When you don’t have a belt or a strap to hang your swords off of, you make do the best that you can.
Yagyu Jubei is, of course, from the anime and manga property Hyakka Ryouran Samurai Girls. Despite finishing up its broadcast run way back in December 2010, its popularity endures amongst figure companies, with makers as obscure as Penguin Parade and U-Art paying tribute to her and her castmates. This figure, however, is from Alter, the best maker in the business and a very enthusiastic supporter of the franchise.
Unlike Orchid Seed, Yamato, and Griffin, Alter historically hasn’t made many recolored versions of their figures. However, that seems to be changing as of late, at least as far as their swimsuiit figures are concerned; they’ll be offering a limited edition version of their Selvaria figure at this year’s Mega Hobby Expo and of course, there’s this figure, which follows the original version released last year which put her in an orange swimsuit.
Like all of Alter’s figures of the Samurai Girls characters, this version of Jubei is sculpted in 1/8 scale and stands about 19 centimeters tall. She comes with no accessories or castoff options; there’s no need to fiddle with her weapons, she’s ready for display right after sticking her to her base.
Alter’s Samurai Girls figures are known for their visual complexity and at first, it seems like a lot of that intricacy should be lost here, given that Jubei’s outfit is quite abbreviated compared to what she normally wears. However, even though she’s showing a lot of skin, the figure still features a number of distinctive aspects, mostly due to her weapons. She’s holding two swords of traditional samurai style, one larger and the other smaller, though in keeping with the stylized motifs of the Samurai Girls series, both swords are rather oversized. Both swords are also very nicely sculpted and painted, with a lacquer-like finish on the scabbards and painted metallic accents on the handles and hilts.
Of course, perhaps the most visually interesting aspect of the figure isn’t just her swords but also the way that she’s holding them. The sexual innuendo of her pose is unmistakable; she’s doing the paizuri thing with her katana, treating the viewer to a good look at her cleavage. The erotic allusions are further emphasized by the placement of her left hand, which seems to be pushing her sword towards her crotch. Furthermore, her sword is actually running underneath one of the straps of her swimsuit. All in all, it’s a wonderful pose that is quite in keeping with the spirit of the anime.
Another thing that Alter’s Samurai Girls figures are known for are their expressive faces. I particularly liked Senhime’s face, which was transfixed in a mighty, homicidal scowl. Their recent Naoe Kanetsugu also had a memorable – if less distinctive – face, one that manifested pure joy. Of all of them, however, I think Jubei’s face is my favorite; she’s beaming with happiness, a warm and flirty smile on her lips and her eyes veritably dancing with mischief. Her gregarious innocence makes for an appealing contrast next to the wanton sexuality of her stance.
I also really like Jubei’s hair; tendrils of hair are going off everywhere, lending a sense of dynamic energy to what would otherwise be a fairly staid figure, as figures go. Her hair is voluminous, much more like MegaHouse’s figure than Alter’s older figure. I particularly like the way she’s got not one, not two, but three ahoge sprouting out of the top of her head like headcrab legs. The older figure had them as well, but they seem much more noticeable on this figure, perhaps because her hair color is a much brighter red. In fact, her paint job seems much more saturated than her first figure, which is noticeably muted in comparison.
Moving on from the fun and innocent aspects of her design to the fun and saucy parts: her pose obviously emphasizes her buttocks, and while the first version of this figure had a solid orange suit, this Jubei wears a white suit that is partially see-through, at least in the back. It’s more on the subtle side but it’s very well-executed, with her suit appearing as if wet. The seat of her swimsuit is a bit on the modest side considering its cleavage-emphasizing design in front, but it still doesn’t leave a whole lot to the imagination.
Like all of Alter’s Samurai Girls figures – heck, like just about all of Alter’s figures – Jubei looks fantastic. It’s probably my favorite one of all the figures from that series. She loses some of the retro-contemporary styling that characterizes the show, but I think the playfulness and innocence she evinces more than makes up for it.
For a review of the original figure with the orange swimsuit, check out this very nice review at Figyura.
Hmm, I think I still prefer the first version though I am very impressed with the way Alter did the semi-transluscent effect on her bikini. Amazing figure, scult and paint work. Can’t recall if this re-colored version is a limited edition as well, I think the first one was limited to 1000 or 1500?
Can’t say I’m that into the sexual innuendo of this figure, but a great figure is still a great figure!
I’m not sure how many they made but I guess it wasn’t a whole lot, since I don’t recall seeing a lot of reviews of it. Sort of annoying, that, since the main reason I skipped the figure the first time around was because I didn’t want to have to use a proxy service to get it, but I’m glad they did a second version of Jubei.
