillful sculpting and shading give it a highly realistic appearance, avoiding the painted-on look that is commonly seen on anime figures.

Mikan’s hair is more detailed, with her happy face head sporting a ponytail. Individual tresses writhe like tentacles, which looks quite cool.

She wears her hair down on her frowny face head, with a familiar sprig of hair sprouting from her head. Personally, I like both her smile and ponytail so I’m using her default head.

Alter has a reputation for ambition in the design of their products, but Mikan is a fairly simple design; she’s just a friendly young girl in a somewhat boring outfit. I quite like her bright expression, and there’s always that less cheery look for those who prefer frowns with their anime girls. Her contrapposto pose is also very attractive, giving her an appeal that is both subtle and obvious all at once. Overall, this is a very nice figure, though I suppose I would have felt less enthusiastic about it had the exchange rate been 77 yen to the dollar like it was for so long.

I’m not sure if the next review will be a porno figure review or the kickoff of Blonde Bikini Girl week; we’ll see.

I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m the only reviewer to cover this figure. However, despite its obscurity, I’ve known about this figure for quite a long time. In fact, I’d go so far as to call it a holy grail figure; I’d even been thinking about looking for the garage kit and trying to assemble it myself, as I never expected it to become available in a prepainted format. Much to my surprise and delight, it has, though courtesy of a manufacturer that I have no personal familiarity with and whose back catalog does not at all inspire confidence. But then again, when you’re working with a leering skeleton feeling up a naked, chained-up girl, how can you really go wrong?

This figure was originally sculpted by Shungo Yazawa years and years ago. It’s not actually the first figure of his that I own; that title goes to Yamato’s Felicia Andress, which really wasn’t as good as I had hoped it would be. Nonetheless, I do like his style, so much so that I tracked down a photo book of his creations. Here’s a picture of the original garage kit:

The original model apparently did not have sculpted hair; rather, it had artificial doll hair, as did the aforementioned Yamato figure. Being that it was so poorly-executed on the Felicia figure, I’m not sorry that the manufacturer dispensed with it here. It also came with a less elaborate background, but the remainder of the design appears to have been retained.

This figure – and I’m not sure whether “Hell Seducer” refers to the girl or the dude – is manufactured by a company called Blackberry, obviously not to be confused with the Canadian smartphone manufacturer. Previously, they’ve produced some uninspired figures based on Happoubi Jin’s art, including a couple of Kanojo x Kanojo x Kanojo’s Mafuyu Orifushi, who really deserves something from a maker like Alter or Max Factory. This figure is a big departure from their earlier work in terms of style and theme, and I really wasn’t confident that they could pull it off.

First, the dimensions; this figure is produced in a solid 1/6 scale. The girl is about 26.5 centimeters in height, which seems about right given that her torso is bent forward. The whole thing is about 36 centimeters in height overall, and it’s all integrated into one unit; neither the girl nor the hooded dude are detachable from the base, and thus the figure is ready to display right after unboxing it.

This figure is listed as being made of PVC and polystone; Hobby Search’s product page suggests that only the background is polystone and not the figure, but I’m not positive about that. Regardless, I’m not about to try any elasticity tests to see if the figure can flex like PVC. Everything does feel heavy and substantial, though.

The girl is obviously sculpted in a realistic manner, which is something that doesn’t always go well; I’ve seen a number of Western figures, particularly of comic book characters, that looked off to me because the realistic look is so much less forgiving than an anime, comic, or cartoon style. In terms of body proportions, I think this girl looks great; she has a long, lithe body with generous hips and quite a large bust. Her pose accentuates the length of her legs and thrusts her rack straight out, which are certainly two ways to make the female figure look more attractive (1990s era comic book artists used to do this all the time).

Looking at the figure from a normal viewing distance, I like her face as well, though it doesn’t look quite as good upon a close inspection. The lipstick is a bit heavy-handed and the eyeshadow application is strangely striated; it doesn’t look bad from afar as the streaks blend together, but up close it’s rather peculiar. Her eyes are closed, which blunts some of the emotiveness of the figure but dodges the obvious problem of badly-executed eyes, which could have destroyed this figure.

The coolest part of this figure, of course, is simply the theme it represents, which is, of course, a naked girl collared and chained to a wall while being groped by a hooded skeleton dude. Obviously this is not something that one sees all that often, even in anime, where the general rule of thumb is that anything goes. Then again, while this sort of thing is not that common, anime figures have become more blatantly sexual in the last couple of years, and this just seems like a contemporary example of an ongoing trend. (Contrast the direction that anime is going with the more conservative approach taken by Western video games and comic books in recent times.)

Up close, one can see that the skeleton is one happy guy. The workmanship on him is actually really solid; I’m impressed at how his teeth have a glossy sheen that looks like dental enamel, while the rest of him is a dull, matte color.

I suppose this is why he’s so happy; he’s definitely got a death grip on her tit.

Not gratuitous enough yet.

Still not enough.

Despite this figure’s explicit presentation, neither her vagina or anus are visible, and it’s not actually easy to tell what orifice his fingers are going into, or if they’re going into one at all.

The background comprises a stone wall, which doesn’t look quite as good as either the girl or the dude; it looks quite a bit like plastic. It does do the job, which is the best that can be said for it.

It does have this elaborate ornament mounted overhead, though; it’s got horns, bat wings, and a spoon-shaped indentation in its forehead, like a Cardassian from Star Trek.

It’s also got this liquid spilling down and congealing on the floor. I suppose it’s intended to be blood, though it looks nothing like blood, if you ask me. It’s more useful in giving some context to the skeleton dude, I think, since he’d otherwise look like he’s phasing through the wall like Kitty Pryde.

I’m definitely not ashamed to say that I think this figure turned out great and that I like it a lot. I expect that I’m going to be alone in that assessment, as this figure is esoteric in theme, to say the least, and its realistic styling may not appeal to anime fans, whose sensibilities are sometimes wholly circumscribed by that genre. I’m still surprised that this figure got the mass-market treatment, but I’m very glad that it did, and hopefully we’ll see more figures with this sort of bondage theme in the future (Q-six obviously has one of Taki Minashaki’s character Rie Kawai in the works, which looks very nice).

Arc Systems Works has been pushing the BlazBlue franchise hard in recent times. Notably, the fifth and most recent console iteration of the game – BlazBlue Chrono Phantasma Extend – is due for release in the North American market in just a few days. In addition, its ofttimes incomprehensible plot has been extended by a dizzying array of multimedia: spinoff games – including, rather incongruously for a fighting game series, some visual novels – manga, light novels, and a poorly-received anime series. Concomitant with this expansion is the sort of product push that the better-known Guilty Gear series never received, comprising a variety of wall scrolls, stickers, hugging pillowcase covers, and of course, figures such as this one. This isn’t even the first Mu-12 figure to hit the market – that distinction goes to FREEing’s version from well over a year back – but being that the last time Alter made a figure of an Arc System Works character turned out quite well, the redundancy is not at all unwelcome.

We talked about Mu-12’s background in the review of her earlier figure, so we’ll just repeat the most salient points: Mu-12 is the true form of Noel Vermillion, the putative leading lady of the BlazBlue series. She is initially introduced as a fearsome antagonist but, in the usual form of these sorts of things, comes to her senses once given a thrashing and reverts to being a good guy.

This figure is manufactured by Alter and represents something of a return to form for them. For one, it’s a very large figure; just eyeballing the figure’s dimensions, Mu-12 is of roughly similar size to Alter’s lineup of Nanoha figures, which are also comparable size to many 1/6 scale figures produced by other companies. It’s certainly far larger than FREEing’s figure, which has dashed my plan to display them together – not that it would have worked out well, as their bases and blade accessories voraciously consume shelf space. The figure itself is about 24 centimeters in height at the top of her head, and its overall height is around 33 centimeters, including the base and the two antenna-like parts of her headgear.

