I’m not really big on collecting full sets of characters just for the sake of doing so. Oh sure, every now and then I see a set of figures that I like, but most of the time, I don’t feel much compulsion to get all the figures in a series if they aren’t each individually appealing. I’ve got three of Alter’s Ikkitousen figures but I’m missing Chouun, I’m missing one of Volks’s Super Robot Girls (uhh, the one with the horn sprouting from her forehead, I forget her name), and I’m missing Rei and Misato out of Kotobukiya’s 1/6 scale Eva girl lineup. I’ve had two of the three Muv-Luv figures that Good Smile Company produced for a while now, and as lolis aren’t really my thing, I wasn’t planning on buying Kasumi. However, BBTS had her on sale for thirty bucks and as I was planning on getting something else there, I decided to toss her in my cart. For thirty bones, I don’t mind getting a figure if she’s wearing a tight, shiny bodysuit. By the way, you’ll be seeing that something else that I bought in my next figure review, I think.
Kasumi Yashiro is a character in the sci-fi h-game Muv-Luv Alternative. I’ve yet to play the game, though I think Amaterasu Translations intends to do a translation patch so perhaps I’ll get the chance to do so in the future. Taking a glance through the game’s CGs, she seems to often be seen in the company of Sumika, whose name is curiously an anagram of this blue-haired girl, or in a special room on the 19th floor of an underground military base which houses a brain in a cylinder. Most odd. It also seems that Kasumi Yashiro may not be her actual name. Mysterious!
Like Meiya and Sumika, Kasumi is on the short side of 1/8 scale at a bit over 18 centimeters tall. Good Smile Company seems to have aimed at keeping her at a certain height rather than keeping her in scale with the two other girls, because she looks peculiarly large next to Sumika and especially Meiya. As the token loli, Kasumi is supposed to be shorter than most of the game’s cast so her head here is enormous. She probably should’ve been a centimeter or two shorter but as I don’t have the girls clustered together on the shelf, her size mismatch doesn’t bother me all that much.
To add to her loli-ness, she’s got this stuffed rabbit. At least, I think it’s a rabbit. There’s a peg that sprouts from the palm of her left head that’s meant to keep the rabbit secured, but it’s kind of a pain to get it to fit properly.
Kasumi’s uniform is a bit more conservative than the other Muv-Luv girls’, but it’s still skintight and looks pretty cool. Not that she really has much in the way of womanly characteristics, though. Of the young-looking Muv-Luv characters, I think Inia is still my favorite.
Kasumi’s face is fairly close to her character in the game, though her eyes look more typical of the usual anime style than Meiya’s unique design. She also has big angular hair, similar to Meiya’s.
She has the same base as Meiya and Sumika, though hers is colored powder blue. It also has a peg sprouting from its side, and I’m not sure what it’s for; there doesn’t seem to be a socket in the other two characters’ bases for it to lock into. Perhaps there was something in the box that I missed.
She reminds me a bit of Sora Kasugano, even though they were made by different manufacturers. They’re around the same size and both carry around stuffed bunnies, though Kasumi’s is far cooler and cuter. Sora’s got a much nicer butt, though. Sexier hips, too. And solid abs. You know, I’ve had Sora up on the high shelf for a while, and I’ve almost forgotten what a good figure it is. Though I’m kinda expecting her TV show to suck … I mean, it’s gonna be about a frail girl who wants to sex up her brother. That’d be weird as hell in any other medium but in anime, that sounds like a recipe for suck. I hope it turns out good, though, since Sora is really cute.
Technical qualities are pretty good; I don’t see any sculpting problems, and the paint application looks nice. Color-wise, she’s got a pretty simple design, so there’s not a lot to talk about there; her hair’s got some nice shading and her uniform has an attractive latex-like gloss to it. It looks good but the overall effect is pretty subdued, pretty low-key, and perched on a shelf, she doesn’t catch my eye like Sumika does.
I wouldn’t have bought this figure at full price, or if I weren’t a fan of the Muv-Luv character designs, or if she were wearing a long black dress rather than a latex combat suit, but since none of these things are true, I don’t mind owning her. She’s not entirely my type – I tend to not dig the young loli thing much – and while I’m not much of a completionist, I’ll admit that the three GSC Muv-Luv girls together do look right when they’re together. So since she was cheap, I’m pretty happy to have her. Hopefully somebody will continue making Muv-Luv figures – preferably Yui, Criska, and Inia from Total Eclipse – but I’m not holding my breath.
