Lacia – 2018 Black Monolith Deployed ver. – Beatless – GSC

This Lacia – 2018 Black Monolith Deployed version figure was made by Good Smile Company. The figure was sculpted by Kamiture Sayoko who already sculpted a handful of recent figures. There were two versions available, the Lacia 2018 Black Monolith Deployed version was sold for 18.333 Yen, the simple Lacia 2018 figure 10.926 Yen.Since I was a big fan of Beatless and Lacia I’ve bought the elaborate figure.

The author of Beatless is Hase Satoshi, albeit the more popular illustrator redjuice was in charge of the character design for it and Guilty Crown or movies like Gyakusatsu Kikan, Harmony or Shisha no Teikoku.

2018 I watched the Beatless anime. It paired Boy meets Girl with an ambitious sci-fi story about the future of artificial intelligence and super computers. Main character Arato meets Lacia. Boy meets Girl, lets be honest, these kind of shows are nice and sweet.

A great watch, I already watched it 3 times, I won’t pretend that I understood every part of the scientific topics this anime addressed, but that didn’t prevent me from cheering for the kind, naive boy to get a happy end with the enchanting cyborg girlfriend Lacia. Lacia was voiced by Nao Touyama, every character she lends her voice to sounds like an angel, also in this anime it was no exception, Lacia is a charming and easygoing robot.

It was actually hilarious how Arato didn’t discriminate between cyborg and humans in his daily life.

In the world of the anime, hIE’s, human-like robots, which are mainly used as public and personal servants in society. Nevertheless, more advanced hIE’s are made in secret. Lacia is a fully cybernetic organism in shape of a gorgeous girl. She is no cunning machine, instead she is extremely charming and has an own personality. She and 4 other advanced hIE’s escaped from the MemeFrame Corporation. A certain event brought her to Arato and she starts living together with him and his lively little sister Yuka.

The show had a few production problems, to fill the gaps there were at least three recap episodes and the end was made after a few months of waiting. The worth of an anime should not be measured by such things, when watched as a whole Beatless was a nice anime.

Lacia is scaled 1/8 and measures 200 mm on her own when subtracting the base. This figure was cursed with a number of smaller and larger delays, in the end I have been overjoyed to finally receive her this April 2021.

When I have to assemble more than 3 parts on a figure I already start to become nervous, to assemble Lacia and the Black Monolith base, I had to put at least 16 together parts, before I could display the beautiful figure as a whole. The pillar parts are springy, there is a certain risk of breaking things off when you don’t handle the figure carefully enough. Currently I have her displayed on a save spot on my desk. Carrying the figure around too much would be a bad idea, since the connections aren’t the sturdiest I assume. At least Lacia has a metal peg.

Good Smile Company was kind enough to provide a simple round base alternative in case the customer feels uneasy with the bigger and complex base.Anyway I bought the elaborate version because it looks damn great when the figure is combined with Black Monolith Deployed base. It is a huge pillar in the middle surrounded by 6 smaller “wings”.

The part in the middle is especially well made, it features a complex design it’s painted in black and silver with some shading effects here and there and a few clear parts are also part of it’s design. Lacia is placed in the middle of everything, with her pose it appears as if she would drag the device after her with just one hand.

The Beatless light novel features a more mature look than the anime, it’s a drastic difference, I would dare to say. Nevertheless, I was fan of the cute anime designs. In this figure adaptation Lacia has a nicely chiseled face with pretty lips. Her expression is stoic and serious, a smile would probably the wrong choice when she carrying around the huge weapon to kick some ass. Unfortunately, this Lacia figure is a little less kawaii, still a bit of cuteness has been added to the figures face.

Compared to her body the head is relatively big, the eyes are very nice and show a strong expression, you might have noticed that the color scheme is a bit unsaturated, but it’s just following the character design.

Her lavender purple hair is painted with a beautiful gradient to blue effect. It’s so nicely sculpted that it is hard to believe that she is actually scaled 1/8. Her futuristic battle suit features a combination of shiny black and white colors and it is also a bit skin revealing, it’s a tight suit and compliments the figures bodyline very well.
I won’t go into detail about every single part of it, it simply looks very well done and appealing.

I really like the fingerless gloves and shiny black thigh highs. Oh and she also wears great looking shoes.
What I always liked about 1/8 scaled figures were the separately sculpted fingers, they are so adorable.

In terms of quality there is not a single thing to complain about, it’s a great example of figure manufacturing. Surely they could have made this figure at 1/7 scale, what is the standard nowadays anyway, but the already big base had probably consumed more than 50 cm from the left to right corner. 1/8 scale is fine for her, they put a lot of effort into her sculpt.

About the base again, it’s a bit worrisome that the black pieces are springy and not as stiff as I would like them to be, but that are the limits of ABS material when being turned into thin plastic shapes. GSC gave a light appearance more priority than rock solid base stability, which is all right. Also in case something might happen, the base and it’s parts should be easy to fix.

I will reveal a bit of truth with you, for me there are two reasons that make me decide to buy figures or not, either they simply look great or I’m a fan of the game /anime character. The problems is that I become especially picky with figures of characters I really like, I’d rather buy no figure at all instead of having a so so adaptation of my favorite character.

Fortunately I really like how this figure of Lacia turned out, she looks wonderful.

Sensei Tier at Tentacle Armada also reviewed the first Lacia from 2012, man figure manufacturing took such a big leap in those 9 years. He also reviewed the 2018 Black Monolith Deployed ver. without black monolith deployed, make sure to check his thoughts on the figure as well.