One of the more lamentable trends in entertainment media during the last couple of decades is the phasing out of the action girl in the battle bikini. They used to be commonplace, particularly in video games, where examples include Golden Axe’s Tyris Flare, SNK’s Athena, the valkyrie in Gauntlet, Sheena in Contra Hard Corps, and a bunch of characters from the early Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games. Nowadays, not only are they not nearly as common, you often see a peculiar aversion to sexiness on the part of female characters. World of Warcraft hasn’t had adequate bikini armor for two expansions now, much to the lament of my four paladins. I hear that the people running Tomb Raider want to place less emphasis on Lara Croft’s appearance, which explains why Square Enix can’t make good games anymore. Sonia Belmont got torched from Castlevania continuity altogether. This trend may be due to an attempt to be more inclusive and more appealing to larger audiences, or a desire to create more realistic characters, or a perceived lack of maturity associated with creating scantily-clad warrior girls. Whatever the cause, it sucks. Fortunately, Kotobukiya and Leaf agree, so here we have Tamaki Kousaka, the first of many Tamaki figures scheduled to drop this year.
Tamaki Kousaka is the frontgirl for the popular visual novel To Heart 2 and its various spinoffs. She’s often shown in her usual pink and red school uniform, blue jeans, or her underwear, but she’s presented here in a very atypical manner, wielding a katana and wearing combat armor of sorts. She comes from the game Final Dragon Chronicle – Guilty Requiem, which was one of several games on the Leaf-made fan disc Manaka de Ikuno!! Leaf Amusement Soft Vol. 5. I’ve not played this game but looking around for more information, it seems to have a lot of similarities to the two Lightning Warrior Raidy ero RPGs – you play in first person view, you explore mazes with an overhead mini-map, you go around beating up monsters to level up, and I’m told that you can knock up some of the female enemies. JAST USA localized the Raidy games and I bought and enjoyed both, but I suppose there’s zero chance of this game ever getting an official translation.
Tamaki is manufactured by Kotobukiya in 1/8 scale and stands about 21 centimeters tall. Like several of Kotobukiya’s other figures, she comes already affixed to the base, which is an unremarkable white plastic disc. Tamaki’s sword and scabbard slide into her hands without difficulty. She also has a castoff option; her upper torso separates from her body just under her breasts so that you can remove her belts and hip armor. It seems to me that this armor is just going to impede her lateral movement, so in the interest of realism, I’m leaving it off of her.
She’s called samurai Tamaki, and I guess the sword and the shingled armor plating do look sort of Japanese. I’m not really sure the lace-up thigh boots and the bikini are emblematic of feudal Japan, though. Regardless, her outfit looks great. Her strappy top shows off lots of underboob and sideboob, and her panties are cut fashionably low with a tiny waistband that threatens to slide off. She’s got a cute hairpin and headband. Not the most practical battle gear, maybe, but Tamaki is so cute she doesn’t need to go into battle wearing more than her underwear and a winning smile.
I like her expression a lot; her friendly smile is a big contrast to my many fighter girl figures, most of which look really pissed off. I love badass action girls but Tamaki’s happiness makes her pleasant to admire.
Tamaki’s hair is splayed out behind her, adding some energy to her happy pose. Her left leg is bent forward to balance the backward movement of her hair; it’s a nice touch that also gives her backside a bit more emphasis.
Things aren’t quite as good when it comes to the technical aspects of the figure. The paintwork is rather rough, particularly on the white borders of her strappy top and her belts. Like Buddy, her panties aren’t all that detailed. In particular, the waistband doesn’t look that great both in terms of paint and sculpting. There isn’t any cameltoe on display here, which I guess is appropriate because she’s got this tiny metal plate covering her crotch. Tamaki isn’t very detailed but Kotobukiya went so far as to sculpt the rivets holding it to her bikini, which presumably shows where their priorities lay.
Her skin tone is a bit flat as there isn’t much shading there. Nor is there much on her clothing but oddly, there’s a lot of shading present on her hair. Too much, in fact – her bangs are a visibly darker red than the rest of her hair. On the plus side, her gloves and boots have an attractive shiny finish which looks pretty good.
Tamaki’s backside has good definition but lacks detail, which is unfortunate since her panties show so much of it. I suppose it’s not very easy to see since her hair gets in the way, but it would have been nice if her butt crack had gotten a little more love from the sculptor.
Her sword is reasonably detailed and is easily identifiable as a Japanese sword, which is what it’s supposed to do. However, the spine of the blade lacks the characteristic darkened wave pattern found on many Japanese swords. Hamon, I guess it’s called.