Incidentally, looking at my pictures of Meiya and Sumika kinda make me cringe. I would really like to re-do my old pictures but I have my hands full generating new posts without going back and revising old content.
This picture is by Bou and comes from the game’s CG sequences and is borrowed from Danbooru. I thought it looked pretty nice so I’m putting it here.
I’ll include this picture from my recent doujinshi post since it has Kasumi giving Criska a hug. I’m pretty sure Kasumi doesn’t show up in Total Eclipse but I can’t deny she looks good here.
Yeah first! When they make a figure of Marimo, I’ll be excited lol.
Haha, they should do that, with swappable heads. Or maybe Max Factory can do a Figma, since they’ve already done one of Meiya. Kaiyodo has that Revoltech with a urine accessory, so I don’t think it would be much of a stretch to include a guro head.
I like how the :< face look from closeup but you can't really see it from a distance. I'm not a fan of the black bits around her neck and face like that on Saber Alter, it looks like they have sideburns :S
You and I are very alike in that we'll collect only the figures we like from a set but won't mind adding those missing if they can be had for cheap. I actually came across a very cheap Senhime the other day but held back because there really was quite a few things I wasn't too fond of on the figure. I think it depends on the discount though, maybe it wasn't low enough for me to consider the purchase.
I think the only other English-language review of Kasumi I ever saw was up on The Shino, and he mentioned the same thing, that he wasn’t a big fan of the chinstrap. I kinda like it since it gives them sort of a mecha-girl look, but yeah, it does look kinda like they’ve got some sort of weird under-helmet or muttonchops.
Yeah, even if I could get Hattori Hanzou for cheap, I’m not sure if I’d pick her up because I’m not as fond of her character design. Though I gotta admit, when she got down on her knees in front of Senhime in the anime, that was pretty hot. Incidentally, I really did not think that Senhime would turn out to be a dominatrix.
Ah so this is the flat chested loli you were talking about, totally not who I was thinking of. But now that I’ve actually found who I was thinking of, she’s not flat, but she does have an enormous stuffed rabbit!
Sora’s definitely surperior, and I hope her show doesn’t suck. IIRC Suzuhira Hiro had a part in designing the characters, and i like her works generally. Anime though… who knows.
It’s too bad Kasumi’s scaled wrong with her peers, if I were collecting a series of figures that were all related and in the same line, i would hope they’d all be scaled at the very least in proportion to eachother.
Ah, yes, I remember that figure. I think I’m passing on it since it’s kinda expensive and I’m thinking it’ll be smaller than what it’s supposed to be, and also because I’m guessing it’ll get tossed into the bargain bin soon and I can pick it up for cheap.
I didn’t actually realize something was awry with the scales until I was looking at the picture on my camera and I was like, “Something ain’t right here.” It’s funny how the longer I stare at that picture with all three figures, the larger Kasumi seems to get.
Yeah, a non-sucky show would be nice. I guess I don’t really watch many of those sorts of shows … uhh, I’m not even sure how you’d classify a show like this. Harem show, maybe? I dunno. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of many harem shows that I like either, so I don’t have a lot of hope for anime Yosuganosora.
Kasumi is really cute. I like how her twin tails spike, and her skin tight suit looks really nice. Her pink rabbit looks both psychotic and cute at the same time. And it’s huge!
Age were at Anime Expo 2010 with Mangagamer and brought along some nice goodies for folks to buy. There’s also been some opinion polls on the mangagamer forum looking for interest in Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien. Depending on how things turn out there may be a possibility of a localised version of Age games being translated and sold. But this is only speculation at this point.
Gah forgot to say – that peg on her base could be for the pink rabbits other hand?
I was really surprised when I heard that Age was going to show up at Anime Expo, particularly since they were going with Mangagamer, who seem to kinda the second English h-game company compared to JAST. I wish that they coulda shown up at Otakon a few weeks later; I definitely would’ve tried to make it to that convention just to see them. And if Mangagamer brings over the sci-fi Muv-Luv games, I’ll definitely be ordering those.
