It’s probably hard to believe, but this actually is my last Super Sonico figure review for the time being, I have no more figures of her on Preorder. The only one I might consider to get in the future, at the moment is the attractive prototype from Kaitendoh.  What would be a better way to conclude this than with a big and cute figure of the now so popular anime culture Idol.

Orchid Seed did a great job with all their adaptions of the Sonico character, Wing, ALTER and Native put up a good competition in the past and recently, but I like their figures the most.

Orchid Seed also made this Super Sonico Cheer ★ Girl version, also known as Cheerleader version, it was released in early October 2014. The figure is scaled 1/6 with an overall height of 30 cm (with pompoms included) with her big head and buxom body, she looks quite big.

The figure was made by Tanaka Masanori  a rather active sculptor of Orchid Seed figures.
The Cheer ★ Girl is based on an illustration from Tsuji Santa, actually one of my favorite Super Sonico illustrations when it comes to amount of details and a cute facial expression.

There are several parts included, optional hands and soft loose socks parts and also a cast off option, so you have different ways to display her. The top opens at the backside, the skirt opens at the side.You can take off the head, but the figure doesn’t separate at the waist.

Sonico always has the same headphones, but Orchid Seed did a good job in letting it look detailed and convincing, she also has her usual shoulder long hairstyle. On this figure though, there are few changes, small strands flowing around her main hair part like tentacles, the different sizes and movements make her hair really interesting, the fringe is hanging deeply over eyes that gives Sonico a rather wild touch.

This Sonico figure has a cute face with really big, lively eyes, her eyes actually aren’t pink, they remind me more of a thin layer balsamic vinegar. At such a size it is to be expected that the facial details get more attention, nevertheless the details like eyelashes look great on her. Sonico has little pointy nose and a deeply engraved mouth with upper front teeth line.

The happy expressions gives her a youthful and cheerful appeal, I really love how she looks.

Her outfit is the classic cheerleader costume known through American sports. Her outfit is a skimpy type of shirt which consist of blue and white colors, her collar has a nice, thin red stripe. The shirt is closed with a big knot, it keeps Sonico’s treasures in place, when she jumps around like that. Her navy blue and white skirt has a very pretty design and good details.

For another sporty option, you can choose to display Sonico with hands or with pompoms. The yellow things look good and give the figure a color boost. The hands have  detailed fingers with painted nails, the detaching points are hidden by the wrist decorations of each hand.

With Sonico making a jump into midair the figure is a really dynamic one, flowing strands, flowing pompoms and bouncing boobs, make her look very energetic and cheerful.

Sonico is a beautiful cheerleader girl, her nice long legs have muscular thighs and also her stomach looks very well trained. She’s not as chubby as recent figures of her. It makes sense, since you can’t be a Cheerleader without physical fitness and stamina, during her workout  Sonico lost a few of her cute pounds. Still Sonico shows an overall excellent sculpted body.

The girl is wearing fancy pantsu with several lines of detailed frills and lovely laces at the outside, it a really cute design. She also has nice looking white sport shoes, you can either display her with her socks or use the soft loose socks, which are simple to de- and attach.

The pose portrays the figure during the ending phase of a little jump, her skirt and the pompoms are lifted up and face upwards. It is really sweet and funny how Sonico’s boobs are bouncing around in midair. Even without her top they still look convincing in shape and size.

The figure has a nice pair of breasts with slightly elevated rosebuds, which are painted slightly darker, I really like the color that has been used. While a few figures of her show her with larger breast, this Cheer Girl version is true to her size as she was introduced as character.

Final Words

Orchid Seed managed to create another high quality big scale figure of the Super Sonico character. there were already a number of great Sonico figures made by them. There was Super Sonico as flustered Rockstar, dilligent nurse and contemplative bikini model.

In this adaption Sonico was portrayed as sporty, buxom cheerleader with a dynamic pose and a super happy smile. It is a really cute figure with a lively atmosphere. The 1/6 scale suits her nicely, her body looks fantastic with all the details of her sculpt and she has beautiful boobs.

The final figure shows a commendable quality, everything is smooth with no edges or obvious seam lines with two metal pegs and reinforced base she stands pretty solid on one leg.

I hope you liked the pictures of the happy figure and maybe the review was informative.

When you think you have seen everything in anime Sekai de Ichiban Tsuyoku Naritai! will disabuse you. SekaTsuyo is a 12 episode long  anime which aired during the Anime Fall Season 2013 from October till December. It was produced by Arms who always combine fanservice and fighting in their shows, Maoyuu Maou Yuusha might be a popular exception.

