Tamaki Kousaka is an exceptionally popular character amongst figure makers and, along with Vocaloid mascot Miku Hatsune and Nitro+ mascot Super Sonico, has had an extraordinary presence in terms of hobby merchandise this past year. However, while Tamaki seemed poised to claim an equal share of the spotlight with the other two characters, one has to feel that her star has dimmed a bit in comparison. Tamaki is a well-developed character with an established personality and background, whereas Sonico is still relatively unknown and Miku is, of course, anything people want her to be. The result is that although Miku and Sonico have received a variety of figures, none of them look unusual or inappropriate – for example, Sonico looks equally comfortable in a nurse’s uniform as she does wearing a bondage collar while rocking out with an electric guitar. Tamaki, in contrast, tends to get stuffed into a school uniform or a swimsuit and one would be forgiven for expressing weariness at seeing yet another figure of Tamaki in the bikini. With this figure, though, Daiki has gone for the hat trick with no fewer than three versions of Tamaki – and I suppose one would say they failed since all of them hit the bargain bin fairly quickly. Not that I saw that coming since if I did, I could’ve saved myself a lot of money. Oh well. Let’s take a look at it anyway.
Tamaki Kousaka is, of course, one of the most well-known characters from the dating game franchise To Heart. She made her first appearance in To Heart 2 and is set to appear in the soon-to-be-released fantasy-themed spinoff OVA To Heart 2 Dungeon Travelers, which is based off of a PSP game which is itself based off of a portion of the Manaka de Ikuno!! spinoff game.
This figure of Tamaki is sculpted in an impressive 1/6 scale and stands around 28 centimeters tall. The large size of this figure was one of the factors that most piqued my interest and she does not disappoint in that respect.
Less impressive is the way her feet align with the sockets in the base. Unusually, the mounting pegs are attached to her feet rather than the base, and they don’t line up very well; her right foot is offset by about a centimeter from its socket. I’m not sure why they decided to do things this way. To get her on the base, you have to put an undue amount of pressure on her leg to force it into the hole; I didn’t feel as if I were going to snap her leg off in the process, but it’s a considerable annoyance given that every other figure manufacturer on the planet has figured out how to mount a figure on a base without inflicting this unnecessary hassle.
Also less than impressive is the durability of her shower hose, which I snapped off while trying to remove the faux-liquid part from the end. So now I can’t use the liquid part anymore. Oh well. I didn’t buy this figure to cover up her breasts, anyway.
Her shower pole doesn’t seem to mount securely to the base, and it tends to shift and lean easily. This isn’t really a problem once you’ve put the figure on the shelf but it’s rather annoying while setting it up.
So that’s the annoying stuff, what about the figure? Well, it’s a swimsuit figure of Tamaki; if one has collected figures for a while, one has seen Tamaki in a bikini about a billion times already. However, I do like this one a lot. Tamaki is one of those characters whose appearance tends to vary at the whim of the sculptor, unlike, say, the Evangelion or Nanoha girls, whose figures often look fairly close to their anime appearances. In this case, the sculptor has given Tamaki a roundish, curvy look. Circles comprise numerous elements of her body – her eyes, mouth, head, breasts, and hips are all very circular, giving her body an impression of softness.
Tamaki is often portrayed as a supremely confident alpha female. In the source art – by Tatsuki Amaduyu – she seems to be nonchalant, perhaps mildly surprised. From certain angles, though, the figure version of Tamaki looks rather anxious, perhaps even afraid. Her oversized eyes convey vulnerability, as if she is afraid someone is going to come molest her.
At least she’s going to be clean for such activities, as the figure captures her in the act of washing off her tit. The plastic water part can be removed from the hose, hopefully with more delicacy than I employed, should one wish to display her unwashed breast.
