We looked at the Cat and Chair a little while ago, and now it is time to give White Cat her turn. No name for her, apparently, but at least her title is a bit more descriptive than her counterpart’s.
Like her raven-haired analogue, White Cat comes from the mind of Mamecchi, who not only created the series she comes from, he’s also credited as the sculptor of the figure. Planet of the Cats is, apparently, a doujinshi series, although I’ve never seen more of it than the covers of the books.
White Cat is manufactured by Embrace Japan and has no listed scale size, but 1/8 scale seems to be a reasonable guess. She’s about 18.5 centimeters tall – fairly small for a 1/8 scale figure, but that’s mostly due to her diminutive stature.
The White Cat comes outfitted in a short, frilly sea-green dress, evoking feelings of warm, breezy days. It’s a cute dress that, at first, seems reasonably modest.
Though certainly not from the rear, where its abbreviated length becomes more obvious.
The left side is not a favorable viewing angle, as that’s where the dress detaches from itself for removal. Taking off her clothes is straightforward; her head pops off and then the dress can be pulled up and away from her body.
Doing so leaves her in a very small bikini, probably the smallest on any of the figures that I own.
Her youth is apparent in her petite body build as well as the compact features of her face. Her expression is quizzical, showing confusion, surprise, maybe even a touch of anxiety. Why does she look that way and why is she wearing such a racy swimsuit? Many swimsuit figures – like Alter’s recently-released Nanoha – are fairly straightforward in terms of their visual appeal, but the White Cat’s look is open to interpretation. Is she just surprised and perhaps embarrassed by someone who has walked in on her? Is she just naturally timid? Or did something more ominous occur?
The ambiguity of her look is very appealing, though it’s not the only element of her design that will stimulate interest. Her small swimsuit and compact body are, of course, highlights of this figure, and though she obviously looks quite young, her narrow waist and long legs enhance her visual interest.
The rear view is no less saucy, being that the White Cat is wearing a thong. Her tail detaches from her body so that her dress can be removed or replaced.
I typically don’t like anime characters with animal ears nor do I have a big thing for prepubescent-looking anime girls, but the White Cat is very cute; the sculptor did a fine job imbuing her with a sense of innocence and sex appeal.
From a manufacturing perspective, White Cat has a number of issues. Up close – and I mean really close – she’s got some obvious defects, like some small pockmarks in her hair and ragged painting along the strings of her swimsuit. Most curious is that she seems to have an odd skin condition on her right leg. It looks almost scaly. I should note that it’s impossible to see this under my normal room lighting. One must wonder what that is, though.
At any rate, anyone who evaluates figures by their technical quality is probably not going to be too pleased with this figure; it’s not exactly an example of a top-quality figurine. However, absent any glaring flaws, I usually evaluate figures by their visual appeal, and so I like this figure a lot. White Cat is cute, looks sexy, and isn’t wearing a lot of clothes. Moreoever, she has a distinctive flair, such that one could imagine writing a story around her, just based on her look. Her inscrutable expression separates her from the scads and scads of swimsuit figures out on the market; she may not be much larger than a Beach Queens figure but she’s a helluva lot more interesting.
Ahh, finally a figure I also have. Our tastes don’t overlap often so it’s a rarity!
I agree as a whole, that she is overall a nice looking figure and better than most beach queens, though I don’t display her cast off, naturally.
Also, my copy doesn’t have scaly skin issues, the only real defect (aside from a few lumps on her hair) is her knees are stained — it seems yours may suffer slightly from this, as seen in pic 16 here, though mine seems worse off (could just be your lighting, though).
Pic I got of it when I unboxed her makes it quite vivid, given the light backdrop; http://myfigurecollection.net/picture/400988&ref=user%3AAsako+album%3A2643
Still, she’s a lovely lass and I’m quite pleased with her overall. I think your simple rusty backdrop works for her, too. Though there are plenty of exotic settings she could be in, sometimes simple is fine too.
Rare indeed! Though one of the figures in the review queue is Neptune. Not sure what I want to do with her, particularly since her and Samus Aran ought to probably be shot in similar ways, and I don’t know what I want to do with Samus either.
Looking at your picture and my figure, I do not think my figure has knees quite that dark, though they’ve definitely been shaded. Curious that mine has that odd scaly pattern.
