Haha I found an old review Draft in my post folder, since some time I planned to publish it, but today is the day where I will show you an edited and updated version of this review.

The figure in this review is Alice which was made by Alpha x Omega, I thought that the first review from years ago was no good and didn’t want to leave it like that and trashed it.

Alice is a 1/8 scaled figure with a height of 145 mm, she was manufactured by Alpha X Omega,
(a collarboration between Alter and Megahouse) and her release was date in August 2008.

This Alice is one of my older, favorite figures, the combat loli whose origin is the Queen’s Gate Battle book series, also had a mayor role in the PSP Game Queens Gate Spiral Chaos.

The full name of this character is Alice Faye and she is known as a human treasurehunter, her weapons are two really customized Mauser C96 guns and a whip. She looks very young and has a petite body, but one of her special abilities is that she can grow into an adult woman when she wants to. There was also a figure made of Alice in her adult form from Megahouse.

The characterdesign of Alice was made by Nishii here are some Illustrations from the book.

As Alice was announced I was drawn to her unique and beautiful appearance, as fan of twintails it would have been a shame not buying her, even when her loli appearance in such a revealing outfit threw me into doubt, back then where I just started with collecting figures and had only a little experience with less modest figures. Compared to back then, nowadays I couldn’t care less about her being a seductive loli, like I also don’t care about busty figures

The head of this figure is very well sculpted, her face has a nice tone and blushmarks, her facial expression depends on the viewng angle, it differs from cute, fierce to serious. Alice has beautiful piercing red eyes, which add a lot to her expression. The flow of her long hair is very detailed with these freely sculpted strands it appears very light. The hair has a few more unclean spots all around, but it’s not such a big deal from a normal distance. The hair has a nice color and shows some shading. Another eyecatcher are these scary black puppets at her twintails.

I modified a jacket into a cute and more innocent dress to give her a different appearance.

The unique bend over pose with the crossed arms looks cool. Alice’s body is quite petite, she has small arms and short, thin legs. As to be expected from a loli character, her breasts are small but have painted nipples from the backside her butt looks quite interesting with Alice’s white panties in need for adjustment and one of her buttocks is visible, I like this part of her.

It seems that the outfit is a bit inspired by Batman ;D, it’s just coincidental. Her corset dress doesn’t really cover much of her body, although it looks really cool. The black corset is very well sculpted with some silver colored buttons and rivets. The corset can be equipped with long brown weapon holsters, it is is partially castoff able, not that the corset would have covered much anyway .

Overall Alice’s outfit is really cool further details are the black gloves, the bat winged arm rings and the thigh-high stockings which are accenting her legs nicely. The half-boots with the white skull heart decals are also very cool. The weapons are two Mauser C96 guns with sawed off barrels and army knives attached, even these weapons show an incredible level of detail.

It’s a bit difficult to put them in the hands of the figure you’ll need a lot of force for it, so at first I decided not to use them. Later I could put the weapons in her hands somehow.

The base is a transparent round disk with her name carved on it, by todays standards this base is really simple, but in 2008 such things didn’t really matter as long as the base full filled it’s purpose of a secure stand for the figure.

Final words

Alice is a cool looking combat loli with a load of nice details everywhere. The paintjob is very well done and the hair is beautiful. The face didn’t really matches the cuteness from her illustrations, albeit her face looks still pretty and very well sculpted. Her petite and small body is really appealing especially with that great outfit she is wearing. After quite some years of owning her, there no turnoffs or damages, it’s a great figure and still one of my favorites. The pictures I took are from different dates between 2008 and 2014 and made with different cameras.

See you next time

“A look back …” basically means to do a reshoot a figure with a more refined idea in mind. After A look back at Momohime and A look back at Sonico Bath Time I did a reshoot of Sansei Muramasa, a great maid themed figure from Max Factory released in March 2012.

My experience with this figure was overshadowed by bad luck, not the figure was to blame, it was rather my fault, first I named her Sandaime Muramasa in the review. Around a year later I noticed this blogging disaster and I wanted to sink into the ground out of embarrassment. This really shouldn’t happen in a review, never *facepalm*

A more dramatic thing was, that I somehow set the camera to a low resolution for the shooting, a few pictures turned out quite nice, but I had really small files, maybe I was drunk. Anyway this really bothered me, so  lets try to make Sansei Muramasa, sparkle once again.

This year the Nitro+ VN, Soukou Akki Muramasa received a lot of attention in terms of figures releases and announcements, mainly from manufacturer Wing. Aside from Muramasa, they also gave attention to Ashikaga Chachamaru.

In the 2 (nearly) 3 years I constantly had Sansei Muramasaon display, the figure showed no effects of leaning or desaturation of colors, accidentally one of her antennas fell off, but was easy to fix.

About the model

In the year 2012 Sansei Muramasa was released, she was sculpted by Shining Wizard @ Sawachika, a really talented artist, who created some really good looking figures. The character of Sansei is based on the dark visual novel Soukou Akki Muramasa made by Nitro+. At 1/7 scale the figure has a nice size and has an appealing look on my shelf, she has a red carpet base and a single table with loose dishes. Check out her “older” review for reference.

Sansei Muramasa is an especially nice maid related figure balance between looking like a fully fledged maid and making the figure look attractive, the elaborate sculpting makes her uniform appear light and detailed. The hair is long and has a pretty shape, a creamy color and a cool looking fringe. Her beautiful facial expression is unique and interesting, changing between annoyed and being flustered, her golden eyes make her expression very strong.

