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.