And you’re completely right, the bunny has a socket in the back of its left arm. I overlooked that entirely, so thanks for noticing it.
nice shiny loli, she reminds me a bit of a mantis.
I like her colorsetting and that of her outfit as well as the hard angles of her hair.
As Sloth said, from close up her face looks pretty good but from futher away it appears more unimposing,her eyes from the doujinshi picture look a bit deeper..
Sumika looks very nice,I think she’s my favorite out of these three.
I will check out your review about her later 😉
Yeah, all the Muv-Luv girls kinda have a shiny, insect-like look, don’t they? I think Sumika is my favorite figure out of the three GSC ones as well, though I really like my big Volks Meiya Mitsurugi figure.
Reminds me I need to actually finish playing Muv-luv…Stopped like 1/3rd of the way through the interesting half of the game (IE where all the mechas are at).
I need to go back and play through Zanjibaru so I can write up a coherent plot summary. I’m planning on doing a review of it since I’ve confirmed that all the girls are alive and healthy at the end of the game.
I’m not really sure what the attraction is to Muv Luv figures… I don’t really get it.
I mean, sure they’re wearing skin-tight clothing, but the clothing and character designs seem kinda… plain? Not sure how to put it. And I don’t know, they don’t seem all that sexy to me either.
Is it just a fan-driving fav? I’ve never played the game, so I can’t say I’d be attracted to these figures based on the game. You’ve yet to play it yourself too.
So what’s the attraction?
I like girls in tight latex suits, I like girls in armor, and the Muv-Luv girls fit both bills. I’m more fond of the Total Eclipse designs than the ones in Muv-Luv Alternative, though. Everyone’s got their fetishes … some people like school uniforms (not me), catgirls (not me), tsundere personalities (absolutely, positively not me), some people like headphones (okay, I like those) … I guess it’s personal tastes. Like me, I can’t understand why people like certain things, like the Vocaloid characters, or nendoroids. God I hate nendoroids. My greatest wish for this hobby is not that someone will make an Irma figure nor that Alter will complete the Beat Blades Haruka trio, it’s that I hope someone will fly an airplane right into the nendoroid factory. It would give me so much happiness if GSC had to cash out of the nendoroid business and got bought out by Giga Pulse who would then task their talented, talented sculptors with making the coolest hentai figures of all time. I’m not getting my hopes up, though.
That bunny looks like it came straight out of a Tim Burton’s movie. Killer bunny, ftw! =D
The base reminds me of Alter’s KOS-MOS v4 base with all the hexagons – I love that figure.
Indeed! It would’ve been cool if it had blood dripping out of its mouth, like those Gloomy Bear toys. It would’ve also been cool if she had a plush toy of a BETA alien instead, particularly given what happens to one member of the cast.
Having missed out on Alter’s v4 KOS-MOS, I’m thinking about getting the Figma, even though I’m not a big Figma fan. I kinda wish that figure makers would go back to the episode 1 costume, though, which is my favorite out of all of them.
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Yasumi was a great supporting character when it was time to carry the fight to beat the last boss.
She reminds me of Chihiro in Ef a Tale of the Two. Her personality’s really cute, as she is calm, docile, and has valuable RPG talents when taking on enemies. Her role isn’t as a direct fighter but as a range support character in crucial plot events. Her connection to Kagami Sumika is similar to light and shadow, the same with meiya and her twin sister.
The atmosphere in MLA is very military and survivalist. It’s harsh, unforgiving, and focuses a lot on simplicity, discipline, and courage. The bodysuits are military versions for the pilots to connect to their mechas, which was a neat technological and aesthetic choice. I find that their military uniforms, especially for the women, were also damn sharp.
Thanks for filling in her character background. I’ve yet to play Muv-Luv Alternative, though I’ve heard it’s a good game. I have the feeling it’d be something I’d enjoy, since I like games and anime which build compelling worlds. And that have sexy females in tight suits, I won’t lie about that.
[Spoiler free if you don’t make it a habit of analyzing the data points here and producing a correct inference. Just don’t think too much about about some things if you don’t want to spoil yourself]
In a nutshell, ML A is the trilogy ending of the first two parts of the trilogy: ML Extra and ML Unlimited.