Overall, the figure has a beautiful appearance and covers a number of my appeal points, elf ears, maid uniform, thigh highs and an attractive looking body. The uniform has a very appealing design, colored in black and cream white, the white parts are decorated flouncy.

A sexy feature is the detachable skirt, that reveals more of Sansei’s sensual body, her dark, fancy underwear is a real eye catcher. I don’t want to sound like an European conqueror, so I won’t call her dark skin exotic, it’s very pretty, though and suits the figure very nicely. The dark skin is also interesting. More dark skinned figures have appeared since 2012, still we rarely see this on figures. Naturally, anime/game characters live in Japan and rarely have dark skin.

The idea

Having a real idea for the shooting would be an exaggeration, I had a classic cafe in mind, where Sansei serves coffee and tea. So I’ve build a fancy window frame out of cheap wood parts and ornaments of the right size, I’ve bought on ebay. Afterwards I attached curtains on left, right and a fancier lace stripe on top of the frame.

To gain more height for the backdrop I also made a background wall made of MDF and painted it in light brown. To have more detail I glued bricks at certain areas, I’ve painted the scale bricks in different, but still related colors.The floor isn’t that important, since it doesn’t appear that often when I’m using a 50 mm lens, nevertheless I also gave it some thought as well, in this shooting I used leather with interesting texture to imitate an expensive looking floor.

Obviously Sansei Muramasa is a beautiful figure, not entirely flawless, on very close inspection of the pictures at the PC screen, the figure has some seam lines, visible at the ribbon at the back, the backside of her thighs and very faint ones at the waist. Her hair also has a few unclean spots, but as I’ve already said, this can only be noticed from a very close distance.

Summary and Impressions

I had a lot of fun with Sansei Muramasa, also this second time I took pictures of her, she is very photogenic, I think the new pictures turned out a little better in terms of lighting and sharpness. Partially, a good model makes good pictures ^^ I like the figures appearance of a very pretty grown up girl with a still youthful expression. She’s a very good looking Elf lady.

With a little self critism at the end, I could have planned her background to be a little higher, in the lower angle shots it’s a little obvious where the background ends. I also learned again that dust can be quite persistent.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the pictures of Max Factories Sansei Muramasa, the next post is scheduled for December 24th.
I guess the next “A look back …” related Post might be about Sayaka Miki, one of my alltime favorite figures. I already have the idea for the setup, but will have to invest some more time in building the props.

Do you have any suggestions which of my figures I should choose to do another photoshoot?

I recently got myself this lovely Asuna figure from Max Factory, she was too pretty not to buy.

[ No Asuna was harmed during this photoshooting ]

This figure was already released, when I noticed her appeal, this often happens after user pictures appear. Sometimes promo pictures don’t convey how a figure will look in person. Asuna was released in late October, and barely available after that, luckily I found a friendly local dealer who still had her in stock, I a little paid more, I got her without customs trouble and relatively short shipping time compared to the transit times of SAL, Airmail or EMS.

Asuna is scaled 1/7, sitting on her legs she measures 13 cm. The figure was sculpted by Shining Wizard @ Sawachika. I don’t like all his works, but there are also figures on his list that are masterpieces, like Sansei Muramasa, Catherine or Psychic, who has yet to be released. Asuna is based on the popular Sword Art online, sometimes it’s rather bad, but it has it’s bright moments and can be fun to watch. In the arc this figure is based on she’s 17 years old.

After Sword Art online desintergraded Asuna is still in a comatose state. She is at the mercy of her would be future husband which was decided by her stupid parents. Still, villain – san won’t touch her real body until they are married. He made it so that Asuna was only conscious in the virtual world of another game called Alfheim online, the villain created her account, decided about her appearance and put her in a cage where no player can interact with her.

In the first half of Sword Art online, Asuna was an exceptionally skilled player on par with Kirito, but after she was put in the cage her role got reduced to damsel in distress and many fans got really upset about this development. I think the happy end as result was sweet, I’m actually someone who is always rooting for the first possible couple in anime, as result harem shows are hard for me to watch, but I didn’t really feel Asuna x Kirito, though.

With all the freedom in character creation of a MMORPG, the villains choice of ingame appearance was a rather plain copy of the real Asuna with pointy ears. In his position I would given her more bust, it had turned the show into a comedy and there is only place for one buxom female character. In SAO most characters have a normal build without such features.

The figure comes in a round transparent box with a birdcage design and printed rods, it looks quite fancy and the figure could also be displayed inside her box, which looks also very nice.

Inside there also is a huge round base painted in light green, Max Factory also added around 70 cm of wire with brown rubber coating in case you want to do some light bondage play with her, I didn’t go all crazy with it, you could probably apply it in better ways  than I did.

What I like about figures the most are expressive faces and this is one of the strong points of this Asuna figure. The sculptor toned down the cuteness of her anime appearance a little and made her face more sensual. The slightly closed eyes which are pointing to the left and concerned eyebrows create a convincing expression on her face. Asuna looks a little scared and defenseless, this vulnerable expression suits her quite well, she’s such a beautiful girl.

The figures orange hair is made of soft material, it’s very long and shows a lot of detail, several strands are which are hanging limply over her wings, on the backside she has two braids and a little veil. I really like the design of her bangs with the four major strands hanging down.