I was kinda thinking she ought to get something bright and airy, but I don’t have anything like that. I’m kinda hoping to build something like that for Horizon, but that might have to wait till after bikey Saber.
I was sorely tempted to get her when she was announced but I wasn’t sure about the maker and it looks like those fears were well fonded…I know you said the flaws don’t bother you that much but just looking at her hurts. Such horrible QC, seen better on prize figures…Yeesh.
Yeah, if I need a magnifying glass to see it, it doesn’t bother me a whole lot, most of the time.
Have to say the underwear on this one embodies one of the things I dislike on figures, where there is no obvious distinction between skin and clothes.
This is one of the reason I never ordered Good Smile’s Inori Yuzuriha. All the promo pictures I have seen of her seem to suggest no distinction there.
Think my favourite in this regard remains Daiki’s Leina. The straps on her thong are probably the best I’ve seen for emphasising her figure quite realistically.
Also, thought you hated animal ears Tier!
I do dislike animal ears.
I will be certain to exalt Inori’s sculpt, then. The only thing I dislike about her – besides the show she comes from – is that she’s listed as smaller than White Cat.
I’m also not a fan of animal body parts on humans, but this figure is really nice. Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini comes to mind, although there are no yellow polka dots in sight. Oh well.
The sculpt looks quite good. What bothers me though is that the entire bikini cuts too deep into her skin, it just doesn’t look right. I agree with Cantan here.
But I like her facial expression very much. And the green eyes and her dress. Did I mention the teeny weeny bikini? So, in spite of the flaws, for the average display purposes this makes a very interesting figure among all those bikini contestants.
Interesting, one person says her swimsuit doesn’t look distinct against her skin, another says it indents her skin too deeply. I think the indentation is actually a manufacturing issue; it looks like the parts of the figure don’t fit perfectly well together. It kinda reminds me of some of the Keumaya figures I’ve got, except those were model kits and so weren’t glued together.
I think what Cantan means is that bikinis, underwear or any other pieces of clothing are in fact a layer above the skin and should be portrayed as such.
That strings or the seams of tight clothes do cut into the skin is natural, and it’s a challenge for figure sculptors to recreate that appearance as accurately as possible.
On this figure however, the bikini does not appear as a layer of fabric covering some portions of the skin, but every adjoining surface is flush to each other. There are just those razor-sharp cuts which represent the edges of the bikini and are not realistic at all. That’s the issue I addressed. But maybe I’m expecting too much from a small 1/8 figure…
Possibly expecting too much from this manufacturer; I don’t hugely dislike their figures but I own three of theirs now and I don’t see anything that leads me to believe they’ll ever match Alter or Max Factory or even Yamato on one of their good days.
Cute, but those defects look nasty. :O
They do! Like some kind of really weird skin condition, like psoriasis or something.
I liked your review text for her a lot, you said everything about this figure in a very good way without using too many words. Well, I always like your review texts, but this time I noticed the more economic length.
She is quite visually appealing ^^ I really like this standing pose with the distance between both feet. She has also an interesting expression, like the other cat girl from this company.
To me it looks like she’s dancing at a beach party, with her hands like this. The petite and short body on highheels looks very sexy especially in combination with her tiny bikini.
The paintflaw at this certain area next to her crotch is a little unfortunately done, now I can’t shake off the thought that she might have some fungus down there XD
Anyway she is a cute loli cat girl with a sense of fashion.
“Economic length” sounds a lot better than “didn’t have anything to say.” XD To be honest, the latter is more true; I didn’t feel like I had a lot to say about this figure. That’s partly because she looks quite young and I feel creepy sexualizing a young-looking figure, even though it’s just a chunk of sculpted plastic. I must be getting old or something.
Yeah, I’m imagining what sort of skin condition she might have and each one I think of is worse than the last XD I think a lot of kids go through that phase where you try to gross out all your friends with the most disgusting-looking pictures of various skin diseases, and I cannot help but recall those memories when I see that weird scaliness on her leg.
Ah so it was like that, but it worked very well. Maybe it’s a matter of age. As I was a few years younger I was a little more into loli characters, but nowadays when I watch anime it’s more like ok she’s very cute, but show me the older girl with the nice rack now XD
Haha yeah definetly, it gets worse, my last thought was dried drool and then I stopped to think about it ^^
Indeed! Also, when I watch anime, I’m always like, “God I hope there isn’t any incest in this show.” Also, I think I’m going to make a new rule for myself, where I skip any show that has the word “onee-chan”, “imouto”, or “Papa” in the title. Besides hentai shows, I mean.