So Tamaki’s not the most well-executed figure ever made. That probably shouldn’t come as a surprise, being that it’s a small-size Kotobukiya figure, but I really like Tamaki anyway. That shouldn’t come as a surprise either, as I have a big thing for warrior girls in battle bikinis and Tamaki is definitely a great example of such. With her tiny panties, lots of cleavage, a big sword and a happy smile, I’m happy to overlook her technical faults to focus on her most noticeable charms, which are charming indeed.
Here’s Tamaki’s source artwork.
And here’s why Kotobukiya should do a Sasara figure next.
Here’s two Leaf heroines in their war-panties.
Mhh this could be a figure of my taste, really pretty 😀
the face looks indeed very cute, I like the depth and shape of her mouth.
the light outfit looks pretty and also interesting, the shiny gloves and stockings are very nice and sexy, overall the quality looks ok to me, but the top, the bikini strings and the belt could have been made more accurate in terms of sculpting and overpainting.
I like pictures tamaki-kousaka-07.jpg and tamaki-kousaka-01.jpg very much this Tamaki figure has some really nice angles, in this tamaki-kousaka-14.jpg sideshot she looks stunning, she has such nice curves.
I’m sure her price is going to drop soon if you’re interested in picking her up, because every figure I pay full price for always gets a price cut. Hopefully Kotobukiya looks at the other characters from the game, there are a lot of cool and cute designs that would make for great figures.
Ironically, the first thing I noticed from your pictures is that she seems to have a very flat face.
Now that I’ve noticed that I just keep noticing her face looks a bit, well, weird. Have never been a great fan of the dinnerplate sized eyes.
Nice background though!
Yeah, she’s got a really flat face; I think Gift’s 1/4 scale Tamaki figure suffers from a similar problem and it’s one reason I’m waffling on whether I want that figure or not. It’s not as noticeable or as big a problem on a small 1/8 scale figure but it comes much more apparent when the figure is over a foot tall.
The market is definitely being bombarded by Tamakis in 2011 lol.
Even still, I don’t think I’ll get one. I don’t know anything about her, and none of the figures really appeal to me.
That being said, the first half of the year is already looking amazing. Dizzy, Saber Alter, Black Gold Saw, and Rin……….I’m pumped lol.
I’ve got only a superficial knowledge of who Tamaki is. I guess the core part of the franchise is still the visual novel, since I haven’t heard much of the anime adaptations that it spawned. I’ve heard her described as an alpha female, if that helps to define her personality. The funny thing is, very few of her upcoming figures show her as such; if anything, most of them depict her as being diffident or as pretty little jailbait.
I don’t think any of her figures depict her as an Alpha……..weird.
I’m really tempted to get a Rei to go with my Asuka; I just can’t find one that’s stylistically similar.
I dunno that black variation of her where she’s obviously tempting you has a dominant feeling to it like she knows just how absurdly hot she is and will use it to her fullest ability type of thing. :p
Which one is that?
I am guessing it’s this one if the figure in question is Kotobukiya’s recent one or this one if it is Cobra Kai’s figure.
I can definitely see that in the first one; at least a woman who knows damn well how to manipulate you lol.
Aye sorry I meant the first one that Tier listed…The name wasn’t coming to me at the time beyond “The one in black underwear on the purple pillow” ahah… >_>
I’m not a big fan of Tamaki or the ToHeart2 series, but this is a version of Tamaki I really like. She does remind me a little of Raidy in that get-up – it has to be the red hair and headband. I really like the way her hair flows at the back. Although after reading that comment about her flat face that’s all I can see now ><.
The Final Dragon Chronicle – Guilty Requiem game looks interesting. I watched the promo video on their site and it looks like you can "upgrade" your character to different classes and it changes their appearance – Dark Knight looks cool.
If that version of Sasara comes out I'm totally getting me one.
I watched a couple videos on Youtube and Final Dragon Chronicle reminds me a lot of Raidy. I kinda wonder what happened to Raidy 3? I mean, besides Zyx apparently going bankrupt or something. I was looking forward to fusing Raidy and Tiss. There’s a CG pack of Final Dragon Chronicle floating on the interwebs that has pictures of the characters in their various outfits.
Sasara reminds me a bit of Tyris Flare. Man she’d make for a great figure; somebody has to make this happen.
Love the outfit…Detest the face. Not so much the expression just her face in general…Barely looks like Tama which is painfully obvious comparing to the original art you linked…Just goofy.
Ah well hopefully they’ll do one for each of the girls…Not likely but it’d be nice. >_>
I am guessing that you are not a big fan of Cobra Kai’s old Tamaki figure? XD Yeah, I’m guessing that’s not likely as well … did they ever even do a Rina Ogata figure to go with Yuki? I don’t recall them doing one.
Four pallys, Tier? Wow. Do you love the class with unnatural vigor, or do you just have an army of characters?