The thematic focuses were all very different. Meaning, people watched ML Extra for the “romance harem comedy”, and that’s all it had, except for some action at the end that was more like an epilogue addition. ML Unlimited is your introduction to the world of the BETA, how it began, what’s going on, and what the potential futures are. ML Alternative is the Alternative route of ML Unlimited, where you get to have a better ending than before in terms of doing something about the BETA other than sit, watch, and train in the rear echelons. Everyone probably knows what a bench sitter is for basketball. That’s what Takeru was in ML Unlimited. But it didn’t matter. The world was so complex and engrossing, and the psychological issues Takeru going through so visceral, every new experience on screen was something to be enjoyed or suspensed over. It didn’t matter that Takeru wasn’t going to fight the BETA. That’s what MLA is for. And by the end of MLA, most people were sick of fighting the BETA, because it hurt too much. They went “emo” as one reviewer said of him/herself and had to take a “break”. I find that interesting and amusing, but also understandable. If my emotional and mental maturity was lower, the same would have happened to me. In fact, the same did happen to me reading some novels involving David Weber’s military sci fi universe.
If the primary theme of ML Extra is “romantic harem comedy” then the primary theme of Ml Unlimited is “love and loss in a world at war when young men and women train to fight in boot camp”.
Love and courage is the byline and theme of Muv Luv Alternative. I would add that it is not just courage, but heroic courage. If people loved the type of courage, yuki, presented in 300 (Spartans), they should like MLA as well. Right now, people think war casualties of 2000 out of a total force of 200,000 is bad. That’s 1% fatalities, not including walking wounded. If you think that’s a “casualty rate” in war, you should know that that’s not the case. 1% fatalities are usually known as “accident casualty rates” not “war casualty rates”. That’s because in war, real war…
In many visual novels, the hero is the only one to be proactive and cool or heroic, and usually only at the end. ML A is different. In this world, Takeru is the shiro, the neophyte and rookie. It’s a world of harsh reality, where responsibility, duty, and honor are prioritized over games, entertainment, and “rights”. Takeru, regardless of his advantages or abilities, or lack there of, still starts from his childish immature phase. And you will see just how far he has to go by looking at the secondary characters in MLA. These are truly tough and admirable people. What makes it so impactful is that Takeru, and you the reader, know their alternative versions. The ones that live in peace and plenty. The ones that didn’t have to worry about war and death. Yet their souls, their tamashii, are not so different after all, regardless of the world they were born in.
In retrospect, my emotional level was already at the end point of the character development that MLA was progressing towards, so I was annoyed but not terribly upset by the various emotional and psychological problems Takeru faced early on. They were not insurmountable in my view. I regretted leaving that world, because while life was short and violent in MLA, those people really lived out their dreams, one way or another. For a person, like Takeru, brought up in peace and plenty, that is an alien perspective. Something that cannot make sense and is insane to begin with. But if you have ever wondered just what it is about fighting in wars that entrances the human soul, creating lifelong experiences that often soldiers do not regret but miss, you should definitely read the ML trilogy.
However, be warned that MLA is not for the immature of heart or soul. If one cannot handle serious life issues as they stand in their reality, then they aren’t going to get much satisfaction from being bombarded with even more serious problems of the MLA sort. Putting a teenager into the perspective of a combat pilot in MLA is like throwing baby birds out of the nest to make them fly. Some of them may not survive the psychological trauma unbroken. The story and the empathy between the reader and the characters in it, is just that powerful. Like Clannad, it doesn’t matter what kind of person it is or what they like, the emotional reaction that is produced is common to all humans. Or most humans.
As the Japanese would say, some content are for adults and some are for children, because some things are better left unknown since you can’t do anything about it even if you do know about the horrors of life. The Western view is “show me everything I want to see and don’t leave anything exciting out”.
The reader will see everything they want to see in MLA. And some stuff they would have preferred not to have seen too. People should just take care that they don’t go around expecting American Hollywood action and plot. This is as different from a shallow action movie as the moon is to the sun.
P.S. Yasumi’s hair color looks white, as a byproduct of Alternative 1-4. I don’t think they made the wrong color choice given that in certain lights, her hair “does” look white. But it might just be easier to do in cg than in real 3d.