At the sides of her head are two pointy ears, as a friend of Elf ears I like this design a lot, the upper side of her ears show a metal like decoration.

Asuna has fairy wings with small winglets on top, it gives her the appearance of a delta winged plane, I can’t shake off the imagination of her to lift off like a space rocket. The transparency make them look quite pretty with the strands of hair over them, it also makes her look wider.

Asuna’s outfit looks rather simple in white, decorated with a red ribbon and a faint shading all around, a mass of folds and wrinkles is used as her skirt, a white ribbon is placed over her private parts. Arms and legs are decorated with brown string, her legs also have bandages.

The design of her top is quite simple, it could look a little thinner to create the illusion of cloth, but however. Her top is evenly torn, it’s a belly free top accentuating parts of her pretty body she has one hell of a pretty belly. It’s also sexy how her lower leg regions come forth under her skirt, the definition of her legs looks great. Every part of her body is nicely accentuated.

When flipping Asuna over she’s unexpectedly lewd, she is wearing a thong and it is badly off center, you can see her butt and also partially the outer parts of her genitals. It’s no necessary detail, maybe the sculptor wanted to show off like “Look what I do with your PG-13 heroine”.

With the arms halfway raised above Asuna’s head and wrists close together she can be constrained with the included wire, when you are into bondage games or just want to adapt a certain scene. I found the wire length to be a little short, as I tried to connect it to something.

I was a bit joking around with Miette-chan about combing this figure with a Rehgar Earthfury figure, his pose was rather hilariously fitting, but I decided that it would have been too outrageous for my liking, soft bondage is the most I can do to this beautiful young  lady.

Final Words

I can’t believe that I nearly missed to order this great figure, she’s without  much exaggeration, fantastic. The innocent white dress combined with the beautiful yet sorrowful expression is unique and make this figure special. The lewdness when flipping her over was surprising, but the sculptor followed his way of keeping attention to detail. The Asuna – Titania version has the nice slender body of a 17 old Elf eared girl (ok, that probably sounds really creepy).

She has a cute belly, also nice arms and legs, the best part for me still is her gorgeous face.
Max Factory did an excellent job and the concept of the figure turned out really nice.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures, I had a lot of fun taking them, Asuna has been a lovely model.
I took more pictures which are below this paragraph, I really couldn’t decide

 End

Sena Kashiwazaki is one of the heroines from the light novel and anime adaptions Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai, where sociable awkward teenagers try to find out about the definition of friendship. It’s a great show with it’s different approach on the harem genre and the portrayal of difficult things about making friends. The kids meet in the after school club “Neighbors Club”  where they either do what they like or plan activities friends would do.

Sena is popular with the boys, with the girls not so much obviously. She can be considered as beautiful girl, with her buxom body, Sena is a teenage boys dream in the flesh. Ok, not everyone prefers blonde (wieselhead raises his arm) Yeah, it’s ok dude to each their own.

Aside from being Yozora’s masochistic bullying victim and a hilarious comedy relief, she is a nicely fleshed out character with personality. To hide uneasiness she often tries to put on the arrogant rich girl act, what always seem to backfire at her during club activities. She is not dumb, though  and has perfect grades in school, but she is rather clumsy and gullible when dealing with other persons of her age, especially Yozora. Sena enjoys to play visual novels and  likes cute loli’s, so she’s partially the living otaku prejudice in the body of a buxom girl.

In terms of personal character ranking Yozora (gloomy girls are one of my weak spots) and Rika (her dirty mind) come before Sena, but she  is a character I also like quite a bit.

After several figures from Sena, Gift released their adaption of Sena in the end of July. The figure is scaled 1/4 which is quite the impact in the size department 37 cm are damn huge. She was sculpted by Kondou Takayuki who was in charge of many other big scale figures.
The sculptor stayed very close to Sena’s official character design, which was not always the case with figures based on Sena’s character. For some reason she often wears a swimsuit.

Swimsuit figures only make sense when they have a detailed body and an articulated, pretty pose. Sena has it all, her bodyssulpting is very clean and accentuates the image of soft skin.

She has a sexy bendover pose with entwined arms she is pushing her boobs up and her hips are pushed to the side. With her sideways tilted head she looks friendly and inviting.

Blonde characters are often portrayed with strong yellow hair, Sena has bright mustard colored blonde hair with very dynamic shading. The sculpting of her hair turned out really satisfying, detailed strands on front and backside and surprisingly also right on top. Her hair has curly tips at the end which looks really pretty. As decoration she has her trademark butterfly clip, it has a clean shape, but I would have preferred a transparency effect instead of solid colors. The figure also has some cute wrist accessories.

The face is very important for such large scale figures, I had some little doubts about the final figure, but Gift passed with waving flags. Sena fires a cheerful innocent smile at you and it works way too good with her lively eyes and rosy cheeks she looks just adorable. Her opened mouth shows a upper front teeth line and a cute fang both of it gives Sena a big, playful smile.

Yozora once gave Sena the actually mean nickname “meat” (肉), but it’s probably true in a positive sense. The figure is quite curvy, as Sena has a bit more sturdy body by nature, she’s not actually chubby though. The figure has wide hips, a soft belly and rather meaty legs.

Not only has Sena fairly sized boobs, she’s well balanced on front and backside. Girls with big boobs rarely have a memorable butt, this also applies in the opposite way. As I unpacked Sena, I was positively surprised by her stunning backside, like one of these girls from a rap video *lol*. Her butt is big and has a nice round shape, she also have lovely dimples above her butt. With her pose Sena puts her boobies into focus, but not that ecchi, unfortunately no traces of nipples are visible under her bikini, just vertical wrinkles from below.

