Anime fans have this funny way of being able to fetishize almost anything. Eyeglasses, weapons, musical instruments, headphones – these are just a few things used to elevate the appeal of anime characters. Intrinsic aspects of the characters themselves also lend themselves well to infatuation – various anime fans may prefer different personality types, hairstyles, skin color … and of course, breast sizes. Characters span the gamut of bust sizes, from impossibly large to flat as a flyover state, and many people have strong opinions as to which they like best. Nymph is placed firmly at the smaller end of the scale. However, even though her endowment is humble, FREEing’s Nymph still makes a strong argument for that old maxim that bigger is better.
Nymph is one of the major characters of the manga and anime series Sora no Otoshimono, localized in the United States as Heaven’s Lost Property. She’s the second angeloid to be introduced, following main female character Ikaros. While Ikaros’s is a low-key, soft-spoken young woman, Nymph possesses a conventional tsundere temperament. She initially displays a haughty, abrasive disposition before falling in love with lead male Tomoki, as is inevitable in these sorts of shows. Being that I don’t really like the tsundere archetype, I did not like Nymph very much at first, but after her backstory was revealed, I became more sympathetic. She gets kicked around and roughed up quite a bit and those scenes are pretty hot, so I found myself liking her more and more as the story progressed.
I liked the first season of Sora no Otoshimono far more than Forte, the second season, and I liked the earlier episodes of Sora no Otoshimono better than the later ones. I thought that Ikaros’s interaction with Tomoki was more interesting than Nymph’s (though I might say that Mikako is the most interesting female character of all in the show). As strange as this comparison sounds, the show reminded me a bit of the old Calvin and Hobbes comic strip in the newspaper (older people might remember this strip; younger people might be wondering what a newspaper comic strip is). Tomoki is a bit like Calvin in being a scheming social misfit with only the most tenuous attachment to reality, and Ikaros was a bit like Hobbes in that she’s the levelheaded partner who nonetheless facilitates Tomoki’s schemes rather than deterring him. Most importantly, Tomoki and Ikaros have a unique relationship that serves as the focal point of the series’s plot. Nymph’s introduction moves the focus away from that, and that seemed to damage the flow of the narrative.
However, this is anime and capitalizing on commercial opportunities always takes precedence over the integrity of the storyline. More characters means more merchandising opportunities, and that explains why FREEing has made figures not just of Nymph, but also of Ikaros and third angeloid Astraea. The packaging says that this figure is derived from the movie Sora no Otoshimono: The Angeloid of Clockwork, where another angeloid character was introduced, and it’s curious that FREEing hasn’t shown off a figure of her. Then again, it’s also curious that we haven’t heard anything more of FREEing’s announced figures of Rana Linchen and Ganessa Roland from Freezing, even though they’ve exhibited preliminary designs for both.
Like all of FREEing’s bunnygirl figures, Nymph is sculpted in God’s scale: 1/4 scale, the scale more figures should be made in. That implies she’s rather large but that number doesn’t express just how large. She’s 41 centimeters tall from the bottom of her high heels to the tip of her bunny ears, or about 36 centimeters tall to the top of her head. As her height is listed as 139 centimeters, her listed scale size is actually conservative, a very rare occurrence amongst figures. In contrast, Gift’s recent figure of Nanoha Takamachi was also listed as 1/4 scale, and being that Gift has made a number of 1/4 scale figures, they should know what 1/4 scale looks like, right? Well …
Placed next to Nanoha, the size disparity between these two ostensibly 1/4 scale figures is obvious, even though both ought to be of similar stature. Despite the character’s petite physique, FREEing’s Nymph is humongous, almost comically so.
FREEing has made a ton of bunnygirl figures, most of which have featured real fishnet stockings. The two other FREEing figures in my collection Satellizer el Bridget and Amane Shiratori – did as well, but Nymph breaks with that tradition by going bare-thighed. She’s wearing some oddly-cut knee-high socks along with a high-cut strapless leotard, both of which are trimmed with a sort of poofy, furry-looking plastic. And of course, she’s got some bunny ears.