The elaborate base constitutes a major element of this figure’s size. No plain black disc here; Mu-12 stands astride a massive pedestal of sorts, with her legs surrounded by some sort of translucent aqua blue plastic which I suppose is meant to represent fire or energy vortices or something. The pegs in which her feet – or legs, technically, as her mechanical apparatus entirely covers her feet – slot into are made of metal, which will hopefully ward off any leaning, sagging, or warping due to the substantial weight of the figure. At the least it should prevent any peg snapping, which occasionally becomes a problem as figures age. Despite its complexity, the base is quite obviously made of plastic, which detracts a bit from its impact. Eight blades can be arrayed around Mu-12; these formed the wings of the FREEing figure and while I think they are quite a bit more striking as wings than as blades thrust into the ground, they would just impede the view of the figure due to her pose. Indeed, the blades complicate taking pictures of this figure as well as taking up a great deal of space, and I plan to put them back into the box as I don’t have the available shelf space to accommodate them. The base also has some light-up effects but I don’t have the LR44 batteries needed to power the display and no batteries were included, so I do not know what they look like and how convincing they are. The power switch for the lights is on the bottom of the base, which is the very worst place that it could be. It would have been nice if they had incorporated the switch into some unobtrusive element on the upper side of the base.

That said, the figure is spectacular enough as it is. Mu-12 has a very distinctive design, with her bulky shoulderpads, visor, and leg armor contrasting markedly with the skimpiness of the rest of her costume. One drawback of her oversized headgear is that it is quite difficult to see her eyes, though that does emphasize the mechanical aspects of her design as well as accentuating her emotionless nature.

Mu-12’s outfit covers up her sides but leaves much of her front and rear uncovered. In particular, Mu-12 wears a thong that completely exposes her backside. This will obviously be one of the main draws of this figure.

In the great tradition established by figures like Matabei and Metatron, Mu-12’s pose is calculated to give the viewer the best possible view of her ass. Alter doesn’t always go for the sexy – some might term it slutty – look for their figures but when they do, they go all-in.

Mu-12’s bottom is a strapless C-string, soemtimes labeled a crotch plate, which is pretty much what it is. One wonders how it stays on.

Her abbreviated attire highlights another interesting element of Mu-12’s design: the prominence of her pelvic bones. This isn’t something that is at all common; in fact, I can’t think of any other figure in which these bones were so conspicuous. Nonetheless, they do look attractive, perhaps because they attract attention to just how much skin she is showing. I suppose that in a genre in which a character wearing a thin blue ribbon has become the subject of an astonishing degree of infatuation, this sort of thing doesn’t seem too unusual; anime culture has always had its quirky fetishes.

Speaking of which, Mu-12’s breasts are also highly noticeable, with her underboob – also a major characteristic of Dizzy, I-No, Ramlethal Valentine, and a bunch of other Arc System Works characters – being especially apparent. Mu-12’s breasts are quite small and they look a little odd if you study them for a while.

The outer covering of Mu-12’s leg armor suffers a bit from its flat paint job, though to be fair that’s more or less how they look in the game

The part which contacts her legs has a more attractive dark satin finish, which looks a good deal better.

Mu-12’s hair is a large, solid and featureless mass; a bit disconcerting at first but this is also very much how her hair appears in the game so any resemblance to a melting mass of cheese can be excused.

Going back to this subject, the sculpting work done on her abdomen and above her groin really is impressive. There are a ton of swimsuit figures that show just as much skin as Mu-12 but most of them don’t have nearly the same level of detail in terms of musculature and bone structure. The sculptor really did a fantastic job with her anatomy.

And I would say that this is a really fantastic figure in almost all respects. It’s a figure that combines technical excellence, overt sexiness, and the kind of ambition of presentation that only Alter regularly pulls off. It’s a necessary and all-too-infrequent reminder that although Alter’s catalog sometimes seems wan in comparison to their heyday, they are still second to none in terms of quality.

This American Fourth of July holiday occurred this past weekend, which means that summer is in high swing, and that means that this is as good a time as any to begin Blonde Bikini Girl Week (though given the pace of updates here, it’s more likely to turn into a fortnight, or a month). We will obviously be looking at various figures of blonde female characters in swimwear, and we’ll start with Celia Cumani Aintree, one of the heroines of the eroge-turned-TV-anime Walkure Romanze.

I enjoyed Walkure Romanze’s anime adaptation much more than I thought I would have, particularly since I didn’t much care for the Princess Lover! anime, aside from the two OVA episodes, which were pretty solid. Walkure Romanze was generally entertaining, and more importantly, it lacked two of the things I really dislike in these sorts of shows: an unlikeable male lead and one or more overtly hostile female characters. The male protagonist, Takahiro Mizuno, is mostly a non-entity – a rather common disposition for a male character in a harem show, but he is at least an all-around decent guy, and if he’s not particularly memorable, he also isn’t at all offensive. The show’s central theme – jousting on horseback – is a little unusual, but the show presents it in a way that is basically similar to the common trope of characters finding inner strength through competition. Moreover, the anime isn’t above occasionally poking fun at this unusual sport.

Oddly, Walkure Romanze’s anime doesn’t actually feature much in the way of romance; rather, the female characters are mostly interested in recruiting Takahiro as a begleiter, which is something like a coach and cornerman. It makes for an interesting dynamic in which the main objective of the female characters is improving their jousting skills to win their school’s summer tournament rather than seeking love, and I think this makes them more appealing than they’d otherwise be.

A common activity amongst viewers of harem shows is picking the best girl, and Walkure Romanze has a number of candidates. The lead girl, Mio Kisaki, fills both the childhood friend and hard-working neophyte roles; the latter is somewhat controversial, since she gets the benefit of plot armor despite not having put in the training time that all the other characters have. I don’t have much of a problem with that but I liked her better with longer hair. Noel Ascot is the confident, outgoing, big sister type while Lisa Eostre is the predictably quiet and antisocial character. Akane Ryuuzouji is the friendly and formal Japanese girl who deeply idolizes Celia; the nature of her infatuation isn’t specifically clarified but she does get to put her head between Celia’s breasts and Celia’s head between her thighs. I think she was actually just a side character in the original eroge, with no romance options, but she’s gotten her own scenes in subsequent fan discs, and it’s nice to see that since I kinda think she’s my favorite character; I like how she is both gentle and refined and yet becomes completely unhinged whenever Celia’s around.

But then again, it’s really hard to pick against Celia for the title of best girl. She’s the best jouster and is highly intelligent, a natural leader, and the very embodiment of chivalry. She is composed, gracious, with an easygoing temperament and arguably the best body of any of the characters. It’s not at all a surprise that she was the first Walkure Romanze girl to get a PVC figure.

This is actually the second PVC figure of Celia; Kaitendoh’s beat this one to the market by a couple of months, I think. Celia’s popularity is reflected in the fact that she’s getting more figures in the future, while Lisa and Noel seem to have been frozen out for some reason or another. Hopefully Daiki Kougyou or Alphamax will get to them at some point. Anyway, this figure is manufactured by Daiki Kougyou in 1/6 scale, and it’s a very hefty 1/6 scale; Celia is about 28.5 centimeters in height, which is more or less typical, but her body proportions give this figure a substantial feel.

And that seems to be as good a place as any to start. I was initially disappointed when I saw this figure, as I thought Celia looked rather fat, quite unlike the source artwork or any other depiction of her. The figure is sculpted by Toshirou of Cobra Kai, and idiosyncrasies are part and parcel of what you get with his work; he’s also responsible for sculpting gangsta lean Saber and this peculiar Fate T. Harlaown figure, which also has a rather plump look. Actually, what bothered me wasn’t so much her thick physique but the small size of her head relative to her body; it’s a style that some notable artists use, such as Sei Shoujo, Mogudan, and Takuya Inoue, but it’s not a style that I like.