The show combines the world of women wrestling and Idol industry. Someday everybody learned that WWF and the likes are scripted events and no real tournaments where the best one wins. Also women wrestling always appeared a bit silly as far as I remember.
In SekaTsuyo they portray women wrestling like a real sport without much of fake events or much *bling bling*, it’s more honest competition than show.

httpvh://youtu.be/Yi_4R9mFeN0

Sakura Hagiwara is 17 and the heroine of this show an honest, cheerful and considerate girl who is part of a large Idol Group called Sweet Diva.  Sakura is a hard working and talented character and so she constantly wins the vote, of being the center girl, very much to  the frustration of her biggest rival and best friend Elena.

One day Sakura and Elena have an appointment in a wrestling gym called Berserk, it was planned that they should be filmed while doing some light training, but after Elena acted a bit disrespectful in the gym which calls the  ger of one of the female wrestlers, Kazama Rio. During a little quarrel between the wrestler Kazama and Elena one thing leaded to another and Kazama insulted Sweet Diva as silly bimbo idols, this offended Sakura with her honor as idol on the line Sakura challenges Kazama to an official match. A quite stupid idea.

Sakura tries her best, but never had a real chance of winning. After her quite humiliating defeat Sakura announces to take a break from Idol business, to fully concentrate on becoming an professional wrestler until she had beaten the girl who kicked her ass in the recent event and insulted  her and her idol friends. The manager of Berserk allows her to train in the gym to become a pro wrestler, but the more experienced wrestlers see her as a real eyesore.

Unwillingly a coach offers to give her some advice and coaching, but instead of starting slowly the coach treats her really rough. Nevertheless, the coach acknowledged Sakura’s potential and gives her a tough training shedule, as top Idol she already has a certain level of fitness, but some quite hard months awaited the girl.

After many months of training Sakura has a final exam or something like that before she will be allowed to participate in official matches. She has to endure a barbaric ritual and really suffered this day. I never felt so bad for a girl in an anime, the duration made it even worse, also that Sakura never complained, she blindly endured it, even though she was in pain and quite vocal about it. At this point I thought about dropping this anime, since this scene looked so cruel.

As she is allowed to take part in matches she unintentionally plays safe and just gives up the match, after she is in too much pain, that this won’t get her anywhere is no secret.

Sakura’s cute cries of agony are actually rather hot, but when you see the submission moves (which means the painful bending and stretching of limbs where the opponent can hardly escape.), you can easily feel sorry for her and start rooting for her to leave the ring in one piece.

Just from listening the show could be mistaken for an hentai, a really grim one. I bet my parents thought that I watched hentai instead of an wrestling anime.

That the fights often have a sensual sometimes arousing outcome, is made entirely on purpose. Sakura’s cries, moaning, heavy breathing can be rather exciting in combination with her  pretty body. It might have something in common with hentai, but the horny monsters are replaced with rough wrestler women XD, don’t get me wrong there is really no sexual harassment.

The targeted audience of this anime are males. Well, there are a few shower scenes, yet most of the fanservice stems from the tight, partially skimpy outfits of the wrestlers. Sakura’s outfit in particular, which seems like a tribute to Gunbuster is showing a lot of cleavage and skin.

Most of the girls look very attractive in close up or portray scenes, the animation style really shines.  They have minimal more muscles than the usual anime girl, which actually looks very hot. I think Sakura and most of her wrestling buddies look gorgeous.

The level of violence is rather mild, there is a only little blood, one broken bone. Also kicks and punches in the face are pretty rare, the worst scenes are  the submission moves, it’s so painful to watch and a Sakura in tears makes it even worse. I’m quite familiar with stretching pains and twisted tendons, it fucking hurts. Even from just watching  it, it hurt. At one point, I just wanted her to quit wrestling forever. Watching girls in pain is something I don’t really like in general.

Many frustrating, unsuccesful fights later, one experienced wrestler shows a heart and offers to improve Sakura’s fighting style, as I’ve witnessed this certain training, I felt really sick and angry.

The best moment of SekaTsuyo is the episode where Sakura finally gets rewarded for all the hardships and pain she suffered  until now in pro wrestling. The suffering before really made sense at this point, all the sympathy the viewer hopefully built up for Sakura was unloade in this moment. It is the kind of feeling wrestling or other sport fans have when their favorite overcomes a tough fight, match or whatever. It was a touching moment, I felt so proud of her.

The show does a good job in pacing the story over it’s 12 episodes, on the downside the anime is so strongly focused on the wrestling and the events in the gym. Well, sometimes it is showing what Sakura’s idol friends are doing. There was much more potential in it  than just that. Where it falls short is the portrayal of some free time activity or in telling the viewer a bit more about the other characters, but the 12 episode limitation prevented such things from happening.

 Sekai de Ichiban Tsuyoku Naritai! has an interesting, refreshing concept of a sport themed anime, it features a charming main character with both an attractive body and a likeable personality. It was fun, often painful to follow Sakura until she gained her victory.