Her outfit and her ears are painted in a sort of lavender color, and I don’t know that I like it as much as I would have if her clothes were simply painted white. The drab purple color reminds me a bit of what sometimes happens when you mix white laundry with dark-colored clothing. I think that at the least, the furry trim should’ve been painted white.
Aside from its color, though, her outfit looks great. I think this high-cut leg style is a lot sexier than the low-rise style that is very common amongst swimsuit figures. One aspect that I didn’t notice in the prototype shots is her leotard’s tightness; Nymph’s navel is clearly visible and her nipples are protruding just enough to be noticeable. They look great and add an element of eroticism to the figure.
Continuing our study of her chest, Nymph is curiously more busty here than I remember her being. I seem to recall that she had a very modestly-sized chest in the anime, but here her breasts are quite visible, with noticeable cleavage. I wonder what flat-chest fans will make of that.
Also surprising is the size and shape of her rear. Nymph’s pose displays her backside most prominently, and so it is a good thing that her ass is quite attractive indeed. Her buttocks are large and well-defined, despite her compact, loli-style body build. Nymph’s rear didn’t seem to be one of her major fetish points in the series, so it’s nice to see that the sculptor spent some time making certain that her ass looks right.
Nymph’s wings are completely undetailed, though as I remember it, her wings are supposed to be wispy and filmy rather than feathery like Ikaros’s and Astraea’s, so perhaps that can be excused. Still, they aren’t what one would describe as one of the more beautiful aspects of the figure.
As befits her contemptuous personality, Nymph’s face is locked into a pout. You can read multiple things into her expression; maybe she’s showing embarrassment, or annoyance, or disdain, or maybe this is just her natural look. FREEing’s Sora no Otoshimono bunnygirl figures have done a pretty good job reflecting the respective characters’ personalities; Ikaros has a bit of a confused look while Astraea evinces ditzy exuberance, and Nymph’s expression looks pretty much like you would expect her to look.
All the angeloids wear collars with short chains, signifying their subservience to a master. If one finds this concept to be distasteful, or if one simply doesn’t like the way her collar looks, it can be taken off. Her head slides right off her neck, allowing her collar to be removed. I think she seems sort of naked without it. Well, she’s already pretty close to naked but the collar really ties her outfit together. Nymph’s pose and body shape have sort of a cylindrical look that her collar emphasizes, and without it her head starts looking too large for her shoulders.
One of the curious realities of figure collecting is that 1/8 and 1/7 scale figures are often far more detailed than 1/4 scale figures. That’s still the case with Nymph; there isn’t a lot to her design, admittedly, but even so, the paintwork still has sort of a flat look to it, particularly with her hair, which doesn’t feature much shading or depth. That’s not to say her sculpting and paint look bad, it’s just that her large size makes such things more apparent.
But even so, I like this figure quite a bit. Nymph looks quite sexy, with her nicely-sculpted chest and excellent-looking behind, and her small scowl is also appealing. Although I don’t necessarily have a big thing for lolis, I do like her body build, particularly her thighs, which look stout and muscular rather than skinny. Her outfit looks very nice as well, though its coloring isn’t as attractive as it could be. Overall, this isn’t a figure I would’ve bought had it been 1/8 scale or even 1/6 scale, but I think that size is an important quality in itself, and being 1/4 scale, I think Nymph looks great.
Here’s Nymph next to Momohime, my standard 1/8 scale comparison figure since everybody owns her. As you can see, Momohime barely reaches up to Nymph’s ass. One of Nymph’s eyes is nearly as large as Momohime’s entire face.
She’s gorgeous, and I was very tempted to get all of this set (as I’m easily swayed by Kemono figures, but also I enjoyed the anime for what it is). I have a 1/6 Nymph, and her collar can also be removed, which I did because it’s too bulky and weird looking. Plus I’m not in to bondage and slavery type stuff, so it doesn’t appeal anyway.