Yeah, I had plans on doing a review of the first version… but yeah. -_- LOL
Original was 1500, I have one of those 1500.
Not sure how many of the reprint was made.
and now you made me want ehr, even though i only planned to get Alter’s Yagyu Gisen! well, i probably wont get eher nayways but instead look forward mroe to gisen xD
I’m looking forward to that figure a lot as well, even though I know nothing about her since I dropped the show well before she ever showed up. Maybe I’ll skim the show to see what she is like; there aren’t that many shows this season that I want to watch so I have some free time.
*damn* so far I haven’t noticed what a sexy figure this Yagyu Jubei is.
The see through effect of the pearl white one is awesome, also the details of her back are great.
I got slightly nosebleed from your description about how she is holding her swords XD
Quite naughty of her to put it partially into her bikini. It’s a little surprising to get something like that from ALTER, usually they are not so bold. Well their Strike Witches are always showing their pantsu, but mainly due to the design 😉
It’s a very pretty figure and your pictures do her justice, 18 is my favorite.
I already ordered the swimsuit Jubei from AmiAmi zero so I guess I won’t try to search for this one on the aftermarket ;D
Alter usually stays on the classy side of things but I’ve noticed they don’t have any problems putting in ero aspects if it suits the figure. Narika has some noticeable cameltoe in her underwear and Dizzy’s bikini doesn’t seem to have a back part, for example. I still really wish they’d kick off a line of all-out ero figures like Max Factory’s Native imprint.
Everybody loves the back shots XD Jubei does have a very sexy behind indeed. I really like how the sculptor gave her some curves.
The sculpt is marvelous. Her back is fantastic, and I particularly like the hollows of her knees…
Yeah, I think the kneepits lovers are especially going to like this figure. Alter did a fantastic job sculpting her muscles and other body details.
Great figure. This might becoming apparent but I love figure poses like this one, bent over showing her posterior. I also like the way she is holding one of her swords. I think the sword going through part of the swimsuit doesn’t really add anything though because it only goes along straps. If it would have been going under the front, I think it would have been more interesting, and the sword would then have been covering her modesty so no harm no foul.
My only real problem is that her shoes should have been white instead of black. They just look funny to me.
That would’ve been pretty cool indeed; I’d have had no problem with that at all. The funny thing about her sword is that when I first saw this figure, I liked her hair and face so much that I didn’t notice that she had her sword running between her boobs until someone pointed it out. I didn’t actually notice that it was running under her swimsuit until I glanced there while taking pictures. I’m not sure how I missed these things being that her pose is anything but subtle.
There are times when I’ve felt like the red-orange of the swimsuit in the original version almost gives the figure too much red and it certainly didn’t offer any translucent elements, so I can see the appeal of the new color. I see some odd white spots on her butt and in a few other areas, but I’m guessing they are supposed to be there.
The pose really makes this figure stand out for me. A lot of swimsuit figures basically fall flat because the girls are just standing there not doing much of anything. Jubei’s sculpt oozes sensual body language and the placement of the swords is just ridiculously gratuitous (in a good way).
I hope swimsuit Naoe turns out well. I have her on order, but I feel like the pose is more conservative than Jubei, so I’m a little concerned that the final figure will leave less of an impression.
Yeah, I was looking at the Naoe figure again and I kinda think she won’t have the same impact as Jubei has, since her pose is a lot more sedate and her smile doesn’t seem as memorable. Then again, her bikini is really, really tiny, and maybe that’ll make up for her less energetic pose.
I agree with that; Jubei’s pose really elevates this figure, particularly compared to recent swimsuit figures like the Shining Wind/Tears figures and pretty much all of Wave’s Beach Queens stuff. I think it’s also great how Alter deviated from the source artwork, which gave Jubei a sillier facial expression (with her tongue sticking out). I really prefer her flirty, earnest smile instead.
This is going to be a strange comment coming from me, but I feel like she’s almost TOO detailed in terms of musculature and tendons and whatnot. TomtheCat may like those popliteals, but they’re throwing me off. From the front, though, I have absolutely no complaints. 1/8th is actually pretty impressive for this level of detail, but I’ve been trying to stay away from that small scale.
