Alter kicked off 2011 with Fate Testarossa and yet another figure of the blonde mage is among those that will close this year. In fact, Alter released five figures of Fate in 2011 alone, demonstrating that she is one of their favorite characters. Their love affair with the lightning wizard will surely continue unabated, as Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force is still untapped and more significantly, the second movie is on the way, with a new costume for Fate. Admittedly, it looks quite like her old costume with just a few changes but that certainly will not deter figure makers and Fate’s fans will certainly not object.
All of Alter’s recent Fate figures have been sculpted in 1/7 scale and this one is no different. The distance between the base and the highest part of Fate’s hand is about 23.5 centimeters, so the figure is reasonably large. She comes with a white plastic base that lacks the famous Engrish that Alter provided on the StrikerS figure bases.
This figure is labeled as coming from the first Nanoha film. It’s been a while since I watched it but I really don’t remember Fate ever wearing a bikini in the movie. Nor do I remember her smiling much and to be honest, it’s a bit strange seeing Fate smiling here. She’s a gloomy girl and for good reason – she goes to work and gets beat up by Nanoha, and then she comes home and gets beat up by her mom. She doesn’t have a lot to be happy about. And she certainly doesn’t have time to be going to the beach.
Apropos or not, she’s wearing a swimsuit, which is quite cute. It reminds me a lot of Alter’s old swimsuit Saber figure, with the same white color and even a similar low-rise style. I would’ve taken pictures of them together except my Saber figure snapped its base pegs years ago and I haven’t fixed that yet.
While her bikini is cute, I wouldn’t say that it’s particularly flattering on her, since she’s got the body build of a very young girl. That’s no surprise, of course, being that Fate is nine years old here, but she doesn’t have much in the way of a sharply defined waist or curvy hips. Strictly speaking, neither does the Phantom Minds figure, but although both Fates have the same physique, that figure has a sleeker look, probably because she’s wrapped in glossy black latex.
Curiously, her bikini buttom is cut more conservatively than her usual barrier jacket outfit. It kinda feels like it should be more revealing; Fate’s backside is one of the reasons people watch the show in the first place and maybe it should have been given more prominence here.
Alter almost never offers a castoff option on their figures, but Fate is an exception to the rule. She comes with a shawl – a pareo, I guess – that fits around her hips. She separates at the waist, right at the waistband of her swimsuit. It’s a very common castoff method but Alter thoughtfully provides an instruction sheet just in case anyone is unfamiliar with the procedure.
Although happiness doesn’t seem to fit Fate, it’s still a pleasing look. Perhaps it marginalizes some of the distinguishing – and attractive – aspects of Fate’s personality, but I suppose a sad frown and a bikini don’t mix all that well. Her pose complements her happy look as well; I’m not sure if she’s jumping or hovering but whatever she’s doing, she looks energetic and lively, with Bardiche in one hand. It’s a good thing she’s flashing Bardiche for everyone to see, since a cynic might note that that’s the only way you’d be able to tell for sure that this is Fate, with many of her characteristic qualities removed.
I really like the way Fate’s hair is sculpted, with her twintails splayed out and sinuous like tentacles. It enhances the effervescence and vibrance of her appearance and generates a bit of excitement that is otherwise hard to find in a swimsuit figure.
But not a lot of excitement and I have to admit, this is not the most dynamic or visually impressive Fate figure around, particularly compared to Alter’s barrier jacket Fate figures. Regardless, I do like this figure – principally because I like Fate, to be sure, and I am predisposed to like every Fate figure that exists, but I think it has a good deal of appeal on its own merits. Fate is quite cute, she seems happy, and her pose is interesting. It would’ve been nice if her bikini were a bit more alluring, but I suppose we can’t have everything. I think Fate fans will be happy to own this figure and non-Fate fans – or Fate fans who feel no compulsion to buy more than one or two figures of her – will be happy to skip this one, and thus everyone will be as happy as Fate is.