Well this…this is the exactly the OPPOSITE of the kind of figure I buy. 😉
Wow, that paint scaling looks terrible. Any idea of the cause? I have (had) a Spinosaurus figure from Papo which became oily and sticky after a few weeks and stayed that way the rest of the time I had it. A friend suggested that the paint was decaying, and leaving a residue. Gross.
Ha! Pretty soon I’ll be reviewing some schoolgirl figures, some porno figures, a big-ass bondage doll, and a big-ass Saber doll, who’ll probably also get dressed in bondage clothes. And I still ought to review Dorothy. There’s a little something for everyone here.
Nah, I don’t have a clue. I hope it’s not a lack of paint primer or something. I still haven’t heard back from Sideshow about that. I’m hoping it’s just poor workmanship rather than a defect that will deteriorate further; it’s hard to notice with the eyeball rather than a camera lens so I won’t be too concerned as long as it doesn’t get worse.
To be honest I am not a fan of this figure. Oh, I like her pose, body-type, tiny bikini, and strappy heels and I have no issues with her being a cat-girl, but her oversized head bothers me and the issue that TomTheCat brought up with the bikini really bothers me. I know it can’t be like the Nanoha you reviewed a few weeks ago, but it is enough to not make me consider her.
I am sorry to see the weird STD she appears to have on your figure. Maybe if you envision it was dried tentacle slime or something…
I like her big head XD It gives her sort of an odd contrast; giant, child-like head on a fairly sexy (though small-busted) body. Yeah, the quality is pretty poor, though. There’s absolutely no comparison between this figure and Alter’s or MF’s/Native’s stuff; it’s easy to tell even from a yard away.
Embrace Japan seem to be going through a downward spiral lately with their QC. The Diabolus Ungulate figure came out quite shy of what she was supposed to look like compared to the prototype. Diabolus Inclinatus came out pretty good though – maybe they changed manufacturers or something. They have some interesting figures, so it’s a little disappointing to see this bad QC trend.
These Planet of the Cats figures are pretty interesting too, though not my cup of tea. I’m also not a fan of the “solid iris” look, the eyes just seem a little lifeless to me and makes the figure expression feel static.
I remember the first version of Diabolus Inclinatus had her own problems, with glued-on clothing or something. I hate to pigeonhole companies into tiers of quality or whatever, but I have to admit I’m a bit hesitant to try out some of these new companies that I haven’t heard of, like Lechery.
Yeah, they had a manufacturing error, but Stepped up to compensate the error on their own dime. All those that received the first batch got to keep it while Embrace Japan gave them the fixed versions. I wouldn’t have mind getting one of those extra non cast-offs for free. =P
Just took some pics of Diabolus Ungulate, hopefully to get some time to do the review soon.
Looking forward to those! I’ve been liking demon girls recently; it might be because of that one show airing now (I forget its full Japanese name but one subtitle group has translated it “So, I Can’t Fuck Her!”).
I was vaguely interested in this one initially because I really liked her light brown/white/pale green color scheme, but ended up passing. Newer companies are always a gamble. Not helping is just how expensive figures are nowadays.
This one’s okay. The original sculpt wasn’t anything impressive. I mean, her “cat ears” don’t even look like ears. Just really weird tufts of hair sticking out of her head. Then there’s her cute, dainty pose which goes against that almost-dead look on her face. However from a distance she does look nice, and her colors are really pleasant.
Yeah, I tend to be wary of buying figures from companies I have no familiarity with; I’ll at least wait around to see a preview on one of the big Japanese news sites before preordering, or I’ll get it after release if I see some pictures elsewhere. I’m in that position now with Lechery; I kinda like a couple of their figures but I don’t know if they’re going to any good (their products seem to have some relation to Kaitendoh, which is both a good thing – in that I have some familiarity with them – and a bad thing, in that I like one of their figures and don’t like the other figure of theirs that I own).
Yeah, I’d characterize this figure in a similar way. The style of the animal ears appeals to me, since I don’t really like animal ears in almost all cases, and since I they look like hair clumps or hair intakes, I can sorta overlook them. I also like her swimsuit a lot. The manufacturing quality could really use some work, though.