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.