Sena is wearing her standard turquoise colored bikini with yellow outlines and ribbons, her top is gently hugging her boobs and forms a great cleavage, there is no cut in effect at the front, at the backside her bottom part is more tight fit and can’t cover a lot of her buttocks,
it has realistic wrinkles and the brighter area recreate the illusion of stretched bikini cloth.

The girl has a rather extreme idea about a fashionable beach outfit, just look at these shoes.

Taking pictures of such a big beauty is kinda difficult at first, I mean with the 1/4 scaled
Fate Testarossa I had no problems. With Sena I was swapping lenses like crazy. With her big size there is no need for macro lenses, the wide angle exposed the narrow background too much, in the end the Tamron 17 – 50 zoom turned out as the best choice for my setup.
The topic for this shooting was sunset at the beach. The 120 cm reflector with the flash and orange film turned out quite satisfying for that, the fake sequin ocean could probably be improved, in the background it did a decent job.

Final Words

Gift made a very pretty big scale figure of Sena Kashiwazaki, the first great thing about her is the detailed facial expression, I like her cheerful smile a lot, her hair turned out nice and convincing. Another good thing is the detailed sculpting of her womanly body, Sena looks beautiful all around. The pose works best from full frontal and of course the backside, it depends on you if you want to admire her adorable smile or her glorious butt.

I got her for 10.580 Yen and considering the amount of PVC, large size and details this was quite a good price. There are not much things to complain about, the colors and shading have been carefully applied, she has no rough areas or seamlines. Only from a nitpicky perspective you could find 1 or 2 small imperfections on the figure, but it’s barely worth mentioning them.

On final summary Sena is a fantastic figure with a lovely smile and a beautiful, curvy body.

You can check out reviews of other Sena figures, most figures show her in swimsuits *lol*

Kashiwazaki Sena – Cow Swimsuit ver by Alphamax
reviewed by the diligent Bakayaro

Kashiwazaki Sena – Swimsuit ver by Alphamax
reviewed by the Bakayaro as well

Kashiwazaki Sena – school uniform by GSC
reviewed by Neath Grim

Hi eveybody, ready for a new figure review?

Today I will have a quite ecchi, but at the same time an also really cute figure on review, her name is Yoshii Hotori. Hotori was manufactured by Native and sculpted by Kawanishi Ken who worked on a number of nice figures and GK’s. She was actually sold as exclusive figure, normally you need a proxy service to get something like that, but here in germany I could order her like any other figure with just a little markup in the end. Thanks again at Yorokonde.

Yoshii Hotori’s release happened in june 25th of last year, she is scaled 1/7 and has a height of 23 cm. She was released about the same time as the Sonico – Bath version from Native, which was one of the reason why I haven’t ordered Hotori at that time, next to her uncovered nudity.

The sporty girl is an original character, which means that the figure has no real origin and is simply based on a illustration. This certain one was drawn by abec, a card with the illustration came along with the figure. In Yoshii Hotori’s case there are a few more sketches around.
I really like her unique design, she definetely would deserve an own manga or even anime ^^.

The windowless box design resebmbles a gymnastics box, unlinke the bold details of the figure inside, the box has a kind of classy design. Inside we have a round base with a concreate like texture, the figure itself, a two piece gymnastics box, a notepad and a connector for the figure.

Hair & Face

The figure has a relatively big head. As hairstyle she has very long twintails, which actually remind me a bit of Kana from Minami ke. With the detailed strands her hair looks elaborately sculpted, even the backside of her heard is very detailed. The silver hairclips are a very small but lovely detail as well. I have a liking to natural haircolors on anime girls in general. Next to black I really like a dark brown, Hotori’s hair is a mix of brown and grey and shows very dark shading.

Yoshii Hotori has a cute round face which is slightly altered compared to the face expression on the illustration. On her illustration Hotori actually looked more raunchy and alluring. As figure she has a anxious look on her face, like if she is concerned about getting her biker shorts up before someone notices her in the storage room. With a more dirty mind you could think that someone forces her to get undress, it’s up to the interpretation of the viewer. Overall I think that the figure looks very cute with the anxious and emberrassed expression on her face.

I like her detailed face a lot, the eyebrow lines are nice and big round eyes are just beautiful. Native recreated these blush marks from the illustration very well, it’s an important detail which is forgotten too often by a variety of manufacturers. The deep mouth of Hotori turned out very nice, I really like that upper front teeth line, the mouth convey’s the anxious emotion very good.

Body & Outfit

Hotori is a skinny and petite person with a youthful appearance, but since her red armbadge means something like teacher, she can’t be that young actually.

Figures in gymnastic outfits are a quiete rare sight, even though it looks very cool, like Hotori shows here. I really like her blue jersey jacket, it is so nicely detailed and has a striking color. Under the jacket wears a white pulled up t-shirt, which shows nice wrinkles. At her lower part she has tight, black biker shorts with a rubber like shine on them, with no underwear beneath.

I don’t know if this is common sense in Japan from my experience with Japanese media it is (Kanbaru from Bakemonogatari or Koharu, the little, not blood related sister in Hinatabokko).

Do you wear underwear when wearing biker shorts?