I did eventually buy this figure – at Mandarake, for a slight markup over the preorder price – and while my concerns aren’t entirely allayed, I do think I can mostly overlook them, particularly when Celia’s clothes are removed. Speaking of which, I had heard that removing and replacing her swimsuit was a pain, and I steeled myself for a frustrating experience since I really dislike figures with difficult castoff systems, but it wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. Removing Celia’s head is the hardest part and requires a fair bit of force, and it doesn’t help that her neck has a ball joint which lets her head wiggle and wobble around while you try to pull it off. After that, her bikini top unclasps near the bottom of her right cup and her bikini comes off with clasps hidden under the ribbons over her hips, which are removable. No instruction sheet is included, which is typical, but at least the process was fairly straightforward.

I like Celia best with her swimsuit removed, not just for the obvious reason but because it reduces her bulky look by a little bit. This is a very, very stylized look for her, and anything that gives her a leaner profile is a plus in my view.

And while she does look very thick, the sculpting quality is quite good, particularly around the abdomen. Her breasts are very large, which also isn’t completely consistent with her anime or eroge appearance, but it’s pretty much a complementary thing to this sort of body design.

Heavy liberties have also been taken with her pubic region. Komori Kei, the artist of Walkure Romanze, is one of very few ero artists to draw pubic hair on his characters. This version of Celia obviously lacks any hair in this region. There’s not a ton of detail here either, but there’s enough there that you probably wouldn’t be showing this figure off to casual company.

Conversely, the detail present in her armor is very nice. There’s a lot of engraving and faux-filigree work there which looks great next to her naked skin.

Just seeing her legs alone, she doesn’t look quite so thick.

Her face doesn’t feature Toshirou’s typical heavy eyelids, which is a little strange as that is one of the hallmarks of his style. She has a pretty, friendly face, without too much in the way of definite emotion, and that seems congruent with what her actual personality is like.

Her hair is also quite elaborate, with her tresses splayed out and corkscrewing all over the place.

There’s really only one way to display her, and that’s with her facing forward. The hair covering her right eye means turning her to her left obscures her face. Also, turning her to either side shows one of the oddities of her pose, which is that her back is really, really arched. It looks almost painful if you look at it for a while, though there’s also something quite sexy about the way it tilts her breasts up and pushes her buttocks out. Incidentally, this is also one of the common comments made about gangsta lean Saber, that her posture looks very strange (hence my nickname for her).

Not that you can really tell under her mass of hair, but she’s got a really huge ass – another one of the strange stylistic quirks of this figure. She also has a somewhat yellowish skin tone, reminiscent of Daiki Kougyou’s older figure of Leina from Queen’s Blade.

But quirks aside, I like this figure quite a bit. Not as much as I otherwise would – if this figure had more typical proportions, it’d probably be amongst my favorites, but I do like it more than I initially did. Celia has a very sexy pose, her armor looks great, and her nude body looks pretty good too, at least from the front, where those quirks are a little less obvious. Toshirou is doing Daiki Kougyou’s figure of Bertille, and while I think I will buy that figure, I kinda hope that if they make figures of the rest of the girls, they spread the work out amongst other sculptors, just to get some variety in the designs.

We’ll be continuing Blonde Bikini Girl Month by looking at Alisa Ilinichina Amiella, one of the main characters from Bandai Namco’s God Eater series. I had hoped to get this post out earlier but the timing still works out as she just appeared as the focal point of the anime adaptation’s most recent episode. We’ve looked at figures of her wearing her original outfit from the first game and her updated costume from the second; now we’ll look at her wearing something rather more revealing.

Curious about the series and lacking the desire to play games on handhelds, I skimmed a bit through the anime to see what it was like. I can’t say I was impressed; I skipped around the second episode and all I saw were talking heads and a peculiar cel-shaded animation style that made it look like the characters had been dunked in baby oil. I’ve also heard that the anime’s plot isn’t particularly engaging, though I guess that doesn’t surprise me; I wouldn’t expect a PSP action game to have much in the way of a compelling story.

To recap Alisa’s history, she is one of the battlers that fights alongside the protagonist. She is Russian and like several Russians in anime – including Muv Luv’s Cryska Barchenowa, Seikon no Qwaser’s Sasha, and Black Lagoon’s Balalaika – she is depicted as enigmatic, quiet, aloof, and possessing a history of psychological trauma which motivates a consequent affinity for violence. Her agreeable appearance has led her to become the face of the franchise.

This figure is manufactured by Alphamax. She’s sculpted in 1/8 scale and stands a bit under 20 centimeters in height. A small instruction sheet is provided to show how to remove her vest.

A large part of the appeal of this figure is, of course, generated by her very brief swimsuit. Her tiny bikini shows off her body very well, and as expected, her trademark underboob is readily visible. Her pose, with her back arched and buttocks thrust outward, accentuate the allure of her look.

That said, this would still be a fairly typical anime bikini girl figure without a few more distinctive elements from her God Eater appearance. First, she can be displayed while wearing her vest. It adds a bit of flair to her look with the way it billows out, as if caught in a breeze. It also provides the practical benefit of making her neck look a little shorter and more natural.

She can also be shown wearing her hat, which has become a kind of beret in God Eater 2. It’s held onto her head by a magnet, which is a nice touch.

And of course, there is her enormous sword, which she is leaning up against. It looks pretty cool but being that this is my third Alisa figure, it’s lost some of its uniqueness.

I’m not so sure that her appearance here is faithful to her canonical look in the games, if there is such a thing. Nonetheless, she is still quite pretty, and true to form, her expression is inscrutable, conveying neither happiness nor anger nor discomfort.

The sculpt is not highly detailed, but there are some nice touches, such as the way the waistband of her bikini digs into her skin, giving her skin the impression of softness.

I think the aspect I like best about this figure, aside from the skimpiness of her swimwear, is her nonchalant pose. Her stance is obviously erotic in nature, but she doesn’t seem too anxious about her situation. Her nonplussed expression and crossed arms give her a pleasant, relaxed look.

This is a pretty good figure – not an amazing figure, but as swimsuit figures go, this one is solid. I’m not so sure that it’s a great representation of Alisa – her expression is a little less sharp and more placid than one might expect – but nonetheless, I do like the way she’s depicted here. The level of sex appeal is high, even for a swimsuit figure, and the optional hat and vest give her a little bit of distinctiveness. Of the figures of Alisa I have, this is certainly my favorite of the three.

We’re not yet done with Blonde Bikini Girl Week – or Month, or Season – but I received this figure the other week; quite unexpectedly, as I usually group all of my figures into one shipment for the end of each month but I suppose I forgot to do so in this case, and since Matsuri arrived early, I thought I’d go ahead and take some pictures of her. She’s neither blonde nor wearing a bikini, but she definitely is not without her own unique charms.

This figure is based off of an illustration drawn by Kurehito Misaki, a well-known anime artist, particularly amongst those who enjoy viewing certain pornographic anime periodicals, for which he often does cover art. He’s also done mainstream work, such as designing Alicia, the nominal lead girl of Queen’s Blade Grimoire, as well as drawing the main characters of the light novel Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata, which recently received a mediocre anime adaptation. Figure collectors might remember the MegaHouse figure of Alicia – which I never even removed from its box, now that I think about it – as well as Native’s figure of a catgirl lapping up milk or somesuch.

Rather than being by Native, this figure is by Alphamax via their SkyTube brand. It’s reminiscent of a Native figure, though; for one, Matsuri is relatively large, being sculpted in 1/6 scale and measuring about 16 centimeters in height. Furthermore, like many Native figures, she comes with a variety of display options, including two faces, removable clothing, and one particularly unique component that we will look at shortly. The figure also comes with a couple of postcards showing the artwork that this figure is based off of; comically, they actually do have markings for a postage stamp and an address, so I suppose they could actually be used for correspondence, assuming the post office doesn’t instead hand the card off to the police.

