While Ga-rei Zero’s storyline follows Kagura’s maturation, Yomi is the most important character in the show. She is the only character to appear in each of the anime’s episodes and she is the epicenter or instigator of every major event that occurs. While Kagura is a simplistic, one-dimensional character who exists in the anime mainly because she exists in the manga, Yomi is far more complicated and nuanced. She is a dedicated hunter of evil spirits, a confident and expert warrior, a mentor, sister, and surrogate mother to Kagura, the heir to her family’s legacy and leadership, a ruthless psychopath, a sadistic murderer, a physical and emotional cripple, and a teenaged girl searching for her life’s path. Kagura’s loss of innocence is a core component of the plot, but by the series’ end Yomi has tallied the longest butcher’s bill, and has lost so much more than her friend.
With a main cast of at least a half dozen characters, the show has to cover a lot of ground, and consequently tries to pack too much material into twelve episodes. Ga-rei Zero would have been much better served if it had been a 24-episode show. As it is, Yomi’s development seems occassionally arbitrary and, like Kagura’s evolution, is not always convincing.
This figure is of course the counterpart to Kagura and is produced by MegaHouse in 1/8 scale. Like Kagura, she doesn’t have many detachable parts; her entire right hand can be removed and replaced by an alternate empty hand. Presumably her sword is the Shishiou, her family’s weapon.
Yomi is looking back over her shoulder, which limits the angles from which she can be displayed. On the plus side, since her gaze is directed downwards, it means that photographs of her face have to be taken at a low angle and thus good pantyshots are very easy to get. Yomi’s school uniform also abets such lechery, as it is agreeably abbreviated.
Like Kagura, paintwork is pretty good. Yomi has a dark color scheme which is executed nicely but isn’t going to raise excitement levels.
Yomi’s face isn’t entirely accurate to the anime; it’s overly broad and her eyes are set wide apart, giving her a cat-like appearance. She’s smiling in an enigmatic way, and the sculptor gave her defined lips, of which I’m of two minds. Her face looks good from some angles and from others, she looks a bit simian. Or extraterrestrial.
I can’t beef about the rest of her body though; she’s got a great pair of legs.
I’ve heard some people say that Mio from K-On! resembles Yomi. Being entirely unfamiliar with K-On!, I’ll leave that argument to those that would know.
Yomi’s base is a rectangle like Kagura’s, imprinted with part of the show’s tagline. Yomi’s section is printed with a pattern of blue butterflies, the sinister harbingers of evil.
It’s interesting that the tagline was divided the way it was.
To be honest, I doubt I would’ve gotten either of these figures if I were unfamiliar with Ga-rei Zero, but being that I enjoyed the anime a great deal, I’m pretty happy with both of them. Yomi is one of my favorite characters in anime, a rare example of a complex character who is both good and evil, a true tragic heroine.
I don’t listen to a great deal of anime music, but Ga-rei Zero’s ending theme is one of my favorites. It’s a haunting rock song sung by Yomi’s voice actress, and you can listen to it here.
A quality equal to Kagura, i think it’s cute in it’s simplicity.
It’s true that her face could seem to be odd on particular angles.
I enjoy a lot the complementarity of the 2 bases that make a pleasant ground.
She is simple too but I prefer this one, maybe for her hair, and her face. It’s nice the base complementarity ^^
Her hair seems too static, but it’s only an issue when viewed from the rear. The figure is nice, but again, the face puts me off for some reason.
Much more lovely then Kagura, but then like you I’m a biased Yomi lover. >_>
>> Lylibellule
I have the feeling I probably should’ve taken more pictures of Kagura and Yomi together; they look much more interesting when they’re both in the picture. Individually, they look a bit plain.
>> Leonia
I prefer this one for her personality! Yomi is an awesome character; there’s a great scene in the anime between her and her fiance where Kagura is trying to help both of them get through a rocky spot in their relationship. You get to see a lot of Yomi’s pluckiness and assertiveness in that exchange.
>> Guy
Yeah, it’s not the most accurate representation of Yomi (well, actually, I guess it is, technically, since Yomi only has like two figures). I think she would’ve looked better if they’d narrowed down her head.
>> Ashlotte
Indeed! I wonder if Yamato will chuck out a Yomi figure to match the Kagura that they’ve put on display; it’d make sense for them to do so. (But then again, it’d make sense for GSC to make an Itsuki Kannagi figure and it’d make sense for MegaHouse or Griffon to make an Irma figure and it’d make sense for Alter to make a Subaru (from Beat Blades Haruka) figure. -_- )
gota love yumi a lot more than her counter part, she is beautifully sculpted. I do agree that her face is a little broader than in the anime, but simplicity is good in this case, since that’s how she looked through out most of the show until the very end.
and I do agree that the anime would’ve been alot more developed in many ways if its 2X eps long. they spent 2/3 of the anime on the development of relationship between yomi and kagura but not quite enough on yomi otherwise..also the beginning part of that wired flashback involving yomi and kagura’s dad is a little confusing to me..oh and have you started on the manga yet?
To be honest I am not really into her face.It looks kinda weird to me.
I totally dig the seperated punchline though.Thats actually a pretty cool feature and well probably means something more to someone who knows the series ^^
>> lee
Err, dang, I never even noticed this comment until now. My bad >.< Yeah, I wasn't too thrilled with the plot development in the middle of the show. The show had this awesome opening and then they threw the brakes and crippled the show's pacing. I guess they had to talk a little about the characters to get us to care about them but I would've preferred less fluffy exposition and more action and drama in the middle part of the show. I haven't yet started on the manga, and being that I'm not hearing the greatest things about it and that I've already read the plotline on Wikipedia, I'm not sure that I will. I wonder how the manga artist feels about how the anime adaptation turned out? >> Blowfish
Indeed it does! I wish they’d played up that aspect a bit more than they did. Yeah, the face does look a bit strange. I see that Max Factory just announced a couple of Ga-rei Figmas so it’s good to see the show getting more love, maybe Alter or MF will take a shot at chucking out some scale figures of Yomi and Kagura, too.