Still, she really is a nice figure. I should have got the set, but I simply don’t have room for such large scales. I also appreciate her modest chest upgrade here; she wasn’t washboard flat in the anime, but she’s definitely had a slight boost here, which is fine. It moves her in to the realm of perfectly sized (A-B, instead of <A).
Also, I really like the cloudy sort of abstract blue/white backdrop you used in most of these shots. I really want a cloudy and/or marbled type backdrop to use instead of plain colours, but I've not been able to find any decently sized ones, only massive like 3x6M rolls and stuff for studio portraiture. Sad times.
Yeah, I usually feel compelled to get sets. This time, I felt okay about skipping Ikaros and Astraea; I didn’t like Astraea’s winking expression as much, and Ikaros looked a bit strange (she looks a lot better in customer photos, though; the promo photos were peculiarly dark). Mainly though, I just don’t have room for them. This does not explain why I am ordering FREEing’s Fate and Nanoha, but I’ll be having to make some rearrangements for them.
Not into the bondage and slavery stuff ;_; That is one of my favorite aspects of this figure, though I figured I’d try to be somewhat classy and not bring it up. I did forget to break out the tentacle stand, though … hmm … can’t believe I forgot about that. Then again, I didn’t have enough room for it on my desk, since I half-assed this shoot by not clearing off my desk (I was also watching football at the time).
The background is the same exact background that I used for cheerful Miku, Inia, and those vmf50 dolls a few weeks back. Man is it useful:
I need to make a big red version of this one; I use red a lot but I’ve only got them in small sizes.
Thank you for showing us your setup for this photoshoot. By the way, who’s your team?
The 49ers for pro and U.Va. for college. That tie game with the Rams was really hard to watch; hopefully they bounce back strong against the Bears next Monday, cuz that’s going to be a huge game.
I really liked the 49ers’ acquisition of Jim Harbaugh as coach. They’re going to have their hands full with that Bears defense though. I’m not a huge fan of the pro game, but the incredibly bad Chiefs would be my team. I follow college football much more closely, which is painful because my college team is KU. Fortunately, basketball season has started.
I love Jim Harbaugh, too, particularly after the succession of forgettable coaches (Erickson, Nolan, Singletary, and so on) that the 49ers have had. Harbaugh’s news conferences crack me up; it’s like he’s medically incapable of speaking in complete sentences, except for once in a while when he talks about things like the seedy, diabolical world that his critics live in.
Ah man, it has to be rough to be a Chiefs fan; they’ve been on TV here the last three weeks and I caught their games (since I’ve got Bowe on my fantasy team) and man they are tough to watch. Though I think they can turn it around, once they get a quarterback; it seems like a lot of the up-and-coming teams in the league, like the 49ers, Texans, Bears, Seahawks, Vikings, etc., are based on good defenses, strong running games, and mediocre-to-average quarterbacks.
I used to be interested in the college game, and I guess I still am, but man does U.Va. blow. That performance against UNC this evening was borderline comedy. It was getting to the point where I was hoping U.Va. would throw pick-sixes just to amp up the farcical quality of our play.
Ahh, KU; I don’t follow college basketball that much but I am a big, big Paul Pierce fan, because I hate the Lakers and hating the Lakers inevitably leads one to becoming a Celtics fan. I know U.Va. doesn’t have much hope in basketball, either, though; it’s galling that we’re not even one of the two best programs in the state (maybe not even top three), despite having a relatively new arena and a lot more resources than GMU and ODU.
I also dislike it when more love interest characters are introduced, after the intro, it just drags the story and somehow dilutes the relationship of the lead boy and girl characters. It sucks when the main focus is changed, especially in SNO it was not so good to put some totally lively girls, next to the silent and stunted Ikaros, she became kinda plain next to them.