I think her shoes are also very cool, she is wearing ankle high sportsneakers in a sporty color design. As little detail there is a whistle around her neck, I haven’t tried if it fit’s into her mouth.

The pose of Hotori is pretty nice I like how they turned it from the illustration into this 3 dimensional figure. It feels very convincing and natural how she rests with one knee on the gymnastics box and puuls up her shorts with both hands. The figure is a bit bold because the crucial parts are revealed, Hotori has small perky breasts and a well defined trained belly. Also her back is quie exposed, she has a small and well rounded butt, further below Hotori proves that she’s an anatomically correct figure. It’s more a little play with nudity than portraying a lewd situation, like it is done with other Native figures. I was quite concerned about her level of nudity at first, which was one of the reasons why I purchased her that late after release.

I broke my “no pantsu, no purchase” rule which didn’t made me very happy, I find it a bit unfortunate that that no optional parts for covering this figure, like panties or a sport bra.
Well, I think such a cast off option would have been too complex overall. It is not like Native would care about that anyway, since these things are not even parts of the adapted illustration.

When displayed the figure actually looks more modest than it seems since the shadows cover her vagina area under normal light.

Final Words

After a lot of struggling with the purchase of this figure, Im really glad that I didn’t passed on buying this excellent figure. Yoshii Hotori has a very appealing design, she is a cute and petite character and is dressed in very cool sport attire. Her gymnastics box base and the notepad are a funny idea and make this figure very lively in pose and overall appearance.

This is my second Native figure and again it turned out to be nearly flawless, be it the sculpting or the paintjob. They either must be procucing with a lot of care or a strict quality control.

more reviews of Yoshii Hotori can be found at

Neath Grim

Tentcle Armada

Bakayaro

Hi there my figure friends, today I will talk about my recently received figure of Noel Vermillion.

This figure was sold as exclusive item, it was a collaboration between Hobby Japan Magazine and AMAKUNI. Noel Vermillions origin are the Beat Em Up BlazBlue and Queen’s Gate Spiral Chaos.

Noel Vermillion is scaled 1/8 figure and has a overall height of 190 mm, Noel was released in April 2012. On first sight I was interested in this figure, even without knowing her origin or character. What counts for me is the overall look not the knowledge of the character in the first place.
As I was finally convinced to buy her, the preorder period was already over, but thanks to Figuya.de I was able to get her a few weeks after the order deadline.

On a funny note I know nothing about her origin Blaz Blue, a game I’ve never played, Im such a lame Gamer. The story behind it is quite complex and I would just embarrass myself while trying to explain more about it. So for now just a little bit of backstory about the character herself.

Noel is an artificially created human, who was born on December 25, 2194. Later she was adopted by the Vermillion Family. She was accepted at the Military Academy and before her graduation she had the rank of an lieutenant in the 4th division of the Praetorian Guard. Noel is the shy and clumsy kind of girl, who likes everything cute, writing poems and online shopping.

This figure of Noel is nicely crafted adaption, I will talk about her head first.The hair of Noel has a pale yellow color with a somewhat metallic gloss. The single strand appear quite detailed. Short hair can be very nice, but don’t be fooled, Noel actually has long hair, but hidden by her blue cap.

A very nice part of this figure is her face, I like the beautiful and big green eyes which are pointed to the right. She also has a pretty and soft looking face, especially the area of her mouth looks very appealing and the slightly opened mouth gives the figure a very convincing expression.
In general I actually would complain about a lack of blushmarks, but not in case of this figure.

Noel has an attractive and petite body, with slender arms and legs. The legs are very sexy and the slightly meaty thighs add some feminine charm. As you might have noticed Noel has small but perky boobs which look very well in combination with her petite body, her back also looks very nice thanks to the nicely sculpted scapulas. A lot of attention to detail was also put to her armpits, they look quite soft and nice, even though that is not really one of my fetishes ;D

This figure is presented in Noel’s battle outfit, a jolting sapphire NOL uniform, that actually looks more like a short summer dress. but with the white collar and a short red tie, a uniform look was created. The color scheme is a combination of black, white and deep blue with silver and red details. She has seperated sleeves with big silver rings at her forearms. At her legs she is wearing matte black stockings, further below she has nice and elaborately sculpted boots.

As a character based on a fighting game Noel naturally carries weapons, she has two long pistols with a long barrel called Arcus Diabolus: Bolverk. They can be used for shooting and hitting.

The figure doesn’t need many assembly steps, there is the figure, the base and two long red straps. These straps are somewhat flexible, but you shouldn’t try to bend them too much while pushing them into the slits at the rings of her sleeves. They give the outfit an extra cool look.

The outfit captivates with it’s details sculpting, there are detailed folds and wrinkles where they belong. Next to her lovely armpits, Noel also offers a bit of mainstream fanservice in shape of a very short and flowing dress that barely covers her butt. I like how her butt flashes from some angles. Before the release there was a little discussion if the figure would have no underwear. Because in the Game her undergarmentswhere never shown directly in Calamity Trigger.

Final Words

It’s time for a conclusion Noel Vermillion is a nicely sculpted figure with an appealing face and interesting outfit. She has an attractive petite body and shows a good amount of skin without revealing too much.  Im quite happy about her purchase and despite the high price I’ve paid, it’s actually the first exclusive figure (Native’s Bath Time Sonico aside) where I don’t feel a bit like being robbed by the company. This figure is very nice in terms of appearance and quality.

another review was written by Tier from Tentaclearmada

At first I wasn’t very interested in getting her, because of underwhelming promo pictures, lately I started to visit Orchid Seeds blog more often, because they sometimes show interesting pictures of the progress of their upcoming figures. There they had a post about Aizawa Nao, which changed my opinion about this figure from not being interested to I really want to get her ;).