Daiki Kougyou’s quality tends to be all over the place, with some figures being among the best I own and some being really, really bad. In terms of paint quality, Tamaki is pretty good, about as good as one would expect a swimsuit figure to be. The paint is fairly clean, not that she has many details that require intricate painting. Her skin tone is a bit yellowish but it looks a lot worse in photos than it does in real life. Under normal room lighting, she looks just a bit darker-toned than most anime figures. In a departure from the source artwork, her hair is painted a very dark red, almost purple, rather than the bright red most often associated with Tamaki.
I really like Tamaki’s sculpt; she has a very attractive body shape, particularly with respect to the size of her breasts which, although quite large, shy away from the controversially mammoth size exhibited by Max Factory’s figure of a couple of years ago, or the BEAT figure which nobody remembers, including myself. Her rear is quite cute and prominent, and her hair is very detailed, tumbling around her shoulders. I like the skimpiness of her swimsuit, although I think it would’ve been color if she were wearing a thong.
So overall, I think this is a very nice figure of Tamaki. Some elements of her design are very peculiar but once she’s mounted to her base and set up for display, those issues aren’t much of a factor anymore. She has a very sexy look that integrates well with my collection, and though I paid about twice as much as I would have had I waited a month or two, I don’t mind too much, since Tamaki looks great.
For another review of Tamaki, check out Neath Grim.
I don’t know the character, though I see many figures of her, I can’t bring myself to care enough to look in to her source or anything about her.
The thing I really like about this review is Obama. You should use him more often. It really brings a shoot to life having some sexytime going on.
I should! I’ve been keeping an eye out for 1/6 scale figures; I guess the next one I’m getting is Alter’s Aegis, assuming she doesn’t get delayed again (a poor assumption, being that we’re talking about Alter). I freely admit that I’m looking forward to Gift’s Sonico and Daiki’s Bible Black Imari in large part because they are 1/6 scale and thus will integrate well with the president.
I’m looking forward to Daiki’s samurai Sasara, too; Obama and Tamaki make for a cute couple, and Sasara has a similar look as her To Heart castmate.
You should get the old revotech Woody with the rapeface. I think they’re a smaller scale, so he’d be good with smaller figures. Maybe. Woody and Obama rapetime with many girls is endless fun.
The toy I wanted was those little Danbo things; I remember seeing them come in different sizes and I thought it’d be pretty funny to see a whole family of them doing unspeakable things. Plus they’re so cute.
I love Yotsuba, and Danbo was great. The newest Danbo that can equip weapons from two other toy series looks particularly awesome; http://www.amiami.com/top/detail/review?scode=TOY-RBT-2261&page=top
That is pretty neat indeed. I might have to look into that.
Obama cameo was the best part
I like the water effect in this figure, but I also like that it can be either way (shame yours broke though).
I think that she only looks overly yellow in one picture (#12) and even then it seems like it is more from the background lighting. Great choice to pair her up with Obama though. He is performing some smooth moves on Tamaki.
That was the one picture I didn’t reprocess; my postprocessing software set the color temperature very high (I still don’t have a good intuitive handle on how Lightroom handles white balance) which I didn’t notice until I’d processed and uploaded all the pictures. The yellow skin tone of my original pictures bothered me while I was looking at the post preview, and I decided to see if changing the color temperature in Lightroom would fix that. It did and I wound up having to re-process everything, which took a little bit of time but resulted in much more accurate pictures, I think.
Ahhhh now I somehow want to get her again ^^
Im no fan of Tamaki with her female predator feel.
I don’t her very well from the franchise, but this figure adaption of her characters, is very appealing to me, she looks soft and has a nice set of curves overall. Hair and face look also very nice. The tight bikini is lovely, especially the lower part give the figure a sensual appearance.
The base with the beach shower is quite interesting, well washing a single tit is a bit odd for cleaning reasons, but she might do it just for pleasure 🙂
In picture 7 it seems like she took a bite of the water hose, sorry to hear that it broke off.
That she doesn’t really connects with her base is a letdown, but somehow Im still interested in her.
pervy Obama again :p Do jo have other clothes for him as well?
something like a beach outfit with a nerdy t-shirt would be funny.
