Despite its age, Lineage II has been a popular source of inspiration for figure manufacturers. Thus far, Good Smile Company, Orchid Seed, and Max Factory have made figures of its characters. That’s gratifying to see, as Lineage II has some very attractive character designs. It’s not atypical in that respect; this may be over-generalizing, but I’ve long thought that Korean MMOs – a group that also includes TERA, Aion, Blade & Soul, and Scarlet Blade Online – have some of the best character designs in video games. The Kamael is the latest such figure to be released, and it’s the third Lineage figure to be produced by Max Factory; we’ll be looking at them in reverse order.
I played Lineage II very briefly, a few years after it was released. I mildly enjoyed it, but I wasn’t thrilled that world PVP constituted a substantial element of its gameplay, and after having played EverQuest for a couple of years, I wasn’t too enthusiastic about playing another hardcore, unforgiving MMORPG. I’m not sure if Lineage II is still that way but back when I played, it definitely belonged to the older generation of MMOs, with long travel times, penalties for death, and lengthy grinds to level up and accumulate wealth. Recent MMOs have tended to move away from that paradigm, which I think is all to the good, although even I occasionally reminisce about the old days when men were men and it took days of playing just to gain a bubble (20% of a level) of experience in EQ.
The Kamael were introduced to Lineage long after I stopped playing, and I know nothing about them or how they fit into the Lineage world, so we’ll skip over the usual character biography. At any rate, this Kamael is nameless, just like Max Factory’s previous Elf and Dark Elf figures. Also like those earlier two figures, the Kamael is a good-sized figure, being sculpted in 1/7 scale. She stands about 22.5 centimeters in height to the top of her head and about 25 centimeters in overall height, including her weapon.
One of the things I like about many Korean role-playing games is that the aesthetics of the character designs are typically somewhere between the Japanese anime and Western style. Such is the case with Lineage II; most of the character models – aside from the dwarves – are relatively realistic and yet still noticeably stylized, with the female characters sporting long, slender limbs, slightly enlarged eyes, narrow waists and wide hips.
Interestingly, the Max Factory’s figures generally go for a more realistic treatment; their Elf figure’s face had a conspicuously Asian look, for example. This figure of the Kamael is no exception; whereas the source artwork makes her appear fairly youthful, the figure gives her smaller, narrower eyes, which make her look quite a bit older. She also has very sharply angled cheeks, giving her face a pinched look and making her expression seem a little more severe.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of the Kamael’s design is her single wing. It is a separate piece that slots into a socket in her back. It’s quite heavy but doesn’t unbalance the figure. Such a large protrusion might arouse concerns of leaning or eventual peg-snapping, but happily the Kamael has two pegs for each foot, and one on each side is made of metal, which should hopefully be stiff and durable enough to keep her upright.
The wing is very pretty and quite detailed, though it’s made of a glossy plastic that doesn’t look anything like feathers. Nevertheless, its effect is apparent; its angelic appearance presents a vivid contrast against the Kamael’s darker, almost demonic features.
For me, though, the most eye-catching aspect of this figure is the design of her armor. Like many other Korean MMOs, Lineage II’s female characters tend to dress in abbreviated suits of armor. Accordingly, the Kamael is wearing some sort of platemail bustier, thigh-high, high-heeled boots, and a high-cut thong. Obviously, it all looks amazing. As with the rest of her, the detailing in her clothing is superb, and the dark, smoky color of her armor effectively complements the lighter tones of her hair and her wing.
Her armor also shows off the sexiness of her body to maximum effect. In particular, her back and stomach are particularly nice to look at. Curiously, while the Elf and Dark Elf figures had removable parts that provided a less-obstructed view of the buttocks of the respective characters, the Kamael seems to possess no such feature; the train that covers her rear seems to be firmly attached to the figure.
The Kamael carries a curious weapon, which appears to be some sort of firearm. Guns generally aren’t the most elegant type of arm, at least not compared to a sword (particularly a Japanese-style sword) or a bow, but this weapon still looks quite classy.
And so does the Kamael, despite her skimpy armor. A large part of that comes from her wing, admittedly, being that wings are big draws in anime character design. She’s a very distinctive figure, being modeled in a more realistic manner than one might expect, and I’m happy that Max Factory did such a great job with her; she’s a fine addition to a superb lineup of figures.
(And as a parting note, one wonders if they’ll make a figure of the human character; Good Smile company did one a while back, of course, but it seems like human characters aren’t nearly as popular as elves – and the loli-type characters – in these sorts of games.)
Beautiful pictures again. I have no idea why she wasn´t on my wishlist when she was announced.. If I didn´t have enough pre-orders planned already, I´d order her now, since she´s still readily available. I´ll probably get her if she´s still around when I have the money.
