It is time for that monthly examination of figures that have recently been put up for preorder. It’s a mix of figures this time, with a few of the usual companies – Kotobukiya and Max Factory in particular – unrepresented. Hopefully they have some neat stuff to show at Wonder Festival, which is just a few weeks away already. Where does the time go? (Spent slacking off, in my case.) Anyway, let’s take a look at the upcoming cool things.
September
Sora Kasugano from Yosuga no Sora
The first figure in this list is, well, not new at all. Alter has been on the verge of irrelevancy as a figure manufacturer for quite some time now, at least for those collectors who have been buying figures for a while. Those who’ve just gotten into this hobby, however, are probably happy that they’ve been rolling out so many re-releases, as are those who missed out on some of their earlier products. Sora is one of their figures that I kinda regretted skipping, and now that she’s up for re-release this fall, I wonder if I should pick her up. I’m hesitating because while I like the way she looks, there’s not a lot about her that really makes me think that I have to have this figure, and with shelf space depleted and with me keeping a closer eye on expenditures, it’s a little harder to justify buying her now than it was prior to her initial release.
October
Travel Cat from Planet of the Cats
A while back, Embrace Japan made a couple of figures based off of Mamecchi’s artwork (Cat and Chair and White Cat). They were pretty nice – not masterpieces or anything, but the characters were quite cute and the outfits were agreeably skimpy. Travel Cat follows much the same pattern, though she has a more willowy figure than Cat and Chair and is more obviously developed than White Cat. She also has a much more friendly expression than either of the two earlier figures. Despite my professed dislike of animal ears and tails on anime characters, I actually like them here; somehow Travel Cat wouldn’t look quite right without them, I think. I’m pretty sure Travel Cat will be joining her two friends on the shelf.
Elisa from DominancE
I’ve passed on a few figures because their bodies seemed too bulky. It’s a somewhat common stylistic thing, but it’s not something I care for all that much, and as much as I like Elisa’s face, I really wish that the sculptor had toned down her curves. However, I also have the feeling that this is one of those figures that is going to be difficult to find post release, and she doesn’t seem quite as fleshy from the front, which is the only viewing angle I really care about. I’ll label this one a maybe.
Sigui from Queen’s Blade Rebellion
This is sort of a random figure, being that Orca Toys has no history at all of making Queen’s Blade figures, but then again, the pose and theme seem right in line with what they do. This is … well, there’s not much that needs to be said about this figure. It looks nice. It’s obviously pretty lewd. And it’s pretty big. It’s also fairly expensive, and Sigui isn’t amongst my favorite Queen’s Blade characters, but I think I’m leaning towards ordering this figure.
Sugie Sun from Maiden of Paradise
By now, Alphamax pretty much has this Tony Taka thing down pat; they find some piece of ero art from Tony’s portfolio that they like, they roll out a figure, and collectors buy it up. The customers are happy, Alphamax is happy, and Tony is happy. They’re almost coming out a little too fast – I’ve got Shirayukihime and Yae Shoubi still boxed up and awaiting review – but I can’t really complain about this situation. Sugie Sun looks pretty great – albeit a little pricier than Skytube’s earlier figures but these days, that’s par for the course.
Yuu Fujikura from Princess Lover!
This is another somewhat unexpected figure from Orchid Seed, a company that, unlike Alter or FREEing or MegaHouse, doesn’t seem to place a high priority on issuing a comprehensive lineup of figures from a show’s cast. I was a little surprised that Princess Lover! didn’t get many figures; I thought that Charlotte might get a few, and that Saber-knockoff Sylvie might get some as well. But then, I didn’t think the show would get a pornographic adaptation, either. Yuu is a nice choice, though her waist and hips look a little misshapen. Nonetheless I’m kinda leaning towards buying her. It’s amusing how the pictures on Amiami censor her vagina but not her nipples, while the Hobby Search pictures censor her nipples but not her vagina.