It’s curious that Alter released this figure of loli Fate, and then scheduled a swimsuit figure of Nanoha from StrikerS. One wonders if they’ll do a matching loli Nanoha or adult Fate; I’m guessing the latter is more likely. It’s going to be sort of strange having a swimsuit figure of nine year old Fate next to a swimsuit figure of nineteen year old Nanoha.
hmmm, its okay but nothing id waste my money or space for, even though its fate. id rather wait for a figure of er in her new barier jacket of movie 2; sure that might tak quite some time, but i just gotta be patient. yeees im patiently waiting for a form of lolifate with bardiche in zanber form; tahts why i missed out on the movie 1 fate in barrier jacket inthe first place. i just prefer her with that thing, its quite more iconic than the scythe/axelike normal form of bardiche after all. i wodner if alter wil make a new nanoha figure for movie 2? different to fate, nanoha#s new costume has almosz no chnages at all to her movie 1 costume–only the insiginia of her wrists are different and the thing thats now there instead of the old ribbon is upside-down compared to movie 1 design…
so yeah, ill wait for a movie 2 bardiche zanber version of fate and stay with it.
on another note, i recently ordered painkilel rnurse kotone-chan after gettign into her due to your keumaya-reviews and stuff (seriously, kotone is easily desscribable with one word: fetish. nurse, catears, a futuristic feel, and eyepatch, an SM feel, highheels, flat chests.. feels like they threw as many fetishes together as they could in designing her..) uhm, do oyu have any avice on properly assembling her? dont wanna make any mistakes there.
I don’t remember Kotone-chan being too difficult to put together, apart from her jacket, which was a pain to get on and I took it off of her after taking pictures. I also seem to remember that it was difficult to get her lower body and torso put together so that there was no gap, but that might have been because I wasn’t willing to push the two parts together very hard.
Let’s chill out on the specific ending spoilers in the comments section; some people who read this may not have seen the movie or the series yet.
well i just wanted to play it safe. btw i recherched and apparently the torso and loower body were hard to put together because of the temperature of the plastic, because keumaya intedned to sell them in the summer soyoud need to use a hairdryer to heat it up before putting it tgether.. idotn remember if oyu or soemone else wrote that XD
haha yeah^^
hm i dotn think the zanber form would be a big spoiler; those taht havent seen the series wont know what i eman with bardiches zanber-form after all.
ah kotone-chan arrived and i put her togeter. im having problems getting the arm holding the gun up to fit properls on the upper body..i kinda dotn wanna break the ruber peg where the arm attaches… but other than that , she seems pretty good (though well, i didnt expect that much force to be necessary to put her togethe rso i lost soem of the needles of the shots. everythig els elooks fine though. though there is one thign i wonder bout: you know the three additional pats coming with the base, i guess to further support her? i cant really figure out how or even why that woudld work…
Yeah, I remember hearing about that; I remember seeing a picture of a hairdryer on the instruction sheet. I remember stabbing myself with the needles, too. I don’t think I used those extra support parts, either; she seems to stand up well enough without them. Nurse Yuno seems to be doing okay too, though she might be leaning a little more, which I guess is not surprising since she’s leaning back and her chest is quite a bit larger.
Nah, the Zamber thing isn’t a big deal, but talking about Fate’s origins is. It may be an older show but there’s no reason to bring up a spoiler like that here.
well, i resolved the problem; i re-worked the thing her second arm attaches too because i noticed the reason it didnt fit was taht the peg was too long. incidentally, i cut myself in the finger doing that. Oh the irony, seems we all hurt ourselves assembling a nurse! weird.
oh, i almost forgot i wrote that XD sorry about tazt, didnt think about it as a spoiler because its been in season/movie 1 and is so basic that it practically got natural for me to consider it common knowledge, you know the kind taht you just dotn think about the possibility of other people not knowing about it… you know what i mean?
MSLN is a pretty difficult series to spoil. The the plot is pretty generic.
You can level that charge against a majority of anime series. I’d rather not see ending spoilers mentioned in the comments here unless the series is plotless (like Kampfer or something) or garbage (like Freezing, maybe Guilty Crown too). There are a lot of other places on the internet for discussion like that; I think MyAnimeList has a comprehensive set of forums that would probably suffice.
The figure itself is somewhat more conservative and it shows her different side. To think about it, her backside is somewhat plain compared to the previous fates. As for me, I preordered the adult nanoha in swimsuit, hehe.
It looks like I will stay here for a long time. I am learning a lot from you. Thanks
It does look quite a bit different than some of the other Fate figures, which is one reason I like it. I kinda thought about buying the re-releases of GSC’s 1/4 scale swimsuit Fate and Nanoha but I passed on them; maybe I’ll think about it again if they get discounted. Alter’s swimsuit Nanoha looks great, though; I’ve preordered it too. I think it’ll be the first adult Nanoha figure in my collection.
