Happy New Year, but I will start with a figure that I have received a little earlier in 2023. It’s the cute and boisterous Daiwa Scarlet from Uma Musume: Pretty Derby, the gatcha game from Cygames that received three anime adaptations, that performed rather successful with a rating from 7,5 – 8, well received from fans of the game and the regular anime consumer, it’s sport, it’s drama and it’s a cute show about girls with animal ears.

The figure was manufactured by Max Factory, as sculptor in charge Akimof was chosen. The official release began in August 2023. Daiwa Scarlet is sculpted after the official design of Daiwa in her uniform, she actually really runs her competitions in this attire.

The figure is scaled 1/7, the overall height is 29 cm, since the figure is delivered with a podest like base.

I only saw the anime adaptations of Uma Musume, I expected the role of Daiwa to be a bit less of a sidecharacter. She was apparently chosen to be turned into a figure because of her popularity in the gatcha game. What I liked were the adorable character design and the story that was told, the crazy names of the characters were hilarious, though. The characters are all named after popular race horses from the 90’s, the real horses were mainly males, but the franchise probably works better with a female cast.

In Europe we actually have no good opinion of horse racing, there are things like animal abuse, and after they ended their racing lifespan the horse would most likely end as sausage. In Japan they apparently are friendlier to the ex race horses. They can spend the other half of their life at a nice farm with other horses together.

The real Daiwa Scarlet is still alive, after she took part in 12 races in total and won 8 of them. That doesn’t sound like a real hard challenge, but the horses probably lose speed at a certain age. While most race horses turn out to be stallions, Daiwa indeed was a mare, a female horse. That is probably the reason for the figures proud chest.

Do you actually know how horse girls are being made?

This is secret information, but you probably can guess that yourself. Anyway that topic is never addressed at any point.

The figure is standing on her podest in a bold victory pose with her index finger pointing forward.

Daiwa Scarlet has lots of hair in a nice auburn colored tone, she is wearing a twintails hairstyle and she also has a real ponytail coming out of her lower back. The hair is sculpted in a very detailed way and every strand looks very soft and smooth, of course it’s still PVC material.

The figures face is very expressive, the sharp eye decals are burning with joyful ambition and the open mouth with the single fang is adorable and shows traits of a michievous personality.

The girls uniform looks quite elite, like a parade uniform of an highly decorated general, but basically it’s just a fancy costume, it’s a quite nice royal blue uniform with shoulderpads and a lot of golden elements.

The figure can’t hide the fact that Daiwa has big boobs, the cutout for the blouse gives them the spotlight, we can’t spot any indicated nipples, so it’s not ecchi by default, unfortunately I would say at that point. The skirt shows nice movement and design, the underskirt is white and slightly translucent, both skirts have the golden colored rim.

of course with the short skirt, the horsegirl can’t wear normal panties in public during horse racing, so she is wearing blackspats instead. The legs look great! The revealed skin at the higher area around her legs is attractive, it also shows the figures interesting leg wear. The black garter belt like stockings are placed inside white thigh high boots inside an adorable looking ankle boots. the design with golden and blue lines is visually appealing and the tiny ribbons at the ankle boots are just adorable.

Max Factory created a nice figure of Daiwa Scarlet, the figure has a great amount of details, that have been perfectly applied and executed. The figure has a very lively appearance and her fantasy uniform is beautiful. Basically there is nothing wrong with this figure, she is beautiful and nicely crafted, in the end it follows the official design a bit too closely and that is what makes it a bit lackluster for me. The design is not spicy enough. The following is only my personal preference, but I would have been happier with a Daiwa Scarlet that looks something like this.

Once again Otaking lend me some help and advise about the text for this review, I’m quite grateful about the help.

I probably haven’t logged into my Kancolle account since 3 years, but I have fond memories of the time where I played actively and took care of the adorable ships girls. Too bad that I was forced to use an VPN every time I wanted to play.

Today I will show you one of my older grails that I always wanted since it’s release. I recently purchased this Kouwan Seiki, She is also known as Harbour Princess from the Kancolle game. This figure was manufactured by Max Factory and released in 2017. She’s been sculpted by Akimof and is scaled 1/8 with measures 155 mm in height.
On release her price was around 18.000 yen, which still was a lot at that time.