Nevertheless I liked Nymph and Astraea a lot in this anime.
This statue of Nymph, has a very good overall look and resembles her character very well.
The face with the blue eyes turned out really pretty, in my opinion It’s good that the collar comes off. I have nothing against such accessories in general, but hers is so huge that I feel sorry for her and in this figure adaption she looks sexier without it 🙂
I like the petite body of her looks great, ok they gave her bigger boobs, but it still appears reasonable for a girl of this size. Haha this suit seems to be really tight, unfortunately not tight enough to show some cameltoe like details. I still like the sculpting of her pelvis, very attractive.
It’s a pity that they couldn’t give her transparent wings, like Kotobukiya did with the Four Leaves Nymph. The opaque plastic doesn’t look that good unfortunately 🙁
Yeah, I think fewer love interests would enhance a lot of shows. I remember watching Infinite Stratos and thinking it was taking way too long to introduce the characters, and by the time Charles and Laura showed up, it was pretty much time to wrap up the show. Samurai Girls had the same problem. (One show that curiously did not have this problem was Sora Kake Girl; it got the full 24 [or 26, I forget] episode treatment and skirted the issue with love interests by not having a lead male character at all. The story still went nowhere, though.)
Aww, not liking her big collar 🙁 I think her oversized collar is pretty cute, I always like the way it kinda blocks her chin in a lot of artwork of her.
Cameltoe definitely would’ve been nice, though I guess a lot of people would’ve considered it too extreme an addition (not to mention tasteless). Not me, though, I would definitely have appreciated such a feature. Particularly at this size; I should’ve taken more pictures of her standing with over figures because it’s kinda hard to judge just how huge she is.
Yeah, the wings are not very attractive. In fact, I barely even noticed she had wings until I was taking pictures and I was like, “What are those things coming out of her back?” And then I was like, “oh, those are wings … gee, they’re not really all that intricate or nothing.”
Thanks for these amazing pics! She’s very cute.
Thanks for the kind words! She’s definitely a cutie, with a bit more sex appeal than one often sees with a character like this.
A suit so tight it even depresses into her belly button. And her rib cage does not cave in. Nice.
🙂
The wonders of anime fabric … I’ve been looking at pictures of Kotobukiya’s Yui Takamura and marveling at how tight her suit is. Definitely can’t wait for that figure, even if the anime is not nearly as good as I had hoped it would be. Nymph’s suit seems to be made of the same magical material. More anime characters should wear costumes like that.
It’s called shrink wrap. Apparently it is only sold to women for clothing. Men aren’t allowed to wear any…
It’s a pity though that on Yui Takamura’s prototype there appears to be no trace of her nipples. Band-aid? 😉
True indeed, I was quite disappointed by that. Also disappointed by its lack in the anime, given that she’s basically showing everything off anyway. We see in episode 1 that she wears no underwear under her suit so yeah, I guess band-aids or tape or something.
Indeed! Though the dudes in Total Eclipse wear some pretty tight suits, too. And probably dance belts or something. (I remember watching Macross Zero some years back and being surprised that the male Russian pilot’s suit was just as tight as the female pilot’s; you don’t really see that kind of equatability in anime very often.)
Kawaii!! (Cute)
I like everything on her except the posing of her hands/arms. They don’t even touch her hip :/
Yeah, it does look like she’s trying to hook her thumbs into her belt or something. Except that doesn’t make sense since she’s not wearing a belt. And I guess it wouldn’t make sense for her to wear a belt in the first place, since she’s not wearing any pants that need to be held up.
Every time I look at a Nymph figure, I get turned off by her ginormous, hulking collar and those poor excuses for wings. I know they are symbols of her past and I’m supposed to feel sorry for her, but aesthetically they just bug the hell out of me. It’s nice that you can cast her collar off in this case, but then there’s the giant fruit loops that I can’t unsee.