As I can see from GSC 1/4 nanoha and fate, the odd looking part for them is the face. It looks like they put a sexy modeller’s body and just simply stuck their heads there. If they will release a matching adult fate with “DAT” pose, that would be epic. And that would also be your first nanoha figure with some minimal clothing only, hehe.
I completely agree with that; I thought the figures looked like real women (albeit rather tall women) wearing kigurumi masks. I think that was the main reason I held off on buying them despite my fondness for 1/4 scale figures. The Hayate figure looks pretty nice but I haven’t seen A’s yet so I don’t know very much about her.
well A#s is realy goo and a lot better than the first season, maybe oyu should watch it before the seocnd movie coem sout, sicne its A’s as movie practically XD
Damn she looks so young I nearly feel guilty when looking at her without the pareo and you’ve already enchained her XD
ALTER chose a quite conservative swimsuit for Fate, but the parero adds a colorful accent.
Honestly I somehow miss some curves on this swimsuit figure, well considering that she’s just 9, thats what to be expected 😉
The more exciting part is her face, which looks better than the one of the casual clothes figure of Fate, the eyes and the mouth give her a very self confident expression, maybe it would be more fitting expression for Nanoha. Albeit I think most people have fun at the beach, even Fate with her sad past. The flowing twintails are very nice and I also like the detailed fingers and toes.
I wanted to use actual chains but there’s less space to fit a chain in than I thought there would be, and I was afraid that it might scratch up her paint. Back when I was photographing Phantom Minds Fate, I used a Matrix Sentinel toy and it scratched her up a bit so I decided to play it safe with the accessories.
I kinda thought about picking up Alter’s casual clothes Fate – the regular one, not the Wonder Festival one – because it’s pretty cheap at Mandarake and the look of a young girl carrying a big-ass pole axe behind her was pretty funny. Come to think of it, it would’ve been pretty cool if Alter had included Bardiche in its usual form, so that Fate could carry around a big-ass axe while wearing a bikini.
tahts one reason why i bought soem of the BRS figures: at leats my dead master and my BRS figma both came with two black metal chains, which are convenient as accesoiries sicne you can drape them around any figure you want, they arent attached to anything.. and they are the right size.
I could’ve sworn I’ve seen some artwork of Fate in this outfit/pose, though in the picture she was lying down. I think this figure too would make more sense if it was lying down instead of…dramatically posing? Jumping? Falling?
Guess it doesn’t matter, Fate still looks nice.
I like to think of this interpretation of Fate as her during happier times. Namely post-season 1/movie 1 times. You know, those times when she’s not getting pounded all day and night. ;_; I really hope that Alter makes a matching Fate to that Adult Swimsuit Nanoha. I would buy that so HARD.
It appears so; looking through Danbooru, I came across this picture which seems to be what this figure is based off of. Curious how the picture comes from Nanoha A’s while this figure is billed as having come from the movie. It would also explain why she’s smiling.
Yeah, I’d love to see a matching adult Fate figure. It’d be pretty cool if the base of such a hypothetical figure could fit together with Nanoha’s so that they can be properly displayed together.
we’d need a third part for vivio, sicne the whole “family” is otgether on the original artwork the adult nanoha swimsuit figure is based off.
With a pose like that I’m surprised you didn’t take on of her lying down, since the pose does seem to also support that position. ^_^ As for her bikini I Think a one-piece type would suit her body better.
maybe they thought a one-piece would look too much like her barrier jacket?
I didn’t even think about it, though in retrospect, seeing that she is lying down in her source illustration, it would have made sense. I think her hair makes it difficult though, since she can’t lie flat.
Her hair is really nice and shows typical Alter awesomeness. But is it me or does Alter usually seem to make swimsuit figures with bland body sculpts compared to say Max Factory and Megahouse? I’m hoping that swimsuit Selveria is an exception though.
And ohman, I hope they make sculpts from Nanoha Force. I have no idea of the story but the character designs look really awesome and I would definitely buy figures from it
It kinda seems like it; their Fate/stay night figures are sort of on the boring side. I liked the Alpha Omega Code Geass figures, though I don’t recall offhand whether Alter’s or MegaHouse’s sculptors did those. Selvaria’s looking pretty nice; I’m not sure whether I want to order her because I haven’t played Valkyria Chronicles and she’s got an elongated body shape that looks odd to me, but in general, I like the figure.
I wouldn’t mind seeing some figures of the characters from Force, either. I haven’t read much of it – just a couple of chapters from the middle because I heard Isis gets naked and that appealed to my interests – but the character designs look great.
agreed. a scale figure of vita in her FORCE design would be sweet. well her barrier jacket hasnt reallly been changed in taht, but the new design of her hammer is definately badass.