She looks absolutely gorgeous. I think I´ve mentioned this, but I´m an ass-man, and even though most of “the good stuff” is covered up, it´s still obvious she “got back”. I love picture 18:
https://www.tentaclearmada.com/images/figures/kamael/kamael-18.jpg
Even though that piece of cloth is in the way, you can still see the sides of her hips, incredibly sexy, and definitely “gets me sprung” (sorry, I have this video of Brian Williams rapping Baby got back in my mind). It´s probably sexier even, I´m not a fan of cast-offs, it gets in the way of sculpt quality in my opinion. I prefer a sexy outfit which highlights all the sexy curves. What do we call that piece of cloth anyway? It´s not a skirt.. Cape? Ass-apron? About her look vs. her look in the artwork, I prefer the look of the figure. The face is much better this way.
I think the only thing missing among your pictures is a full body shot with her facing the camera. I´d like to see that. I suspect that would also be my only point of critique: I think Òd prefer her looking straight ahead, instead of angled towards the floor. But I guess I´ll never know.
Haha, I’m assuming that video is in the same vein as the Gin and Juice one. I think the Kamael may have even hit the bargain bin so I assume supply is good (as is often the case with GSC and Max Factory products). I’ve noticed that a number of Korean (and Chinese) artists like a curvier body form with a larger backside than what one often sees in Japanese anime; I’m not sure why that is, though maybe many of those artists have taken a cue from Hyung-tae Kim. It’s one reason (a big reason, admittedly) why I like this art style so much. I’m not sure what that flap of cloth would be called, either; I’m calling it a train, since it has some similarities to a bridal train, and it doesn’t really look like a loincloth, which is the only other word that comes to mind.
I did forget to take such a shot; I usually go all the way around the figure but this time I forgot that one angle. This wasn’t actually a fun figure to photograph, even though she looks so nice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpd2VaFt5iY
My favourite together with Rapper´s delight.
That’s pretty hilarious; it’s amazing how creative people can be. I really hope that whoever put that together was able to look through the newscast transcripts rather than having to watch hours of footage to get the clips he needed to splice that together.
Those details are really stunning, from her body to her dress up to her weapon. The wing is a bit odd but a nice extra I suppose. Video game character figs are somewhat rare, but they’re starting to build up. Maybe one day we could have valkyrie profile fig in the future
A Valkyrie Profile figure would be lovely (though I haven’t played the game; I think I do own it, though). Some Scarlet Blade Online figures would be nice, too. I wonder if Max Factory will make a figure of the new Lineage II race; I haven’t played the game in years but I’m still subscribed to the mailing list and I’m a little surprised that it’s still going strong, it seems.
Great shots all plus several great standouts. I doubt it was just a happy accident but the second shot with her wing lit just enough to highlight the details in her leg armor is just awesome. I’m between cameras right now so all I can do is drool over your shoots; thanks for the lifeline!
My Kamael was at the post office when you first posted your review. It’s not hard to tell that she’s an excellent figure so it was hard to wait until the next day to go sign for her. I’m glad she finally got a solid treatment after Movic’s decidedly failed attempt. I liked her enough to grab a recast garage kit of her Mr. Surprise sculpt (which is also excellent and worthy of an official figure at some point) when I feared that the Movic version would be all that we saw. The GK is still moldering in the basement while the Max Factory Kamael now adorns my sweet, sweet pile-o-ladies.
I like most of the Lineage figures but I was late to the bus stop on the majority of them. I can always hope for a re-release of them but I suppose there’s a good chance that they’ll keep making new ones so long as the money train keeps rolling. (Far be it for me to presume to know your tastes but it’s hard to shake the presumption that you are destined to like the upcoming Dark Elf by Orchid Seed. What can I say, she’s got a pretty substantial b’donk!)
I always dig your dioramas. During my downtime I need to drum up some interesting projects like these for myself to build up my photography war chest for whenever I gear up again.
This shoot was actually really tough and I’m not entirely pleased with it, though it was also a useful learning experience for me The background is the same wall that I used with Trunk Girl many months ago and I wanted to see if it would work with this sort of figure, as I’ve got a lot of figures in the review queue that would seem to work well with the old church/castle wall sort of backdrop. This one was tough because it was partially destroyed so I couldn’t frame the picture like I wanted to, and that caused a lot of problems with the composition; in particular, I had a really tough time balancing the bars of the window as well as trying to keep the background lines reasonably straight On the plus side, I think I see some ways that I could improve this set and re-use it (or re-build it) in the future.
I’m cautiously optimistic about the Orchid Seed dark elf; I’m sure it will be sexy but I was disappointed that the regular elf came in rather small. I hope the dark elf is larger in comparison. (Speaking of E2046, it reminds me that their dark magician figure seems similar to what Orchid Seed plans to make.)
