Two weeks left in the month and I have little indication that my June preorders are actually going to ship in June, so it’s back to the backlog again. This time we’ll look at Meiya Mitsurugi, a character I know nothing about from Muv-Luv Alternative, a series I know nothing about. Wikipedia – the indisputably definitive source of information for all things in this galaxy – tells me that Muv-Luv is linked to the better-known game and anime Kimi ga Nozomu Eien. How one takes a series from a standard contemporary Japanese school-based love comedy to a science fiction drama starring young girls in impossibly tight combat suits battling against alien hordes is beyond me.
This particular version of Meiya is in 1/8 scale from Good Smile Company, and that leads to my biggest complaint about this figure: it’s really small. It’s certainly the smallest 1/8 scale figure I own, and here she is next to Liu Meifeng, whom everyone has:
Other than that, though, Good Smile Company did a pretty good job with Meiya. The idiosyncrasies of the character design have been replicated very well, including the sharply angled eyes, the very strange bangs, and the ribbon-like tresses of her hair.
Good Smile Company has released a couple more figures from Muv-Luv, but I’ve held off on buying them due to their short stature. I guess I might pick them up if I can get them cheaply locally, but a standard 1/8 scale figure is about as small a size as I like.
I do own one other Meiya figure, which is colossally larger than Good Smile Company’s version, and also features the transparent piloting suit, which I like better than this black suit. I mean, black latex is pretty cool, but something about a transparent combat uniform elevates the character design from very cool to transcendant awesomeness.
This figure seems to have sort of come and gone without much of a ripple, but I like it a lot, small size and all. Muv-Luv Alternative has some of the coolest character designs around, and I hope that figure makers take another look at it and its spinoff series (particularly Total Eclipse) for future sources of inspiration.
What? Its linked to Kimi ga Nozomu Eien`? o.0
I never really liked the getup of the Muv LuV girls and thats all i know about the series ^^;;
very anime-like – posted at https://twitter.com/animefigures
Yeah, I don’t know really see the connection there either, but apparently the main characters show up in Muv-Luv Alternative. Strange, that.
I love the Muv-Luv pilot outfits XD Especially the transparent ones, they’re so wacky weird that you have to wonder who comes up with those sorts of ideas.
Actually, What Maiya is wearing isn’t a combat suit, it’s a pilot suit. Most of the combat in muv-luv is done in giant mecha!!!
Throw in another item into the WTF-meter.
The link to Kimi ga nozomu eien is a single character I believe (and they’re made by the same company) story-wise, they’re completely separate, although the original muv-luv was half standard school eroge, half alien killing, ass kicking stuff.
They used the “alternate reality” sci-fi trick for that one.
Oh, and one more word of warning: Muv luv (and Alternative, I believe) is brutal. A “everyone dies painfully” kind of brutal!!
Ah, right. You know, I’ve seen some of the Muv-Luv CGs and I can’t actually remember what the mecha they drive look like.
That’s a shame about the deaths and pain. I remember reading that one girl dies in particularly brutal fashion (I remember that some players were a bit disturbed by it) but everyone dying is sad. I’d much rather have the girls live happily ever after. Or live as the playthings of the evil aliens ever after. Either is good, but dying isn’t fun.
Volks have a series of muvluv mecha on sale on their store under the A3 line. They’re pretty generic.
And I think unlimited did have a happy ending, tho some people still die horribly. But then you can’t expect much when the writers makes the childhood friend (and main love interest in the “normal” game” into a brain in a jar from the start!!
That’s pretty cool. And different. I’m liking this series more and more the more I hear about it. Somebody needs to turn this into an anime series, it’s got all the staples, then: cute girls, hot pilot suits, giant fighting robots, and a brain in a jar.