Kurehito Misaki is well-known for his ero work, but his art always seems to have a touch of refinement, and that aspect is mirrored in this figure; Matsuri’s clothing is quite elegant, comprising a striking black and gold qipao and fishnet stockings. I’m not much of a fan of her hairstyle – the Chun Li and Princess Leia-style buns don’t do much for me – but they do emphasize the Chinese motif and they give this figure an impression of formality.

That impression is, of course, completely at odds with her entirely indelicate pose, in which she’s squatting down, one hand drawing attention to her bare buttocks while she furtively glances back. The conflict between dignity and lewdness is itself quite attractive, but it also means that there’s a limited range of good viewing angles. Fortunately, that angle does accomplish the trifecta of allowing the viewer to simultaneously examine her face, breasts, and ass all at once.

Matsuri comes with a bevy of swappable parts, and they both fit reasonably well and are easy to detach and replace, which is a somewhat uncommon thing. An instruction sheet is also provided to show how she is to be disassembled and put back together. Her face is removed in a fairly typical manner; her bangs come off, and then her face can be removed as well. Presumably, this face is the standard one, though it’s not actually the one that was originally fitted to the figure in the box. It shows her exhibiting a sense of embarrassment and discomfort, which is quite understandable.

As it turns out, her panties are a removable part that is simply held in place by friction when her body halves are joined together. When you remove them, you get to see this. Believe it or not, this is her “standard” lower body.

With her panties removed, her dress hides enough to make this figure just slightly less pornographic, though maybe I’m just jaded in that respect. Hilariously, her base has a mirrored top surface so that her crotch and anus will always be viewable if her panties are taken off.

Looking upwards, she has a very impressive rack. It’s entirely unrealistic in how her breasts appear to be self-supporting, but they are still very nice to look at.

This is her alternate face, which is the one that my figure was actually packaged with. Her look is considerably more anguished, as if she were in immediate distress. What could prompt this sort of look?

This is a good time to mention that she two sets of lower body parts; each part contains her upper thighs and lower torso. We’ve looked at one, and the other one looks like … well, it looks like this.

I mean, this is amongst the raunchiest, most pornographic things I’ve ever seen on an anime figure – and I’ve seen a lot of anime figures. Why is her vagina quite so distended? So that this can be placed within it:

Matsuri comes with this helpful accessory, which requires no further explanation.

Taking a closer look, one has to admire the loving detail in which this part was sculpted. For anyone who has a thing for birth canals – and I have to imagine that there are people who do dig this sort of thing – Matsuri is definitely the figure for you.

It takes a little bit of work to get her sex toy properly emplaced but once it is, this figure’s eroticism quotient goes from merely suggestive to blatantly sexual; there aren’t too many figures like this, much less ones you can buy from any hobby shop. The forthrightness of this figure’s pornographic nature is as refreshing as it is stunning; one really doesn’t expect such a nice-looking, elegantly-dressed girl like this to be on the receiving end of a dildo as large as her forearm.

But that’s not all! Her chest part is also detachable; she’s got two bust options, one covered by her dress and one not. Again, the process is quite simple and the effect is transparent, with little indication that this part can in fact be removed.

Suffice to say that this is an exceptional figure in so many ways. Obviously it’s highly sexualized and Matsuri is a beautiful character, but the quality of workmanship is also very high; there’s nothing that I can think to criticize (well, aside from some paint transfer incurred while I was swapping parts, but I doubt many people will be disassembling her as much as I was while taking these pictures). This is a fantastic figure, one that ranks amongst the best ero figures out there.

Right, it’s time to get back to work. The review queue is impressive: scads and scads of Tony figures, a couple of Asukas (but – strangely enough – no Reis), and a bunch of Seven Deadly Sins figures that I never seem to know how I want to photograph. We’ll start off looking at this girl, one Motoko Kusanagi of Public Security Section 9, who is dressed to kill in her own unique way. One can surmise that Scarlett Johansson won’t be wearing anything like what Major Kusanagi is wearing here.

Motoko is the heroine of Masamune Shirow’s magnum opus Ghost in the Shell. The 1995 motion picture adaptation brought the series into the mainstream, or at least as much of the mainstream as anime had penetrated at the time, and its reputation has grown over time. A well-received two-season television anime titled Stand Alone Complex aired in the mid-2000s, and an American film adaptation is in the works, starring the aforementioned actress (presumably as the Major, but perhaps not; little seems to have been decided as far as the production goes).

This figure is manufactured by Union Creative, a company that I’m not particularly familiar with. They produced a figure of the horror-themed Miku Hatsune derivative Calne Ca a while back that I was somewhat interested in, but it was fairly expensive and I didn’t feel too compelled to buy it.

The major stands about 24 centimeters in height. No scale size is given for Motoko, but her somewhat-realistic body proportions make her look about 1/7 scale in appearance. She’s ready for display right out of the box; no assembly or disassembly is needed aside from placing on her wedge-shaped base.

This figure is based on Motoko’s appearance in the first season of Stand Alone Complex. Although Ghost in the Shell is always closely identified with Shirow, the quirks of his character design sensibilities weren’t all that obvious in the anime, and they’re even less evident here. This figure adapatation of Motoko presents a fairly realistic look, with normal-sized eyes rather than the large, vaguely insect-like look that Shirow favors. There’s not a lot of emotion to be read in Motoko’s face; she has a very blank expression that is a bit different compared to other figures of her, which typically portray her as stern and poised.

On the other hand, the fashionable pose that she’s striking isn’t entirely something one would imagine Motoko doing in the series, either. One of the hallmarks of Shirow’s style are elongated female bodies and Motoko does have very long legs and a tall torso, but she has a curvy, adult build rather than the slender, spindly limbs typically featured in the manga-ka’s work.

Motoko’s costume consists of thick thigh-high socks, a high-cut leotard, and a leather jacket, shrugged down to reveal a bare shoulder. It’s a great outfit that looks completely undignified but comes together well anyway.

Her leotard has a thong back which completely reveals her backside; it’s still undignified and it still looks great. Motoko wasn’t really much of a sex symbol in the original anime film adaptation but her Stand Alone Complex design reflects a common theme in cyberpunk – sexy, highly-skilled female combatants clad in tight, shiny clothes. Molly in William Gibson’s seminal novel Neuromancer is one of the progenitors of this concept and The Matrix’s Trinity is perhaps the best-known, and it shows up in numerous other sci-fi anime as well, including Ghost in the Shell contemporaries like Gunnm, Bubblegum Crisis, and Armitage III.

In terms of technical quality, Motoko looks pretty decent from a typical viewing distance but not nearly as good when inspected up close. Small pitting is evident, particularly in her hair and in the top bands of her thigh-highs. The paint job is serviceable, being neither conspicuously bad nor impressively detailed.

I’d say this is a decent figure that is made more attractive due to the fact that Motoko hasn’t gotten many figures, despite having existed for over twenty years as the central character of one of the most famous and influential manga and anime series ever created. The technical problems are definitely present, but are perhaps forgiveable, and her overall look is appealing, as long as one doesn’t mind her placid facial expression. Overall, I’m reasonably happy with this figure, particularly considering that this is amongst my favorite version of all of Motoko’s incarnations.

After looking at Motoko last time, today we’ll be looking at Angela Balzac, another highly-skilled, scantily-clad female operative from a science fiction series. This character comes from a much more contemporary series, though it has something of an old-school feel about it.

Rakuen Tsuiho – Expelled From Paradise in English – is an original, feature-length anime film. It takes place in the far future, when humanity has separated into two groups: a digitized society that dwells in virtual bliss in the computers of DEVA, and their flesh-and-blood counterparts living on the sun-scorched, wind-blown surface of the Earth, eking out a meager existence amidst the wreckage of civilization. Following a number of data breaches in DEVA’s systems, Angela Balzac, a highly-trained but somewhat inexperienced agent, arrives on the Earth to search for the mysterious and elusive hacker. Once she arrives, she finds that the sensuousness of flesh and emotion offers a compelling alternative to the antiseptic, anodyne sterility of posthumanity.