The figure is also part of the Wonderful Hobby Selection line of Max Factory. In 2016 I received the Sorceress from the WHS line which was a bad joke partially. The figure of course looked great, but arrived with a broken peg that prevented me from setting up the figure, Max Factory was kind enough to send a spare part, but that also arrived broken … .

That experience actually prevented me from preordering. You can probably imagine how I felt when I opened that figures package earlier this year, but fortunately everything was fine and without flaw.

Kantai Collection is not at its prime days anymore, nevertheless the character design hasn’t lost it’s appeal. Kantai Collection has been a super popular gatcha game that convinced figure manufacturers that gatcha game characters attract more customers than purely anime based characters.

If anyone of you wonders about the sparkles in the pictures background, it is a polycarbonate board with sculpted water droplets on the surface, with the right amount of DOF (depth of field) and light it creates a lovely bokeh.
To match the figures partially eerie atmosphere I decided for purple as main color. As flooring I used a small white carpet and spread some bigger and smaller rocks above, to create some ocean bottom. I thought that the fishing net would be a matching addition to the set.

Coming up with a stage has always been kind of a challenge, compared to earlier years figure photography became more challenging and ambitious. I think I became a little bad recipient, it’s really frustrating. Some fellow figure photographers invest an immense amount of work to create diorama like settings, it’s amazing! I always see myself debating about how much work I want to invest in a figures set and if it is worth the effort.

Figures of antagonists are generally a rare event, except they are especially remarkable. Kancolle has cool designs, also for the Abyssals that were turned into figures, like Kuubo Wo-kyuu or Senkan Re-kyuu, Kouwan Seiki convinced me the most.

Since then the gatcha game character based figures keep growing in numbers. As anime enthusiast this trend is regrettable for me, since less figures based on anime are made, but it can’t be helped these days.

Harbour Princess is a pretty figure with her ghost like white skin, the huge claws and pointy horn on the forehead, she is obviously a monster, but a cute one. The character design of Harbour Princess has been illustrated by Akira (アキラ)

Her shy and vulnerable expression are anything less than adorable. I really like the heavy eylashes design, they are even sculpted and not just lines from a brush, I’m also a big fan of the dramatic makeup anyway. The long hair is nicely done, it has smooth looking long strands and a cutely cut bangs. Her red eyes are very pretty and mesmerizing.

Haurbour Princess is dressed in something called “virgin killer sweater” which was a popular meme some years ago. The outfit has some dark grey weathering, living in the vast ocean surely has a few disadvantages for the Abyssal’s. Furthermore the sweaters vertical creases accentuate the characters dynamite body with the ample bosom, thin waist and quite wide hips. The sweater is also equipped with decorative black armor pieces, the style and pattern looks very interesting and pretty. As shoes she has some kind of kneesock boots with black sole.

Part of her outfit are also the separate sleeves, they have the same vertical creases as the sweater and those pretty black armoir bits, because of her big hands the sleeves have a huge opening, the mechanical claws have a nice roughed up look and intimidating design. Kouwan Seiki is portrayed as mature character with a well endowed and attractive body. Obviously, she also has nicely sculpted big boobs, the outfit also reveals a bit of sideboob which is a little bit risky, but nothing when compared to the shameless hotties from Azure Lane. The figure has really nice thighs.

The figure has been put in a kneeling pose, encircled by a muddy looking base, that intentionally shows traces of wear and destruction painted in shades of black and rusty brown. She is holding onto the remaining pieces of her once proud airfield. I like the tiny particles that have been applied on the runway, they give the illusion of glowing sparks.

Next to the main figure, sits the runway monster with its huge jaw, compared to Kouwan Seiki that is a really nasty monster with teeth and grey tongue.

Final Words

I like the figure a lot, she looks great and has an unique design, a bishoujo monster girl is something I didn’t have in my collection so far. It’s a great design with the dramatic makeup and the overall visual presentation is very well done. Is this figure worth the Wonderful Hobby Selection tag? I have a specific opinion about it.

Max Factory figures are already well done in general. WHS should bring something more. I think that the WHS manufacturing quality is not outstanding enough to justify it. A label like WHS should indicate the highest level of craftsmanship, and I don’t see this big difference on Kouwan Seiki and I definitely didn’t saw it at the Sorceress figure. They both had problems that take away from the overall quality. Nevertheless I’m really happy to have the Kouwan Seiki WHS in my collection now.