I would’ve been okay with the omission of the wings, since that’d even be anime-accurate. I dig the collar very much, though. It seems a lot of people don’t like the collar or bondage elements; I should’ve dressed her up with some of the doll accessories I’ve used for 1/4 scale figures in the past.
Yeah, the fruit loops are pretty weird looking, and I would’ve been fine if they had been omitted. I really wish they were colored differently, since I usually don’t notice them much at first because the have the same color as her suit, but when I do, they become much more noticeable rather than complementary.
Oof. There are way too many things going on with Nymph. The bunny suit, the bunny ears, the cyborg ears, the ponytails, the giant collar. She’s very well-made, but I’ve tended toward simpler figures as my collecting has become more…I don’t know if “refined” is the word.
I guess this is one of those things with this sort of anime, where they throw a ton of character elements at a wall and figure out which ones stick (minus the bunny elements, those components are all part of the characters’ regular designs). Strike Witches was quite the same and that is actually one of the main reasons I didn’t really get into that show (or all the figures of the Strike Witches characters); it seemed like they just threw a bunch of stuff (military uniforms, various swimsuit or underwear designs, and of course, the animal ears and tails) in as a fairly cheap way to attract viewership. (Not that I have anything against a shallow attention grab, though; there are definitely specific elements of character design that will get me to watch a show even if I know nothing about it.)
Hmm … maybe “streamlined”? I think a lot of people are streamlining their collections, cutting back, being a bit more choosy … I’m kinda doing that myself. Sort of. Okay, maybe not really. But if I didn’t have this website, I’d definitely streamline my purchases.
When you started talking about fetishes (glasses, headphones, etc), why did my mind wander to a dirty place when you mentioned musical instruments? It took me a while to think of any girls that use an instrument.
I am not a fan of this figure this time. Something about her head size and wings bother me. Normally I like girls with this bust size, but her body just seems really mis-proportioned. I also agree that the outfit color is funny. Maybe you could paint the trim white.
There are some things I do love about this figure though and first and foremost is her super tight bodysuit. I love that her nipples are poking through and how it shapes her ass. Those features would be worth the price alone and the fact that she is huge make then even bigger.
I didn’t care for the white backgrounds this time. It seemed to wash her out compared t the blue background and ?gels?.
Were you thinking of a clarinetist at band camp, perhaps? You know, I’ve got these really neat vmf50 dolls and all sorts of interesting toys for them, but I’ve never used the 1/4 scale guitar in such a manner. The K-On! characters are probably (by far) the most popular and well-known anime characters to use musical instruments … a few others would be the characters in Sora no Woto, Mylene in Macross 7 … Super Sonico is often drawn with a guitar, which is no surprise since as a company mascot, her main job is to attract a fanbase.
She definitely has a huge head. It’s part of her character design, since she’s very small in stature, but yeah, I personally like Ikaros’s and Astraea’s character designs better. The other Nymph figure I have (by Plum) also has the same big head problem; it’s probably even more obvious with that figure. (Though for me, I think this figure is the one with the most noticeably oversized head.)
Yeah, the white background was very much impromptu. I like the idea – in retrospect, I think maybe this figure would’ve been better shot on white since I think her look, pose, and outfit don’t lend themselves as well to the aqua blue light show I used – but the execution wasn’t great. I try to move the figure as far away from the background as I can when I shoot on white but this time, I didn’t clear off my desk like I normally do so the distance was very short (I should’ve cleared off my desk but I was feeling lazy and I was watching the Steelers/Bungles game at the same time). While I like 1/4 scale figures very much, they are so big that I often don’t have any shooting ideas for them, and that sometimes shows in how much effort I’ll put into the shoot.
I was thinking more of a recorder, but I think you probably know where I was going anyway. That reminds me that I really should watch Darling again.
True indeed! When it comes to anime, there are a lot of aspects and objects that can be used as a fetish in a non-sexual context. Me, though, I’m a typical insensitive male cad and I tend to think of everything in sexual terms.
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