Apparently I haven’t reviewed a Tony Taka-designed figure since Freesia, which is confounding since I think I have at least a dozen Tony figures in hand and in the review queue. Clearly there is much work to do; we’ll start by taking a look at Ping Yi, a figure from SkyTube’s ostensible premium line.
I’m not sure what Ping Yi’s provenance is; there is a
This figure measures about 15.5 centimeters in overall height, not counting the base. It includes a bevy of accessories and optional parts, resulting in a wide variety of possible display options. This versatility is both impressive and at times confounding, as we’ll talk about in a bit.
Ping Yi is not just the first (to my recollection) STP figure, she’s also the first of what will be at least a trio of figures centered around a theme of Tony-designed girls wearing cheongsam dresses, accompanied by musical instruments, and being penetrated by dildos. The designs are reminiscent of the Kotobukiya fairy girls Daisy, Annabel, and Freesia in that they comprise a mild-mannered black-haired girl, a more mature-looking blonde girl, and a perky, younger brunette. I have Jin-Lian on order – she’s on the airplane from Japan to freedomland as I write this – but I don’t know if I will order Chun-Mei, the third figure in the lineup. I don’t think she looks as good as the first two and I don’t really care for both her hair buns and her pubic hair. Technically the preorder period closed a couple of weeks ago so there isn’t much time for me to change my mind.
The face is typical Tony Taka, though she’s quite attractive despite the homogeneity of his designs. She does come with an optional face, which I suppose is part of what makes this a premium-label figure.
And here is that face. I don’t like this face as much, though its expression does better reflect what this figure is all about.
If anyone needs a clue as to what that means, this end right here shows what is arguably the main attraction of this figure.
Some might say that the elegant elements of this figure take pride of place over its more salacious aspects, and that’s fair. Certainly her dress is quite lovely, with its glossy white color, black trim, and its varied hues of blue providing a wonderfully subtle color scheme that perfectly complements the mood conveyed by this figure. Her instrument – a zither called a guqin, from what my Wikipedia research tells me – is similarly exquisite, though the one flaw on my copy is that I’ve done something to knock the strings askew and I’m not quite certain how to reset them. Otherwise, it’s executed very well.
The incongruity of this figure’s elegance and palpable perversity is perhaps its most interesting quality. We’ve seen this before with Matsuri Tougetsu and it worked very well for SkyTube, and so it’s not surprising that they’ve gone back to this theme. The guqin adds an extra layer of curiosity, as there seems little reason for the subject to penetrate herself while cradling her instrument. Why she is doing so will undoubtedly be the first question that a casual viewer asks when first glimpsing this figure. (The second might be either, “How much did this cost?” or “Why did you buy this?”)
Given the thematic duality of this figure, it is only appropriate that the dildo that Ping-Yi is pleasuring herself with a run-of-the-mill phallus with a clitoris stimulator. Its modern design and startlingly bright pink color clash mightily with the classical motif effected by the rest of the figure, and this contrast works very well to emphasize the dichotomy of tone presented here.
I can’t believe it slipped my mind to take a photo of Ping-Yi’s distended vagina sans inserted dildo, but it did, to my enduring shame. This will be rectified this whenever I photograph Jin-Lian.
Amid all this talk about naughty bits and sex toys and awkward masturbation, it should be noted that Ping-Yi can actually be displayed in a non-explicit manner; it’s just a colossal pain in the ass to do so. She does come with panties, which are actually just a plastic piece that fits (and that’s being optimistic) over her crotch and rear. Her bust can be swapped out to display her either covered up or bare-breasted. And if displaying her impaled by a dildo is a bridge too far, she can be displayed with an unstretched vagina. There’s something for everyone here, though it’s far easier to display her less clothed.
And one last quirk regarding this figure; most figures that are sculpted kneeling don’t actually need bases, but Ping-Yi does. She’s very front-heavy and so will tip over if left unsecured. The base has a small transparent plastic pylon that hooks over her right ankle and keeps her in place.
This is an exceptionally lovely figure. The concept is interesting in itself, assuming one displays Ping-Yi in R-18 mode, which I’d imagine most people who own this figure will. The manufacturing quality is, as expected, second to none. There is little to criticize – assuming one isn’t trying to cover her up, which was a source of some consternation while I was preparing the figure for photography – and a whole lot to like here. Perhaps the only deficiency that one might lament is that she doesn’t feature anal penetration like Jin-Lian. Truly, what a time to be a figure collector.