Laura Bodewig from Infinite Stratos
Strangely, there aren’t a lot of figures of the Infinite Stratos girls, particularly of them wearing their swimsuit-style piloting outfits. Merchandise peddling is almost the entire reason Infinite Stratos exists, but though most of the big figure companies have ignored the show, FREEing is rolling out a series of 1/4-scale figures, with Cecilia, Charlotte, and now Laura having gone up for order. I’m most interested in Laura, who looks really cute in her black bunnygirl outfit. She’s pretty expensive but at least she’ll be huge, and for once I don’t mind that she’s sitting down rather than standing up.
Sword Sniper Rigel from Z/X -Zillions of enemy X-
Rigel belongs to one of the anime tropes I like very much – the futuristic armored mecha musume. She looks pretty good, with a very attractive outfit and a, well, not too bad of a face. I’m really not sure about that price, though. I mean, I like eating at Five Guys but I’m not going to pay a Kobe beef price for a Five Guys burger.
Awww Elisa, this was a nice surprise, her face is more pretty than in her “special taste”origin.
The dress is also cool reminds me of NGE, but yeah she is a bit too big of a girl to preorder her without a second thought. I often set plug suits in connection with fitness, but her body looks more lusty than sporty.
That is a big Sigui for sure and so sexy, a bit much for me, you should buy and review her :p
I wonder Alleyne had no vagina at all, yet this figure also has none, but a quite detailed crotch at the sides of her erotic gear.
Sugie Sun, maybe that is another case of misleading product photography, but I don’t feel her design, like a ripoff of Orchid Seeds Alleyne. They should really improve the leaf amor here.
Im happy when Orchid Seed finished their share of 7 Sin figures, so that they can focus on their regular work, their blog slowed down a lot. Color variations also already annoys me. Good they still do things like this pretty and nude maid, uhh they really show her vagina on HS, cute XD
After Cecilia another time Im impressed by how much detail and emotion FREEing hammered in Laura’s face, this looks fantastic!The only bad thing is that the seamline of her fishnet stockings runs straight over her buttocks. I think they will show Tatenashi soon then I will decide if and who of these figures I would like to have, too bad they left Houki her dress
from the certain episode was probably too complex.
Its crazy at the moment I feel like buying the Mirai Doll by Danny Choo, she is cheaper and more expressive than most Dollfies, even has cool clothes and an interesting stand.
Yeah, I really like the face that the sculptor gave her. I generally like Sei Shoujo’s style (well, aside from the bulky bodies that he has taken to. And his scat fetish, I don’t like that.), but I think this face is much, much prettier. The bulkiness of her body seems more noticeable from the rear than from the front, so that does make her a little more appealing to me. I think maybe I should photograph Daiki Kougyou’s Celia and see how I feel about her; I went through the same thought process where I initially didn’t like her because of her small head and big body.
I’d definitely get Sigui if I were more of a fan of her character. Or more of a fan of Queen’s Blade Rebellion in general; I dunno, I liked the original Queen’s Blade but I never got into Rebellion. Maybe I should watch it sometime, I didn’t get past the second or third episode.
Haha, well, I guess Tony tends to get criticized for not being particularly original with his work, so it seems appropriate that Alphamax’s figure gets the same remarks. Yeah, I have to admit I’m not digging the leaves much; they look pretty cheesy to me.
Yeah, repainted figures can be kinda annoying, particularly when you preorder the original figure but then a recolor comes out that you prefer instead. Orchid Seed is one of those companies that seems to go through dry spells every now and then; it’s nice to see them come out with something unexpected.
Laura does look really nice; they did a great job capturing the prouder aspect of her personality. I wish they didn’t put Charlotte in a poodle suit (or well, I wish the anime hadn’t done that) so that I could buy both and pair them together. I wonder what Azone’s Laura doll will look like?
Ahahaha, well, I guess I’ll refrain from commenting about the Mirai doll XD In truth I don’t really have a problem with Danny Choo; it’s mainly his sycophantic fan club that I dislike. It’s nice that he was able to imagine a character and make a big-ass doll out of it.