I really love her boots and gloves. They got a BDSM look to them. Speaking of which, are there any leather bondage figures out there? I’ve seen rope bondage here and there, but I’ve yet to see anyone leathered and ball gagged. It just seems like a goldmine that nobody is tapping into, just like stripper poles.
Dancer is such a ridiculous RPG class, but if that’s what Sasara is supposed to be, my opinions against it are forever reversed.
Btw, the black border on the headband looks like an unibrow. Just sayin’. =P
Four pallys! Yeah, I liked paladins. My first paladin was ret, my second paladin was holy and “optimized” for holy DPS just because I was curious to see what it was like (it sucked), my third paladin was draenei because I like draenei, and the fourth paladin was to experience what the Horde side was like. None of those characters was my main when I quit the game, though.
Hmm, leather bondage … yeah, there’s Amane Shiratori, she’s got this strappy leather thing going on. That’s about all I can remember, though. I’m still trying to think of a way to make a doll-sized ballgag, by the way. And doll-sized nipple piercings. Speaking of doll bondage, I think I’ll do a review of vmf50 Yumi soon.
I think Sasara is some sort of warrior; her artwork has her hefting a sword or a giant battle axe.
Pally bubble…. /golfclap
LOL
I never got a lot of that, but I did get molested once 🙁
“War Panties” I like that.
I already have 3 Tamaki figs, who I’m not particularly a huge fan of, preferring Sasara, but she’s not had as many figures. I’ll pass on this, but jump on board for a Sasara with war panties.
I’ve got my fingers crossed. It looks like they’re still chucking out figures from this game since I saw some pictures of a Silfa figure modeled on the game artwork. It’s sort of a silly looking figure since she’s got that weird crooked tophat which I’m not a big fan of but hopefully we’ll see more To Heart girls in war panties. Lucy also has some nice art that could translate well into figures.
Bikini armour = win! I still remember the old female Soldier class in Dragon Quest III, that red bikini armour was hot. That said, this Tamaki really didn’t do it for me, just wasn’t my taste. The blending of Tamaki’s character as a Samurai warrior is a little weird, guess it’s due to all the portrayls of her more sensual side.
I think the body sculpt is definitely nice though, I never realized how nice it was, until this picture, the way her body contours and slightly twists to the left is sexy.
Definitely looking forward to the AlphaMax Tamaki’s though, ever since I got Spica I’ve become a fan of AlphaMax’s quality. Can’t wait till I get Mai – damn HobbySearch is taking their sweet time processing the order. =(
It is! I was very disappointed that Blizzard’s gone away from that with the recent Warcraft expansions and also with Diablo III, apparently. Very sad. What’s equally sad is that I logged into Lineage II the other month and found that the newbie dark elf armor got changed from a thong to something with a fuller back. How weak is that?
Yeah, I’d guess that Tamaki ought to be a warrior type, but I dunno if she should be a cheerful scantily-clad fighter girl. Well, in the context of realism, anyway; every female character in To Heart should be scantily-clad, in my opinion.
I’m looking forward to Mai too. She’ll be my first Alphamax figure so my hopes are guarded but optimistic.
I’m sure you’ll really like her, and the quality – can’t wait to see your review!
HS finally processed my order – yay! 😀
I got mine a few days ago. She looks fantastic XD I dunno about $300 fantastic but man, her backside is glorious indeed.
Ever thought you were playing the wrong game?
Not WoW but:
Warrior
Ranger
Teapot wearer
Girl off MK?
If you just ignore the chainmail bits
The elite armours in GW were always so much skimpier than the regular armour sets.
I played the beta test of Guild Wars back in, uhh, 2004 I guess. I never played it after that though, since I was still in school and knew there was no way I was gonna graduate if I played an MMO. After I got my degree I started playing Warcraft and never gave Guild Wars much thought. I did like the armor design from what I saw; they’re pretty much in line with the way my other MMO characters looked.
Hmm, now this version or the red version?
I like this version a lot more; there’s a bit too much red on the red version in my view. Plus this version looks more like Raidy than the other one.
I must admit that Ive never been a fan of Tamaki nor did I ever check out the show so I cant really say anything except the fact that this is the first figure of her that I truly like.
I always thought that shes so well liked for her huge knockers though and I to me they dont seem that big in this outfit.Shes just a regular busty heroine and not one on the level og big boobness. Maybe the Straps on her boobs are so tight that theyre are squeezing them that much together?
She must be Ultra Powerful then! Cuz a thumb of rule is that the tighter and skimpier the outfit the stronger the wearer of the armor!