I actually didn’t jump on the recent Samus Aran figure for several reasons. First and foremost the scale, second the Other M Cindy Crawford mole, and third they cut her cup size down quite a bit. Actually, every part of her physique in that figure is too slimmed down. Now I’m rambling. Yagyu is gorgeous, despite my bizarre objections to her level of sculpting detail. 🙂
She does seem a bit more on the musclebound side of things than the typical anime girl. Speaking of detail and 1/8 scale, it’s pretty amazing how much Alter can put into a figure of this size; one of the figures in my review queue is Sideshow’s Premium Format Psylocke, which is probably the largest figure I own, but it isn’t even close to the level of detail of any Alter figure I own.
Looking at Samus again, her bust does seem much smaller than what I’ve seen in her game art. That’s a bit regrettable; I think I like her better when she’s on the bustier side.
If she stands at 19cm right now, how tall would she be if she were standing straight up? Would she be closer to a 1/7 scale?
I think she’d still be about 1/8 scale – at least with respect to other 1/8 figures by Alter. Other figure companies tend to fudge their figure sizes (MegaHouse in particular, and Good Smile Company as well; I’m expecting Inori to not be much larger than a Figma) but Alter stays relatively consistent and accurate. Except with Dizzy, anyway, who is a curious exception to what could otherwise be taken as a rule. Anyway, just eyeballing this Jubei with Alter’s older Jubei, it looks like swimsuit Jubei might be about the same height as the older Jubei if both were standing up; though on the other hand, the older Jubei is wearing some huge platform shoes that increases her height.
Amazing figure but definitely NSFW. I don’t really think sticking a sword in her boobs was the best position they could have made for her, but this is Alter we are talking about – they make every pose work!
It seems they based it off of an illustration by Niθ; you can see it about two-thirds of the way down on the figure page of the Samurai Girls website, which isn’t very well organized. While anybody who’s read this website knows that I am a big aficionado of hentai, I don’t actually like seeing paizuri in anime very much. On the other hand, I do like how the overt sexuality of her pose contrasts with her cheery smile.
If you actually look at that source image you can see that the sword actually went through the “covering part” of the swimsuit rather than just the extra strings.
You can see the bottom pulled towards the side of the sword in the source’s rear view.
Hmm, indeed it does. Too bad Alter didn’t stick with that, as you suggested; it would’ve been really cool-looking.
Looking at that page, I’m reminded of how nice the first Yukimura figure looked; it’s also too bad she was my least favorite character from the show.
I’d probably get this, cause there’s unique and playfulness to the pose which is quite different from the first release which is quite conventional for me. if not for accessories and intricate designs i wouldn’t realy be entice to buy it. Nice shot ma!!!
I like this quite a bit more than the first figure for the same reasons; she shows a much more appealing personality to me here.
Really nice lookin’ Jubei. I’m not a huge fan of Ryouran Samurai Girls’ default costume designs. They’re just…these horrifying mishmashes of traditional, modern, and fetish clothing. I can see how they can be appealing but they just aren’t my cup of tea, so this swimsuit version is a lot more appealing.
Haha, yeah, they are definitely mixed and matched. I generally like the designs, but there are some things I really don’t like, particularly in terms of the footwear; I really don’t care for platform shoes and that’s what Yukimura and Jubei wear, and I think the stilts that Hattori Hanzou has look silly. I’m not sure which era those stilts are supposed to come from. I don’t like Sen’s boots, either. I do like a lot of other aspects of their outfits but Yagyu Jubei’s short pink dress isn’t one of my favorites.
I dunno what the anime says, but i think the shorter sword is called wakizashi, while the longer one katana ofc. ^^
This Jubei figure was actually nicer than I thought. I didn’t give the first version too much attention, since I’m not a big fan of swimsuits for some unknown reason. but now that I see how good your pictures turned out, I’m quite surprised that I didnt notice this fine quality before. Makes me want to collect swimsuit versions! I think I prefer this white version over the orange one btw.
I’ll have to end my comment by saying: DAT ASS!
I thought you didn’t like Senhimes face? I think it was a little bit of though, which why I didn’t order her.
Yeah, I know; I sometimes try to stay away from writing about weapons in technical terms because I usually find that sort of conversation to be tiresome. One exception is that I always call firearm magazines “clips” because gun nuts cannot stand it when you do that.
I do like Senhime’s face, or at least I do now … shoot, what did I write a couple of years ago …
Hmm, yep, I liked her face even back then. Actually, I really like my idealized image of her face, which is that she’s a scowling, homicidal killer. Of course when I watched the show, I found out she was a brainless, snotty rich girl.
Gee, looking at those older pictures … why the heck do I keep tilting the camera like that?
Wow, somebody turned shibari into a swimsuit… I’m rather impressed XD
It’s more common than one might think!