In comparison with the illustration from her medium sized box, the figure appears more pretty with her more beautiful face while the pose resembles the illustration more or less closely.

This figure comes with a big blue cape, a pumpkin where she sits on, a normal and an ecchi bra, a tail and a transparent, purple, round base with her name printed on.

Nao has nice looking hair with these single sharp strands around her forehead, behind her head she has a huge and voluminous ponytail hairstyle. Despite her meneater appearance, she has a lovely face expression, with the piercing yellow greenish eyes, the detailed eyelashes. Together with the friendly sculpted mouth and the well placed blush marks a nice expression is created.

The pose of the figure turned out less risky as on the illustration. Well, she is also sitting bend over on her pumpkin with squeezed boobs and spread legs as well, but her boobs appear a bit less voluminous and the arms of the figure cover her crotch area from lecherous eyes.

In her risky outfit she looks like some kind of female Supervillain, her upper clothes have a shiny latex like texture with dark outlines and a gradient effect that creates a slightly transparent look.
The figure comes with an optional cape, it is blue on the outside and orange on the inside with a pumpkin brooch at the collar, since I prefer her with bare shoulders I’ve put it back into the box.

A pretty and fancy part of her outfit are the stockings and the fingerless gloves, which have a nice dark blue to light purple gradient with white stars on them. The little devil tail can be placed in a hole at the backside of her purple g-string. As shoes she is wearing the well known high school model, we know from many animes, there are small pumpkin buttons as little diversification.

The pose is interesting and very well articulated, even though I could have imagined different poses for this figure, I prefer arched backs and strongly squeezed aren’t really my preference.

Nevertheless Aizawa Nao is a very attractive figure, she is showing a lot of skin and I especially
like her bare shoulders and the colorbones. she has smaller boobs as in the illustration, but they are still big and have some puffy nipples. You can cover this are with one of the two bra parts, well the ecchi one doesn’t cover much, to exchange the parts you can pull off her right forearm.

(thx to alamarco for the hint)

I was always searching for an easy way to create fog in my pictures, dry ice sounded quite convenient at first, but it was only sold in big blocks here and appeared quite dangerous to handle. A fog machine would have been too overdimensioned, well there are small ones with less output for around 400€, I also heard they were smelly and leave sticky arrears. Luckily I found what I was looking for at a shop for pet supplies, it was the  Super Fog Nano from Lucky reptile.

The figure isn’t connected to the pumkin via a peg, the pumkin has intentions for the butt and the hands of this figure, she is very well balanced, considering that her feet are slightly in the air.

Qualitywise this figure is very well made, her skin is smooth without rough areas aside from a small seamline above her g-string. Also the paintjob appears very clean, it nearly shows no overpainting, but on a close distance they slacked at the small orange buttons on her shoes.

Final Words

Im happy about the purchase of Aizawa Nao, she has a very pretty face and also a nice body. The fancy designed outfit with the purple colorsheme looks very cool and Im glad that the sculptor did some changes to the figure in comparison with the not so nice original illustration.
She looks a lot more adorable in figure form

After the Super Soniko – bondage version figure and the lovely Dwarf, Aizawa Nao was the second figure that I received from Orchid Seed and Im quite satisfied with them and I will probably order more from them in the future. In case you like your figures a bit more sexy Orchid Seed is a alternative to tamer companies like ALTER and GSC, in terms of quality they are also on a quite good level.

The figure of Aizawa Nao isn’t very popular, I only saw two japanese reviews of her, which is probably due the non existent origin and because of the first promo pictures which didn’t do her justice at all, but because of that she’s still availabe at most shops for around 7000 Yen.

When already running out of space you shouldn’t order old figures I would say XD

While I was searching for a cover illustration of the Nagasarete Airentou anime, a picture of a cute figure appeared and I was enchanted by her charming appearance and I wanted to see more of her. In the end I bought her on ebay, after I’ve asked the seller to make her cheaper, my price was quite bold, but luckily he accepted it, I wonder if he would have sold her for even less.

This cute girl is named Suzu, she is the main heroine of Nagasarete Airentou, a great comedy anime I just finished a few days ago. I guess I will write a review about it next month, it was very enjoyable. The figure was made by Kotobukiya in the year 2008 with a scale of 1/7 (225 mm). Her sculpt was realized by Takaku & Takeshi who also made my Noemi Itou figure and is working on the big figure Eustia Astraea, unfortunately she’s exclusive and will need space.

Info about Suzu’s origin

Suzu lives on an unexplored mysterious Island together with other females, in the past a thunderstorm occured as all the males were fishing and they never came back. Poor Suzu also lost her mother in that tragic event, since then Suzu lived alone, with the pig Tonkatsu who is the only remaining family member. Nevertheless, most of the time Suzu is a kind, happy and dilligent girl. She helps with harvesting the food in the island community. She likes household chores and would certainly be a good wife, in case there will be a male again on this lost island.

review part

Suzu arrived in her box, the seller told me that he never opened it before. Lets just believe it from the look of it that might be true, after nearly 3 years in her box I liberated her from her prison. Her foot was already connected with her sand textured base and her small friend Tonkatsu was included as well, he isn’t fixed so that you can place him wherever you want. Unfortunately the massive Ponytail lost contact with the head at it’s predetermined breaking point, but glueing it back in place was a piece of cake since the peg was still intact enough.