Here is the MLA OP. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dNnyMCJ1yk
A lot of people were upset about MLA because they were expecting some kind of ML Extra comedy routine. No. Things aren’t going to get “lighter”. It’s going into the “deep end” that only some people can go because only some are ready for that.
Along with Eien no Aselia, Utawarerumono, Clannad, and Soul Link, ML Alternative is something I have no regrets experiencing (all are visual novels). In fact, I am grateful for the experience, for even though it is a fictional world, the maturity benefits for me are anything but fictional.
P.P.S. A lot of Japanese companies don’t like to take risks and English translations are risks. Some other companies, like Age, are more free spirited and able to tackle very unusual and unorthodox products, such as MLA. I love companies like that, like Type Moon. You can see from their stories that they aren’t philosophically attuned with the whole “collect my royalties and prevent anyone else from cashing in on my patents and licenses” thing.
I’m rereading MLA at the moment and Yashiro is often a dutiful lab assistant helping Yuuko with her research while Takeru (Kanji for his name means martial arts or military man) is the guinea pig.
Yashiro is very quiet in the beginning and that’s explained later as part of her deep background history. Many of the supporting cast in MLA grow exponentially at a rate similar to or even greater than Takeru’s own character progression. Most of it was handled in ML Extra and ML Unlimited, so what we see in MLA is the personalities of the new characters and primarily Takeru’s own trials and tribulations. Yashiro is one of the “new” characters which we see progress, side by side with Takeru. The recap of the girls we already know are accelerated and mostly happens in the background. We can assume the effort and progress they made in Extra and Unlimited happens as well in MLA, although by different means and is part of the general background. In Extra, there is a sport team festival where all the girls must work together to produce results (there’s always got to be a festival something in these slice of life Japanese stuff). Effort replacing talent perhaps. Takeru then becomes their coach. In Unlimited, Takeru directly influences the team’s cohesion, unity, and esprit de corps.
Because Yashiro doesn’t talk much in the beginning, her cute bunny ears that blink on and off as well as her expressions, are what most people have to use for communication and understanding. Given how cute she is in her military uniform (even including some kind of bunny rabbit tail…), it’s not a tiresome thing at all. In fact, I often forgot that Yashiro wasn’t in an official military uniform to begin with. The image for her just looked right.
Yashiro never has any echii roles, other than some dry sexual innuendo jokes Yuuko makes about Takeru fantasizing about her while they live in the same room while conducting an experiment. Thus Takeru’s care for her is primarily paternal, although it’s definitely so that everyone recognizes her cuteness and female nature. She’s like this adorable bunny you want to pet, care for, and hug.
In a social context, she’s like the mascot of an entire group, who if anyone should mess with the mascot, the entire group’s going out for some revenge. In John Ringo’s novel, on a military ship in space, the entire crew is male, except for the ship’s mascot, a female with an anime hair dye. The moment it came out someone started harassing her, they took that guy, put him in a spacesuit, and then taped him to the outside of the space ship for a couple of days.
He was never the same once the officers figured out what had happened…
Amaterasu is no longer publishing free patches, they are now working with Age on official translations. Their full patch, due to obvious reasons, is on eroge download dot com.
Ah, that’s interesting. Do you know if Age is planning on releasing anything in English then? I remember hearing they showed up with Manga Gamer to Anime Expo the other year. I’m also kinda hoping the 360 port of Muv-Luv Alternative makes its way to the US, though I’ve got the feeling there’s a better chance Taimanin Asagi gets a region 1 release.
Age is planning to release ML Alternative and Rumblehearts, but not sure what they plan to do with ML Unlimited. If ML Unlimited comes out first in manga gamer or somewhere else like JAST, then the two are in the pipe.
The “brain in a jar” is something one should probably not think too much about, for that’s actually very important to certain plots in the story.
Suffice it to say that Yuuko (meaning child of kindness, boy was that a MISNOMER, at least superficially speaking) fits the Japanese conception of a “mad scientist”. Meaning, they can be good or evil, but their “pursuit” of whatever it is they “pursue” is not hamphered by what we consider “normal societal morality or ethics”.
Que brain in jar. Scared yet? heh. Takeru took the option of “not thinking too much about it”. Some things are better left unknown. At least, for now.