I checked some cg of her and made really dumb face, I can’t imagine anybody is interested in this *puke* Well, whatever the figure is pretty actually only a little chubby princess.
After I´ve seen Tatenashi’s painted prototype I guess Laura would be the best choice for me, even though Cecilia nearly looks as good as her. Hey FREEing get your ass up and make Houki!
“sycophantic” I learned a new word again haha it actually happens more often that I learn a new word when reading here. Well yes there are such fans, it’s a crazy phenomenon. I´m not interested in the Mirai character, my main interest is to find a cute doll, I would consider to buy. Without modified faces Dollfies have a tendency to look cold. The smart doll is an interesting option for me and the price is also ok.
I’d recommend not ever looking at the CGs for Starless. I recall there are some pictures where there is more, uhh, digestive material visible than I think can actually fit in the human gastrointestinal system.
It does look like a cute doll. I’m not crazy about the character or the source but as far as 60cm dolls goes, it seems like a reasonable choice, particularly assuming it’s compatible with Dollfie Dream clothing.
Regarding Sugie, I generally keep my cast-off figures clothed due to the barbiedoll crotch or their clothes simply make them more interesting. In this case her giant elephant ear leaf is the only foliage that I would display her with.
My God.
I often keep my figures in full castoff mode since I typically take the clothed pictures first and then the nude pictures, and I generally just toss the clothing parts and other accessories back in the box. I don’t actually have too many figures with Barbie crotch but in such cases, I’d be more inclined to keep them covered up, too.
http://www.amiami.com/top/detail/detail?gcode=FIGURE-006739&page=top
More coming Tier. hahahaha
Yep, I guess she’ll be included in the next preorder post. I guess I’ll also be getting Princess Milk sometime soon; it’ll be interesting to compare the two of them whenever the Alphamax figure comes out.
Headsup on Sugie…..yup, they changed her name again…………”Sugie” A recent image dump from moeyo.com
http://www.moeyo.com/article/58592
the lighting made her lips a bit weird looking. Well worry not, actual figure is just as if not very pretty. And Skytube included a very small block, half a pencil eraser, about a millimeter thick gum of adhesive to be applied to the two leaves that make up her bikini. And her display base is a great faux white sand beach setting.
I have a feeling I won’t be preordering a whole lot until the Kill la Kill figures start rolling out.
However I’ve decided to up my ero figure collection with that SkyTube cover girl, Susie Sun, and Siggy. I love that the last two are 1/6 scale. That should be the standard scale if large boobs are involved.
I agree; it’s nice to see a lot of larger figures coming out recently. Admittedly, I suppose part of that is because Alter and GSC generally stick to 1/8 scale and it doesn’t seem like they’re pushing out that many scale-size figures.
Kill La Kill is one of those odd series where I really like the designs, but I generally like the fan art more. I feel the same way about Kantai Collection, which is why I haven’t been too interested in many of its figures. I wonder if there will be any Kill La Kill figures where the sculptor goes with his own style instead of trying to replicate the anime look.
I’d like to see that too but it seems pretty rare in the world of figures (outside of Kotobukiya’s Bishoujo lineup). There were the Taka Tony Vocaloids from GSC and those Hajime Ueda Monogatari figures… I’m sure there are more but drawing a blank right now.
There’s a few makers that seem to specialize in this sort of thing, particularly Daiki Kougyou, which probably gets them more criticism than props, admittedly. This is particularly exemplified by gangsta lean Saber; it’s a good thing that they don’t otherwise make figures of many popular characters.
Good thing you posted Travel Cat from Planet of the Cats. I was planning to pre-order her and forgot! Will do it immediately when I get home. 🙂
I should probably get around to it, too; I don’t think she’ll be in high demand but as I recall, Cat and Chair became hard to find after her release.
(And sorry about approving this comment really late; I’m not getting comment notifications by e-mail anymore, for some reason.)