She’s a great figure to buy at 4,800 yen, or whatever her price tag is now. I don’t even mind paying full price for her, since she looks great and she’s huge.
I don’t really know much about the To Heart franchise, either. I know there’s a ton of characters and they’ve got androids and aliens who say “ru”, but not much more than that.
Unfortunately I don’t have any other clothes for the president. Well, I’ve got a casual jacket for him, though it doesn’t look too dignified on him. A completely casual outfit would be pretty funny, though XD Plus he’s from Hawaii so some board shorts and a Hang Ten t-shirt would actually be appropriate.
I still find that Obama figure’s expression to be creepy…it’s like a “I’ma sexual predita” expression.
Anyways. the Tamaki figure looks great. 😀
It’s the expression of a man who takes what he wants! The leader of the free world must be assertive.
Holy crap, she’s cheap–and BIG–and PRETTY!
I’ll have to drop the hammer on this one. I already have the “PANIC!” Tamaki, and I love it (though talk about breast emphasis) and I’ve actually wanted another Tamaki for awhile now. This one fits the bill–and that big 1/4-scale one coming soon where she’s licking a giant popsicle looks cool too. I like bikini figures a lot. A friend recently sent me the P.O.P. One Piece Nami where she’s bent over, squeezing her breasts together. It’s quickly become one of my favorite figures, although it’s deceptively small.
In fact, I think my figure collecting has “evolved” to fit two molds: bishoujo superheroines (OHMYGOD POWER GIRL) and bikini/topless girls. Although, to be fair, Eleanor Mercer is currently my only straight-up topless figure. That upcoming Kumuru Koromo “maid” figure from Orchid Seed looks…potentially awesome.
Yeah, she is big, which is great – though she’s not even the largest figure of Tamaki in a swimsuit that I own (that figure should be getting a review soon). It’s an awesome figure that seems to not have gotten a ton of love, which is a bit unfortunate, though I guess there’s no shortage of Tamaki figures out there.
I haven’t gotten a new Bishoujo figure in some time, though I’m still thinking about getting the Tekken figures. I’m cautiously looking forward to Sideshow’s Psylocke figure, though, which should be here later this month.
At one point I actually had a few Tamaki figures, but soon after I played the game, which was how I learned she is an abusive alpha female, I grew to dislike her very much; which played well into my wallet cause I won’t have to buy her figure anymore, I even given away her figures too as I don’t want to have anything to do with her! Enough of my vent… the figure looks to be well proportioned, love the bikini and everything but the eyes just didn’t work for me as they seem too big for Tamaki. Excellent photos as always brother.
Haha, yeah, I heard she’s sort of the bossy, pushy type. I must admit I don’t have a lot of familiarity with the core To Heart series, but she was pretty cute in the Dungeon Travelers OVA.
Yeah, she’s got some really big eyes here, which make her look a lot younger – and less predatory – than she usually looks. I kinda like the role reversal – the man-eating dragon lady turned into a young, worried-looking girl – but it’s definitely a different and unusual look for her.
Two thumbs way up for the molester president Obama photo-shoot integration LOL!!
On the other hand damn you… Thanks to your review I’ll have to buy her, especially now that she’s now up for sale! Oh well a couple of my March preorders got delayed so this may fill the void till-then.
She’s a good figure, particularly at the prices she’s been listed at. I didn’t expect her prices to collapse that fast, but it’s not too surprising in retrospect, since there were three very similar versions of her.
After the 2012 presidential election, someone felt compelled to use your last picture for an hommage to the victor: http://myfigurecollection.net/picture/559822
Sigh. I usually don’t care a great deal if I see one of my pictures pop up someplace but Tsuki-board is the exception, since I have an active account there. This isn’t even the first time that particular image has appeared there, too. I wish people would stop uploading my stuff there. Thanks a bunch for the heads-up.