Nagasarete Airentou features a very cute cartoon look and Suzu was turned into a figure
which resembles her character very well in nearly every aspect. She has one closed and an open
eye, together with the nicely engraved open mouth she looks really adorable and gives the whole figure a very lively appearance. Suzu really radiates a nice “running to the beach” feeling.

Her massive long ponytail hairstyle is nicely sculpted with an active flow and single detailed strands, the brown hair also shows some dark shading. The big ribbon let it appear like Suzu would have cat ears in the anime the ribbon was dark blue, but it looks good in purple as well.

Suzu wears a cute, light pink and small bikini which tight fit compliments her soft, ample boobs and her nice butt.There is a small ribbon at the front of her top and at the sides of her bikini slip.
In the anime Suzu only had a traditionlal japanese outfit with white stockings, but maybe the sculptor was a little bit inspired by the bikini outfit from the illustration above.

The pose is a very dynamic one, Suzu is set in pose with an arched back and slightly twisted upper body, her right arm is happily stretched into the air and her hair flies through the air.

It is nice that Suzu has a 1/7 scale, the always not that exciting bikini outfit is equated by the level of detail on this figure. She has a very detailed back, these scapulas are damn sexy for example, from the front her soft and ample boobs are also nice to look at. As you see Suzu has even quite pretty long legs. Hehe, ok also the less sexy parts of her body are detailed, her fists show detailed fingers and the strands of her hair were made with the same attention to detail.

Final words

Suzu is a really pretty and cute figure and I’m glad that I was able to track her down for an reasonable price. Her quality in terms of sculpting and a clean paintjob is very good, Suzu is probably one of Kotobukiya’s better works. She has nearly the same look as in her origin Nagasarete Airantou, the transiston from cartoon 2d to a 3d figure was done very well.
The cute an happy atmosphere of this figure is catching Im really satisfied with this purchase.

On a personal note: Omg that felt so good to come up with a figure review again!
To me it felt like ages since the last one, fortunately the lean time should be over now and I should receive figures more regular in the next 4 months, thx for your patience ^^.

Hi a new figure has finally arrived, after a lot of anime related posts I can present you a new figure review. Today it will be about Hirasawa Yui, she’s a premiun prize figure manufactured by SEGA.

Her origin is the popular anime adaption K-on!!, the slightly airheaded Yui was the unofficial main character in the first season. In this figure adaption she is shown in her official HTT (Happy Tea Time) band t-shirt which she sported at the last performance on the school festival with Mio, Ritsu, Mugi and Azusa in episode 20. Ah that scene afterwards was such a big tearjerker, parting with your schoolmates and previous schoollife can be so sad hard. “stop crying damn wimp” XD
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pOoLvamGvM&feature=related

I never thought about buying a Sega figure before, last year, I began to notice, that their quality seemed to be better than I actually thought. I couldn’t find this Yui figure at japanese shops and ordered this figure at an US-shop, later she appeared on Mandarake for around 1600 Yen, I paid a little bit more, 35 $ + shipping (rage!), for prize figures you should give Mandarake a try.

First Impressions

Despite beeing a prize figure Yui comes with a nice looking box, she is a fully assembled figure, already fixed on her flip-flop colored base and with her beloved guitar “gitah” in her hands.
This “Windmill” Yui figure is quite big, she measures 21 cm which lets her look like 1/7 +

As I first unpacked her I felt a bit dissapointed with her, Yui was so unexpectedly big, I expected something more close to 1/8. Because of the huge size the lack of details on this prize figure is very prominent. I guess I became a bit spoiled with the level of detail from my high price figures.
Well, while doing the shooting with Yui, I slowly got the feeling that Yui actually is a very nice looking figure and that I was too harsh with her at the beginning even though there is still a difference in comparison with figures from other manufacturers that have a higher reputation.

Pose and random Infos

As you see this is a quite dynamic pose SEGA had chosen for her, I think they wanted to recreate the trademark windmill move of Pete Townshend, a member of The Who, he also owned the same Gibson Les Paul guitar like Yui, in fact he had 9 different Les Paul guitars for the concerts.

Yui raises her plektrum in the air like she wants to ROCK!, her movement with the spread and slightly crooked legs is captured very nicely, well her back is more leaned forward, but thats mainly because of the weight of her guitar, I suppose it’s a quite heavy instrument for a girl of her size. Yui’s guitar is the Les Paul Standard Sunburst made by Gibson, they did a very good job in recreating the details of this popular guitar model, the plastic has a nice polished wooden look, the turning knobs are on the right placed and also the belt around Yui’s shoulder looks cool.

Yui has a wild waving hairstyle with several detailed strands and her 2 yellow clasps. There are also some shading effects which have been rarely used on the rest of this figure. They gave her face a nice open mouth and some cute  blushmarks and nice eyes, overall she resembles Yui very well, maybe her eyes appear a bit too big in comparison with her face, what do you think?

The reason why I have ordered this figure adaption and not one of the other Yui’s is mainly based on this cool looking pose and partly based on my aversion to western styled private school uniforms, they are so plain and bourgeois. With the white HTT t-shirt her outfit has more credibility, now she really looks like a member of a band. Thats the spirit of Rock n’ Roll!
Well, Im ok with the skirt and her black pantyhose, since they accentuate her nice legs.