New camera stuff is always fun. I got a new camera recently but I haven’t had the opportunity to use it much yet, which makes me feel a little guilty.
Nice pictures with the good lighting.. The figure is not rally my type, I guess. Karmael looks quite older and her white Alpaca like hairstyle doesn’t appeal to me either, at least make it black, people 😉
The quality of the facial features is impressive, nevertheless and I like everything below her bellybutton. I don’t like some of Max Factories Lineage figures, only the dark Elf figures are something I would not mind to have. Maybe because I’m not familiar with the Game,
I actually would like a figure of my FFXIV character class, I’m all for female.Miqo’te. Been a while since I played this, maybe after summer again. It is a good Game, but there is this “small” chest regulation during character creation *grrrr*
This figure is a departure from what Max Factory usually does so I wouldn’t be surprised if this and the other Lineage figures are less popular than say, a Kantai Collection or Vocaloid figure. I would like a figure of my World of Warcraft figure but then again, Blizzard’s design aesthetics leave a ton to be desired. That’s sort of funny that FFXIV’s chests are small; I started playing Star Trek Online again recently and some people have complained that the breasts of female characters are too large and that it’s impossible to make a flat-chested character. Apparently the game’s producers didn’t want to allow players to make characters that looked underage (whereas that’s a hugely popular thing with Asian MMOs, it seems).
I guess it’s the kind of figure people who know the character or origin would rather buy, not sure if she appeals to regular figure collector who are mainly used to the anime style that much.
She looks rather realistic that might not be everyones cup of tea.
Still Karmael looks very well done and that is important.
What! I think that makes even less sense XD Some want more some others less, you can read a few arguments in the official boards, I even opened a thread during the beta test phase of FFXIV, actually I just wanted the slider to go just a little further to the right hahaha. The other way around it appears more of an silly restriction for those who are uncomfortable with bigger boobs.
I took a look at the character creation options in Star Trek,it’s overwhelming compared to FFXIV, you can create quite the ugly alien as well ^^ Unfortunately I could not find a video about the bust slider in STO in action.
This is a Star Trek Online captain with the bust slider set to 80%. At the minimum the breasts are pretty small, just not completely flat, which is what I think some people want.
Actually I have all lineage figures by max factory, and I have to admit they quality was superb, from sculpting to painting, and detailing, at first I’m really-really impressed by alter quality, but after having some max factory figures, I tend to like max factory more than alter now, especially their latest rage of bahamut cerberus figures, she’s almost perfect, interm of detailing and painting, the accuration between original art and the figure translated really well, and after comparing to koto olivia, cerberus wins in all aspect IMHO, anyway I don’t know the first thing that attract me to kamael was her wing, not the armor, the layer and looks was awesome, but that doesn’t mean, her armor was less awesome, hha.
Anyway nice review and photos, you always make a great figure photos, I’m jealouse hahah
I kinda feel the same way about Alter and Max Factory; I really like Alter figures, they started up right about when I started getting into anime figures and many of their figures are amongst my favorites. However, they haven’t really done a ton of interesting stuff in what, almost two years? Maybe more. (At least since there was that weird Chinese factory issue with GSC, I think.) Max Factory, in contrast, has made a ton of neat stuff. It’s a little depressing. Hopefully they step up their game in the next year or so.
Ah that chinese bootleger issue right? Because they always can get the GSC figure mold and release their own figure before GSC release their, maybe they have some rats on their factory in china, who steal the figure molds, and sell it to bootleger, its kinda annoy me sometimes, because the bootleger can produce a copy of GSC figure, but I’m glad from what I’ve seen so far they never beats the original quality (paint, detail, etc)
anyway, agree with alter, they kinda run in circle right now, releasing some character that they already released before with different pose, and they sometimes kinda lazy to make more dynamic pose for their figure, you know the GSC case now happened to alter, their figure constantly got bootleged recently, especially on their latest release like the santa sonico, the free boys, etc, the counterfeit was released before alter release their official figures,
I’ve read on kahotan blog that GSC will build their own factory in japan, to prevent their figure mold got stolen, and to increased their already great Q.C, so it will be no more almost perfect GSC figure counterfeit anymore, I hope alter follow GSC footstep.
I’m not sure if it was related to bootlegging but I recall GSC shifted some of their manufacturing to a new plant a couple of years ago, but the changeover didn’t go smoothly and a ton of stuff got delayed. That’s around when Alter started rolling out a ton of re-releases, too. It’s really unfortunate how easy it is to bootleg stuff. It’ll be interesting to see how moving things back to Japan will affect GSC; in particular, I wonder what it will do to their figure prices. It might just be my imagination but it seems like the majority of GSC and MF figures end up in the bargain bin soon after release.