Expelled From Paradise is by no means original and is sorely lacking in storytelling ambition, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The characters were appealing, with Angela’s design being particularly attractive, which of course is a major reason we’re looking at this figure. On the downside, the plot is entirely derivative, with the computerized Eloi being predictably portrayed versus the human Morlocks of the Earth, and the running time seems too short for the show. The animation style is unusual, with the characters being computer-rendered in the same manner as mecha in anime, and this can make them appear robotic at a quick glance. Nonetheless, you get used to it quickly, and although the story is fairly straightforward, it reminds me a lot of some of the shows I liked in my younger days, including Robotech (particularly the third generation, or Mospeada) and a long-forgotten title called Iria: Zeiram the Animation.

This figure is manufactured by Alphamax in 1/8 scale, standing about 20.5 centimeters in height. She requires minor assembly, in that her twintails are separate pieces that have to be pushed into her head. It’s mostly a straightforward process but a small instruction sheet is provided to show how to do that. One odd thing I noticed is that both hair parts seem to use the same size and shape of peg, so it could be possible to fit her right twintail into the left side of her head, and vice versa; it’s a good idea to make note of which twintail is supposed to go into which socket.

Angela Balzac is designed by Saitom, the alias of Masatsugu Saitou. He’s come into prominence of late in the figure world for his work on Angela, Miku Hatsune (for her 2013 Good Smile Company Racing version), and for a couple of porno figures by SkyTube and Native. He also designed the Mage from Bikini Warriors, though his work there is a little different from his usual style, with the mage having a noticeable upward slope to her eye shape (tareme, to those in the hobby).

Angela wears an extraordinarily tight, high-cut thong leotard, which is reminiscent of the costumes worn by anime heroines from the 1980s and 90s. She’s obviously designed to be attractive and she fills it out well.

She is presented as a hot-tempered girl in the anime but she has a fairly staid expression here. She has a distinctive haircut, with a bowl-shaped style accented with two giant twintails. Her hair ribbons are big green Xs, which combined with her outfit colors almost give her kind of an Xbox 360 mascot look; it wouldn’t be hard to imagine her being Microsoft’s representative in a Neptune game.

Her pose looks good, though it does appear a little odd if you study her and wonder what exactly she’s supposed to be doing. The answer, of course, is that she’s showing off her curves and the length of her body. Although Angela’s sex appeal wasn’t a major factor in the anime (a peculiar thing, given the prominent place fanservice is given in so many contemporary anime), it’s a big part of this figure, with Angela arching her back and pushing her ass out.

And her backside certainly passes inspection. It’s a little unfortunate that one of her twintails obscures part of the view.

Japanese character designers often don’t emphasize the buttocks as much as the breasts, and this tends to carry over in figure design, too. However, it looks like the sculptor took special care to make Angela’s ass appear even larger than it should, which is a really great thing.

Refocusing on things that are less erotic, here’s what she’s holding in her hand; it’s some type of high-tech monocular.

On the technical side of things, Angela looks very nice. Her leotard has a pearlescent sheen to it, which gives it a high-tech look and strongly draws the eye. Ranking figure manufacturers relative to each other is a common activity amongst figure collectors and though I don’t really like to partake in that activity, I think Angela stands quite well amongst figures from the upper tier of makers.

I like this figure a great deal. Part of that is from Angela’s design, which is already very appealing, and part of that is from Alphamax’s presentation, which emphasizes her best points. This is a great figure that further establishes Alphamax as being a highly capable figure maker.

One of the things that I am thankful for is that there is such a huge assortment of high-quality ero figures. Not all that long ago, it was scandalous for a figure company to even reveal a sculpted nipple and now we have, well, this sort of thing. There are a bunch of similarly explicit figures in the current review queue but we’ll start with Rie Kawai, who is all dressed up in a superb outfit.

Rie Kawai is the lead girl of Jellyfish’s 2003 eroge Lovers. The developer is remarkable for shipping just three products despite being in existence for almost two decades: Green, Lovers (about a boy and a girl who are lovers), and Sisters (about knocking up one’s sisters), with the upcoming title I Virgin (about a character who presumably is a virgin) still in development. Jellyfish is also particularly noted for animating the sex scenes in their games rather than simply scrolling descriptive text over static images while the voice actress squeals and squawks. And it’s real animation, not the cheesy After Effects distortion that some low-budget titles incorporate; it’s a little bit surprising that none of their games has ever gotten an ero anime adaptation, at least so far as I can recall.

However, Lovers has gotten a ton of doujinshi and artwork material from Taki Minashika, the artist of Lovers and Sisters. This isn’t even the first time we’ve looked at Rie here; I put up a post about a Rie pillowcase many years back. Funny how it doesn’t feel that long ago.

This figure is manufactured by Q-six. It’s the first Q-six product I’ve ever owned and as such, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. The first impression is pretty good; the figure has a solid, substantial feel. Maybe even too much so; she’s quite top-heavy as one can see and hopefully this won’t cause any leaning issues in the future. This is also a very large figure; Rie is sculpted in 1/5 scale and stands about 29 centimeters in height, which is quite impressive given that she has a notably stubby body build. She comes with several accessories, and we’ll talk about them in turn in a bit.

As far as I know, Lovers is more of a romantic sort of eroge, even though some of the themes it touches on are a little more hardcore or kinky than the average Japanese high school porno game. Rie is often depicted in official artwork as enjoying sex. Here, though, she looks a little nonplussed, as if she is waiting for something, or as if she doesn’t quite know how to react to her situation. Interestingly enough, the other high-profile figure of a girl in bondage gear – Native’s Nana Chigusa – had a similar sort of expression.

One of the most appealing aspects – at least for me – of this figure is Rie’s outfit. She’s wearing a black leather bondage harness with cuffs around her thighs, wrists, and ankles. She also has a thick collar with a metal leash. It’s a great-looking outfit, a style that I wish more anime figure manufacturers would incorporate into their products.

It’s also a very lewd outfit, though it’s also not quite complete, as the straps that frame her crotch aren’t actually painted all the way between her legs. It’s not really a big deal but it looks a little peculiar if you examine this figure closely.

Rie’s design shows off a number of idiosyncrasies, including a very large head, relatively short and thick limbs, and a cylindrical body form with a broad waist.

She also has a rather compact backside. Her outfit does reveal her ass in an inviting manner but I think this is more of a boob lovers’ figure. Note also that although her arms are positioned behind her back, they aren’t actually restrained by anything, though I suppose an enterprising collector could improvise something to remedy that.

Rie comes with an instruction sheet (printed on sturdy, glossy paper) that illustrates how to disassemble her. It’s fairly straightforward, with her head and arms detaching. I found that on my figure, the head comes off easily but the arm pegs make for a very tight fit. Removing her arms allows her to be dressed in a white shirt that doesn’t quite cover her up. I recall her wearing a dress shirt in a number of her official illustrations but I don’t particularly care for it here.

She can also be depicted with an alternate arm pose. Some of the promotional photographs show her holding her leash in her white hand and a vibrator in her left hand. She could also be posed with one arm extended and the other arm held behind her back; I didn’t think to do so but I guess if one were going to do that, one could put a pointer in her outstretched hand, as if she were giving a lecture.

Here’s that vibrator. This is going to come in handy for future photo reviews.

I didn’t show a couple of her other accessories. She comes with a post that attaches to her base that can be used to hold her leash; I don’t really have a problem with it dangling off of her neck. She also comes with a sheet of pubic hair decals; Taki Minashika is, along with Satoshi Urushihara and Onigirikun, one of the few ero artists to prefer drawing pubic hair on their female characters. I like the shaven look more so I didn’t bother applying them; I’m not actually sure how they are affixed, anyway.

I like this figure quite a bit. Admittedly a large part of my bias is due to my fondness for her outfit and the whole bondage theme, but even without that I’ve always liked Minashika’s work (hence the reason I bought the pillowcase a few years back). It’s too bad that even though there is an abundane of ero figures on the market, there really aren’t that many in bondage gear (or wrapped in tentacles …). This is a fine example of one, though, and hopefully more will follow.