I only own one figure by Kotobukiya whihc is Kanzaki Kaori and after her I didnt really look into them anymore cause she lacked something.I wouldnt say detail but she was so simple and lifeless that I wasnt interested in getting any other figures from them. I wouldnt buy this figure but I guess I could try them again judging after this review
Her breasts do look smaller here than they are usually depicted; in fact, I think Manaka’s breasts look larger in her Final Dragon Chronicle figure.
That is true indeed. We need more figures of warrior girls in bikini armor. Like, say, Irma, maybe.
Yeah, Kotobukiya’s figures are a step down from Alter and such. They do have the benefit of being pretty cheap and not very difficult to find, since I think they have their own distribution system in the US. I generally don’t mind them but they usually don’t excite me like Alter’s figures do. Or Native’s.
I used to be a Tamaki fan before I played ToHeart 2 , but once I started the game for Sasara arc, I developed a fair amount of hatred towards Tamaki for her abusive treatment of Yuji for no apparent reason. Alas, enough of my ranting, figure looks good though from a distance at least, the concept of her is good too. Tamaki showing up as a warrior didn’t come as a surprise to me at all. During Sasara arc of the story, there was a side story that suggested Tamaki’s soul came from an ancient Atlantis Warrior XD.
I have the feeling I probably wouldn’t like Tamaki so much either. Well, or maybe I wouldn’t like the main character much, I dunno. I really, really hate spineless male leads. Like that Shirou guy in Fate/stay night. God I hate that character. I’m not sure how I feel about abusive female characters, though … I sorta associate that personality type as generally being part of the tsundere type, which I despise, but I guess that’s not always the case. I like Chifuyu in Infinite Stratos – based on the first episode, anyway – and she roughs up the male lead pretty good. I don’t much like the other characters, though.
I agree, I get the feeling Tamaki had to be a samurai warrior … I’m kinda surprised they made her armor so skimpy, though. I’m also kinda surprised they gave Sasara a battle axe to go with her war panties; she seems to be sort of a subtle kind of girl and there is nothing subtle about a battle axe.
Actually, according to the side story though, Sasara was the ancient Mu Warrior that wasn’t shy or subtle at all, a Battle Axe sounded just about the based on the impression I got from her.
http://tcwenterprise.com/wordpress/2009/08/01/toheart-2-pc-version-kusugawa-sasara-part-2/
Ah, interesting. A battle axe makes sense, then.
Why not Sasara totally castoffable with sets of bikinis to change?
That’d be pretty cool though if someone did make a Sasara figure in that costume, I guess I’d prefer it if the bikini weren’t removable, unless she were anatomically realistic. I’ve got a lot of figures with a castoff option whose clothing looks unusually bulky since it has to be robust enough to handle being removed so these days, I don’t mind too much if a figure can’t have its clothes removed. Except for Daiki’s Saber. I’m still upset about that.
Oh hello, bargain bin Tamaki. >_>
That’s not too surprising I guess, she fits most of the criteria I’d expect to get a price drop. So does that Kyou figure of theirs, though I’m still kinda puzzled how she sold out. I’m also surprised that Alter’s Fate Testarossa figure is in the bargain bin too; I thought she’d sell pretty well, given the sort of prices their Fate T. Harlaown figure was going for on the secondary market before they announced her re-release. I’ve been thinking about ordering her for a couple of weeks now and I gotta admit that I’m real tempted.
I wasn’t really surprised either, I just thought it was funny because all of the figures you review apparently end up in the bargain bin. Granted this may have been an easier pick than most, it doesn’t help disprove that theory.
I remember that one; I thought long and hard about preordering it myself, but the price kept me away. If it lasts in the bin awhile, I might consider it, but the yen rate has dropped even further the last few days. At 79 yen to the dollar right now apparently.
The exchange rate really cratered today. And I just got an in-stock notice for BEAT’s Tamaki, which is the last figure on my preorder list that I want. I’m really hoping Japan weakens the yen soon. Man, it’s been a really rough time for them.
Yeah, I hate bitching about such a thing when such a tragedy has happened over there. Really makes me feel like a bit of an ass, but it does suck. I just hope I don’t get my Illust Guerrilla Nymph cover while the yen rate is so bad, since SMJ seems to charge current rate -3/4 when they invoice you…. even though they probably paid for it when the rate was closer to 84-5.
Yeah, I feel kinda tacky even just shopping for stuff. I feel extremely tacky for secretly wishing my proxy service had shipped me my stuff before the quake. None of that stuff is really significant though so I’m not too concerned by it.
SMJ just got my stuff in the US so at least the domestic shipping bill will be in US dollars. It’s probably going to be a slightly larger bill too, since among the stuff I bought was like 14 porno manga books. Used porno manga. Something tells me that buying used hentai goods ought to bother me but nah, I don’t think it’s that strange at all anymore.