Also the sculpting of her dress with the detailed wrinkles on skirt and shirt is very well done. There are nearly no visible seamlines, also the simple paintjob looks clean and smooth.

Final Words

Yui is a premium prize figure and in terms of quality she’s actually a very good figure. At first I was a bit dissapointed because of her big size, but after the shooting and some days on my desk, she grow on me a bit more.

Well, you can clearly see where Sega cut the budget for prize figure Yui, aside from the hair this figure has no shading and the good sculpted guitar has no strings, nevertheless it’s remarkable, that a prize figure comes with such a good quality. Well for the price I’ve paid I would had expected a decent figure, but when you’ve just paid 1500 Yen this is more than a very good deal.

Hello everyone, this review is about the Hatsune Miku – lat type version figure from GSC.
I think I don’t need to explain it, you all know who Hatsune Miku is and what kind of music
she makes. But what is Lat anyway? What differs this lat version from the normal Miku is
the rounder and cute face, the glasses and the school uniform like outfit that she is wearing.
So far I wasn’t affected by the Miku Vocaloid hype at all. Well, I like the character design,
but in fact I don’t really like the squeaky synthetic voice in most of her uncountable videos.

Nevertheless I will present you a few videos which I found quite enjoyable, the last one rocks
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8SYrzDHD74&feature=player_embedded#!=hd1
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwZO9bio-rU&feature=related

I actually never was interested in owning one of the many many many produced figures of Miku before, but I couldn’t ignore a certain figure in the end. The Tony Taka version with the rubber bones in the feet caught my interest at first, but at the winter Wonfes 2010, I saw GSC’s new lat type Hatsune Miku, so I thought “ok this is the one to buy, forget about the other one for once”.

Miku was manufactured by Good Smile Company and released in late August 2011, she is scaled 1/8, with just 17 cm in height, she plays in the same size league as my Melissa Seraphy and Itou Noemi figure. A little bit bigger would have been nice, because she looks like a child next to other 1/8 scaled figures, but nevertheless the figure turned out quite nice in the final product.

Miku comes with a lot of accessoires, like two bases, two mics, two red glasses and two safety pegs for the lifted foot, to give her a sturdier balance (she doesn’t need them to be honest).

Hair

Every Miku figure has a monster twintail hairstyle and the haircolor is a mix of blue and green.
The lat version of Miku isn’t any different in these regards, her hair looks nice with the little bit of transparency which is added. The strands are mainly sculpted clean and detailed. Twintails are always nice to have and these huge ones doesn’t disappoint, they are long and have a nice flow.

Body & Face

Like I said before typical for the Miku lat type model is a small round head with a cute face.
The face is cute, even though nothing special, the green eyes are big and the open mouth has a nice depth. Her face is also pretty without them, but what makes her face more interesting are the pretty red megane (glasses) which you can put in her face, after you’ve pulled out her bangs. She looks a bit nerdy with them, but in all honesty they suit her very well. I like glasses, because I wear them myself and like when girls are wearing them as well. No, Im no megane maniac XD.

Miku wears nicely sculpted headphones on top of her head, they have a nice design, the R and L letters at the sides for example are a cool detail. These headphones really exist on the market, so if you would like to get them for yourself, these are the Yamaha HP-1 Orthodynamic headphones.

I like the petite body frame of Miku she appears quite tiny I guess, especially her upper body is very thin in comparison with her arms. despite from her small size, the body of this figure is sculped in a very detailed way. Other details like the tatoo with her name on the left arm and painted fingernails are giving this figure the final touch, I can’t provide close up shots since my macro lens died at the beginning of the shooting. This figure also looks great from the backside.

Outfit

The face isn’t very special, but her outfit and her pose are. Miku wears a sleeveless slighty light grey school uniform shirt with an high collar and a green neck tie around her neck. The wrinkles on the shirt and the skirt look very cool and the dark grey shading on the shirt looks great.

Her skirt is really short and because of that her striped pantsu flashes from many angles, (nice!).
The skirt can be casted off in case you want to display her like that. The panties are very low-cut  and so the half or even less of her butt isn’t covered. While the shirt has a pearl effect, the black skirt and the high latex boots are very glossy. GSC and the sculptor Akeji did a great job with the details and the flow of her outfit, it accentuates the dynamic appearance of her pose very well.

There are a lot of small and interesting details printed all over her dress which lets Miku lat type appear like a detailed figure, there were made are bigger figures with less details, I have to say.
The thigh high boots of her have a very glossy finish and a funny green sole, I guess its hard to put on these boots, I also think that they would collect a lot of sweat inside during a concert XD.

Final Words

I don’t own many GSC figures, I only have (3!) scale figures from them so far, but Hatsune Miku lat-type version is a very well made figure, she’s my second favorite from GSC in my collection.

The detailed outfit looks really great with the wrinkles, the shading and the small prints on it.
This Miku also has a great and dynamic looking pose, also her petite body is very well sculpted.
Acessoires like two nice bases, mics and optional glasses are nice extras this figure comes with.
One thing I could complain about is her small size, in real life she would only be around 1,40 ;D.

Anyway Im happy with this figure, even though I considered to cancel my preorder a few times.
If this review made you slightly interestered in the Hatsune Miku – lat type version, you can still get her for around 4080 Yen at AmiAmi and the other shops, she’s worth the money.

other reviews can be found at

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