There have been a lot of Tony Taka figures release this year: Shining series Tony Taka figures, cute Tony Taka figures, but in my opinion, the best Tony Taka figures are the pornographic Tony Taka figures. That’s exactly what we’ve got here; this is DRAGON Toys’s Maya Kamiwazumi, the cold, purple-haired heroine of Fault!! Strangely, none of the figure manufacturers seem all that enthusiastic about making a figure of Mio Sugiyama, the series’ spirited, spunky little sister character. Even hobby companies can surprise us from time to time.

Maya is the newest girl introduced in Fault!!, though that’s a relative term as the series is a couple of years old now and, strangely, no follow-up episode to the single-volume Fault!! Service Aratanaru Rival anime series seems to be forthcoming. The anime ended on a tense note, depicting a physical altercation between Maya and blonde girl Reiko Date Wingfield, and it’s a little disappointing that we’re not going to see them patch up their relationship with the ménage à trois scenes shown in the eroge’s CG sequences.

This figure is manufactured by DRAGON Toy in 1/6 scale. Maya is about 18.5 centimeters in height despite being on her knees, making her a fairly large figure. Aside from an alternate apron piece, she comes with no additional accessories, not even a base.

While the original cast of Fault!! is composed of friendly girls eager to receive the semen of main character Shuuichi Sugiyama, Maya is an aloof, assertive alpha girl. That’s not particularly obvious from the look of this figure, though; Maya has an anxious expression that conveys little of the confidence and self-control that she displays in the anime. Her nervousness is sort of a typical state for a hentai anime heroine, though, and it works pretty well with the rest of Maya’s design.

One odd thing is that her eyes have a pinkish hue, at least on my particular figure, as if paint bled over from her skin tone during the manufacturing process or something. I’m not sure if my figure is an exception, though I’d imagine not. It’s a little off-putting, but it also makes it look like she was crying, which might be an appealing bit of innuendo, depending on one’s perspective.

Her skin also has a dusting of pink color where shading would be expected. It’s fairly subdued, though, and the overall effect gives her skin a low-contrast, pastel tone.

Speaking of receiving semen, mentioning it might’ve been a silly joke but as a matter of fact, Maya actually has done just that, as can be discerned from a quick examination of her crotch, where leaking fluid is pooling on her panties. This exceptional detail is similar to DRAGON Toys’s earlier Kozue Sakakibara figure, and if it’s going to be a recurring feature of their Tony Taka figures, I certainly approve. Her genitalia also looks a bit puffy, and one may derive whatever conclusions one wishes from that.

No instruction sheet is provided to guide the owner in disassembling this figure, but the procedure is reasonably easy; Maya separates high at her waist and it’s not too difficult to figure out how to get her apron on. The bowtie behind her back doesn’t seem to be secured in place, though; it’s just held there when you reassmble her upper and lower halves together around it.

A few years back, the explicit aspects of this figure would be shocking, but now – as strange as it may sound – this figure is fairly unremarkable; we’ve seen Tony Taka figures, we’ve seen figures of Maya, and we’ve seen figures with simulated ejaculate before, and there’s not a whole lot new here. That’s not to say I don’t like this figure, though; I do like it quite a bit, more than the older Alphamax figure, although for a figure this lewd, her look feels muted. Aside from the pink-toned eyes, though, she’s well-made and she looks good, and there was a good bit of fun to be had while taking the pictures here.

It’s become something of an obnoxious tradition for fighting game makers to release a game, add on a couple more characters and re-release the game, and then add on even a few more and do it all again. Arc System Works enthusiastically embraces this convention, each release extending the already-impenetrable storyline, and I have to admit I have no idea how many BlazBlue games there are now (I know I own three, and I was thinking about buying the most recent for the Xbox One that I bought but don’t really use very often, except I don’t know which one that is and I don’t know if another improved re-release is imminent). I guess even they don’t want to source everything from a single well, though, which is perhaps why they’ve branched out into, of all things, the visual novel genre. Xblaze is a currently two-part series which, somehow, is part of the BlazBlue universe; I don’t know how and I don’t know why, but it is. It’s seemingly incongruous for a visual novel to be tied into a world-renowned fighting game franchise, but then, I suppose it’s no weirder than spinning off into beach volleyball.

I can’t claim to have much knowledge of who Nobody is, aside from that presented on the BlazBlue wiki site, given that I haven’t played either edition of Xblaze. I spent a few moments looking up game videos on Youtube and it was every bit as engaging and enthralling an experience as one might expect watching someone playing a visual novel to be.

This figure is manufactured by FREEing, who have produced a few other BlazBlue figures, including Mu-12, which was reviewed here a while back. Nobody is sculpted in 1/8 scale and stands only a bit over 19 centimeters in height at the top of her head, or around 21.5 centimeters when her heart-shaped ahoge is counted. Like Mu-12, this is not a particularly large figure, even when taking the scale size into consideration.

Her outfit is certainly one of her most noticeable aspects, so it makes sense to start the discussion there. Arc Systems Works has occasionally featured female characters wearing rather risque outfits and Nobody ranks amongst them. Sleeves, socks, shoes, a shawl of sorts, and panties comprise her abbreviated attire.

Her shawl is nothing more than a couple of lengths of translucent material that drape loosely over her breasts. Note that with this figure, the shawl isn’t actually attached to her breasts and can thus be pulled away, revealing that she does have accurately-modeled nipples. I couldn’t really take a picture of that though since I don’t have enough hands to hold the figure, pull the shawl back, and snap a picture (and while it’s a nice feature, it really wasn’t going to worth the trouble of putting the camera on a tripod).

She’s actually wearing two panties, one black and one white, in keeping with the monochromatic motif of her design.

They’re more complex in the back; she’s actually got three layers of clothing back there, two pairs of underpants and garter straps which, oddly enough, aren’t present in front, which calls into question their effectiveness in holding her thighhighs up.

She wears some nice high-heeled pumps. This figure’s base is very small, which is a nice thing for people who are running out of available shelf space.

Another conspicuous element of Nobody’s design is that her eyes are normally closed, which accentuates her enigmatic nature and projects a sense of serenity that is wholly at odds with her revealing clothing.

But if you don’t like that sort of thing, she comes with an alternate face which features wide open eyes. Face swapping is typical; first her bangs come off and then her face follows suit. Personally, I like her better with closed eyes, partially because I like how mysterious she looks, and partly because the way her eyes are painted is rather low-contrast and low-resolution.

Indeed, the manufacturing quality of this figure is rather rough as a whole; her diminutive stature hides many of her faults but close up, one can easily see all kinds of technical deficiencies, most obviously with respect to her clothing. Her garter straps in particular look peculiarly thick for what they are.

Offsetting these problems is the attractiveness of her design. I particularly like her black and white color scheme, especially how her white socks and panties contrast with her dark-colored top and sleeves. Her heart-shaped ahoge is a cute touch, too (though by no means unique; Max Factory’s Nyaruko and their Sumika Kagami Figma both featured the same thing, as I recall).

I’m a little less enthusiastic about the coloring of the tips of her hair, though; the way it transitions to black is jarring and more than a little contrived.

Nonetheless, I like this figure, though I wish it were larger and that a litte more care were taken with her construction. Much of her appeal comes from her unique and appealing design, and I’m happy that FREEing made a figure of her, since I doubt any other company will.

Back in the day, getting a Native figure was a rare and exciting moment. The thrill has been lessened somewhat by the proliferation of excellent sexually explicit figures – particularly those from SkyTube – but nonetheless, Native is still amongst the best at what they do and opening up one of their figures is still a happy thing – and this site, of course, is all about happy things. This particular figure, of the mononymous Momoi, espouses a medical theme, a first for Native, I believe; that’s a bit odd to observe, as nurses are as much a part of the hentai repertoire as tentacles, maids, and catgirls, all of which have had representatives in the Native catalog for years.