Not getting Hiryuin Satsuki in her ….. glorious armour ….. ?
Nah, I don’t think I will; I don’t really like her face much, which is to say that I don’t care much for the style of the anime (it’s the main reason I haven’t actually watched the anime). The armor design definitely is amazing, though; if she gets a figure with a less old-school face design, I’d certainly be interested.
If you did not like Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, you probably won’t like Kill la Kill. Although there are enough significant differences.
Yes I’m somewhat disappointed with her facial expression; she needs to be much much more ANGRIER. But it’s Satsuki sama, so i bow my head.
I haven’t actually watched much of Gurren Lagann, either, mainly since I was hoping English-language Blu-rays would be released. It doesn’t look like that is going to happen, though.
I do know a little about Satsuki, particularly with respect to the peculiarly hands-on mothering technique of her parent. That part was pretty cool.
I’m also tempted by Rigel but that price really is offputting. At least I don’t have to worry too much about releases for a while, the last 2 items I received absolutely killed me!
I’m actually glad that there haven’t been too many Infinite Stratos figures. The ones with the girls in their pilot suits have been boring as hell! I have purchased the AGP figs though and they have been good. There has also been *that* amiami figure which has been delayed so long I started wondering if she would ever get a release. Well, she did, She arrived and she is GLORIOUS!!!
Yeah, it’s odd that the IS figures have been pretty uninspired, though I suppose a big part of that is simply due to none of the major manufacturers (of female PVC figures, anyway; I guess Bandai is technically a really big-ass company) making figures of them. It’s good to know that the Houki figure turned out nice, though, since as I remember, her price tag was pretty high. I’d say that it was insane except recent figure prices have made it look less outrageous than it initially seemed.
She got some major price drops as the release date kept getting pushed back. I think the final price is 10k less than the initial price when she first came up for pre-order. Her price is still high but not ball-busting like it was before so I think more people will buy her now. (I bet some of the delay was just to get the manufacturing costs down…)
That is good, at least. I’m wondering if some of these uber-expensive 1/7 and 1/8 figures are going to get some big price drops, too. Houki at least had the big elaborate mecha thing to justify her price.
I’ve been keeping up with your site for awhile now. Always excellent photography with your reviews. You turned me on to Good Smile’s Lacia figure, which I paid a pretty high after-market price for on ebay, but she’s one of my favorites so I’m not complaining. I need to downsize my collection and thought you might know of a better way to sell some of my figures other than ebay. In any case, keep up the good work. I’ll be watching.
Thanks very much for the kind words! Unfortunately, I’m not really sure; I want to offload some of my figures and I’m not sure where to do it. I know MyFigureCollection has a sales section, though I’m not sure how active it is. I’d probably look there along with eBay.
Thanks! I went ahead and posted them on ebay. Don’t look for them, I’m embarrassed for you to see my photography.
It is all good; if I were taking pictures of my figures for sale, I’d take really boring, ultra-flat pictures so that it’s easier to see what the figure looks like.
In a previous preorder post you mentioned that you might be interested in Native’s Touko. Well, last night I was at the LA Anime Expo! During a figure panel Mikao Saito said that Touko has moveable or removable (It was a bit difficult to understand at times) eyes similar to a doll’s. This was the first I had heard of that feature and thought that you might be interested.
Also, I don’t have any dolls nor had I ever had any interest. Recently I’ve found myself considering Danny Choo’s “Smart Doll”. I was curious as to what your thoughts or perhaps intentions were on acquiring one.
I don’t know about Tier but I’m not a fan of dolls so I’m skipping over Smart Doll. From my understanding, it’s a decent offering if you’re just looking for a neutral doll to possibly customise into your own design but my Doll collection is made up of entirely licensed characters with awesome accessories and it’s the character licenses which got me to purchase them.