With attractive girls and a nice animation style the show also has some good eye candy.
When this anime would have been about males, in all honesty I hadn’t watched this show.
The wrestling moves are portrayed in a convincing way, the submission moves in particular where quite detailed. yet it appears to be more realistic than the wrestling fake on television.

When you can’t watch girls in pain, stay away from this anime, it won’t do you any good.

I recently watched a very nice anime called Chiayafuru, in which I got interested in after I’ve seen a screencap of it. Without further ado I took a first look at it. Chiayafuru was produced by Madhouse Studios and VAP and the anime aired from 5th October 2011 till 28th March 2012.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxebYxY9NXE

As you might hear it has an awesome opening “Youthful” performed by 99RadioService, not only has it a nice fresh sound, even the lyrics are lovely and captures the theme from the anime.

The story centers about Chihaya and the adventures of her high school life when she finds herself drawn to the traditional japanese game Karuta. It’s an action orientated kind of memory game for two players. A third person reads the poem out loud and then the players have to identify the poem on the cards which are placed in front of them by it’s first few words and grabs it before the opponent does. There are certain rules to it, but I won’t emberrass myself and go into detail about it, because I actually haven’t really understand it myself that well.

Karuta is a fascinating yet weird game, especially if you never seen it before, I found it rather rude how these poem cards were thrown around, but you should see it for yourself.

The Chihayafuru anime pays attention to present the karuta game as accurate as possible.

Chihaya is the charming heroine of this show, she is a cheerful, straight forward girl. She is not exceptional good at anything. In the anime it is often said that she is an airhead, but that actually isn’t the case, she’s just a bit different overall. As kid Chihaya dreamed that her sister who works as a model becomes a well known international top model. But soon she realizes that pursuing another ones dreams is wrong and she starts to find her own. Her whole family seems to be focused on her big sisters carreer and forgetting about the second daughter, throughout the show I felt sorry for Chihaya that no one in her family seems to care about her.

After a a few impressions from her present life, the story takes the viewer back to Chihaya’s elementary school past where she met her first friends Taichi and Arata and how she found interest in playing Karuta with them. The backflash episodes were directed very well with a deep atmosphere I actually got addicted to the anime quite quick because of the great introduction.

After that first arc we are back to Chihaya’s Highschool life, where she wants to form a Karuta club. Her first member is the childhood friend Taichi who she haven’t seen for a long time. Their other friend Arata moved away and plays no bigger role for once. After acquiring a room the Karuta club is starting to recruit new members and the build up part of Chihayafuru continues.

Getting new members for a niche thing like karuta turns out extremely difficult and so Chihaya’s way of recruiting members is not very sensitive. Ones she grabs one with a slightly interest in karuta she drags them all the way to the clubroom. She exceptional rough with the male candidates and gives them strange names. After the very well directed intro episodes intro episodes these new character introducing episodes were another great part of this anime. As new memers, Kanade, Tsotuma and Nishida join the ambitious karuta club. I might be a bit biased because of her enchanting femininity, but I liked Kanade the most out of these three

Kanade is a fan of traditional Japanese literature and clothes, she loves karuta poems for the thing they are and not to play a game. Actually most of the players don’t give a damn of this old poems. Kanade joins the karuta club after she made Chihaya accept certain conditions.

After hard weeks of practice, the karuta club takes part in their first national matches and don’t perform that badly for their first time, they even gained a trophy for their achievements.

It’s nice to see how passionate Chihaya is pursuing her dream to become a good and popular karuta player, but after a lot of progress in her game and several wins of matches, Chihaya and her friends from the karuta club, they also get in contact with the taste of defeat, as they face superior players, it comes to light that talent and passion aren’t enough anymore.

Since karuta is a niche sport in Japan and is also portrayed like that in this show, Chihayafuru can be partially considered as emotional sports anime, like Ookiku Furikabutte or Bamboo Blade, but on the bottom line it has more to offer like, a good balance of story, drama, comedy and character development. I enjoyed to follow Chihaya and the other characters in this show.

The animation style of Chihayafuru is very fluid and appealing, it has the look of these heavily saturated, sparkly and fluffy shoujo mangas where the characters have glossy eyes and strong blush marks on the cheeks. It strongly reminded me of the the previously mentioned Ookiku Furikabutte, Kaichou Wa Maid-Sama! and also Kimi ni Todoke.

Chihayafuru is a very enjoyable and interesting 25 episode long anime, when watching it I couldn’t get enough of it. It is a kind of Josei anime, which means that it is ought for older girls, but I would think it is watchable for both genders since it is not actually girly. And even when you are not the friend of sport related anime  in general, Chihayafuru could be something for you, since the anime does a very good job in portaying it’s characters and in presenting nice and detailed character interactions aside from the thrilling matches.

The second season of Chihayafuru started recently, so maybe this would be the right time to give the first season of this very nice anime a try. In case you haven’t already done that.