This figure is based on an illustration by Saitom, perhaps best known in recent times for doing the character designs of Rakuen Tsuiho: Expelled from Paradise (and whose protagonist we looked at late last year) and of the Mage in the animated series Bikini Warriors. His work was also adapted for one of SkyTube’s somewhat recently-released figures, which depicts an anime girl doing a kimchi squat in the kitchen. I’ve got this figure in my closet and we’ll take a look at it in the future.

As mentioned, this figure is manufactured by Native and is sculpted in 1/7 scale. She came in two editions, a less-expensive version which lacked the medical examination chair, and this version, labelled the standard version, which includes the furniture. She also comes with a nurse cap, a fragile-feeling stethoscope, and a pair of panties.

The level of lewdness is always a good place to start when critiquing a Native figure, and it’s obviously quite high here. Momoi is sculpted in a reclining pose, legs spread with her outfit in a disheveled state. Typically for an anime nurse, a combination of a short dress and lingerie comprises her uniform. Her underwear, however, doesn’t include a bra; nothing is provided to cover up her breasts.

A quick note about her panties; they are provided, they are sculpted well enough to fit tightly enough to look inconspicuous, and so if you do want to avoid the full frontal exposure for her, there’s that option. They are, however, a pain in the ass to fit, and I didn’t want to bother with them; I tend to think that electing for a more modest presentation is somewhat missing the point when it comes to displaying a Native figure.

One welcome aspect of this figure is that the instruction sheet includes an English translation; I think I’ve only ever seen Orchid Seed provide an English-language sheet with one of their figures, and this is the first figure from the Good Smile Company corporate family to do such. It’s a nice touch and I’m happy that they’re continuing their outreach to English-speaking collectors.

Anime-style artwork typically features certain characteristics that renders the style of some artists indistinct from others. Saitom’s work, however, tends to have certain distinguishing marks that makes his style a little more recognizable. The eyes are the principal clue; they feature his characteristic thick and sharply-inclined upper eyelashes and are spaced widely apart.

One expects a realistic portrayal of anatomy from a Native figure and they do not disappoint; her showy pose, well, shows everything.

Her pose, while highly erotic and very pleasing to look at, does present some limitations when taking pictures of her, though; since her posture and the medical chair block much of her body from view, the only really good angle for observation is directly in front of her. This is obviously not a big deal with typical display, but it does make photography a bit more uninteresting than it should be for this sort of figure.

Speaking of the chair, it’s a very interesting prop in its own right.

Rather than being a static set piece, it features a surprising amount of articulation so that Momoi can be made as comfy as possible while sitting for her examination. The back reclines to a full horizontal position, and the foot and leg supports are adjustable as well.

Other accessories include a stethoscope which I didn’t bother with and her nurse cap, which is held in place by a magnet on her head. The thermometer that she is ostentatiously licking is fixed in place.

Momoi is another fine example of Native’s prowess in making ero figures. Her pose and seductive smile perfectly exemplify the erotic nurse archetype perfectly, and her spread legs and large breasts are well in keeping with Native’s reputation for quality and titillation. This figure is certainly a great addition to my collection.

The conventional wisdom would have it that Japanese anime and tentacles go together like politics and corruption. As is often the case, the veracity of this stereotype is overstated; these days, even in adult-oriented media, there aren’t really that many tentacle-centric anime series and games. This is also true regarding figures; despite the name of this site, I don’t think I’ve actually ever reviewed a figure that incorporated tentacles as a central feature of its design, and that makes this post a watershed moment in the seven-year history of this site.

This figure is manufactured by Lechery and was released in summer of last year; it is getting a re-release this month so now seems as appropriate a time as any to review it. It’s a 1/7 scale figure, making it a little smaller in listed scale size compared to many of their products, but it’s still a substantial figure, measuring about 20 centimeters in height and 22 centimeters in width.

Kagura is constructed from some sort of resin material rather than PVC. It’s a dense, inelastic material that gives this figure a considerable sense of heft. This design choice has a couple of obvious consequences. One is that her skin tone is rather matte and darker in tint than most PVC figures; to an observer, it is perhaps the most conspicuous difference. The second is that because her body does not flex, putting her in her place amid the entwining and penetrating tentacles is an involved affair, particularly since no instruction sheet is provided. Her head and arms are separate pieces, as are the two large tentacles supporting her legs, and I found that the only way to get everything in place was to place her torso atop the tentacle base and then slide her limbs through the tentacle loops, building her up from the outside in, as it were.

That said, while her assembly is relatively complex, the process is not inordinately difficult. Magnets at the end of the detachable parts ensure that each component fits properly and securely. A few of the tentacles have some elasticity, which provides a little bit of give when trying to position her, but the base’s structure is mostly rigid, so it’s both surprising and gratifying that most of the tentacles fit fairly well, with one notable exception.

That exception occurs here, where a small tentacle projects from a larger tendril and – I think – is supposed to be penetrating her anus. Unfortunately, on my figure it doesn’t quite reach far enough, and I’m not sure if I can reposition the figure so that Kagura can be properly sodomized, so for now my figure simply features a gaping orifice rather than double penetration. Admittedly, one could argue that this sort of display has its own sort of appeal.

The tentacles themselves look quite nice; they have the sort of muscular, vein-streaked appearance that one might expect a tentacle monster to have. To accentuate their alien presence, round nodules are spaced across their length, giving them more of a revulsive look.

Kagura herself also has a very nice body. One aspect I quite like are her muscular thighs, which gives her a more sturdy look than many anime girls. Kagura is wearing something of a stylized ninja outfit, with thighhighs, some sort of leotard, and light body armor, though some elements of her outfit are a little odd. The cutout around her crotch and the way it is cropped below her breasts looks a little too clean, as if her outfit were designed that way rather than being torn out to facilitate penetration, and that’s a bit strange to think (although perhaps Kagura is just an unusually kinky girl).

One of the most prominent aspects of this figure is Kagura’s tongue. It’s a little strange-looking as well; one normally associates this facial gesture with the classic eye-rolling ahegao expression, but Kagura appears to be in full command of her faculties. I know her protruding tongue is meant to emphasize the intensity of her circumstances, but I probably would’ve preferred if she had a less distinct, more standard open-mouth look.

But back to the tentacles; the way they wrap around her body is also one of the most apparent facets of this figure. They also obviate the possiblity of displaying this figure sans base, as her right tit has a large groove around its circumference that accommodates a tentacle and her left tit is assiduously being worked on by another tentacle.

This is a figure I like a great deal, principally for what are likely obvious reasons. The technical execution isn’t quite perfect – the skin tone is rather unusual, as it is with many resin figures, and I may need to re-assemble the figure to see if that second tentacle can enter Kagura’s rectum as it should – but the tentacle theme here is very appealing, not too mention unfortunately uncommon. Hopefully the enthusiasm that some figure manufacturers show for producing ero figures advances to incorporate this classic archetype in their future products.

We’ll continue our exploration of hentai figures with this one, the debut product from the company Rocket Boy. Some depictions of vampires, demonesses, and succubi – such as Darkstalkers’s Morrigan and Viper GTS’s Carrera – present them as feminine, full-figured seductresses. This is obviously not one of those renderings.

This figure is of Marie, the lead romantic interest in the manga Shinazu no Himegimi, or Undead Princess. As I recall, it’s a fairly conventional story, in which a little vampire girl comes to the human world to ensorcel humankind, only to find that one person – the protagonist, of course – is immune to her wiles. Hijinks ensue but they eventually reconcile their differences, fall in love with each other, and live a happy life together. It is, on the whole, a more pleasant story than the long-running Xenogears doujinshi that Shinazu no Himegimi’s author is known for, in which a very prepubescent version of Emeralda gets serially chained up and violently raped by various large, unfriendly men.

