Akatsuki – Log Horizon – Aquamarine

Some time ago, I’ve gotten this figure portraying a cute ninja, Log Horizon’s Akatsuki made by Aquamarine.

Another figure from the past, but this year figure releases are even more unreliable than 2020, so it can’t be helped. I coincidentally received this figure from my friend Miette. When he gave me this figure, I didn’t even watch Log Horizon at that time, but some months later I did…

Geez, I really tried liking Log Horizon, I watched two seasons, some parts of the audience think it’s great, other parts say it’s boring. It was unfortunately not to my liking, for me Log Horizon basically is like Gintama, just without good comedy and the epic action arcs. Log Horizon is from the days were MMO players were shunned otaku, nowadays playing games is nothing odd anymore and socially accepted in the younger generations, so a few parts about defending gaming feel out of time.

Log Horizon has excellent world building, but in the end suffers from a too big cast of characters no one really needs (those kids argh!) The core characters offered more entertainment, but didn’t have enough screentime.

I prefer a more straightforward isekai setting, mainstream like Sword Art Online, which of course has it’s own share of problems, like ridiculously hateful villains and man, that author has problems to keep his rape fantasies for himself.

Akatsuki has a cute appearance, albeit her personality is a lot more serious than that. She is a bit above average in her assassins character class, but suffers from low self esteem, she also has problems to get close to other people. In the flow of the story, she becomes more confident. because of her size and cute looks, other people tease her or try to put her in cute looking clothes. Shiroe, the main character in Log Horizon (when the damn kids weren’t there). Early on Akatsuki likes to be close to him, you could say that both are friends, but she wants to be of use to him and there is some romantic interest.

Akatsuki was released in December 2015, she is scaled 1/7 and measures 19 cm, because her character is depicted as small that is about right. As already mentioned she was manufactured by the now deceased Aquamarine. Amasu was in charge of sculpting her. Back then she merely cost 13.000 Yen.

I’m really curious what has been happening behind the scenes with Aquamarine, I mean how can a sub label company from Good Smile Company can end up in bankrupt. Isn’t there some kind of support from the mother company? Some other GSC sub labels are so small that they probably can’t exist on their own. But Aquamarine actually manufactured and planned around 147 figures, most of them were very good.

Fortunately most pending figure projects have been taken over by GSC, which again is odd, but that’s business.

Even when I can’t appreciated the origin of Akatsuki, the figure is quite nice to look at.
With her cute face with the friendly expression Akatsuki puts a smile on my face. The sculpted stubs nose is truly cute and goes well with her slightly parted lips.I really like her dark purple hair with the long ponytail and the interesting design of the strands at the front of her head, they remind me of cutted paper stripes.

The figure is dressed in a ninja outfit, it only makes sense that the chosen colors are low profile and stealth. A combination of anthracite, olive green and red, as the only popping color on Akatsuki.

The outfit is nicely designed and looks great, there are details like the small armor bits and other smaller details. The cargo pants are bulky, the white belt is a nice color highlight at her feet she has antique looking shinobu shoes. The tiny bag and weapon holster at the back give everything a complete feel and finish.

Those detached sleeves reveal a bit of skin, can’t be a bishoujo figure without a little bit of that. She has the standard ninja weapons, a laito and some daggers, those daggers can be placed into Akatsuki’s hand, but fall off easily. Aside from that everything is nice made with attention to detail.

In summary, this figure of Akatsuki with her petite build, the nicely designed and naturally styled Shinobu outfit is a great figure. Her simply adorable face is a very cute. it’s a nice figure with a very good quality.