It’s been well over a year since we looked at a FREEing bunnygirl, but I’ve purchased a bunch of them in that time – three Muv-Luv girls, two To-Love Ru girls, Lucifer, and Reika Shimohira, whom we are looking at here. Truth be told, they all tend to look more or less the same, so for the sake of minimizing unnecessarily repetitive redundancy, we’ll just quickly highlight the main points of this figure.
Reiko Shimohira is one of the central heroines of the manga, anime, and film series Gantz. Gantz has gone through something of a merchandising revival as of late, and I’m not entirely sure why. I’m certainly not complaining though, as Reika and Anzu Yamasaki are both visually pleasing characters.
This figure is manufactured by FREEing and measures about 42 centimeters in height. She comes with an instruction sheet to assist in setup, which is nice as it takes a little bit of work to get her gun placed in her right hand. She also comes with a useful metal stand to brace her body against, which I did not include in these photographs. It’s a nice inclusion as these figures are fairly heavy and as they invariably wear high heels, they tend to wobble a bit.
The Gantz franchise has experienced multiple incarnations and each version has had its own aesthetic in terms of character design. The television anime featured a fairly conventional style whereas the Gantz:O film used more realistic designs. This figure, however, appears to take its cues from the manga design by Gantz creator Hiroya Oku. Personally, it’s my least favorite design of the group, but I don’t think it looks all that bad. Reika has an intense but enigmatic look; it’s not clear what sort of emotion she is supposed to be conveying. She’s also got a very sharp, slightly masculine jawline, a bit reminiscent of some of the male characters from Final Fantasy.
Moving down, we see two of the better aspects of this figure – Reika’s gun and, of course, her body. The main heroines of Gantz have always tended towards a more generous endowment, and it’s well-modeled here, with Reika’s leotard barely succeeding in covering her up. Her bunnysuit is modeled after the bodysuits seen in the series, with small circular nodes placed along its surface. Two smaller caps are strategically placed at her crotch, which is a neat detail.
Here is Reika’s gun, which careful research indicates is called an X-shotgun. Oddly, it looks like she has two fingers extended to operate the trigger; I do not know if that is its typical method of operation.
The high point of this figure is almost certainly Reika’s marvelous backside, which is – mostly – in full view. Her ass is large, shapely, and thanks to her bunnysuit’s thong back, highly visible.
Of course Reika’s bunnysuit features the requisite bunny tail.
While Reika’s buttocks are the best part of the figure, the stock of her gun obscures them a little bit, which is unfortunate. Also, the support pole stabilizes Reika’s right leg, which means that if you choose to use it – and you don’t have to if you’re willing to forgo the stabilization it provides – it partially blocks the view. I would have preferred it if the pole were placed in front of Reika by her left side, where it would be less visible.
And of course the figure uses a real fishnet material for the pantyhose. Hopefully it does not discolor the legs; that has happened on at least one of the bunnygirl figures I own.
After having collected many bunnygirl figures over the years, I can say I’m a big fan of FREEing’s products, and Reika is not an exception. She looks great, combining big presence and a sexy body with a great ass. The face is the one part I’m less fond of, and it’s an important part, but it’s one I can overlook since it’s not entirely visible the way I have the figure displayed. I have pretty much no space left for these bunnygirls, but I keep buying them anyway.
All that said, if I had to choose just one quarter-scale figure of Reika, this isn’t the one I would pick; it would be Prime One’s statue which is due out next year. It’s a lot more spendy but it looks amazing.