Something about this figure is offputting. Well, aside from the fact it’s loli fate; I have StrikerS Fate and love her adult form much more.
But this figure, it seems like she has quite the package. Just something about her crotch isn’t right. It’s like she’s stuffing her banana hammock like The Todd does. (obscure reference go). But only from certain angles, so it may just be a lighting thing. Your first shot here really makes her look like a trap. I like traps, but I already have a Fate so that rules this out regardless…
Haha, yeah, she does have sort of a peculiar bulge there and I steered away from mentioning it because I wasn’t sure how to bring it up delicately. It’s definitely not a lighting thing, though; it’s quite visible under normal room lights, even while looking at the figure from a meter away. I would kinda just dismiss it as Fate not being, well, closely shorn, but she’s nine years old here, so …
yeah, i generlly find the body here is not quite the quality youd expect from ALTER.. from what i see here, it almost feels liek they, you know, sculpted the head in its greatness, especially the hair, and the n just.. got tired and just kinda made the body withotu payign much attention?
@ Asa: The Todd and his banana hammock, rofl. I really loved that show, it was simply brilliant. Sorry they cancelled it, but after eight years, it was probably burnt out.
@ Tier: Not closely shorn, that’s hilarious! Well, maybe Fate just has a prominent mons venus. If so, I’d like to see what that evolves into on her adult alter ego, rowr…
Indeed! Though I hope she trims a bit more as she grows up since she has no problem flashing skin there.
Hm, the bulge doesn’t see as prominent in some of your other shots, but it is still odd, yeah. Makes me appreciate adult Fate all the more. I just wish Alter would re-release Nanoha and Hayate, or do a new Force/Vivid line for me to get them. I like adults. Though with A’s movie coming soon, we’ll probably just get a new bout of lolis. Though I may be able to score a Signum, that’d be nice…
@Asa hm i do prefer loli#s, tu i dotn have anythign against the adults. however, i think tis pretty unlikely to get signum, shes just not popular nor important enough…. if any of the wolkenritter get a figure, its most likely to be vita…
signum could get a figma or a surprisign figure if she has some new scenes taht up her popularity or somehtign like taht. well, youll get enough adults if they do movie 3 and in case they animate force, tight? plus, isnt alter’s graf kaiser vivio constantly in the bargain bin because all he rfans prefer her loli version? you might get her then.
Hum, I wasn’t aware that the character designs have been released for the second movie. What do you think of the change? I’m liking the added contrast that white stripe brings, since I’ve always thought her outfit to be a little plain above the waist. Actually, bottom half would’ve also been pretty boring if not for that delicious 9-year-old ass.
Anyways, about the figure: it’s cool to see the figure from so many angles, because that hair looks fantastic. I agree that her swimsuit is a little plain — her bikini bottom is just the default whit panties you find on most other figures! I dunno why Alter must be so conservative with Fate’s ass. Why squander a character’s best asset?
I’ve got kinda mixed feelings. I’m not sure if I like the gray trim on her socks. I do like the armored shoes, though, I’m glad to see those back since I didn’t like the elf shoes with the red bow ties. The real question I have is how much of her ass is covered, and I think that’s going to determine how much I like her new outfit.
I’ve noticed that since Alter released Fate’s A’s figure all the way back in like 2006 or 2007 or something, her ass has gotten more and more covered up with every figure they’ve done. I’m not sure what the deal is with that, but it’s not a trend that I like. Hopefully they come to the realization that when it comes to the clothing coverage of Fate’s rear, less is more.
Good to see you have reviewed this figure, since I recently got rid of the Fate figure by Movic and I have been itching to add a nice Fate figure back into my collection. Personally I would have much preferred the adult Fate as compare to loli Fate but at the present time I am leaning toward the Phantom Mind version.
Yeah, I’d roll with the Phantom Minds figure too; it’s one of my favorite renditions of Fate, plus it comes with basically all her weapons. The only quibbles I’ve got with it is that her head is a bit large and her ass is overly covered-up. Hopefully Alter will make an older version of Fate in a bikini that will go with their Nanoha figure.
https://www.tentaclearmada.com/images/figures/fate-testarossa-swimsuit/sm-fate-testarossa-10.jpg
Oh lawd, I lol’d.
I liked taking that shot too XD I wish there was enough room around her neck to slip a chain, though, which is what I had originally intended to do.