Incidentally, Mochi, the author and illustrator of the aforementioned works, is female, which is a little unusual, particularly for loli-based works. It is, however, very cool.

Marie stands about 22.5 centimeters in height, being sculpted in 1/6 scale. That’s relatively short for a figure of this scale but Marie’s exaggerated body proportions obviously make her shorter than most characters, and in person the figure is larger than I expected it to be. There is not a large amount of accessories supplied with the figure; you get a small table and a crotch covering which can be used to provide a modicum of modesty. It appears to attach to her body by affixing an adhesive strip (several pre-cut stickers are supplied with the figure) to it and placing it over her genitals. It would seem to be a bit of a cumbersome process but I suppose its real-life analogue would be just as impractical to hold in place without tape. At any rate, I didn’t bother with it and if you’re curious as to what it looks like, you can go take a look at the promo photos on Native’s site.

I don’t have a big thing for lolis or the loli archetype but I don’t really have anything against it either (I am, of course, strictly talking about fictional representations in anime and managa). Marie has an interesting body build; she’s obviously very small-breasted and equipped with a petite physique, but two of the things I notice the most are the prominent protrusion of her pelvic bones and the musculature of her hips and thighs. It reminds me a bit of (of all things) Daiki Kougyou’s gangsta lean Saber, whose original garage kit version was fully castoff-able and had a similarly muscular – some might say lumpy – body. Both figures also share a prominent backwards lean that thrusts the hips and stomach out, which is perhaps why some observers felt that the older Saber figure looked pregnant. No such criticism can be made of Marie, of course.

The massive size of her head is another obvious design feature of this figure. Marie’s head is enormous, matching the size of some of the 1/4 scale figures that I own. I think that her head is actually wider than her waist, which is a little odd, but I suppose it does emphasize her young-looking appearance, which is certainly a major selling point of this figure.

As a vampire-slash-succubus, Marie isn’t wearing very much, just a choker, a thin bandeau, sleeves, the optional crotch plate, and some very fetching thigh-high boots. Her wardrobe isn’t a major part of her design but it all looks quite nice, the heels on her boots being particularly attractive.

She also has wings, which are curiously colored nearly the same dark gray as her outfit. They do look very plastic-like – which of course is what they are made of – and they’re not particularly detailed. They do not comprise one of the more impressive aspects of this figure.

Marie mounts to her base via a pair of pegs that slot into her right foot. She also has a table on which she is meant to be sitting upon. The table looks nice, but I found that one of Marie’s wingtips tends to get in the way while trying to place her buttocks on the table’s edge.

Moving to the naughty bits, Marie has a nicely-detailed vagina, with a prominent red color that gives it sort of a conspicuous – some might say conspicuously-used – appearance.

She also has a very nice ass, which is a little surprising as the backside tends not to be a highlight in anime character designs, particularly those as youthful as Marie. Her chest cannot be covered up, so there is no option for an ostensibly non-explicit presentation of this figure, but her top can actually be removed. Doing so makes her pose a little awkward though, since she’s meant to appear as if she’s sliding her top upwards, off of her nipples.

Overall, I think this is a pretty good figure and a satisfying first effort from Rocket Boy. The quality isn’t quite as fantastic as a Native figure – the wings being particularly unconvincing – but it’s still pretty solid. The subject material is, well, subjective, of course, and those who like this sort of thing will appreciate this figure more than someone who feels uncomfortable looking at characters this young. I like this figure a lot, and moreover, it’s great to see another figure company getting into the business and making quality ero-figures.

We’ll take a short respite from reviewing hentai figures and instead look at this figure of Black Heart – not the demonic villain from the Marvel Comics universe, but the Sony-themed goddess from the Hyperdimension Neptune video game franchise. Compile Heart and parent company Idea Factory have made a number of anime-themed RPGs, most of which have languished in obscurity, but they hit it big with the Neptune series, which has since spawned numerous games, a mediocre television anime, but surprisingly few figures, meaning that any time we get to look at a figure from this series is a special moment.

Black Heart is the alter ego of Noire, one of the central characters of the Neptune series. She is the personification of the Sony PlayStation console and is unsurprisingly amongst the most popular characters of the series. She has even starred in her own spinoff game, which debuted on the PS Vita and was later ported to PC.

The original Neptune game was generally panned for its frustrating game mechanics but the series has survived that criticism, and I suppose that is also unsurprising as the main draw of the series is not found in its gameplay but in its quirky and deliberately self-conscious sense of humor, its appealing, scantily-clad all-female cast, and a shamelessly unrepentant commitment to providing a prodigious portion of fanservice to its players. Strangely, though I feel like the Neptune series is something I should have gotten into, I’ve never played the games, even though I own the first three games (and then bought the remake of the first game on Steam). I’ll admit that a major reason for this circumstance is that although I’m as much a sucker for fanservice as any anime fan – this website is ample evidence of that – I really don’t have the inclination to spend so much time playing unremarkable games. That said, I am fond of the character designs. I hope that Green Heart will get a figure someday, as I’m something of an Xbox fanboy and more significantly, she has the largest and best rack of any of the original characters.

This figure is manufactured by Alter in 1/7 scale. Counting the wings, this figure is about 30 centimeters in total height. Somewhat unusually for an Alter figure, Black Heart has two detachable right hands, one holding a sword and one clenched in a fist.

It’s fairly plain that Black Heart is a high-quality, good-looking figure, as most Alter products are, but the initial impression after unboxing her is a profoundly negative one as she has a profoundly irritating assembly procedure. Four of her wing blades slot into notches in her hair, which is a bizarre way to do things, but the real trouble stems from the difficulty in getting those wings securely placed, which I was not quite able to do; just getting them slightly inserted requires a great deal of force both on the wing and on the figure’s hair, and more than once I found myself hoping that I wouldn’t snap either.

Moving past that, she is a very nice figure. She is reminiscent of a number of older Alter mecha girl and magical girl figures, such as Shin Sonic Fate and Exelica with her energetic midair pose, aggressive expression, and complex design.

The Neptune series is noted for embracing fanservice, and Black Heart’s costume is in keeping with this philosophy. She wears a leotard with a prominent cutout that displays her cleavage, thigh-high boots, and a pair of long gloves that end in talons. While sexy, her costume isn’t quite as revealing as it could be; I’d like a higher leg cut, personally.

As is typical for a mecha girl, she comes with a constellation of machinery that sprouts out of her body, her outfit, and orbits around her. They do a nice job of providing a hard, mechanical contrast to her lithe, half-exposed body. One odd thing I noticed is that the left antenna-like thing that emerges from her head doesn’t quite fit in all the way, although its right-side counterpart does. I’m not sure why that is but it bothers me more than it probably should.

Her wings do look nice as well, adding a touch of color to what is an otherwise monochrome design.

Alter did a nice job with her eyes, which feature power symbol-shaped pupils.

Black Heart comes with two right hands, one holding her gigantic sword and one clenched into a fist. Without the sword, the balance of interest is wholly centered on the figure, and I think I prefer to display her this way. This mode also doesn’t take up nearly as much valuable shelf space.

I like that Noire has a fairly serious expression here. That’s a fairly common thing for Alter and I haven’t really thought about it, but perhaps that’s another reason why I like their products so much; they’ve made figures from series like Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha and Hyakka Ryouran Samurai Girls and while those shows are generally happy-spirited and lighthearted, their figures generally evince a sense of determination and solemnity rather than the gleeful open-mouthed smile that a different manufacturer might go with.

The paintwork is superb, which should come as no surprise. The metallic accents of Black Heart’s leotard are a particularly nice touch, but every technical aspect of this figure impresses.

That is, except for the required assembly, but aside from that, this is an exceptional figure. It’s in keeping with Alter’s history of producing ambitious and dynamic action girl figures, and it’s nice to see that they can still make figures like this, after having recently produced quite a few figures that look rather staid in comparison. It’s a great figure of a character with a lovely design. Hopefully they do Green Heart someday, too.