Have to say that I’m surprised at how little I hear about smart doll in general,
That’s a reasonable assessment (though I’m hearing a bunch about the Smart Doll thing thanks to my Twitter feed; about half of the people I follow are Dollfie collectors and have been retweeting this stuff. It’s driving me nuts.). I don’t know what the doll comes with – I’m assuming it comes with the wig and clothing necessary to recreate the mascot character – but given the prevalence of Dollfie Dream clothing, it shouldn’t be too difficult to customize the doll if one so chooses.
That’s how I’m getting my info as well but it’s usually a retweet from another doll collector as opposed to those I follow being the ones to post themselves…
The actual pool of posters about Smart Doll seems to be actually rather small but they’re somewhat vocal…
Yeah, that’s what I get a lot of as well. I should turn off re-tweets already. A couple days ago, I was looking at my “Who to follow” list and everyone there had a Dollfie Dream avatar. Maybe this is a sign that I need to start tweeting pornographic doll photos again.
Ah, that is interesting news. I’m not sure how that will work since it doesn’t look at all like Touko has artificial eyes, but we’ll see how she turns out. I just hope that she doesn’t have big seam lines that will make it difficult to display her unclothed.
Ehh … man, I dunno if I really want to articulate my views. I suppose I’d say, I’m mildly apathetic to the doll, somewhat ambivalent towards its creator, and full of disdain for the more obsessive sect of his personality cult. I have no plan to purchase the doll; aside from the baggage that the character and creator bring, most of the doll stuff I have is in the 50cm size. The Angel Philia doll line is also more explicit, though sometimes that theme is carried to comical extremes that I don’t care for (Arcadia apparently showed both a quad-amputee doll and a futanari doll at one of their recent doll shows.)
I’m more interested in the animatronics. I’m pretty sure that she’ll be buggy as all hell but the idea itself is pretty cool. I don’t know, I guess I’m just hoping that it’s not simply a gimmick….
It’s probably a gimmick and won’t deliver at all.
I dunno, it might deliver…
But you’ll have to pay through the nose to get one. The current price (which is a little lower than standard DD price) is just for the doll with none of the electronics. You can bet that will be astronomically expensive if they complete it
Uhh, gee, the thing can move? That’s pretty neat; I have no idea how much these things cost but at the least, I guess one can get a handjob out of it or something. It is pretty neat that they’re trying to differentiate their product a bit from the other big-ass dolls in the marketplace.
When Danny was pushing it, he was showing a load of mechanics being placed into the doll which would (in theory) allow it to do some basic, pre-programmed moves.
However, the one on the market is just a basic doll with some slight design changes to distinguish itself from Volks Dollfie Dreams, like a much less clear separation between the torso and lower body. The mechanic-less doll costs slightly less than a DD but you can bet that the full version will have a ridiculous pricetag if they ever release it.
Hmm, interesting. I did notice how the torso looked like a single piece; if it really is two pieces, I’m pretty impressed by how well they hid it. I’m gonna guess the motorized version will be strictly limited edition if it does hit the market, and it is kind of a sign of how wacky this hobby is when a Dollfie-type price tag (i.e., $500 US or so for basically a hollowed-out vinyl doll) elicits no reaction.
the leaves on look uninspired, but never owned something by Tony and this one doesn’t seem like a bad start
^ Sugie
Yeah, I have to admit the leaf motif isn’t one of my favorite things. I’d prefer it if they’d had left them off completely, to be honest.
i noticed a recent trend in amiami (as in just today), new pre orders for Daiki figs has a note: “can only be purchased with credit card”. DRAGON Toys and Skytube still can use Paypal……….wtf?! Paypal getting all religious or some nutty feminazi playing the victim card? grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
I dunno; Hobby Search and Amiami are inconsistent in how they handle adult goods, it seems. I recall Hobby Search used to sell R-18 stuff on their international website, but then they pulled it all when they removed credit cards as a payment option. Then they allowed credit cards again, but they never put the ero stuff back up. Speaking for myself, I don’t mind since I get big credit card points from ordering figures and I’m thinking of taking a vacation somewhere later this year.